A Happier Life

7. Keaton Immersion

I never truly understood what it meant to clean a house until this trip. I knew I needed to get up and get moving on my to-do list. But sitting in my grandfather’s library, reading his words, feeling swoony over—and yes, I’ll admit, a little jealous—the way he loved my grandmother, seems so much more appealing.

When I finally motivate myself to get going, realizing that I’m actually going to have to sleep here, I spend five hours getting one bedroom—my mom’s—clean enough that I felt like I could inhabit it. I chose hers because it was the only one that didn’t have carpet installed over the hardwood floors. With some effort, I roll the bedroom rug up, sneezing as I go. (Salt was a big help, let me tell you, growling and pawing at the moving rug.) The bed is tightly, expertly made, as if waiting for someone to come sleep in it. I strip Mom’s old pink bedspread and all the linens and put them in the ancient avocado-green washing machine. I decide to toss the mattress pad and pillows, which are easily replaced and not sentimental, and take down the swirling hot pink, orange, and yellow drapery. The drapery is crazy heavy, but I’m not sure if it’s from the dust or the thick material. The sun has done a number on it, making the fabric thin and dry in places. I know it can’t be cleaned. But I also can’t quite bear to throw it away, so I stack the pieces downstairs in the back hallway.

If I can’t even get rid of curtains, I’m going to be in trouble when it comes time for the sentimental things. I open all the windows and vacuum and dust every square inch of the room, including Mom’s typing award trophy, her surfing medals—my mother surfed?—and her photo albums. She had left for college in… what? 1970? 1971? I run my fingers along the spines on her small bookshelf. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The Bell Jar. The Feminine Mystique. The Bluest Eye. Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Play It as It Lays. On the shelf below sits what I assume is an eight-track player because the stack beside it—little boxes of a variety I had never seen—are labeled Crosby, Stills, Nash Young, Joni Mitchell, the Doors, James Taylor, Carole King. I pause, holding James Taylor’s first, self-titled album, and have a thought that had never occurred to me: Was my mom cool? She had listened to cool music and read cool, feminist books. She surfed. If the guitar in the corner of her room was to be believed, she played the guitar.

I want to know this version of my mom. I also feel a little guilty. I had never considered this person, the girl who had lost her parents so suddenly. But, in fairness, we never talked about them.

One of my very first memories is coming home from kindergarten with a hot pink flyer pinned to my backpack. I could read just well enough to sound out “Grandparents Day.” I didn’t know what that was, but I knew Grandmommy and Grandaddy were my grandparents.

I remember sitting around our dinner table that night, peas I didn’t want to eat on my fork, and saying, “Daddy, are Grandmommy and Grandaddy your parents?”

He smiled at me. I had just caught him feeding his peas to our dog, but, as Harris always said, no one likes a tattle tale. So I kept it to myself. “They sure are, sweetheart.”

Then I looked at my mom, piecing things together in my five-year-old mind. Were my parents little once too? Did they have parents who fed them dinner?

“Mommy, do you have a mommy and daddy?”

I had only seen my mom cry once or twice before. But I knew when her face clouded over that she was heading in that direction. She shook her head. “No, Keaton. I don’t have a mommy and daddy.” She stood up quickly and started clearing our plates. Then she said, “We’re expecting a new family at the shelter, and I want to be there to welcome them. Could you finish cleaning up without me?”

I could tell by the way my dad shifted as he watched her go into the kitchen that he wanted to say something. But he didn’t. And I filed that away somewhere deep in my memory. I never wanted to make my mom cry. So I never asked about my grandparents again. From then on, on the rare occasions my mom mentioned them, I felt myself storing away every little tidbit about them that I could.

So it wasn’t that I was unfeeling or unconcerned. I just didn’t have any information. I wondered if every time my mom threw herself into work, into another family at the domestic violence shelter, she was trying to build something she had lost. I respected the work she did, but I couldn’t help but be sad that she hadn’t thrown that energy into me, into Harris, into our family. Her loss led to ours, in a way.

