The Second Home

by Christina Clancy

  What was this “business” Maureen referred to? She liked to imagine they worked on something really important and interesting, like a blood test that could detect cancer, or a computer chip, or some dot-com business like GeoCities.

  Maureen took a drink out of her own glass. “Tony says ‘Jump’ and his workers say ‘How high?’ He’s really got a remarkable gift for leadership, for encouraging people to do well. Of course, like any of us, he has his vices.” Maureen’s voice trailed off.

  Vices? Ann wanted to know more; she was dying to get inside their marriage, figure him out.

  “Your brother is a sweetheart,” Maureen said, gesturing for her to join her at the bistro table. “I think it’s wonderful what your family has done for him. It’s gotten me thinking that maybe we should look into adopting a needy child. We tried to have a third, you know. I wanted a daughter, someone I could talk to the way I talk to you.” She pressed her hand on Ann’s knee and smiled. Her fingers felt long and cold and hard, like the chilled shrimp she’d left on the kitchen counter for guests earlier that day. “Then I had female problems. Cysts, fibroids.”

  Oh God, no. No! Ann wished she could put her fingers in her ears. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be Maureen’s female friend. Her gal. Especially since she’d been daydreaming about Anthony.

  “I have this theory,” Maureen said, “that women should be born with zippers, and once we’re done having babies we should just unzip ourselves and get rid of all that stuff we don’t need anymore.”

  “That would be cool,” Ann said. She stood up. “I should go check on the boys.”

  “Look at them, they’re fine.” Maureen pointed at the patio doors that opened to the family room. Through the glass, Ann could see the boys sitting on the couch, absorbed in whatever it was they were watching on the television. “There are so many children who need homes. I was thinking we could adopt a child from Nicaragua or Vietnam, but then again there are children just like Michael right here in our own backyard.” She looked out at the rich green landscape and conveniently saw Michael bent over a pile of cedar chips. “Everything is so out of balance in this world. I mean, look at me, here in this huge house. Your family has really gotten me thinking about my own family, Ann. About how we can be better, do more.”

  We. That word sounded funny to Ann.

  “Do you know,” Maureen said, “that I sent a note to your mother and father telling them what lovely young people they are raising?”

  Oh God, now she was sending notes to her parents?

  “Your upbringing seems so simple. So good. I’m jealous of you Gordons, all of you. So wholesome, like a television family.”

  Ann thought of her dad’s bong hidden in the linen closet, the way he swore like a sailor, her mother’s stash of Valium, the way she felt when she’d barged into Michael’s basement bedroom back home and caught a glimpse of him without his clothes on, and the secret, forbidden fantasies that moment had produced. “We’re just like anyone.”

  “No, no. That’s not true. I hope Toby and Brooks turn out to be half the young people you and Michael are. Tony thinks it’s because you’re from the Midwest.”

  She thought it was both shameful and exciting that there was so much that Maureen didn’t know. The other day, while Maureen was out, she was cleaning up after the boys in the family room. When she looked up, she saw Anthony in the hallway, watching her. He was headed to the beach, and wore just his swim trunks and a towel around his neck. She stood up straight, blushed, and pulled her shirt down, because it had slid up while she was bent over to pick up the LEGOs. “You have great legs,” he’d said.

  “You’re so dear,” Maureen said.

  Their conversation made Ann feel like she’d entered into the kind of fake friendship that she had with some of the girls at her high school. Maureen tucked her wild burnt hair behind her ears. It was hot and still. Her forehead and nose were beginning to glisten with sweat. She shook her head, as if to shake an unwelcome thought out of it. “You have such a nice family, which is why I feel so terrible asking you to spend more time away from them. But I’ll be busy the next two weeks. Shhhh!” She put her finger to her lips and winked. “I’m taking an acting class in Provincetown, isn’t that something? Please don’t breathe a word about it to Tony. He thinks actors are kooks. Despite his flair for drama, he has zero appreciation for the stage. And next Saturday we have an oyster party to go to. Could you—”

  “Sure,” Ann said. She knew her parents would be upset if she missed out on another weekend with them. “You’re more of a nanny than a babysitter with those hours,” her father had said. “We don’t haul ass halfway across the country so you can spend time with someone else’s family.” But with Anthony around, the Shaws’ house was a lot less boring. His presence was as intimidating as it was enticing. Her memories of that afternoon in the bedroom were on autoloop and took on a fantasy life of their own.

