Two
On the drive to Irontown, Emma and Dad fire a barrage of get-to-know-you questions at Garrett. He’s distracted, overwhelmed, but he does his best to answer each one.
He plays football.
Does debate.
Is planning to attend Ellison University in Atlanta for pre-law.
Emma and Dad draw him out of his shell with their excitement, and soon he’s describing his favorite Atlanta restaurants and hangout spots, the three of them chatting amiably like nothing is wrong with this situation.
We’re supposed to be driving home a violinist from Eastern Europe—or Western Asia—but Dad and Emma seem content to have swapped Davit out for a football bro from Atlanta.
We crest a hill, and Irontown spreads out below.
Rooftops and steeples poke out among the trees, the whole place cradled between red iron-filled bluffs.
Beyond the bluffs, just visible past the miles and miles of forest, sprawled across the horizon, is Lake Superior, looking like the sky flipped itself upside down and became part of the landscape.
We drive through town, and in the warm amber light of evening, it feels like the opening sequence to a feel-good family film.
There are golden retrievers out on walks and kids on bikes and old ladies gardening, and I can almost hear the optimistic Alan Silvestri piano theme underscoring it all.
Dad and Emma do the work of pointing out all the landmarks: City hall with its ornate clock tower and green patina. The band shell in the park. Our high school, crumbling and old; its sports complex, gleaming and new.
The Catholic church.
Grady’s Bar and Grill.
The Lutheran church.
The Range Bar and Grill.
The Episcopalian Church.
Cheeky’s Bar and Grill.
You get the picture.
As we drive, yellow flags emblazoned with a pickax-wielding miner hang from every light post, proclaiming IRONTOWN MINERS: DIVISION C STATE FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS!
They’re from three years ago, and most of the players are now off at college, or—more likely—digging away in the mine and getting drunk at the bars every Friday.
Irontown doesn’t care, though. We’ll take what we can get.
We drive the length of Main Street and stop where it dead-ends at the edge of town.
Garrett points out the window. “What’s that?”
A line of barbed wire fencing runs across the street, separating us from the forest on the other side. The paved road and its sidewalk continue under the fence, cracked and weathered from so many winters of ice and snow. Trees and undergrowth push in on either side of it.
“The Caving Grounds,” Dad says.
“The what?” Garrett asks, craning his neck as Dad wheels the truck around and heads back up Main Street.
“You know,” Emma says, “ground that caves in. People don’t go over there.”
From the look on Garrett’s face, I figure his hometown doesn’t come with a risk of being swallowed by the ground. But his confusion fades as we drive back up Main Street, businesses giving way to old houses with lawns shaded by towering oaks.
“Darryl Maki lives there.” Dad points to a yellow house with blue shutters. “He’ll be your calculus teacher. And the Halpens are there. They have a daughter your age.”
It’s like he’s forgotten that Garrett is leaving tomorrow, that he’s not actually our exchange student.
We slow down at a large white house with a wraparound porch and ornate trim.
A turret protrudes from the second story, the setting sun winking off one of its many windows.
If the house were a bit bigger and a bit more polished, it might look like a small retreat home for Victorian-era nobility.
If it were a bit less polished, it would look haunted.
The yard is strewn with a menagerie of artfully arranged items. Some might call these items junk, others might call them weird shit, but Dad calls them priceless antiques.
Several gnomes with bulging eyes and peeling paint leer at us from the base of an oak tree.
A spray of petunias grows from a teal-colored toilet bowl.
Teapots lining the front path hold a variety of fuchsias.
At the end of the walkway, next to the street, hangs a whitewashed wooden sign with red lettering that reads ROSSI’S RARE FINDS.
Dad wheels the truck into the driveway and kills the engine. We step out.
Garrett squints at our house. “You live above an antique shop?”
“Technically, the shop is in our house,” Emma says.
Dad hoists Garrett’s luggage out of the truck, and we follow him through the back door and into the kitchen.
We’re met with the heavy, humid air of boiling pasta water, the cackling simmer of sofrito, the smell of onions and garlic. It’s a big kitchen filled with well-worn wood, copper pans, and an island scattered with vegetables, at which stands my Aunt Liz, plucking basil leaves from the stems.
