Chapter 4 #2
North Hampton, and then Rye, up the long and curving stretch of Route 1A that leads to the house. It’s the winding road of
a fairy tale, of a buddy movie, of an untested future, with the ocean to the right, a great wide unbroken expanse of blue,
and beautiful, spacious homes to the left. Legitimate mansions, many of them. She pulls off the main road and down the small
access road that leads to Ruby on Rye and into the driveway. There’s room for four cars, but only with a Tetris level of car
management. Nobody has parked in the garage for as long as Mae can remember. She’s the first to arrive.
The house, built in the late fifties as a summer cottage for Theresa Shipman’s parents, Lewis and Roberta Perkins, but expanded, renovated, insulated, shored up, is two stories, with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an upper deck and a lower patio, both facing the water.
Three steps lead down from the patio to the beach, and a stone wall sits to either side of the patio.
Living room, small sunroom, kitchen, dining room.
A little square of grass around the side, but the real yard is wide, bountiful Jenness Beach and the ocean beyond.
Theresa’s parents had divided their kingdom among their own three daughters: the brownstone in Boston to Carolyn, the eldest;
money to Dawn, the youngest (this was what Dawn wanted); and the house in Rye to Theresa, the middle. Both grandparents died
within nine months of each other when Natalie was two, before Mae was born, so she doesn’t remember a time when the house
didn’t belong entirely to the Shipmans.
It’s not a mansion like the homes Mae just drove past, with their golf-course-green lawns, their turrets and gables, their
location across the street from the ocean. Those houses observe the beach from a distance, while the Shipman house, and the
houses on either side of it, a dozen or so altogether, inhabit the beach. They are the beach.
There’s a woman bending over the outside spigot on the house. She straightens when she sees Mae’s car, and a look passes over
her face that could only be called—confusion? She’s maybe in her late forties or early fifties, buttoned up, both figuratively
and literally, in a pantsuit and square-buckle velvet flats (impractical beachwear, Mae notes).
Mae hesitates before getting out. Has there been a mistake? Has her father accepted a rental for the week and forgotten all
about it? He is getting older—he’ll be seventy in October. Maybe his memory is starting to go. (If there is a renter, if the family bonding
week is off, if she needs to turn around and go back to Colorado, she will ask her father to pay her back for all of the gas
she purchased so that she could make haste.) She lowers Leo’s window a few inches and climbs out of the car.
She calls, “Hello!” She tries to make it sound merry but she hasn’t spoken in hours and the word comes out with a dry, desperate croak.
The woman approaches, hand outstretched to shake Mae’s. Very formal for a renter. “Hello there. I’m Nikoletta,” she says.
She looks at the window from which Leo’s wide snout is visible. “Oh, what a nice dog,” she says optimistically. “Can I say
hi? I love dogs.”
Leo shows his teeth.
“I wouldn’t,” says Mae. “Sorry. We’re—training.”
Nikoletta lowers her hand, clears her throat, and says, “You must be one of the girls. Your father thought you’d be arriving
later.”
Mae nods. But why would a renter know she’s “one of the girls”?
“I think I’ve got the lockbox working now. You shouldn’t have any trouble with it, but if you do, give me a call. I’ll come
right back. The code is four-three-seven-one.”
“I have a key,” Mae says, confused herself. They’ve all always had a key to the house; Mae keeps hers on her University of
Vermont key ring, which she took with her when she moved out of Tony’s place and commenced her month of couch surfing. Much
less fun than actual surfing, which Mae and her sisters grew up doing on this very beach. Why would she need a lockbox code?
“Oh, but we changed the locks. Common practice.”
Mae shakes her head. “Sorry?” In what universe is that? “The locks get changed every time a renter comes?”
Nikoletta tilts her head and considers Mae. She has kind brown eyes and the perfect amount of eyeliner, very much not smeared.
She looks well-rested and organized. “I’m not—” She seems to reconsider. “Never mind,” she says. “Sorry to bother you. I’m
sure your father will be in touch with me later today, once you’ve all arrived.”
“He’ll give you a refund,” Mae says. “If you’re out any money.”
Nikoletta is already walking quickly down the driveway. She looks back over her shoulder. “What’s that? Oh, I’m sure he will. Remember! Four-three-seven-one!”