  TWELVE

  Michael

  Heat bore down on the Cape. It hadn’t rained in weeks. The bluestone Jason ordered for Anthony’s patio still hadn’t come in. There was little for Michael to do in the Shaws’ garden aside from watering. Mowing was pointless—dusty and dirty. He tried to stay busy. He snipped away the dead blooms, pulled some weeds, and waited for rain, tending to the garden the way a security guard might watch over a business that had closed for the night.

  Jason told Michael he could go home, but he stuck around. Even without pay, it was nice at the Shaws’ with Maureen out of the picture. Anthony was gone, too, in Los Angeles for business. Michael was temporarily free of worry that he’d drop in the way he did—unannounced, hovering at the edge of the yard, critical of every little thing.

  With just Ann and Michael around, he felt like he and Ann were playing house, as if they were married. He imagined that the garden he tended was for them, and the Shaws’ nerdy boys were their nerdy boys. Maureen had become so preoccupied with her acting classes that she hadn’t made plans for them. Suddenly the boys were always underfoot, bored, seeking Michael’s attention.

  “I don’t know what to do with them,” Ann said.

  “Let’s take them to Mayo Beach.”

  “No,” Ann said. “Anthony is worried they’ll get stung by a jellyfish or cut their feet on the razor clams. He thinks Mayo is dirty.”

  “Dirty? It’s the ocean. Why do they even bother to come here?”

  “How about we go to the park across the street from the beach?”

  The boys tied the laces on their perfectly white tennis shoes and followed Michael and Ann like ducklings to the playground. They played flag football and Frisbee with the boys and taught them how to improve their time in the forty-yard dash.

  “Want to play horse?” Michael asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a basketball game.” He tousled Brooks’s hair. “Don’t you poor little rich kids know how to do anything?”

  They played horse for hours.

  The heat persisted. They went back to the playground the next day and the next. The boys’ awkwardness seemed to melt away. They started meeting other kids their age. Michael had Ann all to himself again.

  * * *

  ONE AFTERNOON THE BOYS were in a pickup game, darting around with the grace of ostriches. After an argument over a foul Brooks called, they started taking jabs at each other.

  “Did I ever tell you my dad was a lightweight champ?” Michael said to Ann. They sat on the bench outside the court, watching.

  “Just that he was a boxer.”

  “He traveled a lot for matches. He’d come around every few months and take me to the gym, or to watch his friends fight—but I never saw him compete. He’d never let me watch him get hit.”

  The wind blew off the water, filling the air with the pungent, salty smell of the bay. Seagulls came ashore and dipped down to pick up bits of fries and picnic food the tourists had left between the benches and the basketball court.


  “I wanted to be just like my dad,” Michael said. “He was cool. Real cool. He wore snakeskin shoes and he had a big cross on his neck, and he had two gold teeth replacing the ones that got knocked out in a fight. One year he gave me a punching bag for Christmas. I couldn’t make it budge. I was like those boys, skinny and weak. My dad, he taught me how to land a right hook. It was like he was dancing and then pow! He’d hit the shit out of it. All I ever did was hit that thing. After he got hurt and my mom hooked up with Marcus, I got so good the sand came out of it. I hated that guy so much. I don’t know what I would have done to him if it weren’t for the bag.”

  Ann’s sunglasses reflected the cloudless sky. “What was your mom like?”

  As close as they were, Michael hadn’t said much about his mom to Ann. It was painful for him to talk about her.

  “She was tough. I saw her run after my dad with a knife once. One time she hit him in the kidney with the heel of her shoe so hard he had to go to the hospital.”

  Ann laughed.

