Chapter 23
Gregor
“Have you given any thought to putting a smaller version of the corral around the nest?”
Pops asked as Uncle Atlas cracked open his lunch box while the rest of the crew collected theirs from the coolers.
“August is in favor of them, so let’s go ahead and mark up the spots for the posts after we get done eating,”
I replied before digging into the mini lobster rolls I’d wrapped up last night.
August had fallen in love with the spicy homemade dressing I made for them that blended mayonnaise and melted butter with lemon and Cajun seasoning.
The look on his face when he’d first bitten into one had made getting squirted in the eye by a lemon worth it.
Grating zest and adding it to the sauce had really elevated it.
I looked forward to playing with a few other variations to see if he enjoyed them, too.
Like mango in the sauce when I’d mixed up crab rolls last week.
Using three kinds of crab and a garlic butter wash to brush on the inside of the rolls, I hadn’t expected them to be as big of a hit as they were, but he’d loved them and everything else I’d made him so far.
I’d learn to make pasta salad, too, because he loved it, especially with bits of broccoli, onions, relish and shredded cheese.
The sauce I’d made with plain yogurt, sour cream and ranch seasoning, passing on the peas I was supposed to add because August hated them.
After watching him painstakingly pick every last one of them out of the shrimp with lobster sauce I’d made him, grumbling and cursing each one out, I’d omitted them from every recipe they’d showed up in after that or substituted them with diced carrots and celery, which he loved.
Even cauliflower would was better than peas, since he actually asked for it from time to time.
At least August hadn’t rattled off a long list of things I could leave out of the dish in addition to peas.
My brain was already compiling one to include water chestnuts.
He hadn’t even said anything about them to me, either, he’d just dug them out of the lobster sauce, nudged them to the edge of the plate, and dug right back in.
He’d asked for seconds, too, repeating the process with the peas and water chestnuts so he must have liked it, aside from those two components.
So far, I’d been lucky, and not served up any foods he couldn’t eat, but I’d scouted out the restaurants in the area just in case.
I knew which ones were open late and I knew which ones delivered.
When and if I did screw up, I had contingency plans ready, and options, in case he was craving a combination of things.
“I just sent the plans for your home model addition to your phone,”
Uncle Atlas said. “I included both the star and the spiral designs. I think you’ll find that the spiral spire for the hot tub addition will fit perfectly along the back corner of the house, and offset the lighthouse perfectly, while the star-shaped office in the front left corner will give the side view its own distinct bit of charm.”
“I think you’re right about that. I’ll look at the photos after I eat, but it seems like a no brainer and August loves the idea of having the hot tub at the top of the tower, where he has the perfect view of me across the balcony at the hibachi.”
“Are we still looking to widen that by three feet and add some additional support?”
“Yes, please, I agree with what you said, about it making the space much more versatile, especially since we’re enclosing it. It’s going to be nice to open up the inside wall on both sides and make it a true extension of the space.”
“When this house becomes a tourist attraction, you make sure you keep my business cards in the basket in the entryway and pass them out to anyone who asks who did the work,”
Uncle Atlas said.
“I’ll do that,”
I assured him. “I might have to keep a few in my wallet, too, once people start to associate me with the house.”
“I’d appreciate it,”
Uncle Atlas said. “I’ve enjoyed getting to turn this place into your dream house. Restoration is a lot more fun than building another cookie cutter house in some subdivision. I’d love to tackle more projects like this one. There are a lot of old homes in town. Come winter, I really need to put together a good advertising campaign and update the website. There are months’ worth of images that need to be uploaded and arranged on the website and I’d love to see if Olly can shoot some footage.”
“It’s a good idea,”
I said. “See if he can set up a virtual tour, too, to take visitors to your website through a simulation of each restoration. It’s a little more interactive, because you can type up information explaining what process was used on the floor, or what condition something was in before you got started and then show the step-by-step photos you took as the grime was stripped away and the wood came alive again. He’d made several virtual tours for my shop as well as done mini-documentaries on some of the more intricate pieces I’ve created.”
“Yeah, let me write that down,”
Uncle Atlas said.
I focused on my extremely delicious sandwiches, and on what I needed to pick up after work for tonight’s meal. I’d promised him a caramel cake with ribbons of dulce de leche dribbled over it, and I planned to make crabcakes served with deviled eggs and a side of tangy red cabbage coleslaw made with apple cider vinegar.
