My Life in Dioramas (15 page)

That afternoon, I decided
to take Angus for a walk, which I never did, since mostly we let him out to go down to the woods to do his business, but I had to set my plan in motion. I heard music and it was, in fact, coming from the direction of Troy's house. How did his parents stand it?

How did
we
?

I walked up their long, steep driveway.

“Hey,” I said, finding Troy by his car with the radio cranked. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, neighbor girl who hasn't spoken to me in five years. Anything you like!”

“Forget it. I was just going to ask you to wash your car tomorrow. Between noon and two. With really loud music playing.”

He looked at Angus and came forward to pet him, then looked back at me. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing.” I turned to go. “Forget I asked.”

“It just so happens I was planning on washing my car tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Cool.”

Maybe this was going to come together after all.

If I had Troy out blasting music and configured some kind of annoying beep in the house, all I needed was a barking dog and I'd be in pretty good shape—even without Naveen and his leaf blower.

I downloaded the free barking dog app but it wasn't clear if it would time out and just go to sleep. Also, my phone wasn't loud enough to be heard from the house if it was outside. But the old speakers my dad had for his computer upstairs might be. I was pretty sure they were in a desk drawer in the loft. If I plugged them into my phone and set my ring tone to a dog barking, I could just call periodically and voilà, barking dog. I could hide the stuff down by the rocks near the woods easily enough.

Then, when I realized I couldn't exactly call my phone
if I didn't have my phone
, I texted Naveen and asked him to call me every ten minutes between noon and two tomorrow, if he could.

He wrote back
No problem
and also said,
I'm charging the leaf blower. Which is battery-powered. I can take a stroll behind the barn for as long as it lasts.

I wrote back,
<3.

19.

The ride to my grandparents'
house was down a long and boring highway, so luckily I'd only needed one iPad for my noise project. I'd set everything up while my parents showered and put music on in the living room until the second we left to hide the annoying beep I had going every two minutes.

In the car, I asked my parents if I could watch a movie and they agreed, but I had to use headphones so they could talk.

Fine by me.

I watched
Xanadu
and pictured my phone, hidden in the woods just beyond the stream. I hoped it'd be loud enough. I imagined possible buyers standing on the back porch, trying to figure out which neighbor had the barking dog.

I pictured Bernie hearing a beeping sound, every few minutes, thinking it seemed to be coming from underneath the stairs
near the napping room, where they'd surely never find the other iPad, which I'd hidden with our Christmas ornaments.

Angus was with us today so I reached over and scratched his head. His breathing seemed shallow, like it did on hot days, and his stomach pulsed with each breath.

I loved my grandparents, I really did. But it was just sort of boring to be around them. They had a lot of stories that they told over and ever. Even when I said things like, “Yes, you've told me about that,” they told the story anyway. Maybe that was all you had after a while, after you got old enough that you were retired and then sort of retired, even from being retired. All they really did now was read and play cards with friends and once a year, fly down to Florida to spend a month driving golf carts around some senior community.

The good news was that my grandmother was an awesome cook. And it turned out she made my favorite big Sunday meal, roasted pork. With the best gravy ever.

“So!” she said to me when I was helping her in the kitchen. “How's school?”

“Good,” I said. “Fine.”

“And you're still dancing?”

“Yup,” I said. I wanted to tell her about Dance Nation, but my parents still didn't know I'd signed up.

“It's good to have hobbies,” she said.

“I wouldn't exactly call it a hobby. Knitting is a hobby. Fly fishing.”

“I just mean it's not like you're going to be a professional dancer when you grow up.” She was moving pots and pans around, stirring things. “Teaching is a good job, especially if you want to have a family. Also, engineering. They need women.”

“Okay, Grandma. I'll put those on the list.”

“It's tough to make a living as an artist these days is all I'm saying. Actually, I guess it always has been. But you probably already know that.”

“Yes,
Mom
,” my mother said as she wandered into the kitchen. “She's learned that from her dear old mom and dad.”

“That's not what I meant,” Grandma said. “I just mean that there are choices we make and things we can choose to apply ourselves to, even if we feel like they go against our natural instincts.”

“Oh, that's all you meant?”

“Forget I said anything.” Grandma was really stirring that gravy now. “Follow your bliss, Kate!”

My mother wandered back out of the kitchen.

Grandma took her apron off and hung it on the hook of a cabinet. “Keep an eye on things in here, okay? Oh, and will you make up a batch of your super-duper salad dressing?”

“Sure.”

She left the room and I started getting out ingredients.

The dressing I always made at Grandma's wasn't the healthiest thing in the world, as my mother was always
pointing out, but it was definitely yummy. It was basically Russian dressing but made from “scratch” if a bunch of condiments counted as “scratch” and I was pretty sure they didn't. Mayonnaise, ketchup, relish, all mixed up together just right with a dab of Worcester sauce and a dash of hot sauce.

I was just about done when my grandmother came back into the room. She looked like she'd been crying.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yes, I'm fine. You know how it is.” She elbowed me. “Mothers. Daughters.”