  “It was actually kind of funny to hear her scream, saying ‘Oh no you don’t, Macho Camacho!’ She loved my dad. They had something. But they liked to party. They’d disappear for days, weeks, months at a time when I lived with my grandmother. When my parents were gone I’d sit at the window and wait for them all night. Only one time, it was just my mom who came back. She said my dad got hurt. She took me to see him in the hospital. He didn’t move when I called his name. Didn’t squeeze my hand back. He didn’t even know I was there. I said his name over and over till I started screaming it. Nothing. He just drooled and stared at the wall.

  “My mom cried all the time. She kept saying he’d come back, but he didn’t. He went to a home. Then Marcus entered the picture.”

  Michael thought he could forget all about Marcus. He had a new family now. A new life. But Marcus was always there at the edge of his thoughts.

  “Most of the time he didn’t want me around, so he made me stay in my room. I had nothing to do in there but read books or draw. All weekend long I’d sit on my bed, staring at the door, waiting to get out.” He stared off at the distance. “But you know what, it’s because of Marcus that I like to garden.”

  “Why Marcus?” Michael didn’t like hearing his name on Ann’s lips.

  “He started locking me outside in the backyard like I was a dog. I’d bang on the door and beg to be let in. Then I wised up and realized it was better out there, out of sight. Things change outside, you know? I studied the way the grass grew, dug up the roots of plants, put my fingers in the soil to see how much water was in it. I’d collect seeds from plants I found in the park and keep them in ziplock bags in my pockets. At school, I read books about edible plants and perennials and hybrid varieties. I started a whole garden. Hollyhocks, peonies. One day our neighbor, this old lady named Darlene, she gave me a bag of tomato seeds. The next week she left me a starter basil plant. Then sweet peas. She showed me how to plant them. My plants grew. My mom got into coke, heroin. Darlene bought me more stuff. Peppers, oregano, cucumbers. The more my garden grew, the worse my mom got. The garden was the only place I had any control. I thought—” He paused.

  “What? What did you think?”

  He looked down at his basketball shoes. “It’s stupid, but I thought, with my garden, that Marcus would see that I was more than the worthless little shit he thought I was. That’s how Anthony makes me feel. Like I want to work on his yard and do a good job because he thinks I’m a worthless little shit.”

  “He’s nothing like Marcus,” Ann said. “You don’t have to prove anything to him.”

  “I feel like I do.”

  “Anthony’s not so bad. He’s nice, actually.”

  Michael couldn’t stand to hear Ann standing up for that guy. Why couldn’t she see what he saw? “He’s not nice, Ann.”

  “He is! He tells me things. His dad was a coal miner. He said he gets bored.”

  “That doesn’t make him a good guy. I don’t like the way he looks at you.” Michael couldn’t even look at Ann when he said it. He knew what it was like to look at her that way. He knew. “Be careful.”

  “He’s fine. He’s just rough around the edges.”

  “He’s rough all over.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but maybe you don’t see him clearly. Because of Marcus.”

  “I see him clearly all right.” He sat forward and did a few triceps dips on the bench. Ann joined him. Her arms were lean and strong. She had a cowlick where her hair parted. She was beautiful, he thought—so beautiful and perfect that looking at her twisted something deep inside him.

  He felt overwhelmed with these strong feelings of wanting her, and wanting to protect her. He’d spent almost a year trying to snuff his feelings for Ann, trying not to look at her, think about her. Sister, he told himself. She’s my sister. But at that moment, she was just Ann, and her face was right there, leaning closer to his. He couldn’t help himself. He did the most natural thing in the world: he kissed Ann on the lips, or she kissed him, he couldn’t tell who started it. He kissed her the way he’d always wanted to kiss her, and she kissed him back, she did. She tasted good and sweet. Perfect. This kiss felt like completion, like tying a knot. It felt like they were acknowledging a deep and boundless connection. He let his hand travel to the back of her neck. He’d wanted to touch that downy, golden hair and now, finally, he could. He wished that honest, perfect kiss could last forever.

