The Checklist

by Addie Woolridge

  Gingerly picking up the phone, she took a steeling breath before pressing Mom and listening to it ring, half praying for voice mail.

  “Hello, sister,” Neale’s voice singsonged through her mother’s phone, crushing her voice mail hopes. Her younger sister still lived with their parents. She was purportedly pursuing a performance art career, but as far as Dylan could tell, she was mostly waitressing and watching her father’s collection of obscure German films.

  “Hi, Neale. Is Mom there?”

  Dylan felt Neale’s dreamlike thought process floating through the line before she spoke. “Not sure. I think she and Dad are installing something in the front yard.”

  “So she’s in the front yard.” Dylan had learned to appreciate that her younger sister consistently sounded high. Half the time she was, but that was beside the point.

  “Yeah, she is. Did you want to talk to her?”

  Dylan fought the urge to say no and leave a message with Neale. But there was a good chance Neale would forget. And if she didn’t give the message directly to her mother, there was a shot she wouldn’t be able to get into the house without setting off an alarm. Her father regularly left the door unlocked because he didn’t like carrying keys on his walks, which had prompted her mother to install a keypad lock. Unfortunately, her father still didn’t lock the door most of the time, and every resident of the house habitually forgot the code. It meant her mother constantly changed the door code, resulting in a lot of false alarms and angry police officers.

  “Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind grabbing her for me.”

  “Mkay,” Neale said, setting the phone down with an audible clunk.

  A few seconds later, Dylan heard her mother shout something at her father, then pick up the phone.

  “Prodigal daughter, is that you?” Dry humor and a slight accent dripped through the receiver.

  “You have two of those, Mom.”

  “I know it’s you, Dylan. Billie would have called collect.” Bernice Delacroix was always direct, which was painfully off putting to most people. She was also brooding, artistic, and the exact opposite of a Canadian stereotype. Sometimes Dylan wondered if her mother fed the image so she wouldn’t have to speak with her collectors. Then again, she even treated the dog with direct disdain, so Dylan was pretty sure it was just her temperament.

  “Good point.”

  “So what can I do for you? I know you like to call with a purpose.”

  Ignoring the jab, Dylan began, “I’ve been assigned—”

  “Hang on. Henry, do not put that there! I want it front and center.” Dylan held the phone away from her ear as her mother shouted instructions to her father. Sighing heavily, Bernice continued, “Your father, I swear. You were saying?”

  “I’ve been assigned to Technocore, and I was hoping to stay with you and Dad. You know, not waste company dollars and such. I arrive Friday morning.” Dylan said this as quickly as possible. Announcing her intentions tasted like cough syrup. She was beginning to regret letting Nicolas talk her out of renting a place in Seattle. It was easy for him to say their condo budget wasn’t worth the price of city rent. He wasn’t the one who had to live with her family.

  “Technocore, huh? You’re working for those corporate fascists now?” Bernice labeled any company large enough to need an HR department “fascists.”

  “Yup. And I want to stay under your roof while I screw over the little man.”

  “Very funny. Of course you can stay. Your room is always here when you need it. I’ll text you the door code so you can let yourself in. See you soon, sweetheart.” As gruff as she was, her mother always used endearments when getting off the phone. It was as if she wanted to tell her children she loved them but despised the sentiment too much to say it, so she stuck with pet names.

  “Thanks, Mom.” Setting the phone down, Dylan looked at her suitcase with less trepidation. As far as Delacroix family communications went, that phone call had been downright pleasant. She pulled on her pajamas and shut off the lights, deciding not to wait up for Nicolas, who from the sound of it was going to continue berating his associate for a while.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dylan got out of the rental car and wondered, again, if she should have leased a place. The house was completely different and exactly the same. Glaring at her from the dead center of the yard was an eight-foot-tall tiger clutching a beach ball. Her father liked to let each piece “live in its space” before installing it at its final home, either in a collector’s sculpture garden or in some corporate lobby. When she was young, her father had sold a massive replica of the Marty McFly shoe to developers, who’d placed it in front of the football stadium in honor of the team’s new digs. Once someone like Paul Allen or his representative purchased a piece, a lot of other people wanted one, and her father had no problem taking advantage of that. Dylan secretly hoped the Tiger was for an investment banking firm.

