Chapter 2 #2
He shakes his head. “Bake all you want, but I’m not putting in another counter. I’m not buying a single new thing for that store. Last debt payment’s in August. I turned off my autopay so I can have the full experience of walking out of that bank debt-free. You can come with me.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” I say, pulling him into a hug. “I’ll let you buy me an ice cream after.”
He gives me the smile of a proud, stubborn man. The kind who’s been underwater for decades but who always wants to be the one to pay for ice cream. I’m happy for him, for us, to finally be out from under the weight of that failed second location.
We head into the kitchen and fall into our rhythm, my dad and me, and now Gus.
I sweep the kitchen floor, my dad cleans the lettuce.
I take a knife to crumbs that have hardened along the metal rim of our old Formica countertop while Gus makes the hamburger patties and regales my dad with statistics about the Red Sox’s new third baseman, Howie Carver.
He has so many thoughts and feelings about the Red Sox and Howie Carver that I relax, knowing the conversation will never run dry.
Christopher is at the table eating Oreos and watching them talk, but he’s not really listening.
I’m definitely calling his doctor tomorrow.
My dad and Gus are outside minding the coals on the barbecue when Naomi arrives.
She bursts through the door and calls, “Hey-o!,” as she drops her bag on the table.
I put down my carrot scraper and cross the room into her arms in almost one movement.
Naomi smells like floral shampoo and cotton candy lip balm, just as she has for thirty years.
“Did you really just work a full day hawking T-shirts?” I ask. “You literally look like you stepped out of a salon.”
“Speaking of which,” she says, lifting a piece of my hair and making a yikes face. “You’re starting to look like you’re in a witch costume.”
“One of my students said that exact same thing,” I say, laughing.
“Kindergarteners don’t lie,” she says. “I can’t believe you’re actually staying the whole summer.”
“I haven’t stayed this long in eighteen years,” I say. “It’ll take a sec to get my bearings, Gus too. But I think it’s the right thing.” I gesture with my head to the sleeping porch.
“Is it bad?”
“I need an electrician, but I can fix the rest,” I say, placing a plate of Triscuits and cheddar cheese on the table.
“Well, Keith Bloomfeld came into the store today,” she says, and takes a hunk of cheese. “Which, as you know, is odd. Locals don’t shop for souvenirs. He wandered around the store for ten minutes before he mentioned that he heard you were in town.”
“No,” I say. It falls out of my mouth like a boulder I’d been sucking on.
“No what? No, you can’t find a night to go to Hog Tied for a basket of chicken and some laughs?”
“Yes, that’s the no I mean.”
Naomi steps toward me. “Let me tell you something you don’t know about Keith. He’s a sweet, single guy with rock-hard abs and a Mustang.”
I laugh. “That does sound like one in a million.”
“Think about it.”
“I do not have the bandwidth. Not even for rock-hard abs and a Mustang.”
“Are you dating anyone at all?”
“Not exactly,” I say, and turn back to scrape carrots.
“Does that mean sort of? There’s a guy and you’re hanging out?”
I turn around and gesture with my scraper. “More like there’s no guy and I’m fine with it. I don’t need the headache or the heartache or actually any of the aches. I’m currently living the ache-free lifestyle.”
“This,” she says. “This is what I’m talking about. You jump to a lot of conclusions about how things are going to turn out with guys you haven’t even met. Mustangs you haven’t even ridden in!”
“And I’m usually right. Even if they’re perfectly fine, they’re going to take up my headspace or, worse, my actual space. I promise you when Gus is grown, I’ll find some kind of companion.”
“You’ve got to stop saying ‘companion.’ I’m picturing you finding your soulmate at the kennel.” It’s possible we’ve had this conversation too many times. “What about a little something fun? Rock-hard abs in the moment?”
“This is my life.” I gesture to the Formica countertops as if getting the gunk out from under the metal rim is my life now. Which, maybe.
“It’s been what? Fourteen years since Niles? And you’re kicking ass at life.” She looks at my hair again and winces. “Generally. I want to see you swept off your feet.”
