2. Friday, August 25, 2023 #2
Alice holds up a hand to illustrate she didn’t mean anything by it. “Of course. I just meant the kitchen, for example, is a crucial room for the entire family and it needs to be unpacked. I would do it but I’m helping Polly. You know how she gets kind of stuck now, since?”
Geoff turns and looks longingly at the cabin behind him. “Okay,” he says, not even trying to hide the annoyed reluctance in his voice. “I guess I’ll just put this box away and come in.”
Alice puts a hand on his shoulder, tries not to recoil at the sweaty dampness of his Nirvana T-shirt.
She’s pretty sure she smells booze on him.
“Thank you,” she says, even though now the connotation is that he’s doing her a favor when, really, he should be doing it for the sake of the family.
Nobody’s thanked her for getting the Wi-Fi organized or making sure each bathroom has toilet paper and toothpaste.
“I’ll get in there to take over as soon as I can,” she adds, because she just can’t help herself.
When he goes to walk away, she asks, “Have you been drinking?” also because she just can’t help herself.
He stops and turns back, eyes narrowed. “It’s just that you smell like it,” she says with a shrug, like it’s no big deal, even though it is.
He recovers and tries for nonchalance. “Yeah, I unpacked a bottle of bourbon and had a glass while I was putting shit away.” Now he shrugs. “No big deal.” She nods, and then he turns and walks away.
From behind he could still be the twenty-four-year-old she fell in love with in worn jeans and T-shirt—the gray in his hair not visible, his slim frame unchanged.
The view doesn’t bring those feelings back though, just makes her wonder where the hell they went and why.
The drinking worries her. It used to just be a social thing when they saw friends or went out for dinner.
Since Lucy died it’s become more regular, and something he does on his own.
She hasn’t said anything because she knows it’s his way of coping with the loss of their daughter, but it’s not healthy, it can’t go on, and it seems to be getting worse.
It was more than one drink; his brown eyes were notably glassy.
Before she works herself up into a full frenzy, she changes tack.
The move will surely help, the change of scenery will do him good, and so will having his own private writing space.
The sentiment settles the gnaw of worry that’s always so quick to arrive in the pit of her stomach.
The ideal refuge for you and your family, she repeats in her head for the millionth time.
The words give her something she hasn’t had in a long time—hope.
That her family can be fixed after Lucy’s death broke them.
When she sees other people’s family photos on social media, it’s not the white-sand beaches they’re on, or the lakeside settings, or the Eiffel Tower in the background that she’s jealous of.
It’s the look in their eyes—the look of contentment.
That’s all she wants for her family now.
Full-blown happiness is too ambitious since Lucy died. She’ll settle for contentment.
On her way back to Polly’s room, she stops to check in on Quinn.
He’s sitting amidst chaos, clothes pulled free from suitcases but not yet put away, his collection of sneakers in a pile that’s already claimed the room with its stench.
Panda, their border collie rescue, who never leaves Quinn’s side, is happily lying down next to him on a pile of T-shirts.
The only thing set up is the TV and the Xbox.
He sits in front of it, a headset tamping down his brown curls, a sheen of sweat on his tanned face that even at fifteen still has a babyish quality to it—so similar to his father’s.
He sees her and pulls the headset down. “Hey.”
“I thought you needed Wi-Fi for that?” Alice points at the Xbox.
“Not for all the games.” He starts to pull his headset back on.
“Quinn,” she calls out before he can disappear back into his virtual reality. “Can you please do some unpacking?”
He lets the headset rest back on his neck. “When will the Wi-Fi be on?”
Typical Quinn, answering her question with a question that is unrelated and in no way helpful. Annoyance prickles through her. “I don’t know exactly,” she snaps back. “Just get off that stupid thing and unpack properly, for heaven’s sake.”
She’s not even through the door when the guilt bleeds through the annoyance.
She gets so short with him now, but they’ve never had the easiest time.
She was sick all through her pregnancy with Quinn, and to be honest, he was a bit of a surprise, arriving red-faced and outraged, four years after the twins were born.
