The Children (20 page)

“I don't have that,” I said. “Did Spin say I did?”

Now Laurel looked like she was going to die of embarrassment. She covered her face with her hands and said, “Shit, I did it again.”

“Why the hell did he say that? My sister doesn't have anything like that,” Sally said.

“Guys,” Laurel said. Her voice was trembling. “I'm really sorry. I think I keep coming across as rude.…”

Now she was crying, her face still in her hands.

“Wait, no, Laurel, don't cry,” Sally said. She gave me a look; I could tell that she felt as bad as I did. Spin did once send me a link to an article about agoraphobia. He was concerned that I might end up like that, I guess. He probably told Laurel that he was concerned. She was going to be his wife; of course they told each other everything.

“Laurel,” I said, “it's fine. I am a homebody. Spin probably thinks it's something more than that.”

“I keep trying to fit in and everybody thinks I'm horrible.”

“
No,
” I said. “Nobody thinks that. Laurel? I have had anxiety about leaving the property recently. But something you said yesterday really helped me.”

“Really?” She sniffed.

“Yeah, the thing you said about feelings being like ghosts.”

Sally had moved away from Laurel when she first sat down, but now she moved in closer.

“Come on, stop crying,” Sally said. “What's all this about ghosts?”

“And I … just being with you two…” She was sobbing now.

“Oh, Laurel,” I said, putting my arms around her.

Sally pushed in closer and said, “Sister sandwich.” And Laurel giggled through her tears as we hugged her.

*   *   *

We all spent the next few days absorbed with our various projects.

Laurel liked to write on the porch. She had found a little folding TV table in one of the closets and set it up facing the lake. She worked there during the mornings. I worked, as usual, up in the attic, though I had to move downstairs after lunch because it gets so hot up there.

I had run into a little bit of a dilemma on the blog. LoneStarLiza, a longtime follower, wanted to raise money for Wyatt's upcoming spinal surgery. She wanted to set up an online auction of sorts, and a bunch of my readers got all excited and started making plans about how to set the thing up. These conversations were taking place in the comments section of my posts. They kind of took over the blog. I would write a funny post about a hyperactive tiger mom at the playground, and instead of commenting about that, they'd all carry on with their ideas about how people could donate items to the auction, how people would be able to pay for the items. It was getting out of hand.

I couldn't let them have the auction, of course. What I was doing with my blog was entertainment. I was providing entertaining content for bored moms; it was almost like a TV show—a show about a quirky family that everybody could relate to. And, like a TV show, I was getting paid by sponsors. I wasn't breaking any laws, as far as I knew. But accepting donations for a sick child? A child who's not real? That would be fraud. I never took any law classes at Columbia, but I was pretty sure that would have been illegal. And it was wrong. A lot of my followers have families with struggles of their own. I couldn't let them continue trying to figure out ways to help my family.

At first, I thanked them all for caring, and explained that we didn't need help with medical costs. Our insurance was paying for everything.

But my kind readers persisted. There must be other expenses, they said. What about all the therapies?

I replied that, amazingly, our insurance covered most of that. Then I wrote an entry explaining that their loyalty to the blog was helping out more than anything else they could do. The blog's popularity had been what attracted the sponsors, and the income from that helped with our living expenses. Truthfully, I had a six-figure contract with the diaper company. I didn't reveal that the blog earned that much, of course. I made it sound like it was just a little extra income to defray some of our living expenses.

*   *   *

Sally spent many hours a day in the music room, working on the film score. One afternoon, when I ran into Laurel in the kitchen, she commented on Sally's music.

“She's really persistent,” Laurel said. “She keeps playing the same thing over and over.”

“Oh?” I said. “I'm so used to hearing music. Whit and Sally always played instruments in the house. Spin, too, when he was here. You'll get used to it. I don't even hear her, to tell you the truth. Is it disturbing your writing?”

“No, not really,” Laurel said.