My childhood princess fantasy flashes in my mind, swept away by the gentle man and the white horse she gets to keep. “Life’s swept me away plenty, Naomi. Not a big fan of it.”
She doesn’t say anything, which is the true beauty of old friends.
She was there when my mom left. She was there when I found out I was pregnant with Gus.
She came for the month I was on bedrest and stayed a week after he was born.
She held him while I cried in the shower.
If anyone understands why I don’t want to set myself up to be abandoned again, it’s Naomi.
“Speaking of you doing every goddamn thing around here, what’s going on with Patsy?” she asks.
I laugh. “She’s good. Busy with work and kids and stuff.”
“And you here with all your free time,” she says, and here we go. I never argue on this point, because God knows I agree. But it’s a circular discussion because Patsy’s not interested in pitching in. And sometimes it’s easier to take care of things than it is to ask for help.
I grab two beers from the fridge. “I can’t help it if I’m so great at everything,” I say with a bow. “And speaking of which.” I reach into my back pocket and grab Stewart Whitfield’s handkerchief as a prop for the story I’ve been dying to tell her.
She recognizes the monogram immediately. “Holy shit. Where did you get that?”
This is going to be even more fun than I thought. Naomi has a very short fuse for excitement, and nothing excites her like the Whitfields. “Oh, just from my pal Stewart. When I stopped to change his tire.”
“Get. Out.” She grabs the scraper from my hand to garner my full attention. “Start from the beginning. Where was he? What was he wearing? Did you smell him? Was this the first actual contact outside the fish house? Sorry. Just talk.” She pulls a chair from the table and sits.
“I knew you’d ask, so I checked—he smells like leather and freshly cut grass.
The backs of his hands are tan, and he has strong-looking wrists.
I’m guessing tennis.” She’s leaning in to my details, and I swear this was worth the trouble of changing his tire.
“He was on the side of the road out by Eight Oaks and I was on my bike. He was in a blazer and sort of acted like I worked for him. He even offered to pay me.”
“How much?”
“I said no.”
Naomi nods approvingly. “Is he still ridiculously handsome? It’s been years since I’ve seen him in person. He looked good in that engagement photo, sort of brooding.”
“Definitely still handsome.” I’m not going to mention his neck. Or the reckless electricity that comes off his skin. “But get this: Audrey Mills dumped him for a Yankee.”
“Gross,” Naomi says. Then, with horror on her face, she says, “Please tell me you didn’t bring up striking him out. Total boner killer.”
“What? There was no. Eww.”
Naomi’s laughing at how easily she’s gotten me flustered when Christopher calls, “Dolly!” from the front porch.
I turn to the window and see Gavin McCumber, the fire chief, walking up our front steps.
I open the door to let him in and give him a few seconds to run his eyes up and down Naomi. I honestly don’t blame him. “Naomi,” he says, removing his hat. “Hi, Dolly.”
“Hi,” I say. “Thank you for responding so fast last night.”
“It was no problem, barely a fire at all,” he says. “Looked like an isolated electrical problem.”
“Doesn’t look too bad back there,” I say. “I think I can sand and paint it, and no one will ever know.”
“Yes, I’m sure you can,” he says. “But I wanted to talk to your dad about the roof.” Our roof is original to the house, making it about eighty years old.
Because I can’t really see it, it’s the one thing in this house I don’t worry about.
“We were up on ladders last night, checking the roof for embers. There were none, which is good, but the roof is shot. Water’s gotten in, there’s rot and visible mold.
The whole thing is going to need to be replaced.
” I should have known. The only real problems that ever materialize are the ones I haven’t thought of.
“My dad’s outside. Barbecuing,” I say. As if this will somehow stop this line of conversation: He’s busy so you can’t give him bad news. Instinctively, I finger the ten-dollar tip in my pocket.
Naomi asks because I don’t dare. “How much would that cost?”
“This size house? With the mold cleanup, I’d guess about fifty grand.”
I laugh a hard laugh. “Yeah, I’m not sure the house is worth that.”
“Of course it is,” says Naomi.
