Had he forgotten to tell his parents he was coming home? Where was the marching band, his parents waving, his favorite foods prepared and ready on the table? Or, failing that, where was the spare key?
He checked under the welcome mat, above the door lintel, and then began picking up rocks and flowerpots. He finally found the key taped beneath a garden gnome and used it to open the door. The burglar alarm began beeping, and he confidently entered his birthday—082591 The panel continued to flash red.
WTF? His parents had changed the code? He grabbed his phone and punched the speed dial for his dad.
“My wayward son,” his father answered.
“What’s the alarm code?”
“Your sister’s birthday.”
“Gretchen’s? I thought it was mine!” He scrambled to remember her birthday and plugged the numbers in.
“The world does not revolve around you, Gavin,” his father said as the alarm panel shut down. “I assume you’re at the house.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m at the house. Where is everybody?”
“It’s the middle of the afternoon. Where do you think we are? I’m at work. Your mother is at her yoga group. And Viking is down the street at Mr. Goldsmith’s for a play date. You can pick him up.”
Viking was the Irish setter his mother had bought the summer before Gavin left for college. Gretchen—aka Wretched, when they were kids—had already moved in with a boyfriend in Madison and made it clear she was never coming back.
“Sure, Dad.”
“Give Mr. G a twenty, please. I’ll pay you back this evening.”
After he hung up, Gavin dug around in his pocket. A twenty? What did his father think he was made of?
He stopped short. Crap. When had he started channeling his father in his brain?
He found a folded twenty in the back of his phone case, his emergency stash. After leaving his bags in his room, he walked down the street to the Goldsmiths’. Mr. G had to be eighty, and instead of greeting people at a superstore for extra cash, he took in dogs whose owners worked all day.
When Gavin rang the bell, a cacophony of barking erupted inside the house. Jesus, how many dogs did the man have? Mr. G opened the door a crack, as if he were afraid Gavin was some kind of burglar. But immediately Gavin understood why; a very large cocoa-colored standard poodle tried to nose his way out.
“Ranger! Back!” Mr. G said. “Hello, Gavin. Come on in.”
He body-blocked the big poodle, and Gavin stepped into his foyer. Viking romped over to him and put his paws up on Gavin’s waist, trying to lick his face. Gavin laughed as a couple of Yorkies scrambled around underfoot.
He handed Mr. G the twenty and accepted Viking’s leash in return. He clipped it on, and Mr. G cracked the door open again for him. Viking took off down the street as if he were a greyhound chasing a rabbit, Gavin stumbling behind him.
“Viking! Heel!” he yelled.
Viking paid no attention to him. Gavin began to run, figuring he could outrace the dog, but all that happened was that Viking galloped on ahead, dragging Gavin behind. “Stop, you crazy dog!”
When they got back to the house Viking turned on him, jumping and licking. “I know. I missed you too.” Gavin leaned down and kissed the dog’s titian head.
Viking turned and ran into the house, returning a moment later with a red-and-white-striped rope in his mouth. Gavin sat on the marble floor of the foyer and played tug-a-rope with him until the front door opened and his mother walked in.
“Gavin. You’re home.”
Why did both his parents have such a talent for the obvious? “Yes, Mom.” He stood up and kissed her cheek. “You look good.”
Natalie Kaczmarek wore a scoop-neck pink T-shirt and white cargo shorts, and she carried a blue yoga mat. No makeup, no jewelry, and she was still one of the prettiest women he knew, even though she was close to fifty.
Though he’d just been back in Wisconsin for Independence Day, Gavin had gone directly to Starlit Lake, and he realized he hadn’t been back in this house for at least a year or more. As his mother went off to do something motherly, he looked around. There was a new painting in the living room—what looked like a street scene from the French Riviera. Both the sofas were covered with blankets, which he realized was so that Viking could choose whichever he wanted to rest on.
Otherwise, the house looked the same. He fooled around with Viking for a while; then his father came home, and the dog immediately abandoned Gavin.
The big joke about Viking was that his mother had bought him as her surrogate child, against his father’s objections, but quickly Viking had become his daddy’s dog. Gavin couldn’t help but be jealous, because he’d always been the family favorite before.