After our early supper, during which Grandpa told some dopey jokes I'd heard before, like about how Ireland will always be a wealthy country because its capital is always Dublin (ha ha) and how it'll never sink because one of its biggest cities is Cork (groan), I excused myself to go to the bathroom and went upstairs, even though there was a bathroom downstairs. Then I went into the spare bedroom. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes and tried to imagine us all living here. I just couldn't see it working. For starters, there was only one spare bedroom. They had another room that Grandpa used as a study where I guessed you could throw a sleeping bag on the floor, and I figured that was probably where they'd stick me.

It was a nice enough house. It was just sort of . . . soulless?

I opened my eyes and looked around the room. There were framed photos of my grandparents from trips they'd taken. They looked happy. They still seemed happy. But I wondered if they ever got sad about being old. They were both pretty healthy but there were pill bottles in the bathroom cabinet for sure. Heart pills. Something my grandfather called his memory pill. Once I heard my mom talking to my dad on a drive home from my grandparents' to our house, saying that she'd love for her parents to someday move into the guesthouse so they'd be closer, so she could help take care of them. My dad had joked that my mom was delusional, thinking she'd
actually
want that. Now it was going to happen either way.

Only when I was leaving the room did I see that my mother had put her purse and another bag there. I unzipped it and saw a hairbrush, a few changes of clothes, a book. Her phone was there so I used to it call my phone and imagined it barking in the yard with no one left to hear. I wished I had a way of knowing how it had all gone.

But wait . . .

Why had she brought so much stuff for a day?

Was my mom leaving Dad?

Leaving
us
?

Downstairs, the topic was dessert and everyone being too full to eat it.

“Kate?” my grandmother asked. “How about you? I have cookies.”

“Nah.” I studied my mother for signs that she was no longer in love with my dad. “I'm good.”

“Who's up for a game of cards?” Grandma said. “Maybe gin rummy?”

“It's getting sort of late.” My mom looked pointedly at my dad. “Kate has school tomorrow.”

Mom went into the downstairs bathroom and Dad and I said our good-byes. Then he said, “Come on, Kate. We'll get the car started.”

“Come on, Angus,” I said, and he followed me.

I opened the back door for Angus and helped him climb in with a boost. I'd never had to do that before.

In the driver's seat, my dad turned the key and just sat there for a minute, not moving. Just looking at the front door of the house.

“Mom's not coming home with us, is she?” I was watching the door, too. Because maybe now that it was happening, she'd change her mind.

He put the car into gear and started to back out of the driveway, one arm outstretched toward my mother's empty passenger seat.

“No,” he said. “She's not. But it's only for a few days. A week, tops.”

He stopped at the bottom of the driveway and said, “Want to ride shotgun?”

“I don't have the heart to make Angus move.” His head
was on my left thigh.

My father nodded and drove.

“She could have told me,” I said. I hated that they had secrets from me.

“She didn't want a scene. She just wants some . . . space.”

I stared out the window at the sky, a blue so pale it was almost white as the evening dug in. “Are you getting a divorce?”

“It's nothing like that. Really.”

“Then what is it?”

He breathed hard. “Selling the house. It's bringing up a lot of stuff for your mother. For me, too, but more for her. She just needs some time to think about her next steps in life, that sort of thing.”

“Is she depressed?”

“We're trying to figure that out. We're trying to figure out if it's just a tough time for us or if it's something deeper. But we're on it, okay? So you don't need to worry. And this, it's just a few nights. I'll probably run up and get her while you're at school one day.” He caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “And in the meantime, we get to par-tay.”

“Right,” I said. “Pizza every night. A total rager.”

I put my head back and closed my eyes and was asleep by the time we hit the highway.

20.

“Kate,” my dad said,
“Kate, we're home.”

I climbed out of the car, feeling like I was asleep on my feet, until we got to the front door. My dad had been holding my hand but now dropped it. Angus sat by the door and yawned.

My phone and the speakers were sitting there on the welcome mat, alongside some Ziplocs full of rotting food with a note from Bernie, which my dad read aloud, “We need to talk. Call me ASAP. (Call Kate's phone first, though.)”

He turned to me. “What the heck?”

He probably expected to see confusion but my guess is what he saw was fear. Or shame. Or both. He took his phone out and pulled up my number and called it.

My phone started barking.

And for a second he looked at me like he didn't know me and didn't want to.

“Go to bed, Kate,” he said.

I was too sleepy to worry about what would even happen. Maybe I was even relieved I'd gotten caught. And that it was by the realtor and my dad, and that my mom didn't know.

I heard my dad on the phone as I was brushing my teeth and putting pajamas on. It was obviously my mom on the other end. “She slept the whole way. Yeah, we'll be fine. Okay. You, too,” he said.

I felt dumb about it all as I drifted off to sleep.

Seriously.

What had I been thinking?

I dreamed that stinkbugs started to crawl out of my closets and drawers and pillows and eyes.

I woke up sweating and thirsty at 1 a.m. and got up to get some water. There was a light on in my parents' room, and I peeked in but my dad wasn't there. So I tiptoed down the stairs, just far enough that I could see him asleep on the couch.

Back upstairs I climbed into their bed, on my mom's side, where it smelled like vanilla, and slept there until morning.