Interstitial
“They’re predicting a fourteen-foot storm surge at high tide,” says Mae on Saturday morning. The rain came down all night
for the second night in a row, and it’s raining still. Mae took one for the team, walking both dogs while everyone else stayed
warm and dry. She played the martyr, but secretly she wanted to do it; she wanted to know if she was up for the challenge
of walking them together. She wouldn’t even have attempted this a few days ago, but Leo’s leash skills have improved remarkably,
and the dogs are now BFFs. Well, Fs, anyway.
In the water, she’d seen three intrepid surfers—there are always a few, no matter the weather—but there was nobody on the
beach. The wind was picking up, whipping the water into a frenzy, blowing Mae’s hair back. The waves were ferocious, and she
watched one surfer wipe out and then give up, lugging his surfboard up onto the beach. She kept the dogs on their leashes
the whole time, even reliable Cinnamon, because she feared they’d run into the water and get swept away.
Now the family is gathered in the kitchen, where something really exciting is going on. In the garage storeroom the day before,
Jordan found an old stainless-steel espresso maker, the kind you use on the stovetop, and she’s cleaned it and brought it
back to life. Coupled with a battery-powered frothing wand Natalie discovered in the kitchen drawer with the measuring cups,
they’ve got a real coffee bar going.
“Fourteen-foot?” says Calvin. “Are you sure it doesn’t say four-foot?”
“I’m positive,” says Mae. “I learned my numbers a long time ago.”
“Dad?” asks Natalie, who’s loading Caspian into his portable booster. “What time is high tide?”
“Do I look like the tide clock?” asks Calvin, a little grumpy because he doesn’t want espresso, and he’s trying to decide
whether to make a full pot of the regular stuff, but there are so many people in the kitchen that he can’t get to the coffeemaker.
Austin is tall and broad-shouldered, with big hands and big feet; his arrival, welcome as it is, makes it seem like the number
of people in the house has suddenly doubled.
“I got you, Dad,” says Jordan. “I’ll make a regular pot.”
“Austin will drink regular too,” says Natalie. “He hates fancy coffee.”
“Hate it,” Austin agrees pleasantly. He’s in an excellent mood because this is the latest he’s slept since he and Natalie
bought Hillside Haven.
“Good man,” says Calvin.
Jordan fills up the old Hamilton Beach with water and measures the coffee. Jordan is rolling her eyes at her father, but only
a little, and you have to look closely to see. Has this week softened Jordan? Mae wonders.
“You do look like the tide clock, a little bit, around the eyes,” says Mae to her father, and Calvin chuckles. “No, but, for
real,” she adds. “What time is high tide?” She tried to dry the dogs off but drying two dogs is harder than walking two dogs,
and Cinnamon’s fur holds a copious amount of water. When Cinnamon shakes, Caspian, who’s lower to the ground than anyone else
in his booster, gets a full shower. Which he likes.
“I’ll look it up,” says Natalie. She taps on her phone screen. “Just before one thirty,” she reports. “A little over three
hours from now. Jordan, can I have a double cappuccino? With an extra shot?”
“So, a triple?”
“Sure. Yes.”
“You can just order it that way.”
“I thought it sounded more demure my way.”
“This thing doesn’t really make shots, per se, but I’ll estimate.” Jordan makes Natalie’s drink and serves it in a mug that
says THAT’S VERY NICE BUT I DIDN’T ASK. She makes a latte for herself. She makes Calvin’s regular coffee and another cappuccino for Kara, this one with the equivalent
of only two shots. She gives Kara a mug that says MY brAIN HAS TOO MANY TABS OPEN.
Evangeline is deep into Ivy + Bean, and Scarlett is sitting in Austin’s lap and working on a Cozy Friends coloring book that features unlikely groups of animals, like an alligator, a bear, and a duck, doing unlikely activities
together. Visiting a nail salon. Watering a garden. Sunbathing on beach towels. They do look cozy, doing all of these things.
(But what kind of duck gets a pedicure?)
Even though it’s closer to lunch than breakfast Natalie makes effortless pancakes, a big tower of them, and Caspian sits in
his chair for a long time, pulling his apart and dropping them onto the floor for the dogs. Mae notices but lets it go, because
it’s keeping Caspian busy and the dogs at peace. Calvin is staring worriedly at his phone, looking at weather reports on a
bunch of different apps. A furrow has popped up between his eyes. He hasn’t eaten any of the pancakes Natalie set out for
him. He’s twisting his watch around on his wrist the way he does when he’s nervous.
