Chapter 10
SOME DREAMS MATTER, ILLUMINATE A CRUCIAL CHOICE, OR reveal some intuition that’s trying to push its way to the surface. Others, though, are detritus, the residue of the day reassembling itself in some disjointed and chaotic way, and those were the sorts of dreams I had the night before I drove back to see Oliver Parrott—dreams of chasing after Max, whose laughter I kept hearing in the trees, floating over water; dreams of running across the depot land, trying to climb out over the fences, which kept growing higher. Yoshi was in the dreams, too, trying to help, unable to find me. Frantic dreams, they left me tired, and I woke grouchy to another rainy day, the sky so densely gray and the rain so thick that I couldn’t see the opposite shore.
I pulled on the only pair of jeans I’d brought, my last clean T-shirt, and the same dark blue Night Riders sweatshirt. In the gray light, the color made me look bleached-out and tired. I brushed my hair and teeth, collected a basket of dirty laundry, and made my way downstairs.
Though it was Saturday and she had the day off, my mother was already up and dressed, her short hair moussed into spikes. She was sitting on the floor of the living room, near the door to the sleeping porch, a cup of coffee steaming by her side and several big boxes lined up at the edge of the rug.
“I’m taking it on,” she said. “I don’t have to work today, and so I thought I’d start digging into this mess. Want to help?”
“Oh, not really. It’s such a funky, rainy day. It’s put me in a bad mood.”
“Well, have a quick look anyway. Blake’s coming by in a few minutes to take a few things.”
I got a cup of coffee and sat down beside her on the floor, pulling open the flaps of the box closest to me. It was full of books, children’s books. I pulled out
The Little Engine that Could, The Very Hungry Caterpillar,
and
The Cat in the Hat
. They were worn from many readings, the cardboard corners dented in places, the pages soft.
“Oh, that’s a good one,” my mother said, reaching for
Goodnight Moon
. “I loved this one. So did you. I must have read it out loud three hundred zillion times. Anyway, I promised Blake this box of books, now that he’ll have a use for them. I’m glad you told me, Lucy, even though it was awkward at first. I mean, yes, Blake was a little upset, but I think he really wanted to talk about it, too, and when he realized I was happy about the whole thing, he relaxed. Really, I can’t wait,” she went on. “People always say how thrilling it is to know you’re going to be a grandparent, but I didn’t imagine it really would be. I’ve set another box aside for them already, filled up with old toys.”
“What about me?” I meant to say it in a kidding way, but even to my own ears I sounded a little shrill. Seeing my mother so excited made Blake and Avery’s baby seem very real, and although it was ridiculous, I felt left out, or left behind, the sweep of life moving on while I kept doing the same things over again in different places. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m in a lousy mood—I didn’t sleep well. I guess I just mean that if I ever have a baby, everything will be long gone.”
“Trust me—people will pass things on.” She looked at me then, and added softly, “But if there’s anything special you want to hold aside—you know, for some day—go ahead. Blake and Avery won’t even notice.”
“It’s okay. Maybe that mobile Dad made when I was born. I’d like to keep that.”
My mother nodded. “It’s already in a box in your closet. I put it away—oh, a couple of years ago. And the trains he made for Blake. I put those away, too.”
She reached into the box in front of her, pulling out a handful of folders.
“So—you and Yoshi have any plans?” she asked, trying to sound offhand and failing so miserably that I laughed.
“New plans every day, it seems. But no. If you’re talking about settling down and having children, no.”
She nodded and rested her hand briefly on my arm, which irritated me because I was afraid she felt sorry for me. “Just curious,” she said, pulling away.
“Need help with any of that?” I asked, glad to change the subject, as she caught a slipping folder. “How’s your arm feeling, by the way?”
“I’m fine. I saw the doctor yesterday. I’m healing nicely, he says. If all goes well, I can get rid of this Aircast next Wednesday, hooray. Oh, look at this, Lucy.”
She handed me a poem written carefully on wide blue-lined paper, back when kids still practiced cursive writing. I’d decorated the edges with dolphins and fish, waves and seashells, even though I’d never been to the ocean.
“Guess my inclinations were clear even then.”
