Interstitial
After Leo’s morning walk on Tuesday, Mae and Leo return to the kitchen, and Mae unhooks Leo’s leash. He flops on the floor,
tongue out, breathing fast in the satisfying way that a tired dog breathes. There’s no sign of Cinnamon, but Natalie is sitting
at the kitchen island, frowning into a coffee cup that says I’M SILENTLY CORRECTING YOUR GRAMMAR. They’d started getting these mugs for their mom years ago, the cornier the better, and they’d all ended up at the beach
house. In Lenox, the cabinets hold a matching set of twelve light blue pottery mugs. Here they each drink from one of approximately
nine ridiculous mugs.
“You like the coffee? I made a pot before I took Leo out,” says Mae, pleased with herself.
“Thanks,” says Natalie wearily. “It’s on the weak side, but, yeah, thanks.” Mae rolls her eyes—sisters can be so ungrateful.
“Then make it yourself next time,” she suggests, not unkindly, but not kindly either.
“You asked if I liked it.” Natalie rubs her temples. Her phone, next to her coffee, buzzes, and she silences it and turns
it over, but not before Mae sees Austin’s name on the screen. Mae fills the teakettle, sets it on the stove, and chooses a
mug that says MY BLOOD TYPE IS COFFEE.
Leo raises his head, his ears go up, and footsteps approach. Mae grabs her phone, tells Leo to settle, and captures him watching Jordan enter the kitchen. He looks back at Mae for confirmation that this is okay, puts his chin on the floor. Good boy, Leo.
Jordan finds a mug that says HOLD ON, LET ME OVERTHINK THIS, and fills it nearly to overflowing. She opens the refrigerator door and stands there for way too long. “This house has no
milk alternatives,” she says. “Why didn’t we get any when we went to the store yesterday?”
“Who needs alternatives?” asks Natalie. “You’ve got the finest, freshest milk there is right there. Organic.”
Leo raises his head again, lifts his ears, and Caspian trundles into the kitchen. He’s wearing pajamas with trains on them,
and his hair is sticking up all over the place.
“Good boy, Leo,” Mae says encouragingly, and Leo sighs and settles once again.
“Ommy?” says Caspian.
“How’d you get out?” Natalie asks, and Caspian grins.
“I got him out,” says Evangeline, who comes in right behind Caspian.
Natalie hops off the stool and lifts Caspian, saying, “Wet diaper, mister.” Caspian pats her approvingly on the head with
a flat hand.
Next comes Cinnamon, who enters the kitchen halfway, and then, seeing Leo, halts, wags uncertainly, and backs up two steps.
Four, if you’re counting paws. Leo scrambles to his feet and emits a low growl. His tail is stiff. In an instant Mae has the
leash back on him, her body in front of Leo to act like a shield, talking to him softly until she reads calm in his body language.
When she does, she lets the two dogs sniff each other. She’s ready to pull Leo back if needed, but he does just fine. It’s
a big moment!
“Hello, Dog Whisperer!” says Jordan. “Nice work.”
“Thank you,” says Mae. Next time, she’ll be sure to record. She would have loved to show that recovery to Human Leo. “It’s
called counterconditioning.”
Mae starts prepping for the trip to the airport long before she has to leave.
She’s going to set Leo up for success in the back seat with a couple of old beach towels and a Kong filled with frozen peanut butter.
(She must remember to tell Human Leo about the wonders of the Kong, and about how licking is a calming activity for dogs; it’s the canine version of meditation or yoga.) The Kong should keep him busy for most of the drive.
Her father comes out to the driveway as she’s checking to make sure she has the collapsible water bowl and a full bottle of
water.
“So you’re off!” he says.
“Not quite.” She checks her phone—she still has plenty of time. “I don’t need to leave for a while. I’m just getting ready.”
She’d been rooting around for an extra blanket in her trunk but she slams it shut so Calvin can’t see how many of her belongings
are in there.
“Car holding up okay? You keeping on top of the oil changes and all of that?”
“Of course,” she says, untruthfully, now wondering if she can move toward the front of the car to hide the outdated oil change
sticker.
Calvin clears his throat, and Mae waits. Does her father have something important to say? Are they going to get into it about
the house? “Mae—do you need gas money?” Mae exhales softly. The answer is, of course, yes. But which is the right play: Admit
it, hide it, or inflate the amount so she can pocket the difference? She makes a noncommittal sound that could mean anything.
“Well, here,” says Calvin. “Why don’t you take it anyway.”