The girls were in preschool, and Alice had been looking forward to getting back out into the workforce.
She’d been the one to stay home with the twins because Geoff was an English professor at the time and made more than she did working in the pharmacy.
After her difficult pregnancy, giving birth was a relief, until she realized she had a colicky newborn on her hands.
And he stayed fussy right up until eighteen months.
Lucy was the only person who could soothe him; she would sit beside his baby seat and talk to him softly, holding up toys for him to look at, singing soothing songs to him and stroking his cheek.
Polly tried with him as well, but she was loud and rough, itsy-bitsy-spidering up his stomach too aggressively, planting hard, wet kisses on his cheeks, making Old MacDonald animal sounds that scared him.
That’s why he loved Lucy best—right up until the day she died.
His father was a close second, followed by Polly and then Alice.
Or at least that’s how it feels. As a child, Quinn had been clingy and needy, but Alice never got the knack for soothing him.
He’d rail against her, she’d snap at him, he’d punish her with silence and lock his bedroom door, then she’d feel guilty and try to fix it.
It was a nasty cycle that no parenting book could remedy.
They got along a bit better when he became a teenager, because he was less needy and she was less impatient.
Somehow, they stumbled into a clumsy sort of harmony.
Then Lucy died. And Quinn blames her. He’s never come right out and said it, but she knows.
A mother always knows when her child hates her.
She hopes that the move helps him. Hopes the reminders of Lucy from the old house no longer haunt him.
Over the past year, Alice had found Quinn in Lucy’s room many times.
Lying on the bed, staring at the wall, tears streaming down his cheeks.
The pain of losing her child was unbearable, and she almost didn’t make it, but then to see the pain in her other children brought on a whole new level of grief.
Pain laced with a sense of profound failure and helplessness.
She takes a deep breath and steps back into Quinn’s room with a smile.
He glowers at her return but slides the headset off.
“I was thinking we’d order pizza or Chinese for dinner,” she says, because those are his two favorite kinds of takeout.
“Your pick. We’ll see what this town has to offer.
” He nods but eyes her with suspicion. At least it’s not hatred.
Geoff
Of course Alice would label the setting up of his writing studio as non-crucial.
Of course she’d step in to delegate what he should be doing instead.
The verbal tirade against her is loud in Geoff’s head as he unwraps the gray dinnerware that Alice bought for the new house.
She didn’t even ask his opinion, not about the new dinner plates, or the new glassware, or the new towels.
Not to mention moving, and worst of all, inviting her crazy mother to live with them.
Alice had shown him photos of the house online.
He’d agreed that it was an amazing find, mostly because he’d finally have his own separate writing space.
And yeah, her mother didn’t have anywhere else to go—but it’s the principle that matters, isn’t it?
The way she just bulldozes ahead with things like she’s the goddamn CEO of the family.
As though she knows what’s best for everyone.
But if that were true… He doesn’t let himself finish the thought.
He’s the one who got them where they are today.
He put in the work that bought their first house and paid the bills when the kids were little and Alice wasn’t working.
Day in and day out, slaving away as an English professor to privileged snots who cared more about social media and what parties they were going to get drunk at than real literature.
It was only fair that, as soon as Alice started making good money as a pharmaceutical rep, he got a turn to pursue his dream of becoming a writer.
A dream he’s had since before he and Alice even got together.
It was Alice’s dream to have kids, wasn’t it?
He made that happen and now it’s his turn, plain and simple.
She’d been all for it in the beginning. Super supportive and encouraging.
It was after the first novel, the one that his agent couldn’t sell, when she started to get critical.
He didn’t know that there was a time limit on the pursuit of your dream, that only one novel was allowed.
She came into his office, saw the new novel Post-it notes on the wall, and said, “You’re writing another one?
Does this mean you’re never going to go back to teaching?
” From that day on things shifted. She started to get her little digs in.
Started demanding more of him. “Could you at least get some laundry done during the day, do the grocery shopping once a week? It would be nice to come home to dinner made once in a while.” As though his days were empty and needed to be filled by her.