“He did. Your father did love that place, I know, Lucy.” He drummed his fingers a little harder, and then slapped his hand flat on the counter. “We used to go there when we were boys. It was our go-to place, I guess you could say, whenever we needed to think something through, or just to get away. Fishing wasn’t bad, either,” he said, lost in thought for a moment before he shook his head and rejoined the conversation. “Now, Blake,” he went on, changing the subject. “I’ll see you later today, right?”
“Not today. I can come tomorrow.”
“Be early, then. There’s plenty of work.” Art turned to my mother. “Evie, I fixed the window sash in the bathroom, too. I’ll stop back next week to put on a coat of paint. But it should be okay in the meantime. Come and take a look.”
“I appreciate it, Art,” my mother said, following him into the other room.
“What was that about?” I asked Blake once they’d gone. “Are you working at Dream Master now?”
Dream Master Hardware and Locks was the business our great-grandfather had founded in 1919, turning his intuitions about the internal mechanics of locks into a thriving enterprise. In its heyday the Dream Master factory shipped locks all across the country. Like most of the other industries in the area, it was gone now, but the hardware store remained, and Art owned it. My father had once owned it, too, but in 1986, the year the comet came, when I was almost ten, he had come home one morning with a box full of things from his office, and he’d never gone back, or said a word to me about why he left.
Blake ran one hand through his wild curls and glanced after Art. “Walk me outside,” he said.
We went through the porch and down the steps, and then Blake kept right on going across the lawn to the shore. The day was clear but windy, the water punctuated with whitecaps like commas, the buoys singing their hollow metal songs. I caught up with him at the end of the dock.
“What’s going on? Did you quit your job on the boat?” I asked.
Blake kept his gaze on the water, watching the rippling patterns change, a distant flock of ducks floating light on the surface.
“Not yet. I’ve agreed to pilot through the summer, but just the evening cruise. I might quit after that, though. I’m thinking about it. Art offered me a job. A good job. He stopped in a couple of weeks ago to ask me in person. Took me by surprise, I can tell you.”
I didn’t say anything, trying to sort out why this news felt so upsetting.
“Art’s helped Mom out a lot,” Blake went on quietly. “I know they always argued, he and Dad, and we were never close to Art growing up. But lately I’ve been thinking I haven’t been quite fair to him. Maybe none of us have.”
“Well, so what? When did anything between Dad and Art ever end up fair?”
Blake shrugged. “We were kids, Lucy. We don’t really know. Art probably feels bad about the way things turned out. It’s got to haunt him, being on such uneasy terms with Dad before he died. Suppose he’s just trying to make things right?”
I felt it then, the pull of the family history, an invisible gravity, almost irresistible.
“But what about sailing, Blake? You love to travel. What about winters on St. Croix? You’re just giving all that up?”
“Like I said, things change.” Blake glanced at me, embarrassed, assessing. “Long story short, Avery is pregnant. The baby’s due in October. So, I have to think differently now.”
I was too surprised to say anything at all.
“That’s right,” Blake said. “We’re having a baby. Good wishes appreciated.”
“Sorry. I’m sorry, Blake. Of course I’m happy for you. It’s just a lot to take in.”
He gave a small smile, nodded. “That’s okay. I had the exact same reaction, actually—stunned silence.” We stood in the wind off the lake.
“Are you happy about it?” I asked.
“Sometimes. It’s exciting, sure, but a surprise. The timing is bad for us both.”
Wind rattled the ropes on the dock, and I tried hard to remember Avery, a slight, energetic girl with dark brown eyes and hair.
“Look,” Blake said. “This thing at Dream Master, the way I see it—it’s just a job. Not a forever job, just a good-for-right-now kind of job.”
“Right, I get it. It makes sense.”
He smiled then, his charming old smile, and gave my shoulder a playful push.
“Water looks nice,” he said.
“Oh, you wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t I?”
He pushed me harder then, and though I could have kept my balance I grabbed his arm and let myself fall, dragging him in after me. We hit the clear, cold water and came up laughing, shaking bright droplets from our hair.
“Oh! It’s freezing!”
