“You know I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
They were both Shelby’s former “clients” at the day spa where she worked as a massage therapist. Michael was referred to her by his chiropractor, who said massage would help get rid of the constant pain in his lower back. Shelby was five years older than Michael. When she found out she was pregnant a few months after they’d started dating, they were both excited about having a kid, although their relationship had already settled into a platonic friendship. Michael wasn’t upset when he heard about Deedee. He couldn’t deny that Deedee and Shelby were together in a way he and Shelby never were.
Deedee said, “What’s up, Michael?”
“Nothing.”
“Nah, something’s up. You’ve got a look in your eye. There’s a bug in your rug. A crab in your crotch. A tick in your prick.”
Michael picked at the soil under his fingernails. His sweatshirt was covered in dust from the pavers he’d moved for a patio job. He hated that he always came home dirty. He could feel the dried sweat on his face and back and the grease in his hair. “I think something’s going on at the house.”
“What house?”
“The house in Wellfleet. Where I used to live.”
“Your family, Michael.”
“They’re not my family. You guys are.”
Michael regretted that he’d ever told Shelby and Deedee about his past with the Gordon family. He stood up and walked to the window. He looked out over the miniature waterfall and hyacinth bushes in the small courtyard surrounded by the rental units. Shelby had painted them a blue-green that reminded him of the color of toothpaste. He hated the color, but he wasn’t in a position to complain, and he didn’t care very much anyway. Someday he’d have his own place, but for now, his unit was fine. It was small, mercurial, and had nothing to do with him, from the lace curtains to the floral-print bedspread and old-fashioned washstand. He didn’t care about the décor or the fact that he had to share a bathroom with strangers. The guests weren’t a problem; they were courteous and fun, happy, on vacation, and some of them came back every year and became friends.
Deedee threw a spoon at his shoulder. “Would you look at me so we can have a conversation?”
Michael took a long drink of his beer. “I’ve got something for you guys.” He pointed out the window at the green couch.
“The hell you do.”
“It’s from their house.”
“I don’t care if it’s from the Palace of Versailles. That’s an ugly beast and we don’t have a place for it.”
“Yeah you do, the courtyard. It would be perfect out there. It’s for the outdoors.”
Deedee stared out the window at the couch, perched upside-down in the bed of his truck. “It’s for a dump.”
“It’s not a puppy I’m asking you to take care of. I live here, too. I want it.”
“Why do you suddenly want something? The only thing you own is the shirt on your back. You live like a monk. And now you want an ugly-ass couch you found on the side of the road? Forget the couch. Buy something nice for yourself.”
“It’s mine.”
“It’s going to look awful against the blue paint.”
“Anything would look awful against that blue.”
Michael saw Shelby walk past the window, the sunlight glinting off the tiny sapphire stud in her nose. Her hair was so fine and fair that in the light it almost looked see-through. She entered the house smelling of eucalyptus, wearing her ugly cork nursing clogs that were comfortable for a long day of standing over prone bodies.
“Hiya!”
Deedee and Michael didn’t respond.
“Let me try that again. Hello!”
Still no response.
“What’s going on?”
Michael didn’t say anything.
“Tell me.”
“I think something happened.”
“To what? To whom?” She began to look panicked. “Avery?”
“She’s fine,” Michael said. “Someone was at the Gordons’ house. Something’s up.”
“If you’d just stop by in the summer and talk to them like I’ve always told you, you might know what’s going on.”
“Nobody’s there now.”
Shelby walked up to him and poked the cell phone in his front pocket. “Jesus, Michael. Call them in Wisconsin. All these years I’ve been telling you to just call. Stop by when they’re here during the summer. Clear the air.”
“They don’t want to hear from me.”
Shelby stood behind Michael and gently rubbed his shoulders, even though her hands must have been tired. “Remember when Avery was born and you called, and Ed answered, and you just held the phone and didn’t say a word? I’m sure they aren’t holding a grudge. What happened with Ann is in the past.”
Deedee took a seat in front of her iPad. “I’ll Google them.”
“Don’t.” Michael felt funny having Deedee search for his old family. He’d thought about looking them up a thousand times, the way he might have tried to find an ex. But every time he’d start typing their names in that awkward way he used the dreaded computer, he’d get a sick feeling in his stomach and stop. He couldn’t do it. Now the sick feeling he had was different. Before, he worried what they might think of him. Now he was worried for them.
“Don’t tell me what you find out.” He stood up to work something out of his system and accidentally knocked a glass to the floor, and it shattered. “Goddamn it!”
Avery came running down the stairs and into the kitchen. She looked scared. Jesus, he knew what it was like to be a scared kid and swore he’d never put her in this situation. He felt that old anger and fear and frustration build up in him, and he heard Connie saying, Jump, Michael!