I snap myself out of it, put James Taylor’s eight-track down, vacuum again, mop, make up the bed with my clean linens and pillows from home, and flop down on the mattress dramatically. Salt whines until I let him up on the bed too.

I had had Salt about six months when Jonathan and I moved in together, and he convinced me that a dog should be allowed full run of the house—and was a bed-sharing-worthy family member. It only took a couple nights before he was sleeping with us, burrowed happily under the covers. Thinking about that now gives me a pang around my heart. While Jonathan and I—clearly—weren’t right for each other, part of me still wishes he were here with me now, helping me wade through this very emotional situation. He took care of me. That was what I really loved about him, more than anything else. But then I think of Allison, of how Jonathan was always hers, never mine.

But there’s no use dwelling on what isn’t meant to be. I swallow my tears and click on the organization app on my phone that I couldn’t survive without at All Welcome to make a list of how to tackle the rest of the housecleaning. It was better, I realized, when I could use it to assign jobs to other people… Even still, I add tasks for myself like, buy contractor trash bags, check into the cost of dumpsters, and contact the Salvation Army about donation pickup policies.

I reward myself for all my hard work by flipping through the photo album on Mom’s nightstand, dusting each page as I go. I recognize Uncle Lon, of course, and my grandparents, from their picture downstairs. But it makes me sad that I don’t know who anyone else in the album is. It is like my mom has just wiped out this entire part of her life. I want to shake her shoulders and be like, You are a grown-up! You have to deal with things!

I fall asleep with the photo album open and wake, my cheek stuck to one of the sticky laminated pages, to bright morning sun. I check the time on my phone and am shocked to realize that I slept through the night. It takes me a minute to remember where I am, what I’m doing here. And my first real thought is that I can’t decide whether I should go hang with the Dockhouse Dames this morning. On the one hand, Violet seems like she’d know everything about this town, and I get the feeling that her friends will be no different. If I really want to uncover the truth about my grandparents, they might be a good place to start. But do I want to? I couldn’t help myself from scanning my grandfather’s journal yesterday. I still feel a little icky about reading his private thoughts. But, more than the ickiness, reading his words is like piecing together this man I will never get to know. A man who I am one-fourth of. And that feels like an opportunity I can’t give up.

Why I can read his journals and not my grandmother’s entertaining notebook, I can’t say. But I’m not ready.

“Salt,” I say, looking down at my dog. “I think it’s time to venture out.”

He whines up at me like he agrees. I get ready quickly in my mom’s pink-tiled bathroom.

As I walk into the kitchen, I think about the checklist I made for it, which begins with putting away the remains of my grandparents’ last dinner party. But I can’t help but feel like I will be disturbing evidence. I’ll worry about that later. First, coffee.

I open the door and jump, making Salt bark, at the sight of someone sitting on the porch.

“Sorry,” Anderson says. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to see how the ghosts were last night.”

I laugh. “You know, no paranormal activity, thankfully. But, my grandparents didn’t die in the house.”

He looks at me like I’m dense. “Keaton, this house was built in the seventeen hundreds. Probably like fifty people have died here.” Kid has a point.

I nod. “Hey, shouldn’t you be at school?”

“Not until eight,” he says. “And it’s my last day!” Salt is practically in his lap, licking his face, and it warms my heart. Animals and children have such an instant connection. “But I was going to tell you that if you ever need someone to walk Salt, I can do it.”

I smile. “Well, that’s very nice. What are your rates?”

He shrugs. “It’s just a neighborly thing to do.”

I laugh at the grown-up statement coming from under that Camp Rock Springs baseball cap. “No. It’s a service. You should charge. Don’t you have something you’re saving up for?”

He nods. I expect him to say a bike or a Wii or whatever kids are into now, but he says, “A GoPro,” and I laugh again.

“Anderson, you are full of surprises. Why do you need a GoPro?”

“I want to start a fishing YouTube channel.” He pauses. “I have mad fishing skills.”