Calvin’s phone rings, and Nikoletta Realtor flashes across the screen. Calvin takes the call in the sunroom, and when he returns he says, “Nikoletta wants me to keep
her informed if we get any water in here. Obviously that would affect the open house.”
“I’m all for affecting the open house,” says Natalie, “but we never get water in here. Right?”
“Not so far.”
“That’s surprising, with sea levels rising the way they are,” offers Austin, and Natalie shoots him a murderous look.
“This beach is so big!” says Mae. “Sometimes you have to walk out forever just to get your ankles wet.”
“That’s at low tide,” points out Jordan.
“Yeah, but—” says Mae.
“They say sea levels will rise twelves inches by 2050,” says Austin, and this time Natalie hits him ungently on the thigh.
They try to go back to what they’re doing—eating, coloring, smearing maple syrup (Caspian)—but the worry has pervaded the
kitchen. Calvin keeps leaving to pace the living room, pace the sunroom. Mae and Jordan wash the breakfast dishes while Natalie
and Scarlett color in a frog with curlers in its hair. At twelve thirty, Calvin takes a trip out to the patio. He’s gone so
long that Mae gets worried. She takes a raincoat from the hooks in the mudroom and joins her father. He’s wearing his yellow
slicker, the one he’s had as long as she can remember, the one they used to make fun of him for looking like a fisherman in.
Now he looks like a sad, wet fisherman; his hood is up, and the sideways rain is beating at him.
He has to talk loudly to be heard over the wind and the rain. He says, “When I think about your mother’s parents buying this
house, moving in here, and, I don’t know, unpacking their things in the kitchen, hanging curtains—it just really makes me
miss your mother. I miss her so much. I hope you girls know that I miss her too. Every day, I miss her.”
“I know,” says Mae. “We do know, I promise.”
“And to think that this house will one day be gone . . . I mean, whether or not we sell today or next week or in two years, any house along here that doesn’t get rebuilt will one day be gone.”
“I know,” says Mae. She thinks about how she doesn’t have a lot to give, no money, no home anyone can visit her in, no real-life
advice because she herself is still learning. But right now, she can give her father something. “Remember what you said when
we first got here?” Calvin shakes his head. “You said, ‘A house is just a structure. Family is people.’ You were right, Dad.”
Calvin puts his hand over Mae’s, squeezes it once, lets it go. “Thank you for reminding me of that.”
“Does that make me the Favorite Daughter?” asks Mae.
Calvin smiles and says, “No comment.” Then he says, “I think we should move to higher ground.”
“Like, the mountains?”
“I was thinking more like the second floor.”
“Upstairs, girls,” Natalie says. Austin scoops up Caspian, the girls follow Natalie, and everyone else moves into formation
behind, dogs too.
“Come in our room,” says Kara. “Since we have the deck, and the windows facing the ocean.” At the beginning of the week, Mae
knows, they would have bristled at the our and the we. Maybe Jordan and Natalie are bristling still, but if so they’re bristling very quietly.
They all crowd in. The slightest hint of Kara’s perfume hangs in the air.
The bed is made perfectly. Hospital corners, of course.
On each nightstand is a glass of water and a book—Malcolm Gladwell for Calvin, Elin Hilderbrand for Kara.
Kara is tidy; there are no articles of clothing flung around, no grains of sand tracked in, nothing really personal, nothing that says We have sexual relations here, and Mae is very, very glad for that.
Kara turns on both bedside lights because the day has grown dark. Jordan steps out onto the deck, closing the door behind
her, and comes immediately back in. “It’s so windy,” she says. “I felt like I was going to get blown right off.”
“I’m scared,” says Scarlett, and Natalie tells her, “She didn’t really mean she was going to get blown off. We’re all safe,
you don’t need to be scared,” but she sounds scared too.
Calvin goes out to the deck next. It takes some effort to close the slider behind him. Mae starts to worry now too: Is Calvin
going to blow off the deck? No, he’s not. But when he returns his hair is all leaning in one direction and there’s an anxious
look on his face. He pats his hair down, checks his watch, glances at the kids, and shakes his head. He says, “Almost high
tide.”
Mae wonders if a storm surge comes exactly on time. She tries for a joke to this effect: “Does it tell you, like an Uber driver,
when it’s three minutes away?” She looks around; nobody is laughing. The dogs are whining, reacting to the change in atmospheric
pressure, walking in circles, unable to settle. They seem like many dogs, not just two, winding around Mae’s legs, then Natalie’s,
then Jordan’s. They seem like ten dogs; they seem like a shiver of sharks. Austin puts Caspian on the bed, then Cinnamon leaps
up next to him, messing up Kara’s careful bed-making.
“Sorry, sorry!” Natalie says. “I’ll fix it!”