“It'll be much quieter at Perry and Catherine's,” I said. Laurel and Spin had one more week with us, then they would be joining Perry's family in the Hamptons. The following weekend was the engagement party.

Now that Joan had committed to having the wedding here, she had lost her enthusiasm for the party.

“It's too much,” she said one afternoon when Laurel and Spin had gone sailing. We had convinced her to let Ramón and his crew help spruce up the grounds, and Joan had been harassing them all week. They were overpruning the hedges. They were trampling her fresh mint.

“I think they just want to move some of the mint away from the footpaths. It's gotten a little out of the gardens,” I said. We had mint everywhere.

“Everybody'll be sorry when there's no fresh mint for the iced tea,” Joan said. We were sitting on the porch, drinking iced tea at the time.

“There's still plenty,” I assured her.

“I wish I hadn't let them railroad me into having the wedding here,” she griped. “Why wouldn't they have it at Holden? The chapel is so beautiful.”

Joan had a point. A lot of people have weddings there. “I think that if you're a member of the faculty, you can have the reception right there on the green,” I said. “They can put up a tent there.”

“Oh, look, they almost went over.”

We could see the sailboat out in the middle of the lake. A gust seemed to have caught them off guard when Spin pulled in the mainsail, and now we could hear their laughter as they scrambled from one side of the boat to the other.

“I guess Laurel wouldn't have sailed, growing up in Idaho.”

“No, I guess not,” I said.

“I can't imagine what these guys charge,” Joan whispered a moment later when one of the men pushed a wheelbarrow past the porch.

“Who cares? You're not paying for it, right?” I said, opening the door just a little. “The trust is paying for it.”

“That's not the point,” Joan said. “The point is that it's wasteful and Whit wouldn't have liked it. We could do just as good a job.”

“No, we couldn't,” I said.

“You know, my family once had almost as much wealth as the Whitman family, and it was all frittered away by my great-grandparents, who were very extravagant with just this kind of thing.”

“But it wasn't their extravagances that wiped them out,” I said. “It was the stock market crash and the Depression, right?”

“Other families survived. The Whitmans thrived.”

“But what good is having so much money if you never spend it?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

“Dear, the money in the trust was earned by Whit's great-grandfather, who was an incredibly brave and enterprising man. He made all the money. Whit didn't earn the money, so he didn't feel he had the right to spend it. He lived off his earnings from the banjos and some of the interest from the trusts, of course. But he wanted the interest to keep growing, as it had always grown. And, of course, he would never, ever”—here I said the words with her—“
dream of touching the principal
.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” Joan said. “I'm just looking out for Perry's and Spin's children and grandchildren, as Whit would want me to do.”

“I don't know what the trusts amount to,” I said, though I had an idea, just from Internet research I'd done over the years. “But I think there's plenty available to do some improvements here without touching the principal. Besides, this estate is part of the trust and they might want to sell it someday.”

“Perry might, but Spin would never,” Joan said.

“Anyway, they have to keep it maintained, or its value will depreciate.”

“Well, I have to pay for the engagement party from my allowance, since I'm throwing it.”

“So, how much could it cost?” I asked. “I'll help. I've got plenty saved, I've been selling lots of articles.”

“No, no, I don't need your money,” said Joan, as she always did.

“It's just a barbecue, right?” I said. “Like we used to have when Whit was here. It can't be much.”

“You know, I just got my bill from Anson's gas station. Spin never paid me back for the charge that Laurel put on there.”

“Joan, seriously? What was it—thirty-five dollars?”

“It was thirty-eight dollars and forty-seven cents,” Joan said sadly.

This was too much; I couldn't wait to tell Sally. Now that Whit was gone, Joan was the cheapest person on earth. It was confirmed.

