Chapter 2
I get to Goose Lane at six with ground beef, sliced cheddar, hamburger buns, and a bunch of romaine lettuce for salad in my basket.
I’ve biked more than a reasonable number of miles today, and I’ve changed an aristocrat’s tire.
If my dad doesn’t have oil and vinegar in his cupboard, I might lose my mind.
I sent Naomi a series of texts from the grocery store: There was a fire. I’m home for the summer. Hilarious story to tell you, unrelated. Come for dinner
She said yes with a dozen exclamation points, per normal.
She’s leaving Sully and their girls at home, which makes it feel like old times.
Naomi runs Whitfield Tees, our local tourist-trap gift shop.
She and I spent weeks brainstorming names for the store and landed on this one because we thought it was funny when it was said out loud: Whitfield Tease.
Naomi is the kind of hot that actually stops traffic.
Throughout my life, I have seen cars slow down to take in the bounty of her.
Blond, curvy, with lips that fall into a perfect pout.
She trails pheromones wherever she goes, and it’s possible she was a bit of a tease in high school.
Like my dad, she makes most of her money in the summer, peddling hoodies and faux mansion artifacts, cheaply made replicas of vases and flatware to remember your mansion tour by.
I turn away from the water, up Goose Lane, so tightly packed with houses that you’d know if your neighbor’s back porch was on fire.
I haven’t been to the house yet to assess the fire damage and am a little worried.
Ours is white clapboard with a luxuriously oversized but drooping front porch and green shutters gone gray from neglect.
If I tackled only the shutters, I could sand and prime and paint them before August. I’ll need to borrow a ladder and see what outdoor paints are on sale at Hubbard’s.
The planters at the bottom of the front steps have gone to seed, and Christopher is on the top step, whittling a popsicle stick.
“Dolly!” Christopher says, just as I say, “Pants!” and redirect him inside.
I grab the broom that lives on the porch and start to sweep.
This is the first step of tending to this house and, ever since it became mine to care for, I always start here.
First the front porch, then the kitchen floor.
The dishes, the wiping, the general degunking starting with the refrigerator door.
Sheets and towels, up the stepladder to dust the ceiling fan, vacuum, done.
Christopher reappears in the doorway, clad in Big Bird–orange pants that cannot possibly be his. He wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the ground.
“Dolly!” he says, stretching my name into a song the way he always does.
“You’re home.” He’s a full head taller than me and soft around the middle from spending his days on this porch.
He smells of the same baby shampoo we’ve always used and the butterscotch candies my dad keeps in a mason jar by the sink.
For the second time today, time folds in on itself—he is three and perfect, he is eight and broken, he is thirty-six and both of those things at once.
“I am,” I say, and the enormity of my love for him burns my chest. Now that I can feel him safe in my arms, I allow my mind to take in what might have happened last night if that fire had gone unchecked.
My little brother, my dad, my home. He breaks the hug, and I give him a once-over.
His hair is wild and needs a cut, though I’m in no position to talk.
His skin looks terrible from all the meds he’s on.
They’re mostly antipsychotic drugs that even out his disposition.
He suffered a head injury when he and my mom were in a car accident when he was eight.
I was eleven and Patsy was ten. My mom was wearing a seatbelt, he was not.
The Newtons, to the left, are playing polka music.
The Goldbergs, to the right, have T-shirts and towels drying on the line.
I’m thirty-nine and nothing’s changed. I’m here, at home, with Christopher in my arms. Naomi is coming to hang out.
Patsy’s out living her life. The only new thing is Gus, and at thirteen he’s really not that new.
Christopher and I sit on the porch swing and sway gently. “What’s been going on today?” I ask.
“Not much, just watching my tree.” He looks at it lovingly. “It’s having a great day. And I was thinking about Las Vegas.”
This startles me, but I proceed carefully. “What about?”
“Just about the time Mom took me to Vegas and we met the real Buddha. The one from a thousand years ago, and he blessed me.” Christopher has never been outside the state of Rhode Island.
“Ah,” I say, and put my arm around him. I will call his doctor tomorrow.
Every few years he needs his meds switched up.
He gets dreamy, like he’s slipping away.
