Chapter 4
“We just finished eating, but I can throw something together.” Mom drags me across the threshold.
Drags is not quite right, really, but she’s surprisingly effective at steering me, even though I’m holding her up.
She hasn’t even asked me why I’m here, as if it’s perfectly normal for me to swing by on a Friday evening.
“Thanks, but I’ve eaten already.”
“Okay, then, you can stay for game night. Do you have a game picked out, Abby?” Mom glances over her shoulder at Abby and Caleb, and I catch a whiff of the honeysuckle scent of her perfume. Home, I think, before I remember and dispatch the instinct.
“Sure do, Grams,” Abby calls back.
My pulse thunders in my ears. Grams. This girl calls my mother Grams. Jeff is having a baby that’s not mine. My mom has a granddaughter who isn’t mine either.
We shuffle into the house, where the sunset bleeds through the windows and barrels through the hole in its center where the tree grows.
The familiarity of the home sends conflicting signals to my brain, homesickness and horror battling for control.
The cylindrical glass structure encasing the trunk reflects the varied colors like a prism.
Sunset and sunrise, Sonny would say, are when you need to be closest to nature.
At camp, the sunset was honored every night.
We’d hike to Colibri Peak and have ten minutes of silence as the sun descended, or sing meditative songs in the amphitheater, where the crimson light would beam down on us like a benediction.
Here in this house, you don’t need to pause to notice its beauty. The sunset demands attention like a ballerina taking center stage.
The first floor is a single open space that curves around the tree.
Mom nudges me toward the dining area. The house is the same in many ways, but the muted bring-the-nature-in design Sonny favored is punctuated by Mom’s bright artwork on every wall, vivid oil paintings on canvas without a theme to ground them.
When I settle Mom at the head of the live-edge dining table, I note a collection of portraits on the wall behind her.
They’re all me. As a baby, toddler, child, and several of me as a teen, as if I got stuck at that age in her mind forever.
In the biggest one, I’m in costume. It’s my first professional tutu, and I’m posing in a simple épaulement. It’s the long, straight line of a girl who didn’t know how lucky she was.
I feel Caleb’s gaze on me as I inspect it. I dart my focus to him, and he’s unabashed. His expression is biting. I’m the guy who watched your mom paint your portrait for the last twenty years.
She painted the same version of me over and over and over again—the me I was before she broke me. If I could wield a brush, I would have painted me, too.
“Edie, honey, sit here.” My mom’s smooth hand curls in mine and coaxes me into the seat to her right, giving me a view of several portraits of Sonny—his head thrown back in laughter, his body curved over the neck of his guitar, leading the campers at the nightly campfire.
Abby settles at the table, shuffling a deck of cards like a dealer in a casino.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” Mom asks, pointing to a bottle on the table.
“No. No, thank you,” I say. The last thing my fragile nerves need is alcohol.
“Oh.” Abby gasps. “That’s you.” She points to a canvas, and I notice Caleb is still staring at my portrait.
It feels like a violation that I’ve been hanging here on exhibit all this time.
I don’t know if I should be flattered or horrified that Caleb and Abby recognize me from those old portraits.
I couldn’t have been more than fourteen in them.
“Oh dear.” Mom laughs uncomfortably. “Abby, I’m sorry, honey. This is Eden, my daughter. And Eden, this is Caleb, Sonny’s nephew. And Abby is his daughter. You’ve heard me talk about them, of course.”
But I haven’t. I know I haven’t because when we speak, it’s like she’s in denial that she lives in Grand Trees.
She can’t casually mention people from the town and simultaneously pretend she didn’t ditch me to move here.
In the intervening years, Mom mentioned Sonny only twice—once to tell me he proposed and once to tell me he was gone.
She never mentioned a nephew or a child.
Mom doesn’t know I’m divorced, and I didn’t know she had a new family, which is a surreal discovery.
I have tried so hard not to imagine her here with Sonny because it felt disloyal to Dad, but I have worried about how she was faring since Sonny’s death.
I just couldn’t bring myself to return after my failed attempt with the funeral.
“We do game night on Fridays,” Mom says. “What are we playing tonight, Abby?”
“Asshole.” A grin blooms on Abby’s face.
“Language,” Caleb warns.
“It’s the name of the game,” she protests without the slightest bit of fear.
“Actually,” Caleb says, “we should let Grams catch up with Eden.” He stands behind Abby, with his hands resting on the back of her chair.