“Guess so.” She glanced at several files full of business papers left from my father’s time at Dream Master and chucked them into the recycle bin.
“Ah, report cards.” I gave her a stack of Blake’s, and pulled one of mine out, from fourth grade. “ ‘Has strong writing skills and loves science
.
Needs to work on sitting still.’ That was Mrs. Blankenthorpe,” I said. “I remember her. We used to call her Mrs. Battleship.”
“That’s terrible,” my mother said, though we were both laughing.
We kept going, refilling our coffee cups one time, then again. The porch roof was leaking, and every now and then my mother went to check the bucket she’d put out to catch the drips. I suggested that she could install rain barrels, and she sighed.
“It must be hard to keep up with this place,” I said when she came back from having dumped the half-full bucket onto the lawn.
“It is.” She sat down again. “But I truly haven’t decided what to do, Lucy. Art has his ideas, but they aren’t necessarily my ideas.”
I didn’t answer; I didn’t want to argue again. Despite what she said, it felt like an understanding had already been reached, even if my mother hadn’t quite come to terms with it yet.
By the time Blake stopped by the rain had eased, but he was soaked from doing some caulking on the boat. We took a break and ate some scrambled eggs along with more leftovers from the party: tabbouleh and French bread, now a little stale, spinach hummus on crackers. Then we went back to sorting out the boxes. The phone rang; my mother reached into her pocket and smiled when she saw the caller ID.
“Back in just a second,” she said, then went into her room and closed the door.
Blake and I didn’t speak for a while, listening to our mother’s murmuring voice. Tension, either from the party or from my mistake in telling the news about the baby, was in the room, invisible but real, limning everything.
Finally, Blake asked what I was doing with my day. I told him I was going to visit Oliver Parrott and invited him to come.
“Today?” He waved his hand, dismissive. “This may surprise you, Sis, but some of us actually have to work.”
I decided to let it pass, not to mention the work he seemed to be doing with Art and the developers. Because Blake was doing his best, probably, doing what he thought would make a good life for himself and for Avery and the baby in the midst of a rotten economy.
“Well, sometime, then—you should go see this place. Take Avery; it would be a nice drive. The stained glass is really striking, even if there turns out to be no connection to Rose. And I’m totally curious to know what Oliver Parrott thinks he’s discovered.”
“He seems a little off to me, this guy—dedicating his whole life to the study of another person, some dead ancestor.”
“Well—it’s not the person he’s dedicated to. It’s his legacy.”
“Same thing. It’s weird.”
“Well, it’s really no different than you and Art, is it?” I asked, keeping my voice pleasant even as I lashed back. “Doing everything you can to keep Dream Master alive.”
Blake didn’t answer. His jaw was set and he was staring out the window at the lake. It took a few minutes for him to speak.
“I’m just trying to make my way, Lucy—got a problem with that?”
I let the silence gather, too, trying to figure out why Blake was so upset, and why Oliver’s choices were explicable to me while Blake’s were not.
“No,” I said, finally. “I don’t have a problem with that. But it was strange—really disconcerting—to find out what kinds of deals were being cooked up with this house and all the land, all these plans you and Art and Joey are making, all those conversations happening, and I had no idea. Not that it’s any of my business.”
He gave a short, angry laugh. “It’s not. That’s the thing, Lucy, it’s not your business, at all. You seem to think we’re trying to pull a fast one, but we’re not. The deal would be good for Mom, if she decides to take it. You haven’t exactly been around to help, you know, these last years when she’s been rattling around in this old house, trying to hold it together.”
“True.” I bit my tongue then. I didn’t say what I so deeply wanted to say:
I haven’t been going around in circles, either, tethered to the past.
But then Blake, encouraged perhaps by my agreement, stepped things up.
“You know, Lucy, you’d do yourself a real favor if you were more willing to embrace change, not resist it.”
“Are you talking to
me
about change?” I asked. I put down the papers I was holding and stood up, barely able to contain myself. “Do you have any idea how many places I’ve lived in these past years, Blake? Two states, four countries, seven different jobs. New cultures, new communities, new people, every time. You think
I
can’t handle change?”