  “Welcome home,” Dylan whispered, pulling her suitcase toward the house and trying not to get her heels caught in the weeds growing between the paving stones that led to the front steps. She could hear the dog’s whines through the bright-teal front door as she tapped the new code into the panel. She had just enough time to pull her suitcase through the door before being pummeled by excited leaps and licks from the perro de presa, whose mass shoved her into the corner, effectively knocking her over.

  “Okay, Milo, down. I love you too. No. Stop. I’m covered in dog hair and—oh God, you licked my teeth!” Dylan said, shoving the dog away and toeing off her heels before trying to stand. Milo happily slurped at her slacks and hands, leaving a big wet imprint on the side of her leg as she surveyed the interior of the house. The inside of her former home had the same neglected feel as the exterior. Dylan was conscious of how little dog hair she had on her in comparison to the designer mismatched furniture and expensive carpets. In her childhood, her father had not been able to resist buying beautiful things, but neither of her parents could be bothered to clean or maintain them. So the beautiful things had been broken, either by the girls tap-dancing in the halls or by the tails of overeager family pets. There was dirt and dust everywhere, including on the hallway table, which Neale had helpfully signed and dated last August.

  “Hello?” Dylan called to what she figured was an empty house. Her parents were never quiet. Thanking God for a moment of peace, she hauled her suitcase up to her bedroom while Milo raced happily up and down the stairs. Collapsing into her attic room, she surveyed the damage. It looked like her mother had been using the room as a storage space for her work. She had clearly taken pieces off the bed, but a few easels still stood with glossy coats, drying. Peeping around the easels, she could see Billie’s attempt at self-expression still written on her bedroom walls, along with the Langston Hughes poetry she had painted on the ceiling.

  Casting a sideways glance at the twin bed, Dylan started a Things to Clean checklist. Wincing, she watched Milo settle into the armchair by the picture window and made a note to wash the cushion cover along with her sheets. Her aspirational list making was interrupted by her mother’s alto barreling through the wooden beams of the old house.

  “Henry, it won’t stand. I’ll go over and tell them myself.”

  “Honey, I don’t think you’re wrong. I just don’t think we need to deal with it while they’re at work. Let the Robinsons come home first.”

  “No. This is the last straw. Installing a motion light? It shines right in our window whenever some squirrel runs by.” Bernice spoke at an impressive decibel, unfazed by being indoors.

  “Where’s Milo?” her father asked as Dylan quietly padded down the dark-wood staircase. The beauty of a third-floor room was that it gave her plenty of time to prepare herself for her parents.

  “I hope he’s digging a hole in their front yard,” Bernice spat.

  Dylan took in her mother from the top of the second staircase. Ever sturdy, Bernice was largely unchanged in a pair of hiking pants a few inches too short for her tall frame
and a winter fleece. Her graying curls were pulled up in a messy bun held by a purple scrunchie. Small spatters of paint ran down the brown skin on her neck where she’d forgotten to wipe her hands before she scratched an itch.

  “I’m sure he’s not doing that. Is Neale at work right now?” Henry answered, completely missing Bernice’s sarcasm.

  Taking a deep breath, Dylan descended the stairs and answered his earlier question. “Milo’s with me. Passed out on my chair, to be exact.”

  “Dylan! You’re home.” Her father still wore his self-proclaimed uniform—a pair of light-blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and tennis shoes. His dark skin made it difficult for anyone except other Black people to determine his age, a trait that supported the general feeling that he had as much energy and enthusiasm as a twenty-five-year-old. His signature large glasses were perched on his nose, amplifying his eyes in line with the “Coke bottle” tradition. He considered them to be the height of fashion, and nothing could convince him otherwise. After pulling her into an effusive bear hug, her father released her directly into her mother’s stern embrace.