I nod seriously. “I don’t doubt it.”

Salt jumps off his lap. “How about five dollars?” I say.

His eyes widen like he would have taken less. I immediately think of Uncle Lon and decide I need a negotiation lesson. “I can help you with other stuff too, you know,” he says, looking at the porch disdainfully.

“Squirrel shooting?” We both laugh. “It doesn’t seem like your dad would be too big on that. He didn’t seem thrilled that you were over here the other day.”

“Yeah, but he googled you, and you don’t seem to be a criminal or a developer so he’s cool with it.”

“Anderson, you are the most interesting neighbor I’ve ever had.” I pause. “Come by after school, and I’ll put you to work. How are you with internet people? Because I need internet, but I hate dealing with them.” I’m joking. That is, unfortunately, a grown-up job. But Anderson seems undeterred.

“For five bucks I’ll do pretty much anything you want.” Anderson gets up. “Bye, Keaton.” Salt follows him to the gate, and he leans down to rub his head. “Bye, Salt.”

“Have a great day at school!” I call. It’s only then that I realize Anderson’s dad is watching us from the porch. I wave at him, and he turns and walks into the house without acknowledging me.

“At least we have one nice neighbor,” I say to Salt as we make our way down the front walk.

I turn back to look at the front of the house, and as I do, my heart starts to thump. There is a man—well, no, a pirate, on the side of the house. A literal pirate. He’s wearing heavy brown pants, leather boots, and a red coat trimmed in gold. I squint to see that he has a full-on beard—and appears to be hammering the siding on my house.

Is this the ghost? I watch him. No. Despite the weird outfit, this is definitely a real person.

I decide to call to him from a safe distance, noticing that he appears to have a sword in a holder on his pants. I feel like I should call the police, but what would I say? There’s a pirate hammering my house? Before I can decide, he notices me, and I freeze.

“Hi,” he says, waving and smiling. Despite the lunacy of his outfit, he does have a nice smile underneath his brown leather pirate hat. “You must be Keaton.”

Fear grips my throat. He knows my name. What does he want? It’s like I’m in one of those dreams where I can’t scream or run, so I just stand there, dumbly, as a grown man who thinks he’s a pirate walks toward me and opens the gate. “I’m Alex,” he says. “I do handyman stuff around the house for Lon.”

I feel my shoulders relax an ounce, but I’m still on high alert. Salt, however, is nonplussed. Alex looks down at himself and laughs. “Oh, gosh. Sorry. You probably don’t have a lot of pirates in New York City.”

I shake my head.

“I do the pirate tours around town.”

“Pirate tours?”

He nods. “Yeah. There were a lot of famous pirates who lived in Beaufort at one time or another. I take people around town and tell them about where they came to port, who they killed. You know. The juicy details.”

I finally laugh, my panic subsiding. “Oh, wow. That is really fun.” I pause. “Unless you were one of the victims. Then, you know, not fun.”

“Yeah. Totally unfun,” he agrees. “And sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. But I’m here a lot, just doing little odds and ends.” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a business card. “Call me if you need anything—or, you know, if you find some buried treasure.”

I slip the card in the pocket of my dress, laughing.

He points. “I’m going to get back to it. I have a pirate walk at ten.”

“Aye aye,” I say in my best pirate voice, which is, I realize, abysmal.

He shakes his head seriously. “I can take you on part time, but we’re going to need to work on that accent.” He points at Salt. “And the dog will need an eye patch.”

I’m still laughing as I walk out the gate and onto the sidewalk. It is what I imagine must be a perfect Beaufort day. It is a beautiful seventy-eight degrees with a breeze. Birds are perched on the docks and diving down to catch their breakfasts. “Hey, Alex!” I call across the street. He looks at me. I point. “Is this our dock?”

“Yup! That’s yours! Your boat too!”