This makes me anxious because I don’t want him to slip away, and also because it’s how my mom left.
She never sat us down and said she was leaving.
It was more of a slow departure, like when the water’s draining slowly from the bathtub.
You don’t really notice until it’s completely gone and suddenly you’re sitting there, cold.
He’s holding Vic, the long-haired stuffed fox I gave him before I left home for Boston.
It usually stays upstairs in his room, so this is also cause for concern.
When Mom left, Christopher stopped sleeping.
He was nine and had gotten used to soothing himself after the accident by rubbing the ends of her hair while he fell asleep.
I figured this out on the third night she was gone when I went in to check on him.
He’d been crying, but he settled down and fell asleep with a chunk of my hair in his hand.
I put him to bed this way until I left for Boston at twenty-two and replaced myself with Vic the fox.
It took all of five minutes, and I still marvel that this became too much for my mom to give.
I leave him with Vic and head inside for the first time. I find my dad puttering around in the kitchen. “There’s my sweet Dolly blue eyes,” he says.
“Things don’t look too bad here,” I say.
The kitchen and the living area make up most of the ground floor.
My dad’s bedroom is right off the kitchen, and it will take me no time to change his sheets and tidy that up.
A flight of stairs that’s always seemed too close to the refrigerator leads upstairs to Christopher’s room and the one Patsy and I used to share.
Gus stays up there when we visit, which is probably where he is now, relishing some rare alone time in this house.
I’ll have the partially burnt sleeping porch out back all to myself.
I drop my groceries on the table and wander out to the sleeping porch to assess the damage.
The screens are filthy with soot but seem savable.
The wood needs to be sanded and repainted.
I’ll need a new mattress and bedding, but the old iron daybed just needs a wipe-down.
I can fix this, I think. I can do it in the mornings before the fish house and after dinner.
My grandmother Maud’s old Singer sewing machine is unharmed in the corner.
Entirely made of metal, it’s from the early 1900s, with foot pedals that move the needle up and down.
She used to say it was harder to learn than the violin, but once you got it, it was twice as beautiful.
My dad’s watching me from the doorway. “This is all fixable,” I say.
He breathes out a heavy sigh, like he’s been waiting all day for my verdict. “Thank you, darlin’,” he says. “Are you really staying all summer?”
This is a question that produces mixed feelings in my dad.
Like deep, thirty-year-old mixed feelings.
I can see it in his eyes and in his unnaturally neutral expression.
Like he’s trying to wipe all the preference from his face.
He wants me to stay because he needs my help.
Managing the house and the store and Christopher is no joke, and until I left for Boston, we divided the load pretty evenly.
But he doesn’t want me to stay, because he feels guilty taking my help.
“Yep. I’m here for the summer. Gus wasn’t so excited about the kids who are playing summer baseball anyway, and I was telling him about that lifeguarding camp here.
Kim and Layla are going to stop by the apartment to bring in my mail and deal with Fern.
” I pull out my phone to show him a picture that he’s seen before.
Fern is majestic, hanging in the corner of my living room.
“And you’re telling me that’s all you’re leaving behind? Mail and a fern?”
“I’ll miss a couple of barbecues. Really, Dad, I’m glad to be here. Gus’s friends have sort of gone off the rails, and he’s been keeping to himself. It’ll be good to air him out a little.” I reach out for his arm. “Really. And I’m glad to work at the store.”
“Okay, well, thank you,” he says. “It’s a relief. I’m not sure I can count on Rikki Clark. Apparently, he joined a band.” He huffs a sound like following that kind of dream is pure tomfoolery. “Maybe four days a week?”
“Perfect,” I say. “And I can spend the other three on house stuff. The shutters look tired and everything needs grout.”
“Yeah,” my dad says. “If you look close enough, everything around here needs fixing. But maybe it’s time you let some of it go. Maybe you work four days at the fish house and then treat yourself to a little summer rest.”
I laugh. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.” I reach into my bag and pull out my card catalog of Maud’s recipes. “I’ll be baking in the mornings, and if you guys can’t keep up with all the deliciousness, I’ll be forced to sell some at the fish house.”