“Okay, but my dad doesn’t have the money. We can work around it. Replace parts of the roof as they fail.” Just when he was about to get out of debt, here we go again.
“You can’t,” Gavin says. I turn to the fridge and offer him a beer. He holds up a hand to decline. “The thing is, Dolly, now that I know about it, and I know it’s not safe here, or at least it won’t be soon, I have to report it. And if it’s not fixed this place could be condemned.”
“No,” I say. I turn to Naomi. I want her to make a joke about how I’ve misunderstood, how I’m a worrywart. The furrow of her brow tells me I’ve heard correctly. I shove a rich man’s handkerchief deep into my back pocket. “No. They can’t. Christopher can’t leave, this is his home. My dad’s. No.”
“There’s the hero of the day,” my dad says, framed in the open front door of the house he was raised in. He puts down the hamburger tray and shakes Gavin’s hand. “Did you want a beer? Stay for dinner.” He turns and hugs Naomi, who is sparkling thirty percent less than usual.
Gavin gives me a look that lets me know it’s on me. “Dad, Gavin found a lot of damage to the roof last night and says we need to replace it.”
My dad shakes his head. “It’s always something. Here’s hoping we get the contract for the Starlight Gala this year.”
“It’s fifty thousand dollars,” I tell him.
“Oh,” he says. He’s still smiling, but there’s a crack in it now. It’s the cracked smile he used to give us when he told us our mother would be back in a few weeks. “That’s a lot of lobster tails.”
We don’t talk about it at dinner, because our lack of fifty grand feels more personal to my dad than it does to me. He’s had just one failed venture, but he lives it every day because of how long he’s been stuck under the debt. He peppers Naomi with questions about the store and her girls.
When Christopher and Gus have gone upstairs and Naomi has left, we sit down at the kitchen table. “Meeting of the ringmasters?” he says.
I smile. “Yep, I think we should call one to order.” When I was thirteen and my mom had been gone for a year, we had the first of these meetings.
Patsy needed a costume for something at school and Christopher had developed a habit of wandering around the neighborhood in the evening.
My dad was managing the store and us full-time, even though I’d taken over the housekeeping and most of the cooking.
“This place is a circus,” he’d said, dragging Christopher home by the arm and discovering me at the sewing machine, trying to make a pillowcase into a skirt.
I told him the circus needs ringmasters, and we needed to get more organized about things.
He smiled, both sad and relieved. I think I became an adult in both of our eyes that day.
“I don’t have the money to fix it,” he says now. “And before you say something crazy, neither do you, and neither of us is going into debt to fix this old place.”
“Then what? You can’t stay here if the house is condemned.”
“Would it be so bad if we had to move?” my dad asks.
“Yes,” I say. “It would be so bad.” It would shake Christopher to his core.
His routine is everything to him and he is the guardian of his tree out front, the maple that he watches year in and year out through the seasons.
And this is Maud’s house, the house my dad grew up in.
The one she moved out of and gave my parents as a wedding gift, much to my mother’s horror.
It’s also my home, the place that held us together after Mom left.
The home where I’ve tended to my people.
The place where we grew because of the food I cooked, the schedules I ran, the sheets I washed.
It’s the frog song and the leafy view out of Patsy’s and my bedroom window.
“Yes,” I say again. “It would be so bad.”
“Chris and I could get an apartment in town. Two bedrooms and a bathroom. A circus of two.” He smiles. “Works just fine for you and Gus.”
“Gus is a kid, and he’s going to grow up and leave. This is the Brick home. You were born here. Grandma Maud taught me how to bake here. Christopher’s whole life revolves around sitting on the porch. He’s connected here.”
“Doll. You’re not his mother. He’s my responsibility.”
I raise my eyes from my tea. “He’s also mine.” I’ve been taking care of Christopher his entire life. Even before the accident I knew he needed an extra set of eyes on him.
He shakes his head. “Let me think about this. Talk to friends. Maybe even talk to the bank. But one thing I know is I’m not letting this be your problem. You’ve given up too much.”
“I’ve given up nothing, Dad. This is my home too.”