“I can’t believe how much there still is left to do,”
I said several minutes later, as I gazed around the room. I’d wolfed down the first sandwich, so it was nice to be able to take my time and enjoy the last one.
“It’s been a lot of changes in a really short amount of time,”
Pops pointed out.
“And still a bunch more to come.”
“Don’t you forget it, either,”
Uncle Atlas said. “Are you ready for them all?”
“No.”
“Right answer,”
Pops said.
“We’ll figure it out along the way, or you’ll get woken in the middle of the night and hammered with questions,”
I told him.
“Why me and not your mom?”
“Because she can sleep through everything now that us kids are grown, while you lie wake going over maps of the fishing grounds in your head trying to decide where to steer the boat when you head out in the morning.”
He chuckled at that, nodded, and peeled the wrapper off another section of his meatball sub.
“Just remember, kid, you are going to fuck up and you are going to feel horrible about it,”
Uncle Atlas said. “When that happens, don’t try to hide how much it upsets you that you messed up. Let them see that shit, so they grow up understanding that grown-ups make mistakes, too. Kids try to be little miniature versions of us, but it’s more like the cartoon superhero version where everything turns out the way it’s supposed to because we do such an amazing job of hiding our struggles. Just never be fake, always own it when you fuck up, ‘cause that will make it easier for them to, and always keep in mind that when they start asking to speak to August about whatever is going on, that’s the equivalent of them going to management.”
I doubled over laughing at that, but I could see it, too. In my head, I pictured a little girl with spiky brown hair sticking up everywhere as she stalked through the house dragging a large stuffed critter and her blanket, looking for August after I’d upset her somehow.
“Never forget the power of one whelp determined to do something you told them not to do,”
Uncle Atlas said. “They will lie awake at night dreaming of ways to go around you so they don’t get caught, while you’re in bed snoring, exhausted after a day spent thwarting plans to row out to Crow Island in an old dingy.”
He eyed me when he said it, because I’d been in on those plans, along with my cousins Ross and Petyr. We’d hatched them up over a weekend sleepover, but we kept getting caught every time we tried to sneak out. It had taken years before we’d been allowed to row over alone. Sadly, what we discovered was far less grand than the way we’d built it up in our imaginations. It was still fun to camp out alone all weekend, but it would have been cooler when we were younger. Mysterious, too. We’d been out on boats by the time we camped out there. After being on a boat in the middle of the ocean, being on an island had seemed a lot more tame.
Now I wondered if I’d let my kids go out there when they were the age we’d been when we’d first wanted to go. Maybe? If I did, I’d sneak out there, shift and hide close enough to keep watch over them. It would be win-win. They’d get to be proud of themselves and I’d get to live another day without worrying myself gray.
“I remember one time no amount of prevention was able to deter one stubborn wolverine from attempting to run across what was left of the rope bridge on Ricochet Ridge,”
Uncle Atlas said, shooting a look at my father when he said it. I stared at him, too, until he flipped us both the bird and unscrewed the cap on his tea.
“I could never quite accommodate for how much wind there was when I reached the middle,”
Pops said. “There was a massive tangle there, and a spot where it was twisted, so I had to scamper across and then turn the moment I reached the other side, which was usually where the wind pushed me off and I wound up dangling and kicking my feet around until I could wiggle back up.”
“What’d you do then?”
I asked. “Go back, or keep going?”
“Rush back to whatever side he’d started from,”
Uncle Atlas said. “Used to tell him all the time that it was the same distance at that point so he might as well keep going, but he never did.”
“Because I would still have had to run all the way back once I got to the other side, and at that point, I’d had my fill of thrills for the day.”
“I can appreciate that,”
Uncle Atlas said. “Still cracks me up when I think about it, though.”
“I bet.”
“Is the bridge still there?”
I asked, wondering why I’d never heard about the place before, or seen it on any of our numerous camping trips.
For the first time since we’d started talking, they hesitated, leaving me to try and figure out why mentioning the bridge made them cast unreadable looks at one another, before looking away and fidgeting with something.
“We chopped it down when you were three,”
Pops said at last. “After your cousin Sasha fell trying to run along those ropes.”