Lon—or, well, Alex the pirate—must have been keeping up the dock too because it’s in perfect shape. And he’s right that there’s a boat tied to the dock, with a little pilothouse. It is held above the water by these two things that look like tiny cranes, probably to prevent water damage. Even still, it has to be totally rotted by now, right? I shake my head. What a huge waste.

I obviously don’t know where the Dockhouse is if I do decide to go. But since there are only a few houses and then water to the right, I go left and assume if I don’t pass it, I’ll at least find somewhere to get coffee. I walk past a beautiful building, covered in perfectly aged cedar shakes, with thirty-foot-tall doors open on either side. I pause, peering inside. I can see straight through all the way to the water. Inside, two men are sanding the most gorgeous wooden boat I’ve ever seen. “Good morning,” one calls as he notices me.

“Good morning,” I say. “Sorry for staring.”

“Nah. That’s why we keep the doors open. We like witnesses to our hard work.”

“I can see why. How long has this place been here?”

“Well, as the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center, since 1980.”

I smile. “Your boat is beautiful.”

The other man, who hadn’t spoken yet, says, “We can teach you to make your own if you like. We have classes.”

I nod. I can’t imagine making my own boat or what I would do with it once I was finished. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You two trying to recruit another member for the splinters club?” asks a voice from behind me.

I turn my head to see my neighbor. Salt jumps on him despite my plea of “Down!”

The neighbor rubs his head and smiles at him. “Hi, buddy.” Well, if Salt likes him, maybe he isn’t so bad. “Good morning, Bill, Tony.”

They wave their good mornings. That’s when I realize I still don’t know where I’m going. “Um, where’s the Dockhouse?”

“I’ll walk you there,” he says. “I’m Bowen by the way.”

“I’m Keaton.”

I raise my eyebrow. “Are you following me?”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m on my way to work. See you later, boys.”

I smile in spite of myself and walk beside him, my feet tapping the boardwalk. Boats are lined up on docks alongside it, the slips filled with everything from huge yachts and gorgeous fishing boats to beat-up dinghies. “I’m glad someone’s living in that house again,” he says.

“Well, you could have fooled me.”

“Call me when you can’t find your kid and he’s hanging out with a total stranger.”

That makes sense.

Salt has to stop and smell everything as we pass a long building with several shops and restaurants. “I won’t be here long,” I offer. “Just until I get the house cleaned out for my mom and uncle and put on the market.” Bowen stops in his tracks, his face clouding. “You’re going to sell? That house has been in your family since it was built. Do you know how incredibly rare that is?”

“How do you know that?”

He laughs, his clear blue eyes crinkling. “Keaton, every single time the double-decker Beaufort tour bus rides by my house, twice a day, they mention it to the tourists. But, also, in a town this size, everyone knows everything.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I had noticed a red double-decker bus going down the street yesterday—that must have been the bus Bowen is talking about. I make a mental note to take the tour sometime. “My mom and uncle own the house, and they think it’s time to sell. And I don’t have millions lying around to buy them out so here we are.” I pause, now feeling sad that this true family heirloom will be gone. “So, has your house been in your family a long time?”

He shakes his head. “Believe it or not, real estate down here used to be really cheap. My dad bought my house as a rental property back in the seventies, and I bought it from him.”

I’m about to ask him about the real estate market here when a dolphin jumps so close to the dock that if I crouched down I could touch it. I gasp. This place really is like a postcard. Then I hear, “Kea-ton!” ring out from above me. I look ahead to see Violet practically hanging over the upstairs porch of a place called—lo and behold!—the Dockhouse. She waves. “We’re up here!” As if I couldn’t tell.

“Well, I guess I found it,” I say.

“Good luck!” Bowen gives me a wave and turns off the boardwalk and onto one of the boat-lined docks. I try to see which one he gets on—is he a fisherman?—but I lose him. Suddenly I have meeting-new-people anxiety and, as I walk within easier talking distance to Violet, I call, “I can’t come up. I have the dog.”

A lady at the table with Violet, rocking round Iris Apfel glasses and hot pink lipstick, laughs. “Honey, you can obviously bring the dog.”