  “Hello, sweetheart. It’s good to have you home. Your father and I were just discussing the latest Robinson travesty. Those women—”

  “Are you thirsty? Tea? Something stronger?” Her father spoke over her mother’s burgeoning rant.

  “It’s ten fifteen a.m.”

  “That’s one fifteen p.m. in New York.”

  “Still not acceptable for drinking,” her mother shot over her shoulder as she wandered toward the kitchen. “Let me finish. She can deal with them, and then she can have a drink. By then it will be five p.m. or later in all American time zones.”

  Dylan started, “Mom, the thing with the neighbors—”

  “Not in Hawaii,” her father added.

  “Not helpful,” her mother countered.

  Dylan felt like her head was on fire. Her parents were already speaking at light speed over one another, and Neale wasn’t even home yet.

  “In Guam it’ll be ten a.m.; then we’re back where we started.” Her father was downright giddy over this.

  “Are we considering unincorporated US territories?” her mother asked, temporarily distracted. “If so, then it appears there is never a good time to drink.”

  “Mom, I’m not going over to the neighbors’. I’m almost—”

  “Or it’s always a good time to drink. Glass half-full!”

  “Of tea.”

  “Or whiskey.”

  “How about both?” Dylan asked, her voice ricocheting through their airy butter-yellow kitchen.

  “Like a hot toddy. I like where you’re going with this.” Henry beamed at her as if she had solved a pressing family issue.

  “Tell me what the Robinsons have done.” Dylan held up her hands, halting her mother’s interjection. “That doesn’t mean I’m going over there. Neale said she put her foot down on this ages ago. I plan to invoke the same right.”

  “Neale is a household contributor, so she can do that,” Bernice answered with her usual haughty tone. “You are a visitor.”

  “Mom, Neale doesn’t pay rent. She’s technically been visiting for the last six years.”

  “Be that as it may, she lives here. You do not.” As usual Bernice’s logic was questionable, but her argument was airtight.

  “Just tell me what they’ve done. Then I’ll decide.” Dylan sagged onto a barstool and tried to swat the dog hair and dust off her wool trousers. As far as she could discern, their neighbors across the street had a new motion-sensor light that shone high-powered beams directly into her parents’ bedroom with the movement of every nocturnal critter in the neighborhood. It was Bernice’s singular wish that Dylan communicate a cease-and-desist order to the couple immediately.

  Most normal people would assume this was a mistake made by their otherwise pleasant, tidy, churchgoing neighbors. Most normal people had never endured the longest-standing family feud since the Hatfields versus the McCoys. The light was probably retribution for the tiger statue. Even for her parents, it was an unusual eyesore.

  “So you’ll go over there tonight and tell them to get rid of those insidious things?” Henry wrapped up her mother’s raging tale with equal fervor.

  “Dad. Mom. You know I love you and have for years participated in the Robinson loathing. But honestly, this is too much. I’m over thirty. I can’t go over there like I’m ten. I doubt Linda and Patricia will do anything I ask anymore.”

  “Your room faces their house too. You act all high and mighty, but it’ll upset your sleep pattern, and then you’ll get off your high horse and go over there.”

  “Mom, please. You’re being dramatic,” Dylan said as her mother picked up her mug of cold tea and ambled toward her studio.

  “Just wait. You’ll see what I mean.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Dear God. Are they trying to signal someone in outer space?” Dylan asked Milo, squinting out of her bedroom window. As if in agreement, Milo grunted, slowly moving off the window seat and onto her freshly made bed. So much for clean sheets. Setting her book down, she unpretzeled herself from the armchair she’d been installed in. Quietly, she opened her bedroom door to survey the rest of the house’s response.

  “I told you so! Now, do what you must.” Bernice’s mocking voice floated up three stories. Dylan marveled at her having heard the bedroom door open over her dad’s experimental Ghanaian drum-circle music.