“It’s June—what did you expect?”
“Not to be swimming.” I skimmed my hand across the surface, sending a glittering arc of spray. Blake ducked, then sprayed me back.
“Truce!” I finally called, staggering out of the water onto the gray shale beach. Blake followed me up the lawn, catching my arm before we reached the driveway.
“Mom doesn’t know,” he said, looking at me seriously with the beautiful dark-lashed family eyes, blue irises mottled with green. “No one else knows. I promised Avery I wouldn’t say anything until she’s ready, so keep it quiet, okay?”
I nodded slowly. “Okay. I won’t say anything.”
“Thanks. Hey—it’s good to have you home, Luce.” He gave me a hug as we reached the driveway, and then headed toward his truck.
“Aren’t you even going to dry off?”
“I’ll drip dry,” he called back. “And I’ll see you later, okay? Welcome back.”
I waved, watching him pull away and disappear.
Art had gone, too. I found my mother in the kitchen making up plates with chicken salad, lettuce, and grapes, working slowly because she could use only one hand.
“Just a light supper,” she said, and then she looked up and saw my wet clothes, my hair. “Oh, the two of you,” she said, laughing, biting her lips because it hurt her ribs to laugh. I could tell she was happy, though. “There are towels on the sun porch. And could you pour us some wine? You must be tired, Lucy, but it’s so good to see you that I’m not going to let you sleep, not yet.”
After I changed we ate on the patio, weighing the napkins down with forks because the breeze was still brisk, cold in my wet hair. The setting sun had emerged below the clouds and the lake had turned from gun-metal gray to the color of sapphires, waves lapping gently at the shore. My mother’s face softened in the golden light, her silver hair glinting amber.
“So,” she said. “Here you are. And this Yoshi of yours is coming, too, I hear. That would be a first, Lucy, meeting one of your parade of boy-friends. Sounds like it might be serious?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, yes, I suppose. We’re at kind of a cross-roads, I guess.” I paused there, surprised at my own words. Was it true?
“Well, you don’t want to wait too long,” my mother said.
“Too long for what?” I regretted the words the minute I spoke them, because my tone was sharp. My mother averted her gaze, ran her finger around the rim of her glass.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said, her voice mild. She looked up and smiled at me. “I don’t mean to pry. And I don’t mean that you have to find happiness in a relationship. Not at all. But I do want you to be happy. Wherever you find that happiness, I want it for you. That’s all.”
Now I had to look away, out to the tranquil waters.
“I think you’ll like Yoshi,” I said, finally. “He and Blake really hit it off. His job has been really consuming, so that’s been kind of hard, especially since I don’t have any job at all just now. It seemed like a good time for him to come, that’s all.”
“I can’t wait to meet him.”
We talked a little more about work, and then I asked about the car wreck.
“Not serious,” she said, waving her good hand. “It could have been, but I was lucky. The ribs are the worst, it hurts to laugh or take a deep breath, and there’s nothing I can do but let them heal. Still, I don’t know why everyone got quite so upset. Except maybe it reminded us,” she added. “About how quickly things can happen.”
Again, silence fell between us. I was the first to break it. “I still miss Dad,” I said.
“I know.”
“What do you think of Blake?” I asked after a moment. “Working for Art, I mean?”
She was looking out at the water with its dancing nets of light, and shook her head slightly. “I try not to get too involved, now that you two are adults. Art has been a terrific help to me, Lucy. You haven’t been here to see it, but it’s true. I guess your father’s death made a powerful impression on him. I think maybe they always imagined they’d have time to patch things up, time to find a way to get along, but then, just like that, it was too late.”
“Whatever happened between them, anyway?”
“Oh, honestly, honey, it’s hard to pinpoint. There was always tension. I remember when your father brought me here for dinner and announced that we were getting married, Art made a point of taking me aside to tell me all your father’s faults. It was strange, almost like he was jealous and wanted to keep things from working out. That didn’t really make sense, because he was already dating Austen. But anyway, I didn’t think much of Art for doing that, I can tell you. As an only child myself, I always wanted to have siblings, so I’ve never understood why they couldn’t get along. But that’s just the way it was for them, growing up, maybe because they were born so close together.”