 

SIXTEEN

Spin and Laurel were planning to go to the Hamptons on the fifth of July, to spend a few days with Perry's family. Spin had a lot of things that he had committed to during those two weeks before they left, so we had Laurel to ourselves much of the time. One morning, a few days before the party, Laurel admitted that she was a little surprised by how much he had to do.

“I thought that once school let out for the summer, he'd be on vacation. But he's still spending so much time at the school. And then all this work for the lake and the town.”

“They don't really finish all their school stuff till July,” I said. “I think there's a June session or something, right? Like a summer school? Spin usually teaches some of the courses for that.”

“Well, at least he gets paid for that. I just found out that he doesn't get paid for any of the work he does for the town.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Spin doesn't work for the town—why would he get paid?”

“I mean the wetlands inspections, for one. Every time somebody wants to put up a shed or put in a driveway, he has to go inspect the site. Why isn't he getting paid for that?”

“No, he doesn't have to inspect every site,” Sally explained. She had been sort of zoned out, as she so often is when she's writing music, but now she tuned in to what Laurel was saying. “He's on the board, that's all. It's the wetlands commission. There's a group of them. It's just a two-year term. It's just, you know, community service stuff. He's a volunteer. Whit was always involved with this stuff. Joan, too. She's on Planning and Zoning.”

“No, I think she's not on the Planning and Zoning Commission right now, Sal,” I said. “She's too involved with the soup kitchen and the senior center.”

“Whatever, anyway, he enjoys it,” said Sally. “I think he just had to wrap up a lot of stuff before you guys go to Scary's.”

“Sally,” I said.

Laurel laughed and said, “Scary's?”

“I meant Perry's. Did I say Scary? I meant Perry.”

Sally and I were both trying to keep straight faces, but Laurel noticed and said, “I get the sense that you guys don't get along so well with Perry.”

“I wouldn't say that. We just don't see him and Catherine much anymore,” I said.

“Don't lie,” said Sally. “We don't really get along with him. We never have. He's always had a big fucking chip on his shoulder. He's always hated us.”

“He doesn't hate us, Sally,” I said.

“We haven't seen them much this year, which has been nice,” said Sally.

“After Whit died,” I explained to Laurel, “things got a little bit tense between Perry and Joan. He wanted to have people come in and replace the roof, fix things up. Since the house would someday be his and Spin's, he wanted to make sure it didn't depreciate in value. Sally, that's all it was, and you have always been after Joan to do more maintenance here, so it wasn't just him.”

“Why didn't your mom want to do the improvements? Was it the cost?”

“Partially that,” I said. “It's just that she's used to things the way they are. She gets anxious when people start moving her stuff around. Plus, Perry and Catherine like the Hamptons—they almost never come here. Joan felt like every time he came here, he was doing an appraisal, trying to figure out how much he'd make the minute she died. Anyway, I think Perry got the hint. He stopped pestering her. That day he was here with Catherine was the first time we've seen him in almost a year.”

“Oh, I guess that was when Spin bought him out,” said Laurel. “He did say it was last year sometime.”

“What?” Sally said. “What do you mean?”

“You know, when Spin paid Perry for his share of the house.”

“What house?” I asked.

“Spin bought Perry's share of this house?” Sally said. “When?”

“Oh no, I … I thought you all knew. Spin's going to kill me. Please don't tell him I said anything.”

“But I want to find out if it's true or not,” Sally said.

“Please,” Laurel said, “I'm sure I'm wrong, I shouldn't have said anything. Just pretend we never had this conversation. I'm probably mistaken.”

“It's fine, don't worry,” I said. “We won't say anything to Spin.”

*   *   *

We were dying to get Joan alone, but when she came home that afternoon, she and Laurel were suddenly inseparable. They raked the weeds and stones from the beach for the barbecue. They hung up strings of paper lanterns that Laurel and Spin had bought. Because Sally and I were following them around, trying to get Joan's attention, we kept getting shanghaied into helping. We had to bring up the folding chairs and tables from the boathouse and hose off all the cobwebs.