“Oh, I know all that. But this is different. This is a different kind of change. A letting-go kind of change. Not a running-around kind of change.”
Was it? Yes and no. I loved my life, but I also thought about how I’d felt earlier, talking to my mother about our old books and toys.
I was still standing face-to-face with Blake, so angry I couldn’t speak immediately; I imagined taking the old swim trophy from the table and hurling it across the room to smash against the wall, I was that furious.
“That’s enough.”
We both turned, startled. My mother was standing in the doorway, her cast held close to her chest, the phone in her good hand.
“I’m just expressing some concerns,” I said.
“Right. So altruistic. Like I’m not,” Blake countered.
“Stop it! You seem to forget, the two of you, that you’re fighting over something you don’t control. I’m not an imbecile, and I’m not behaving like a teenager, either, unlike the two of you. I’ll keep my own counsel, thank you. And I will not listen to this senseless bickering in my house.
My
house, you understand?”
She stepped out of the doorway, strode across the room, and sat down in the overstuffed chair where she used to read to us as children.
“Now,” she said. “I’m going to continue sorting these things. Blake, I’m sure Lucy would help you carry those boxes out.”
Blake refused my help, but I walked out with him anyway. I stood there in the mist, hands in the pockets of my jeans, as he put the boxes of toys and books in the passenger side of his truck and slammed the door. Blake didn’t get angry easily, but when he did, it was hard for him to let it go. Maybe he would have said the same about me. The times we’d seen each other over these years, either here or meeting up in exotic places, we’d been on our best behavior, not admitting any tension. Now we were being our teenage selves.
“I don’t want to fight,” I said.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned the baby to Mom. I asked you not to do that. Avery answered the phone and you can imagine how she felt.”
“I’m sorry. It was after the solstice party and I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, and it just slipped out.” All this was true, but it was also true that I’d been angry in that moment, as I was in this one, about Blake’s collusion with Art about the land.
“Okay, then,” he said, finally. “All right. Truce, okay? That stuff I said about change? I didn’t mean it.”
“I figured,” I said, stepping back to let him climb into the cab.
“We’re good, then?”
“We’re okay.”
“Okay. Good.”
He waved as he backed out, and I waved back, watching him drive away, his red truck disappearing into the mist.
When I went back inside my mother stood up from where she was sitting on the floor amid piles of paper. She stretched and said she was tired of the dusty past. When I told her what I was doing and asked if she’d like to come along, she surprised me by agreeing. I went upstairs for my purse and my papers, and by the time I came back down she had changed into dark jeans and a crisp white blouse, the rhubarb scarf flowing around her neck, silver earrings dangling. We popped open our umbrellas and ran to the barn for the car. The rain made the Impala feel cozy, heat pouring out of its vents.
“Did you and Blake patch things up?” she asked in the middle of our conversation, halfway to Rochester.
“More or less. I still think it’s a mistake, the way he’s attaching himself to Art, to Dream Master. It didn’t end well the first time, and Blake can’t fix it now. Plus, I don’t care what Art says, I can’t imagine that he’d share things he could give to his children equally with anyone else.”
My mother sighed, looking out the window at the rainy landscape. “I don’t know. There are forks in the road that I’ve second-guessed for years. But I can’t do any of it over. We made the best decision we could at the time. And even if you’re right, Lucy, even if Blake is making a mistake, it’s his mistake to make. I have to stay out of it. And honey, so do you.”
I didn’t answer, and we drove the rest of the way in silence. It was still raining when we arrived at the Westrum House. We huddled beneath our umbrellas under the dripping portico as the bell sounded deep in the empty rooms. It was several minutes before we heard footsteps; then Oliver fumbled with the keys for a little while longer before the door finally swung open. If he was surprised to find I wasn’t alone, he didn’t show it, but graciously shook hands with us both. He stepped back, pulling the door wide open, and ushered us inside.
The house was utterly still, even more silent than it had been on my last visit, and our quiet footsteps—my mother’s flats, my sandals—echoed. Stuart gave us a brief tour of the main rooms and served us tea. Then we climbed the open stairs with Oliver, lingering on the landing to take in the window of the woman with her arms full of flowers.