  But it didn’t. Ann pushed Michael away and pulled back. “You love me.” Her voice broke. “You love me, don’t you?” It sounded less like a question than an accusation.

  Michael looked at his basketball shoes. He wanted to say yes, but he said nothing.

  Ann stood up and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. Just then Toby snuck up from behind Michael and giggled. “Gross! You kissed your sister. We saw you.”

  “You didn’t see anything,” Ann said.

  Brooks said, “Yeah we did. Isn’t that against the law? You can’t kiss your brother.”

  Michael sprinted away, turning the corner by Captain Higgins, running as fast as he’d ever run.

  THIRTEEN

  Ann

  Ann fell asleep on the Shaws’ couch and slipped into a dream about Michael and that kiss. His lips were soft but insistent, his hand resting gently on her shoulder. She worked so hard to suppress her feelings for Michael and deny her attraction to him that it felt good to let go in her dreams, where she could indulge all of her pent-up emotions and guilty thoughts.

  But then Michael started morphing into Anthony. His features became blunt, his scent musky. He was saying her name: Ann, Ann. She felt the grip grow tighter. It was Anthony’s hand—had it also been his lips on hers, or had she dreamt it? We’re home. Wake up. She opened her eyes and saw him leaning close to her, his hand still there, his face just inches from her own.

  “You were out cold,” he said. “I enjoyed watching you.”

  “Sorry,” she said, wiping the drool off her cheek. She wondered if she’d fallen asleep with her mouth open—how stupid had she looked? “I can never make it past the music part of Saturday Night Live.”

  “Did the boys behave?”

  The boys, the boys … it was hard to focus. “They were fine.”

  “Now, that was a party!” Maureen said, pulling a big gold bangle off her wrist and tossing it on the kitchen island, where it dinged against the granite.

  “A miserable one,” Anthony said.

  Ann didn’t think Maureen looked like she’d had fun. She looked sad, worn out, with smudged mascara under her eyes and sweat marks in her shirt under her armpits. Anthony was clearly agitated, his face also grim. Ann could tell they’d been in an argument, and that the argument would have continued if she weren’t there.

  Maureen reached into her purse and jiggled her keys. “I need to get you home.”

  “I’ll drive her,” Anthony said, snatching the keys from her hands.


  “I’m fine,” Maureen said.

  She didn’t look fine to Ann. She was wilting in her espadrilles. It was hard for Ann to see Maureen like this. It made her feel guilty for fantasizing about Anthony, but wasn’t it better than how she thought about Michael? Her brother? That was wrong, and dangerous, and look what it had already led to. Imagining an encounter with Anthony was fun and harmless. He was a grown man, married, a dad. She liked to imagine she was married to him—they’d drop the boys off with Maureen so she could be their babysitter, while Anthony took Ann to restaurants and ordered her wine and filet mignon and the waitstaff fawned all over them. In her fantasies Maureen was the competition—the wife who didn’t understand her husband, who didn’t meet his needs.

  In reality, and at that moment, it seemed it was Maureen who was misunderstood.

  “My wife needs some sleep,” Anthony said to Ann without looking at her. “And some water and aspirin.”

  “I need many things,” Maureen said. “Sleep is far down the list. A husband who cares about my personal aspirations? That would be right at the top.”

  Anthony walked into the kitchen and poured her a large glass of water. He grabbed a bottle of aspirin off the shelf and shook a few into his meaty palm. “I do care. Here,” he said. “Take this.”

  “Isn’t he putting on a good show for you?” Maureen said to Ann, her words running together. “It’s always a show.”

  “You know all about shows,” he said. “This house, the parties, and now I find out you’re a budding actress…”

  Maureen winked at Ann. “I let it slip.”

  Anthony spoke in a low, frustrated grumble. “I work night and day so you can have this wonderful life, and now you’re paying a sitter to go off to—”

  “Ha!” Maureen said. “You married into this wonderful life, Tony. This wonderful life was my wonderful life. My father gave you your job.”

  Ann didn’t want to be in the middle of their argument. Her parents hardly ever fought. “I should get going,” she said.