We Sing It Anyway #8
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” said Mary.
“Rose is going to help me go and fetch your mattress once we have this all put together, and then you’ll need to tell me what kind of bedding you want.
We’re not robbing a department store. Your grandmother has a whole attic full of sheets and blankets, and having the Aeslin mice living up there means that ordinary mice haven’t chewed holes in them.
It’ll be sparse in here, but we’ll have you kitted out before dinner. ”
“Speaking of dinner,” said Rose.
Mary shot her a hard look. “You’re dead, you don’t need dinner.”
“I’m dead, but I’m hungry. Some of us didn’t get the eternal-satiation package. And I was just going to offer to pick up burgers for everybody, if that works. Bronson’s is still open for another three hours, and they’re used to me.”
“How have you been going to the same diner for eighty years?” I asked.
Rose shrugged broadly. “It’s in Buckley.”
That didn’t actually explain anything. When she didn’t offer anything else, I looked to Mary, pleading silently for more details. She smiled as she shook her head.
“The people who stay in Buckley live alongside the Galway Wood, and they learn early that if they saw something, no, they didn’t.
A teenager who never gets any older but also doesn’t lure the high school boys out into the swamp to swallow their souls is nothing compared to some of the things that live out in those trees,” said Mary.
“Glad Mom moved to Oregon, then,” I said.
“Anyway, burgers?” asked Rose.
“Sounds good,” said Arthur—Orin.
“But not until we finish putting the bed together,” said Mary.
Rose rolled her eyes. “You are no fun.”
“I’m the babysitter,” said Mary. “If I’m fun, I’m doing it wrong.”
“Can we help?” I asked.
Mary nodded and beckoned us closer.
Working together, the four of us got the bedframe assembled, and then Mary and Rose vanished, reappearing a few minutes later with a box spring precariously balanced between them.
Orin and I moved to help them maneuver it onto the frame.
They vanished again, this time reappearing with an actual mattress.
Once that was in place, Mary stepped back, dusting her hands together before resting them on her hips.
“I’ll go get the bedding after you have a chance to sit down and eat.
Orin, you think about what you want, or you’re going to wind up with whatever I think suits you, and that might upset us both. ”
“Okay, Mary,” said Orin.
She moved toward him, dropping her hands before reaching out to take his. “You know how I can feel every member of the family, all the time?” she asked. “How I always know when you need me?”
He nodded. She smiled.
“Well, I feel you, Orin Harrington-Price. As yourself, independent and unique. I feel Artie down in his basement, and I feel you up here, because you both exist, and you’re both part of this family. Don’t question that.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said.
“Good,” she said.
“Now tell me what you want for dinner,” said Rose. “Bronson’s awaits.”
After taking our orders, Rose popped off to get orders from Dad, Artie, and Sarah, then vanished across the country to Michigan to actually pick up our dinner. Orin and I followed Mary back downstairs to the living room, where we resumed picking up the trash and clutter from the floor.
We’d been at it for a little while when Dad wandered down the stairs, freshly showered and shaven, wearing a clean shirt for the first time in months.
He stopped to watch us for a few moments, then sighed, rubbing at his face with one hand.
“It’s a good thing your mother isn’t here,” he said.
“She’d kill me for letting it get this bad. ”
“You didn’t trash the place on your own, Dad,” I said. “I think I get at least a little credit.”
“Ah, but she wouldn’t kill me for making the mess, she’d kill me for neglecting the mess, and I don’t think we can pretend that I don’t have any responsibility for keeping the house semi-livable.”
“Grief is a beast,” said Mary. “Sometimes when it howls, all we can do is try to get out of the way before we’re swallowed whole. Jane would understand. I know she would.”
Dad looked at her, then looked firmly away, eyes shining with unshed tears. He didn’t argue. I think he understood that it wouldn’t do any good.
One thing about having a dead woman for a babysitter: she knows everything about you, because she was there while you were figuring it out.
She changed my grandmother’s diapers. If she said Mom would have been able to understand why we’d let the house go to shit around us, she meant it, and there was no one who would know better than she did.
Then Rose reappeared with her arms full of takeout bags and drink holders, and the living room devolved into laughter, more laughter than the house had heard in years. Artie and Sarah came up from the basement, and we all pretended not to notice how rumpled her hair was.
“Unpacking, hey?” asked Rose, passing over their orders.
Well. Most of us pretended.
Artie’s cheeks flared red, and a sharp spike of jealousy stabbed out from Orin.
I threw a French fry at him, breaking the emotion, and he shot me a startled look.
I shrugged and smiled. If I needed to help him shake off his natural instinct to obsess over Sarah, well, I would do exactly that.
No baby brother of mine was going to be that hung up on a woman he’d never be able to have. Not if I had anything to say about it.
The living room was still a disaster, but it was a disaster with available chairs now, and as Mary distributed napkins and cans of cold soda, it was hard to think of anyplace I would rather have been.
I wound up seated on the floor in front of the couch, Dad’s knees against my back and a burger resting on my crossed ankles.
Artie and Sarah packed themselves onto the loveseat, and Orin sat on the other end of the couch, the toes of his left foot digging companionably into my calf.
Rose sat in Mom’s recliner with her burger, and I didn’t tell her to get up or move.
She had as much of a right to be there as anyone.
Mary didn’t eat, but she did perch on the arm of the loveseat, smoothing Sarah’s ruffled hair with her fingers, and for a moment, everything felt like it was the way it was supposed to be.
My mother was still gone, and that was never going to stop hurting.
But my brother had come home—both my brothers—and I didn’t have to choose between them. We got to stay together.
We got to be a family. And we got to figure out what that was going to mean.
Together.
Really, when the mice came swarming out of the walls to get their own share of the meal, it was almost a relief to have something so incredibly normal happening around us.
I threw them my fries and leaned back into Dad’s legs, laughing.
The sound filled the room, mixed with the cheers and exultations of the mice, and we were home. We were all of us, finally home.