Gretchen was the first-born, and she’d been a colicky baby. His parents had almost decided not to have another child because she was such a handful, but then Gavin showed up. He was sweet-natured and adorable, and Gretchen hated him. Looking back, he couldn’t blame her. She was smart, way smarter than he was, but she was also pudgy and cranky. She’d bring home straight As, where Gavin scraped by with Bs and Cs, but it was clear that his parents liked him best.
It wasn’t until puberty, when Gretchen’s plumpness turned into curves and her braces came off, that their parents woke up and realized that they needed to pay attention. By then it was too late. Gretchen dated older boys with motorcycles and marijuana. She stayed out late and skipped family events.
She kept up her grades, though, and followed a boyfriend to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, their father’s alma mater. She graduated with a degree in computer science and moved to Seattle, where she worked for a startup company that did something so complicated Gavin had no idea how to describe it.
Gretchen was the dark-haired one in a family of blondes and the smart one in a family that valued looks and charm over intellect. No wonder she’d cut out as soon as she could. But then, Gavin had done the same, hadn’t he? He’d gone to college in Miami instead of Madison and come back only for holidays.
At the dinner table, his father wanted to talk about Miles. “You think this guy can help you make a record?” he asked.
“Nobody calls them records anymore, Dad,” Gavin said.
“You know what I mean.”
Gavin shrugged. “He likes that old-fashioned kind of music.”
“Choral singing is making a comeback,” his mother said unexpectedly. He thought she was probably the least musical person he knew. They’d never even had a stereo system when he was a kid. If he wanted to listen to music, he had to use an MP3 player.
“Really?” he asked.
She nodded. “Look at the a cappella group your cousin Archie sang with. Every college these days has at least a couple of those groups. And there was that TV program last Christmas—what was it called?” She looked to his father.
“
The Sing-Off
,” he said. “Some great performances.”
“You watched that?” Gavin asked.
“We’re not Philistines here in Wisconsin,” his father said. “We get not only broadcast TV, but cable and satellite. If the three of you could sing as well as one of those groups, you might have something.”
“I’ve been working with Miles for the last few weeks, and my singing has really improved. He gave me these vocal exercises to do, showed me how to read music and how to manage my breathing.”
“Can you sing for us?” his mother asked.
“I don’t know, Mom. Without the music and all…”
“Please, Gavin?”
He took a deep breath and tried to remember everything that Miles had taught him, then launched into “Apple Cider Time” a cappella.
Neither of his parents said anything while he sang. When he was finished, though, his father said, “That was even better than my mother. And that’s saying something. Remember, I grew up listening to that music.”
“I had no idea you could sing so well,” his mother said. “My goodness.”
Gavin didn’t think he was that great. He had begun to hear all the mistakes he made—the chord transpositions, the weak notes. He still had a lot of work to do.
“You guys,” he said. And then he found he couldn’t say anything more.
Baby Boy
The next morning at breakfast, his father announced, “I have a used Camry down at the lot I can lend you. You’re due to pick your grandmother up at ten.”
Gavin wasn’t quite awake yet. “For what?”
“To drive her to Starlit Lake,” his father said in his “my son is a small child” voice.
“Oh. You’re not driving us up?”
“Gavin, I have to work, and your mother has her…activities. We may come up one weekend to say hello.”
For some reason, Gavin had been expecting his entire family to cluster at Starlit Lake for the whole time. “Whatever.”
He rode to work with his father a little later.
“I expect you to look after your grandmother. She’s not as young as she used to be.”
Once again, the family talent for stating the obvious. “How old is she?” Gavin asked.
“Eighty-four. I want you to see she doesn’t work too hard. Don’t let her climb too many steps. If she gets tired, make sure you take her arm when she walks.” He looked at his son. “You’re twenty-two, Gavin. It’s time you woke up and started acting like an adult.”
His father had been saying something like that, with the age changing, ever since Gavin was about sixteen, he thought. When did you get too old to hear crap like that, he wondered as they drove into town. Did Grandma Frances still say to his dad,
Richard, you’re fifty-seven years old. It’s time you started acting like an adult.