Mae straightens her spine, trying to seem un-needy and un-eager.
“I insist. You’re doing me a favor.” Her father opens his wallet and pulls out four crisp twenties.
She had been anticipating Venmo or maybe, as in the good old days of high school and early college, the loan of a parental credit card.
But here is cash! Dads are so old! Also, eighty dollars is a lot of money, and way more than she needs to get to Logan and back.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you,” he says, with a little tip of his head that seems very formal. “For making the trip.”
“No problem,” she says, trying to convey with those two words all of the ambivalence she does not know where to put. She’s
still so angry about the house sale, but she’s also feeling guilty about Leo destroying the glasses. She’s looking forward
to seeing Kara but doesn’t want to look too forward in case her sisters notice.
She watches her father go back into the house—she tracks the stoop of his shoulders, the bellwether of aging.
“We’re off!” she tells Leo later, but Leo, focused on his Kong, doesn’t answer. Mae knows she’s leaving earlier than she needs
to, but she wants to take the long way. She checks the line at the Beach Plum as she passes by—long—and she reminisces about
the Secret Spot, home of the most glorious smoothies, which never got rebuilt after the fire four years ago. She sees the
place where Natalie got pulled over for speeding when she was a new driver with Mae in the passenger seat (she got off with
a warning; Mae had helped her by bursting into very believable tears, requested by Natalie). She passes through Hampton Beach,
home of the Casino Ballroom, where her parents used to go see a show every summer (“the theater of the has-beens,” Jordan
called it in her sardonic, late-teenage period, but her parents had loved their annual tradition, coming back flushed and
happy, Theresa a little bit tipsy).
“What are we but our memories, Leo?” she asks, and she watches in the rearview mirror as he picks his head up, lifts his ears,
and seems to be considering her question. It’s not a bad quote. Somebody should put that on a coffee cup.
It is decided that Jordan will bring the kids to the beach while Natalie drives Calvin into Portsmouth to order his new glasses, waits with him for them to be ready, and drives him back home.
At that point Jordan and Natalie will work on the storeroom while Calvin scrubs the tile grout in the upstairs bathroom.
Jordan could have done the trip to the optometrist, but, if she’s being honest, Natalie is sort of dying for a break from her kids.
She loves her kids with all her heart and soul, but she is around them all the time—such is the life of a homeschooling mom—and the promise of a teeny-tiny break feels to her now the way the promise of a night
out at the bars used to feel when she was single, that zing of anticipation, the first sip of the first drink hitting the
back of your throat.
They had to wait for the optometrist in Lenox to open—they’d just missed the four thirty closing time the day before—and then
to send over the prescription, so when they finally get on the road it’s nearly time for Mae to leave for the airport.
They start off north, along the ocean, then turn inland.
“What did the dentist say to the molar when he had to leave the room?” Calvin asks.
“I give up,” says Natalie. They pass the library, then the fire station, cutting west to pick up Route 1.
“You didn’t even try to guess!”
“Sorry, Dad. I guess my mind was elsewhere.” Elsewhere is an understatement.
When she’d first learned that New York would be doing a profile, she’d imagined the days after its publication to be a victory walk of sorts.
She’d planned the photo of herself holding the issue, standing in the milking barn in overalls, her hair in a careful messy bun.
Maybe the children would be arranged adorably around her, maybe she’d be holding Caspian with a daughter on either side.
But not only is she nowhere near her milking barn, she hasn’t even considered looking for a hard copy. She hasn’t posted a word.
What do I do? she’d messaged her publicist.
Stay quiet. These things tend to burn themselves out. In the meantime, I’ll monitor your accounts. You spend time with your
family.
She can’t remember the last time she’d gone three days without tending to her accounts. Actually, she does remember: It was
when Theresa died. She’d posted her favorite photo of sunrise at Hillside Haven and written a paragraph about her mother,
announcing that she’d be offline for the rest of the week. Her followers had been so supportive; she’d gotten hundreds of
thousands of likes and comments. She’d felt it, the kindness of strangers, flowing to her. How quickly people turn. Ingratitude,
thou marble-hearted fiend, she thinks.
“I give up,” she tells her father again. “Tell me.”
“I’ll fill you in when I get back.” Natalie groans. He waits a beat, then says, “It’s like pulling teeth to get you to laugh
at my dentist jokes.”
“Oh my god,” says Natalie. “Dad!”
She needs more coffee. She’s so tired! “Don’t lose sleep over it,” Theresa used to say when she saw her daughters worrying