“And Dream Master?” I asked. “That happened later?”
My mother glanced at me, her expression somewhat guarded. “It did.”
“Well?”
“You were always such a persistent child,” she observed. “No wonder you’re such a success around the world.”
Long stems of white gladioli stood in a vase on the table. I touched a petal, feeling hurt rather than complimented; my mother had argued against my living overseas, especially after 9/11 happened while I was in Sri Lanka, and it was still a sore point between us. Golden pollen coated my finger.
“These are pretty. Secret admirer?”
To my surprise my mother laughed, color rising briefly in her cheeks. “Not so secret. Someone I met in the emergency room. His name is Andrew. Andrew something or other. I was pretty spacey from the pain pills. We had a lovely conversation, of which I remember almost nothing.”
I opened the florist’s envelope and pulled out the little card.
“Yes, go ahead,” she said. “Feel free.”
Dear Evie, thank you for the good conversation on a very bad day. As discussed, these are Apollo gladioli. Hope you like them. Yours, Andrew Stewart.
“Why Apollo gladioli?” I asked, catching the envelope as it skidded across the table in a gust of wind that rattled the wind chimes and slammed waves against the shore.
“Well, we talked about the moon landing, that I do remember. Where we were in 1969, that sort of thing. I suppose I must have mentioned my old moon garden, though it all went to seed years ago. But maybe that’s why he sent these.”
“Looks like you made a big impression.” I put the card back in its envelope, suddenly very sad. My parents had met as volunteers in a community garden just as my father was about to leave for Vietnam. Over the next year, they wrote. My mother savored his letters, the onion-skin pages in their thin envelopes filled with his slanted script. She had known my father so briefly that it was as if she had made him up to suit herself, and when she wrote back it was with a reckless freedom, telling him things she’d never shared before—her secrets, fears, and dreams.
Then one day she had looked up to see my father silhouetted against the door of the greenhouse where she worked. He was so much taller than she remembered, disconcertingly familiar and strange all at once. He crossed the room and stopped in front of her, but didn’t speak. The scent of earth gathered in her throat. Water dripped in the sink.
“I’m transplanting zinnias,” she’d finally said. As proof she held up her hands, dirt beneath her nails, her fingertips stained brown.
My father had smiled. Then he leaned down and kissed her. She kissed him back, pressing her wrists against his shoulders, her earth-stained hands lifted like wings.
I’d heard this story over and over, growing up, so I didn’t really like it, not one bit, that some man I’d never met was sending my mother flowers. Jet lag traveled through me like a wave and the world suddenly seemed vibrant and strange, as if all the colors might burst from their shapes. I put my hand on the table to steady myself.
“You okay?” my mother asked.
“Just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Of course you are, honey. I’m surprised you lasted this long. I made up the couch on the screened porch for you.”
“What about my old room, can’t I use that?”
“Do you really want to?”
She sounded reluctant, and I remembered she’d told me once that in the silence of my father’s sudden absence, the voices of the house had begun to whisper to her constantly, the trim crying out to be painted, the driveway sputtering about cracks and pits, the faucets leaking a persistent dissatisfaction.
Love,
said the kitchen cabinets my father had built from quarter-sawn oak. The lights in her sewing room, the slate tiles of the patio, the newly sanded floors, all of these persisted, saying
love, love, love,
and when the gutters clogged, when the shutters broke loose, when a windowpane cracked, she could not bear to alter the things he had last tended; nor could she stand to listen to the clamoring of the house. That was why she’d closed off the second floor, turning the glass doorknobs, clicking the metal bolts shut.
“Would you mind? I’ll make the bed and everything.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” she said, though I sensed that she did.
I found the key ring hanging inside the kitchen cupboard. The keys made soft metal sounds as I carried them to the second floor, which was warm and stuffy, the doors all closed. When I entered my old room I went from window to window, pushing up the sashes, struggling with the combination storms, letting fresh air pour in. I put a fitted sheet on the narrow bed, unfolded the flat sheet, and tucked it in, fatigue throbbing through me like a pulse.