Mae unloads Leo from the car and walks him on the patch of grass at the side of the house. She loops the leash around the
railing, and he heaves himself onto the grass, panting like he’s the third-place finisher in the Bolder Boulder 10K. “Be right
back, Leo,” she tells him. “Don’t go anywhere.” As if I could, says Leo with his eyes. I’m attached to the railing. Mae digs in the back of the car for Leo’s food and bowls, fills his water, pours the kibble. “This is more brunch than breakfast,”
she tells him. “But it is Sunday, so we can make that work.”
Where are her sisters? She doesn’t want to be in the house without them. She doesn’t want to face the ghost of their mother
alone. She wants to see them, smell them, Natalie’s flowery perfume, Jordan’s expensively practical face wash. She wants to
fall into their arms and tell them everything. She wants to say Fix it, you guys. Fix it all for me.
She calls Jordan. “Where are you?” she says, feeling very much the coddled youngest who is currently not being appropriately coddled. “Nobody’s here but
me.”
The second they pull into the driveway the girls are asking if they can swim. They’ve invented a song too, which goes like
this: beach, beach, we want to go to the beach. A songwriting Grammy is not, Natalie is afraid, in their near future, but the melody isn’t bad, and the sound of their sweet
little voices harmonizing almost brings her to tears. She’s always been a sucker for the singing of children. Austin plays
guitar and sings himself, and the kids seem to have inherited some of his talents the same way they inherited Natalie’s blue
eyes and unfortunate tendency toward sunburn.
(“Christian rock?” Jordan asked sardonically the first time Natalie mentioned Austin’s singing, and Natalie had said no, huffily, because she knew Jordan would make fun if she said yes, although the truth is that sometimes Austin does veer slightly into Matt Redman territory.)
Even Caspian is trying to sing along, his legs in the car seat pumping mightily up and down.
(“Caspian, like from the sea?” Jordan had asked when Natalie called to tell her that her nephew had arrived, a perfect little
boy to go along with big sisters Scarlett and Evangeline. And Natalie had said, “Caspian as in the prince from Narnia.” The
name was Austin’s idea. “Noble, handsome, brave, and merry.” She’d be too busy to put any more thought into it, Natalie knew.
Jordan is always busy.)
Jordan loves her nieces and nephew, though, she really does. Both of Natalie’s sisters are phenomenal aunts; she’s so lucky.
Even if her beloved mother won’t get to see Natalie’s children grow up, she knows that her sisters will be there. She just
wishes that at least one of them would have babies so that her kids would have cousins on their side of the family. As it
is things are very heavily weighted toward Austin’s side. He’s the youngest of four boys, and among them they have eleven
children, enough for their own NFL team, as soon as the NFL goes coed.
Natalie sometimes forgets she’s not technically a Shipman anymore; she’s a Hanson. But she will always be a Shipman sister.
“Not now,” she tells the singing army in the back seat, turning off the ignition. “Inside first, beach later. We have to unpack.
We have to say hello to the house.”
“Hello, house,” says Evangeline.
Natalie takes a deep breath, trying to push energy into all parts of her body.
She’s so tired. Austin wants more children, and theoretically Natalie does too.
But how will she ever have another baby, how could she handle four children under the age of seven, when three under six have her balanced on the knife’s edge of sanity?
Not that she’s going to admit that to anyone but herself. That would be extremely off-brand.
Cinnamon lets out a low whine.
“Simanon needs the bathroom,” announces Scarlett.
“Cinn-a-mon,” says Natalie (the first rule of homeschooling is that every moment is a teaching moment), and Scarlett repeats,
“Sim-a-non.” She has articulation challenges that qualify as adorable right now but that might need intervention soon. Natalie
adds it to her mental list.
“Out,” says Caspian.
“Just a minute, buddy. Let me gather myself.” She takes another deep breath.
There’s one car in the driveway: Mae’s old Subaru, the gently used one their parents bought her after college graduation.
How did Mae make it here first when she drove all the way from Colorado, while Natalie has come only from Vermont? And why
no Jordan yet, why no Calvin? She checks her phone. It’s only eleven o’clock. It’s going to be another thirty-four-hour day.
When she’d told Austin about her father’s invitation-slash-order his face had crinkled up in a very Austin-like way, part
sympathy, part kindness, and he’d said, “You have to go. Of course, go! Leave everything to me!” The “everything” did not
include the children, of course. It rarely did, as per their unspoken agreement, except when Theresa was sick. Which is fine!
It’s mostly fine. Was she hoping Austin would break from tradition and suggest that she go on her own, have a little time
with her family, lie on the beach, as she used to do when she was a teenager? Some of the best naps she’s ever had in her