“But we play every Friday,” she says.
“Don’t leave on my account,” I say. “I have a room at a bed-and-breakfast. And I had a long drive, so I can’t stay late tonight.” It was once a five-hour drive from San Francisco to Grand Trees, but years ago, the main highway was wiped out in a landslide, and the detour added another two.
“Oh,” Mom says. “You came all this way to stay at a motel?” Her voice is soft, a little pleading. Does she really expect me to stay here? Really?
For a brief moment, I’m grateful we have an audience.
Perhaps I can delay the uncomfortable conversations until tomorrow, when I’ll have to confront her about why she didn’t tell me about the diagnosis, and why she’s unwilling to seek treatment.
I can do my duty, change her mind, and get out of here by Sunday.
“Dad, can we still do game night? Please?” Abby tilts her head back to gaze at her father, flashing a smile I suspect typically works.
“Fine,” he says. “But not too late. We have the festival tomorrow. And no more swearing.”
Abby perks up, straightening her spine and dealing cards to each of us until the deck is empty.
“We’re playing A-hole.” She enunciates slowly, and Caleb’s jaw tenses as he flashes her a warning.
“Have you ever played?” she addresses me as Caleb sinks into the chair between Abby and Mom, perched on the end as if he might change his mind.
I shake my head, and Abby launches into a description of a game that sounds familiar, actually. “Oh, wait. I have played this.”
I remember it vaguely as a drinking game I’d played in college but omit that part. Caleb sighs when I cast a glance in his direction.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, and I wonder why he thinks he can read my mind, irritated at how presumptuous he is. “But we play without alcohol.”
I organize my hand and ignore the weird tingle when I realize he did, in fact, read my mind. “What are the stakes?”
“Pride,” Caleb says.
Noted.
My mom grasps my forearm, releasing a relieved sigh. “I’m so glad you’re here, Edie. How long are you staying?”
“The weekend.”
Mom releases me, placing her palm flat on the table. “Okay,” she whispers. “Are you sure you can’t stay here?”
I feel Caleb’s focus on me, and it’s strange because I barely know him, but I can imagine the expression on his face, as if whatever answer I give will be the wrong one.
“Next time, Mom. I can’t show up unannounced and have you host me.” I hope my forced smile looks natural.
“Next time.” She pats my arm once again. “I like the sound of that.”
“Youngest goes first,” Abby declares, throwing two threes onto the table.
Abby looks to be somewhere between twelve and fifteen.
She has a complexion I would have envied at her age, with a mouth full of bright-orange rubber bands stretched across metal.
She also has a wide-open earnestness that pop culture would have me believe is impossible in adolescence, due to social media and technology destroying their childhoods.
She resembles Caleb; they have the same coloring, full lips, and prominent brows.
But otherwise, they couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Abby, even with her braces, has a face that is begging to smile at any opportunity.
On my turn, I play three jacks, winning the hand and clearing the pile.
“Look at the newbie.” Abby giggles.
“Beginner’s luck.” I start the next turn with a single three, and play resumes.
Mom’s hands shake slightly as she studies her options before playing two fours.
Abby wins the next turn, clearing the pile with a two, the most powerful card in the deck.
“What grade are you in, Abby?” I ask when the table grows too silent.
“Seventh,” she says. “Only one more year of middle school. Thank God,” she groans. “It’s like the world’s worst social experiment. Someone should set a reality show in the halls of junior high.”
“Well, it’s only up from here.” I offer her a sympathetic smile that betrays my real feelings about growing up. “You’re twelve?”
“Thirteen,” she says, proud. “I keep telling my parents I only have five years till college.”
“Hey now.” Caleb nudges her shoulder with his. “Slow down, kid.”
I notice the mention of “parents” plural, but no one elaborates.
Is her mom around? Are she and Caleb together?
Maybe she’s the pretty bartender from earlier.
I remember how they leaned close, how he whispered in her ear.
But that couldn’t be right. Wouldn’t she have been suspicious that he saved me from a lecherous tourist and paid for my meal? No wife is that naive, other than me.
“Abby’s so smart she has to take some classes at the high school already. She wants to be a lawyer when she grows up.” Mom plays her turn.
I notice Caleb tracking me as I watch the tremor in Mom’s hand.
“I want to sue all those evil corporations destroying the world,” Abby says.
“Wow, that’s ambitious,” I say.