He looked at his daughter and jumped, and all the dishes in the cabinets rattled. Connie’s advice still worked better than anything he’d learned in therapy and meditation. He’d gotten so good at managing his anger that he could pull over to the side of the road and meditate for ten minutes when he felt it coming on, searching for silence and stillness. But this feeling he had building inside of him was bigger than that—bigger than anything he could jump or meditate away.
“You need to cool it,” Shelby said. She knew all she needed to know about Michael’s moods.
Shelby took Avery’s hand. “C’mon Avery, let’s go get an ice cream at Turner’s while your dad gets some exercise.”
Deedee kept typing. “Gordon. Milwaukee, right?”
Michael didn’t answer. He shot out the back door, ran into his unit, changed into his running clothes, and hit the road toward the abandoned air force station in Truro. He remembered when Ed and Connie brought him here with the girls. Ed blindfolded them in the car, and when they got there he led them to the front of an empty barracks and took the handkerchiefs off their eyes. It was the strangest place, so wrong for the Cape, ugly and empty like a ghost town, especially this time of year, with chunks of snow littering the parking lot. Connie had said, “Walk around. Try to come up with a story. What happened here?”
What happened here?
He bent over to catch his breath. When he stood up, he wiped the sweat off his eyes with his sweatshirt and noticed that the place was still as big and as lonely as it had been back then—even lonelier, because it wasn’t summer, although summer always filled him with painful nostalgia.
Calmer now, he turned around and ran back to Provincetown on Route 6 instead of the back roads. There was hardly any traffic, just a few trucks rumbling by. That was how Michael liked it.
When he got back to the house, he knew something was wrong, because Deedee turned off the water and Shelby, who’d been cutting carrots, put her knife down. They didn’t usually stop anything for him. He liked being part of the flow of the house, part of the rhythm.
Avery was at the table doing homework. Deedee said, “Can you do me a favor, Aves? Can you run to the store and get me some milk?”
“I’m doing math.”
&nb
sp; “Now.” Deedee handed her a five-dollar bill and everyone fell silent.
Avery rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She sounded just like an adult, and why shouldn’t she? She was constantly surrounded by grown-ups.
As soon as she was gone, Shelby walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. He shrugged them off. He knew what was coming. He remembered when the Gordons’ old dog Fender had died, shortly after he’d moved in with them. Poppy sat on the stairs crying. He sat next to her and watched as she pulled at her fingers, which was what she did when she was upset. “It hurts too much,” she’d said.
Shelby said, “So about Ed and Connie.”
He hadn’t heard their names out loud in so long. They sounded strange coming from Shelby, who didn’t even know them. “I don’t want to—”
“Baby,” Deedee said, “they passed away.”
“They?” Michael said. He thought of the one-two punches his dad had taught him. “Both of them?” His lungs were burning from the run and he could still feel his heartbeat in his eardrums. Sweat dripped down his back and it felt cold. But it made sense. If it was just Ed, or just Connie, they’d never let the house slip into other hands.
Shelby looked him in the eyes as if she needed to be direct in order for him to believe her. “They were on their way back home last fall. A semi.”
Deedee said, “They died together. In Ohio.”
“No.”
As awful as it was to get such horrible news, he was grateful that Shelby and Deedee were the ones to tell him. Who, he wondered, had told Ann? Who told Poppy? Had they been alone when they’d found out?
Shelby tentatively reached for his hand, unsure if he’d take it or push it away. He gripped tightly, the way a patient might clutch a nurse’s hand while undergoing surgery without anesthesia. This pain he felt was real and intense, inescapable. He couldn’t even cry, although he wished he could, because crying might have offered him the slightest relief.
Deedee held his other hand, and the women moved closer to him, pillars for him to lean against.
TWENTY-SIX
Poppy
Poppy had sex with Brad in every room of the house except her parents’ bedroom, and on every surface: the dining room table, against the refrigerator, in the foyer. They came together quietly and without discussion. Their lovemaking—the naturalness of it, and the urgency—frightened and confused her. She’d been with enough men to appreciate his straightforward approach to intimacy. He didn’t think about what he was doing, didn’t try any tricks. Their sex was natural and grown-up, and it was also scary because it wasn’t just for fun, and that’s how she was conditioned to think about sex. She tried to keep her emotions separate, tried not to worry about commitment, tried not to feel that deep connection when she’d reflect on the sound of his laughter or the current that ran through her when he placed his hand on her hip.
She tried to keep it casual. That wasn’t a problem for the other men she’d been with, but Brad wasn’t like that. She could tell by the way he kissed her, and the way she caught him watching her when he thought she was sleeping. Casual sex might become a problem for Brad. It might become a problem for her, too. Maybe it already was.