There are four ladies sitting on the top porch—Violet and three others—which makes me a little nervous. But, well, they seem friendly, the view should be gorgeous, and I desperately need coffee. I also need to figure out where to eat, grocery shop, etcetera. But eye on the prize: my big, fat commission. Plus, I think, my marketing brain turning on, these ladies seem like the type to bring me a buyer before the house ever hits the market. Lon’s going to have to give me extra for that, I think.

I walk up the green carpeted stairs inside what is clearly a fun bar at night. The top floor, though, looks like a quaint little café. “So you’re sprucing up the old Saint James place, huh?” the woman behind the counter asks. She has pretty brunette beachy waves and is around my age. Her comment catches me off guard, and she must notice because she says, “If you think you’re going to keep a secret here, you are very wrong.”

I laugh as I eye the pastries in the glass case beside the counter. “That’s what I hear. I’m Keaton.”

“Amy.” She smiles. “What can I get you?”

“I’d like an iced coffee with oat milk please,” I say, realizing this doesn’t look like the kind of place that has oat milk.

She doesn’t bat an eye. “And a cinnamon roll,” I add.

“I’ll bring it out,” she says.

“Do I just pay after?” I ask when she makes no moves to take my money.

“Oh, no. Violet said to put it on her tab.”

I smile. Oh, Violet. I’m surprised when I walk out onto the porch that Violet taps the seat beside her, but no one makes a fuss at my arrival. It’s a relief.

The lady with the glasses who said I could bring the dog, the one who is clearly the oldest of the group—maybe early eighties to the others’ late sixties to early seventies—is saying, “Who died and made her queen of the altar guild? We don’t have to have every meeting at her house.”

“And that dry coffee cake,” a woman in a neon sun visor says, shivering.

Violet smiles at me as Amy brings my order. I eat slowly, enjoying the chatter around me, even though I don’t really know what it’s about. It’s like going to a country where you don’t speak the language. Immersion is tricky at first, but ultimately, it’s the only thing that makes you fluent. My ears perk when the fourth lady, who’s wearing a beautiful dress and pearls, says, “Oh, but bless her heart, if that poor girl thinks Bowen Matthews is going to settle down and get serious with a woman…”

Bowen. My hunky, kind of rude neighbor who at least now believes me not to be a criminal. Or a developer, which I get the feeling is worse in his estimation.

“What’s the story there?” I ask, my mouth full of cinnamon roll. Visor lady gives me a withering look.

“Oh, honey, that is not a tree you want to bark up,” Violet says. Salt barks at the word and we all laugh.

“I’m only staying long enough to sell the house, not start a romance, and Bowen has made his distaste for the fact that I’m selling my grandparents’ house pretty clear. I’m not barking up any trees. But Anderson said he never had a mom, and I just wondered…”

Pearl lady leans in. “It was the saddest thing you’ve ever seen. Bowen and Kerry brought Anderson home from the hospital, and she just took off.”

“She never wanted children, and having Anderson didn’t change that. Broke Bowen’s heart,” glasses woman laments.

Violet brings it home: “But we all chipped in to help care for Anderson, and Bowen is the best dad you’ve ever seen.”

“Anderson is adorable.” I can’t imagine what it must be like to grow up without a mom. And I wonder how many questions he has about where his mom went. But, I remind myself, I’m not here for long, so my focus needs to be on learning more about my grandparents—since this will likely be my only chance. I want to ask about them now. But being surrounded by the chatter of all these cute ladies is, sadly, the most fun I’ve had in a while and is taking my mind off the job I need to find and the massive amount of work to be done back at the house and Jonathan the cheater. Just thinking his name causes fury to rise in me. Instead of going home alone to grapple with that, I sit back, relax, and enjoy their company. As Salt stretches and curls up in a patch of sun, head up as if he’s listening intently, I have to think he feels the same way.

I’ve waited thirty-three years to find out more about my grandparents. One more day won’t hurt.