“Or a vet,” Abby says. “I have time, I guess.”
Caleb chuckles before he plays three aces and wins the hand.
Abby groans. “Dad, you always win. It’s so annoying.”
“I don’t find it annoying,” he says.
Abby folds the score sheet into a paper airplane and launches it at his head. He grabs it out of midair.
We play for a second, third, and fourth round before Caleb slides out of his chair. “Anyone want something to drink?”
Abby asks for a soda, and Caleb shakes his head. “It’s too late for that. Water?”
She rolls her eyes. “Fine.”
Caleb heads toward the kitchen, and Houdini scampers out from under the table to follow. I almost forgot he was there, but he sprints to catch up, fixing himself against Caleb’s heels.
“What kind of dog is he?” I ask as Abby shuffles.
“He’s a mutt. I want to get him DNA tested, but Dad says that’s bullshit science.” She deals the cards with the dexterity of a pro.
“Language,” Caleb yells from the kitchen.
“I’m just repeating you,” she calls back. “You’re the one with the foul mouth. We think he’s German shepherd, Lab, and pit bull, or maybe husky or something.”
“And maybe wolf.” Caleb returns with a tray in his hands.
“Seriously?” I watch the animal as he trots back into the room on Caleb’s heels. He has tufts of wiry hair mixed in with fluff. He’s both adorable and awkward.
“Whatever he is, he’s definitely first-generation domesticated.” Caleb sets the tray on the table before sliding a water glass in front of each of us and a bowl of pretzels beside me.
“Thanks,” I say. Perhaps we’ve graduated from contempt.
Houdini jumps up and puts his paws on the table, hunting for scraps.
“Off,” Caleb says, and the dog skulks away to a corner of the carpet, circling three times before landing with a harrumph of protest.
“They rescued him after that big fire last year in the next county over. So many people left, didn’t rebuild, and abandoned their dogs.
How sad is that?” Mom sorts her hand as the tremor intensifies.
I catch it out of the corner of my eye as I try to reconcile this diminished woman with my mother, the bold artist who uprooted her life to paint a lifetime of art pieces in her encore, who left her family for a man so full of life it was contagious.
In her weakened state, it’s hard to pin her as the villain of my story.
She’s wrapped in a shawl, the sheath of fabric cascading to her wrists.
The skin of her hands has thinned to a topography of veins and age spots, hiding the precision with which she held a paintbrush, the finality with which she waved goodbye.
“Winner goes first,” Abby demands. “Dad,” she nudges.
“One more hand, and then we’re going to let Grams get some rest.”
I win this one, with a decisive victory over Caleb’s three kings in the final play, and restrain myself by offering only a self-deprecating shrug.
“All right, Abs. That’s our cue to leave,” Caleb says.
“What, you losing?” Abby laughs. “And to a girl?”
He pushes his chair back and stands, stretching his arms overhead. I look away as his shirt rides up to show a dark happy trail. I don’t want to see more, because it’s clear it wouldn’t dampen my attraction to this surly man who hates me and is probably happily married.
“Are you calling me a caveman, kid?”
“If the barefoot fits.” Abby cackles, and Caleb picks her up by the waist in one arm, spinning her until Houdini gets into the mix, howling and jumping on his hind legs in an arc. Caleb tosses Abby onto the couch with an effortlessness that doesn’t escape my cavewoman brain.
“Just for that, you’re doing the cleanup while I help Grams upstairs.”
Abby’s still giggling as she rolls off the couch.
“C’mon, Nicki.” Caleb extends an arm to Mom.
“I can get myself upstairs. I’ll use the handrails.”
How could that not have crossed my mind?
The floating spiral staircase hugs the tree, curling around the glass enclosure like a vine.
Those steps require a sure foot. I know.
It was the excuse I gave for not visiting when she first left.
Not that I needed an excuse. She knew exactly why I didn’t want to be here.
“I’m sure you do. But humor me, please.” Caleb’s tone is all sugar for her. This is a man who is selective with his kindness.
Mom sighs but relents, sliding her arm in Caleb’s as she stands. “Eden, we have the festival in the town square tomorrow. Caleb’s picking me up at nine. You’ll come, right?”
It’s not like I have a bunch of options. I’m here for Mom. If she’s going to a festival, I’m going to a festival. If I only meet her in crowds, I can’t confront her about her diagnosis, which might be her strategy. “I’ll be there.”