Chapter 3 Upstairs, Downstairs, and the Buyout Letter
BIRDIE lives in the downstairs half of a two-flat on Larch Street, and Ren and Theo live in the top half, and the arrangement runs on a system of ceiling-thumps and porch-hollers that I would defend against any smart-home company in America.
One thump: you home? Two thumps: coming down.
Three thumps, close together, means Theo has found something on a documentary he needs an adult to be appalled with him about, and I should put the kettle on.
That was the thump I got that evening, three fast ones over the kitchen light, and I put the kettle on, because I am, apparently, the adult in this scenario, a fact that would make my old team laugh until they hurt.
Theo came down the outside stairs at his usual velocity, the velocity of a boy who has never once considered that stairs could win. He is twelve, all elbows and opinions, with a phone his mother pays too much for and a brain that never stops taking things apart to see the tendons.
“Did you know,” he said, coming through my kitchen door without knocking, because we retired knocking around month two, “that the Hindenburg didn’t have to burn?
Like the hydrogen was one problem but the skin was painted with basically rocket fuel.
They painted it with the thing that killed everybody. ”
“I did not know that,” I said, which was a lie, because I know a truly unhelpful amount about how things burn, but Birdie Vance learns her disasters from a seventh-grader, and I would not take that away from him for anything.
This is the thing about Theo that I have never told anyone, including Theo: he is why the whole disguise is worth it.
He moved in eighteen months ago, a skinny kid with a dead grandfather’s house full of a mother’s grief and no father in the picture and a documentary habit that was clearly a way of studying catastrophe from behind glass, and he took one look at the jumpy hardware lady downstairs and decided, on no evidence, that I was safe.
Kids get that wrong all the time. He got it right for the wrong reasons, which is the funniest and saddest thing about my life, that the one person who correctly identified me as a safe adult did it because he thought I was harmless.
“They could’ve used a different paint,” he said, mournful and delighted at once, sliding onto the stool at my counter. “It’s always a smaller thing than you think. That’s the whole point of the channel.”
“Feet off the rung, you’ll scuff it.”
“You scuff it more than me.”
“That’s my job. Landladies are allowed to scuff.” I set a mug of cocoa in front of him because the kettle was already going and because a kid who comes down three thumps’ worth of urgent deserves cocoa. “Where’s your mom?”
“Getting ready. She’s on nights again.” He wrapped both hands around the mug. “She got another letter today. From the harbor guy.”
The kettle clicked off. I poured, and I kept my hands ordinary. Keeping hands ordinary is a skill. “Did she now.”
“It was in a fancy envelope. She said a bad word at it and put it on top of the fridge with the other one.”
There were two now. I filed that the way I file things — completely, and forever, and while pretending to be thinking about cocoa.
Ren came down a few minutes later in her scrubs, hair up, keys already in her fist, doing the particular hurry of a single mother with a punch clock two counties’ worth of nurse in her.
Renata Alvarez is thirty-six and looks tired the way a bridge looks tired: still holding an unreasonable amount of weight and not planning to stop.
She kissed the top of Theo’s head and stole his cocoa for one sip and made a face like it was terrible and drank more.
“He tell you about the letter,” she said. Not a question. Ren reads me better than most, which is one of the small ongoing terrors of my life.
“He mentioned the harbor guy.”
“Grant Holloway.” She said the name the way you say a name you’ve decided about.
“Second one. This one’s got a number in it.
A real number, Birdie, with commas. For my dad’s house.
” She leaned against my counter. “It’s a good number.
That’s the part that makes me want to throw it in the river.
It’s a good enough number that I sat at my own kitchen table and thought about it for a minute like a person who’d do it. ”
“You’d never,” said Theo, with the total confidence of a kid who has never once had to choose between principle and a roof.
“No,” Ren agreed. “I wouldn’t. This is Dad’s block.
He fixed half the porches on it. They can pour their marina somewhere that isn’t where my father is buried up the hill from.
” She checked the clock and swore softly at it.
“But they’re going house to house. The Kowalskis took it.
Old Mr. Petrakis is thinking. Somebody’s going to send a smiling person to my door, and I’m going to be at work, and Theo’s going to open it because he’s twelve and thinks everybody’s a friend. ”
“I do not,” said Theo, opening a cabinet like a friend.
“Birdie.” Ren looked at me, and I felt the ask coming, and I felt the little cold spot that always opens when anyone asks me to be responsible for anything larger than a return policy.
“If somebody comes around while I’m on shift.
Can you be the one who talks to them? You’re downstairs.
You’re always—” she waved a hand, kind about it, “—here.”
Here. Available. Harmless. The persona in one word, handed to me as a compliment.