  “I’m on it,” Dylan called back before slinking down the stairs and grabbing her heels from over by the door. “‘Do what you must.’ Who says that?” she mumbled as she reached for the door handle, already regretting how quickly she’d caved. What had she said to her mother? Something about her age and independence? Obviously, that wasn’t true.

  Cursing herself, she closed her parents’ door and began the slog across the street to the Robinsons’ house. Although modestly painted and well landscaped, the house wasn’t entirely dissimilar to her parents’ home. However, it was scientifically impossible for the family living inside of the house to have less in common with her own. Linda and Patricia Robinson were both tech-industry big shots in their own right. Linda was a patent attorney and the recent recipient of the Latina Bar Association’s Trailblazer Award, a fact she never failed to mention. Patricia was an accomplished programmer and volunteer youth-cheerleading coach who’d even made the cover of American Cheerleader magazine when her all-Black squad had pulled a real-life Bring It On–style competition victory. Both had come through the tech boom when the industry had still employed few women, and they took absolutely no shit from anyone—including Dylan’s parents. Dylan believed her parents objected more to the Robinson women’s love of golf than their jobs. As far as Bernice was concerned, golf was like standing for hours in a glorified front lawn.

  The Robinsons had two boys around Dylan’s age, and she had been jealous of the entire family while growing up. They’d gone to church and played organized sports, their clothes had always matched, and their mothers had joined the PTA. Dylan’s dad had endured a short stint with the PTA, but the Delacroix didn’t do organized anything. If Dylan had left the house wearing something that matched, it was by accident.

  Distracted by the past, Dylan had stopped paying attention to where she was walking until her foot sank into the divot near a storm drain, filling her heel with water. She cursed, her heart thwapping in her chest. Visions of her father toilet papering the neighbors’ house ran unchecked through her head. As did the memory of her mother nailing the police citation to the Robinsons’ door when it had arrived in the mail a week later. Dylan thought this was a tame response where Bernice was concerned, but it led to the Robinsons sending boxes of craft-store glitter to the house. The Robinsons had lost that round, and the joke was on them, because her mother loved glitter. It had appeared in several of her most lauded collages that year, which she’d named for Linda and Patricia Robinson when she’d taken out an ad in the Seattle Times to feature the work.
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br />   Ignoring the panic sweat forming on her palms, Dylan knocked on the door, then frowned, looking down at her soaked woolen pant leg. If she didn’t dry-clean those ASAP, they were going to reek.

  “One minute.” She had barely registered a man’s voice when the door swung open. “Hello.”

  “Uh. Hi.” Dylan’s voice cracked.

  Mike was, if possible, better looking than the last time she had seen him. His thick hair had been cut short, highlighting his high cheekbones and the ambient glow of his golden-brown skin. Time had turned him into the sort of made-for-TV manly pretty that seemed unfair for one person to achieve. The vaguely chiseled features and broad-shouldered Latino archetype that beer commercials aspired to.

  Aware that she needed to state her purpose, Dylan said the first thing she thought—“You still live here?”—and instantly regretted her decision.

  “No, I’m visiting. Do you still live here?” Mike asked with an incredulous laugh. The Robinsons’ younger son filled up what felt like the entire doorframe, with one arm on the handle and the other resting comfortably on the jamb, as if being the J.Crew catalog guy were no big deal.

  “I’m staying with my parents while I’m here for a work assignment. How are you?” Dylan smoothed a hand over the hem of her blouse and collected herself.

  “Great. I live in Capitol Hill. I’m finishing my PhD at the U-Dub. I basically come here to bum dinner off my parents.” He smiled, and Dylan wished he still had braces. Braces had made him just above-average looking in high school. Now, hazel eyes and straight teeth made him uncomfortable to be around. Or maybe it was the vast amount of water in her shoe.

  “I’m sorry. My dad’s drum circle carries all the way over here. I forgot how loud it is.” Dylan gestured around the front door with a nervous laugh.