Probably not. His dad had been an adult for most of his life as far as Gavin could tell. His baby pictures advertised Kaz Cars—the used-car lot Grandpa Al had started in Eau Claire in the 1950s. His dad had grown up around the lot, washing cars and sweeping up the showroom. He’d studied business in college, and when he returned to Eau Claire, he had convinced Grandpa Al to open the first Toyota dealership in town. He belonged to the Kiwanis, the Rotary Club, and the Chamber of Commerce. Toyota of Eau Claire sponsored a Little League team and a Pop Warner football team, and his father was often at the games cheering. He couldn’t walk a block in town without seeing someone he knew, and every family restaurant dinner was interrupted at least twice by people who wanted to shake his dad’s hand or thank him for a great deal.
As they pulled into the dealership parking lot, Gavin felt an unexpected pang of gratitude for everything his father had done for him. He was sure that his parents would have preferred kids who were happy to stay in Eau Claire, marry, and give them grandchildren, but they had never once complained when Gretchen ran off to the West Coast or when Gavin wanted to move to Miami.
He leaned over and kissed his dad’s smooth cheek, smelling his old-fashioned aftershave. “Thanks for the car, Dad. And for everything else.”
“You’re welcome,” his father said. Gavin grabbed his duffel bag, and his father led him over to the Camry—a bland beige with dealer plates. “I need to make a copy of your driver’s license. For the records.”
Gavin handed it to him, and then while his father was inside, he walked around the car, carefully evaluating it. If there was a single ding or dent, he was going to point it out to his father before he left the lot, maybe even photograph it with his cell phone.
He found a long scrape on the bottom edge of the front bumper, and when his father came out, Gavin showed him.
“Yes, I know about that. But I’m glad you noticed it too.” He handed Gavin back his license, along with a copy of the vehicle registration.
“There’s also a dent back here,” Gavin said, pointing at the left rear wheel well. It was almost imperceptible unless you looked for it.
His dad laughed. “I guess you did pay attention to a few things I showed you.” Like his father, Gavin had washed cars as a teenager, and his father had trained him to look for and document anything wrong with a car. His dad leaned down and looked at the wheel well. “Good eye, son. I hadn’t seen that before.”
“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t blame it on me,” Gavin said blandly.
“Drive carefully, son,” his father said, then walked off.
Gavin slid into the driver’s seat. He didn’t have a car in Florida and didn’t need to borrow one very often. He heard his father’s voice in his head, instructing him to become familiar with all the controls before starting the car, and he wanted to ignore it, but the habit had become too ingrained in him. He identified the headlight wand, the location of the gas tank, the radio controls.
Then he backed carefully out of the space; if he banged up the car before even leaving the lot, he’d never hear the end of it.
Grandma Frances had sold her big house a few years before and moved into a bungalow. Gavin had only been there a couple of times on visits from college, and he wasn’t even sure which one was hers until she came out onto her porch and waved as he cruised slowly down the street.
He pulled up by the curb and bounded up the lawn to hug her. “Hi, Grandma.”
“Oh, my,” she said as he hugged her. Then she stepped back. “You look just like your father at your age. Skinnier, of course. Richard was always very solid. But I can see him in your face.”
Gavin took that as a compliment. “You ready to sing?”
“I have been singing my entire life, baby boy. Nothing new to me.”
She had already packed her ancient suitcase and a square box she called her “train case,” which held her makeup and medication. She had also packed a big cooler with prepared foods and had several bags of groceries to go as well. He made sure to help her down the two steps from the front porch, though she seemed pretty spry.
“When was the last time you all performed on stage?” he asked as they left the city limits of Eau Claire behind for the country roads that would take them up to Starlit Lake.
“I’ve been trying to remember,” she said. “It wasn’t exactly a stage, but Myrtle and Ida and I sang for the grand opening of the dealership. That was what, thirty years ago?”
“Never since?”
She shook her head. “Not the three of us. Myrtle, now, she kept on singing for a while after we broke up, as a solo act, and then she kept popping up like a bad penny all over the place.”