“If we’d left the story and our recklessness in the past where it belonged, Sasha and your brother Bren wouldn’t have gotten it into their heads to try it,”
Uncle Atlas said. “It’s a miracle Bren didn’t fall, too, or I’d have both their shattered futures on my conscience.”
“You weren’t the only one discussing it,”
Pops said.
“No, but I was the one who brought it up,”
Uncle Atlas declared. “Once everyone started sharing stories of their attempts, there was just no putting that cat back in the bag. Most of you kids were too small to understand what we were talking about; you just babbled along and interrupted our stories with your noises.”
“There were a few well timed ones, too,”
Pops pointed out. “Like when Yuri let out a great big burp just as Bruce was describing the size of the steak he’d had on the Cape.”
“So, is that how Sasha wound up in a wheelchair?”
I asked before they could shift the topic any further along.
For as long as I could remember, Sasha had been in that chair. No one ever talked about why, or how, not even Sasha. It just was. If I hadn’t seen twisted scars on his body when he’d been changing into his swimsuit, I’d have still been under the assumption that he was born that way. That was also when I understood that the old time men’s bathing suit, that covered half the thighs and most of the torso, wasn’t what Sasha wore because he liked the style, it was because he could hide his scars underneath it.
“Yeah, that’s what happened,”
Pops said.
“There is nothing more painful than watching my son pay for one of my mistakes,”
Uncle Atlas said. “As nice as it is to talk to you guys about my so-called glory days and all that bullshit, there are stories that aren’t worth telling besides to brag about a man I’m not anymore. Maybe it was cool then. When I look back on some of that shit now, I think we only did it because we thought others would think it was cool when really, we’d have much rather been sitting around a campfire with some kielbasa, lingui?a and marshmallows.”
“I’ll go along with that.”
They’d given me a lot to think about, and not just when it came to what to tell my whelps when they were growing up. It made me wonder if my old man rarely talked about his past at all because he was afraid of saying something that would prompt one of us to do something reckless.
The whole thing with the rope bridge, I know I’d have wanted to try that, too. We’d all been little daredevils. More than one arm, leg, and collarbone had been broken while attempting poorly thought-out stunts.
“Nothing you tell them about your past is going to make your children admire you more than just the knowledge that you’re their parent,”
my uncle explained. “That automatically makes you a hero to them.”
“Try to remember that when a certain someone is sitting at the table on the Fourth of July going on and on about how he set the market for blue fin up and down the coast,”
Pops said. “We both know it was only one time and only because we had engine trouble because you let him take the better boat. I know you’d like to clock him, we’d all like to punch him in his stupid, sneering face, but then we’d all be accused of ganging up on him and Caroline will get Granny involved and you and I will never hear the end of it.”
“Yeah, it would be nice to go another year without her lecturing us,”
Uncle Atlas said. “I always feel three inches tall by the time she’s through.”
“Because she makes us describe in vivid detail everything that was wrong about whatever we did.”
“I hate that.”
“You and me both.”
I’d never had a reason to fear Granny, she was just Granny. She sat in one of the rockers on the porch whenever she visited, knitted the coziest caps I’d ever owned, and told stories whenever someone had the time to listen. Granny was harmless. Only listening to Pops and Uncle Atlas, it sounded like she hadn’t always been that way.
Now I hoped to hear more stories about Granny in her younger days, so I’d be able to share them with the whelps if she wasn’t around for them to get to know. Now that I’d started to pay attention to the conversations and the stories that were shared whenever family members got together, it was opening my eyes to a lot of things I’d never realized about the way relationships worked in our family.
We might not come right out and tell someone how we feel about them, but when I looked around this room, I knew how they felt and how much I mattered, just by how many had showed up to help get the place renovated before the babies came. One day, they’d be wearing oversized toolbelts and struggling to carry toolboxes through a yard with their cousins while we worked on adding rooms for someone else. And when I looked up to see an adorable little whelplet holding the wrong sized wrench out to me, I was going to take it, thank them, and pretend to use it before I asked for the wrench I needed, because I know they’d smile ‘cause they were helping.
I’d rather that to them ducking their heads and slinking around a room, constantly second guessing themselves before they answered questions so they wouldn’t get it wrong. Nurture and encourage, that was the path me and August were determined to take with our litter. Fortunately for me, I had a room full of men, as well as others in the family, who would be there to answer my distress calls until I found my footing as a dad, the way they had.