She looks up when we enter, her round face breaking into a broad smile. Abandoning the basil, she marches over to Garrett and pulls him into a hug, her chestnut hair wobbling in the messy bun atop her head.
“Gamarjoba!” she says. She holds him at arm’s length by his shoulders, waiting for a response. She’s worked on that one-word Georgian greeting for weeks, likely pronouncing it wrong and having no idea what to do if someone actually responds.
Garrett looks at her like she’s speaking a foreign language.
“Liz,” Dad says, giving her a small head shake.
“Oh!” she says, letting go of Garrett. “Sorry. Right. Full language immersion.” She places her hand on her chest and speaks slowly. “You can call me Aunt Liz. What’s your name?”
“I’m Garrett,” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s amused or annoyed. “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”
Aunt Liz gives him a wink and makes the okay sign with her forefinger and thumb. “Very nice pronunciation. You’ll do well here.”
“He’s not actually from Georgia,” I say.
“Yes he is,” Emma argues.
Aunt Liz looks between the two of us, and Dad steps in to explain. She listens, frowning, then lets this not-so-small change of plans bother her for zero more seconds.
“Either way,” she says to Garrett, “welcome home. You haven’t eaten dinner yet, have you?”
“No, I—”
“Wonderful.” She pushes a wooden board piled with cheese, nuts, and olives toward him. “We eat late here, so help yourself.” She begins pointing out each variety of cheese and nut and olive while Garrett obligingly tastes them all.
Dad wanders off to close out the cash register at the front desk, and Emma busies herself with the sofrito on the stove, leaving Aunt Liz, Garrett, and me around the island.
Aunt Liz looks between us, lips puckered, a concerning glint in her eye.
I know what she’s thinking: He’s from Atlanta.
A big city. And she’s hoping I’ll become best friends with him and hear about all the opportunities outside of Upper Michigan, and it will be one more nudge in the direction of me getting out of this town next year.
She has more plans for me than I do.
“Enzo has been so excited for you to get here,” she blurts. “He’s been talking about it for weeks.”
“No I haven’t.”
I definitely have.
She ignores me. “Enzo, why don’t you give Garrett a tour? Show him his room. Help him get unpacked.”
“He probably shouldn’t unpack,” I say. “He’s leaving tomorrow.”
She gives me a look.
“But yeah,” I say, turning to him. “I can show you the guest room.”
Garrett hoists his backpack on his shoulder, grabs the handle of his luggage, and eats one last olive.
“Thanks for all this,” he says, gesturing at the kitchen.
“You really didn’t have to do anything special.
” I can sense a small note of guilt in his voice, the sound of someone who isn’t where they’re supposed to be.
“Of course we did,” Aunt Liz says. “It’s a special occasion.”
He grants her his one-third grin and steps through the swinging door into the hallway. When I follow, I bump into his back. He’s standing still, looking around.
“Holy shit,” he says.
The front hall is the nexus of the house. The staircase winds around and above, and half a dozen doors open into various rooms. It’s nice, in an old-house kind of way: dark wood floors, tall windows, patterned wallpaper.
But what warranted a holy shit are the hundreds of items arranged on end tables and bookshelves and display cabinets in each room.
An ornate mirror hangs on the wall to our left over a giant urn.
A scarred violin is suspended from a hook on our right.
Next to it sits a glass display case filled with dozens of teacups.
Other items are spread out along every wall and into every corner of every room, all with white price tags attached to them.
Dad stands at the front desk, tapping away at the touchpad that rests atop our ancient cash register.
“Not a bad day,” he remarks as we draw level with him. “We finally sold that old sewing machine. Got full price, and replaced it with another big-ticket item.” He points at the door of the living room. In the corner where the sewing machine once lived rests a tarnished tuba balanced on its bell.
The upside to living in an antique shop: We have a cool massive old house that we couldn’t afford if it didn’t double as the family business.
The downside: Our cool massive old house is filled with other people’s junk.
Ninety percent of the objects in our home are here temporarily, as if everything we own is borrowed.
Once, when I was younger, I found a set of old cars and a racing track.
I played with them every day for weeks, until one day they weren’t there.
Someone had bought them as a gift for their grandson.