Poppy gave up her bedroom and started sleeping in the basement with Brad. It all happened without discussion, as natural as a change in the weather. They planned meals together, cooked, and spent long hours at Boswell Books, the neighborhood bookstore, leaning against each other as they read on the big, comfy canoodling couch. They laughed as they stumbled home from drinking at Von Trier, the neighborhood German bar, and talked constantly when they went on long walks.
He was smart and confident, and he didn’t smell like a wet suit. She liked that he didn’t put pressure on her to be any different from the way she was. Most unsettling was her feeling that they were becoming her parents. They lived together in the house with the same closeness, the same ease. They were spread out on his bed, lit by the dim green light of her father’s antique desk lamp. His foot bent inward at the ankle. He wasn’t self-conscious of his foot anymore, or anything else, which made her wonder if he’d had lots of lovers or just one who had been particularly accepting. She liked the softness of his red chest hair, the rough calluses on his fingertips, and his sturdy presence. She felt he could absorb her.
Poppy said, “Don’t you ever want to leave?”
“Leave where? Your house?”
“No, Milwaukee. I spent my whole childhood wanting to get out of here, and you’ve never left.”
“I like it. Besides, where would I go?”
“Anywhere. There are lots of places.”
“Yeah, but my business is here. My parents. My friends. People know me, I know people. Beer’s cheap. I make a point of seeing the lake every day. The people are nice. This is a great city. I can afford to live here, and Chicago is just a train ride away. It’s home. It’s easy.”
“Isn’t that the problem?”
“What?”
“That it’s easy.”
“Why make things hard?” He slowly ran his finger down the bridge of her nose.
“It’s hard to explain.” Poppy tried not to think of Brad’s complacency as a problem. Was it really so bad to feel that way, to be released from the restless energy she felt?
Brad said, “I don’t feel like I need to run around the world chasing after something I’ve already got.”
“I’m not chasing anything.”
“Chase me.” He kissed her. “I’m all the adventure you need.” He eased his hand down the elastic waistband of her pants and started to work his magic. Her back arched and, before she knew it, their mini argument was all but forgotten. Sweaty and relieved, they lay side by side. Poppy put her hand in front of the bare lightbulb in the lamp and waved her fingers around, casting shadows on the far wall. A rabbit, a fox, a bird. Animals in motion, running away. She remembered the game she and Ann and Michael used to play where they’d put all the animals together. What did they call it? Ani-something. Bird, rabbit, fox: a “babbitox.”
Poppy said, “So when you hung out with my dad, what did you guys talk about?” She couldn’t look at Brad when she asked. It was too hard; she was afraid she might start to cry.
“I don’t know, we shot the shit about a lot of stuff.”
She laughed. “He was good at talking about a lot of stuff.” She found a path in the hair on his chest, and ran the tip of her finger through it, along the dip in his sternum, over the gentle mound of his emerging beer belly. “Can you be more specific?”
“I don’t know. You know what he was like. He’d go off on music, politics. One minute he’d talk about colonizing Mars, the next he’d tell you about some show he liked on reality television. He liked to hang out at the shop. He’d pick up old bike parts and bring them to me and I’d weld them for him. He has an awesome bike. You should check it out. I saw it in the garage.”
“Sounds like you knew him pretty well.”
“Yeah, I guess. But he was also one of those guys that could talk your ear off about anything without talking much about himself.”
“Did he…” Poppy smiled, embarrassed. “Did he talk about me?”
“Sure. Yeah, sure he did.”
She drew back a long slug of beer, bracing herself for what Brad might say. “And?”
“And he thought you were great, of course.”
She pounded his shoulder. “Come on, what did he really say?”
“I think he wished you and Ann lived closer. He was a teacher, he spent his whole life devoted to kids, but his own were pretty far away.”
“Ouch.”
“I didn’t mean for that to sound bad. It’s OK. He understood. I think he admired you for being so independent, like your mom. He was probably even jealous of your freedom to move around. He said he kept track of you on a map in his classroom, did you know that? He put a pushpin in every place you ever lived. It made him proud.”
“I should have called more. I should have visited more ofte
n.”
“You were living your life.”
“But I only came home once in over ten years. One time. And only for a few days.”
“He raised you to live your life. Besides, he didn’t want you to worry about your mom.”
“My mom? Why would I worry about my mom?”
Brad rubbed his hand over her shoulder as if she were a precious wood instrument he was about to play. “It was hard on him.”
“What?”
“You know.” Brad pointed at his forehead. “That she was starting to lose it.”
Poppy sat up and pushed Brad’s arm off of her. “What are you talking about? My mom wasn’t losing it.”
Suddenly, Brad’s face took on the expression of someone who’d accidentally let someone know about their surprise party.
“My mom was smart. Scary smart. She could speak four languages and play the viola. You should have heard her recite poetry. She read every book in the library. She wasn’t losing it.”
“I’m really sorry. I thought you knew.”
“There was nothing to know.”
“She got lost once, for two days. I helped your dad look for her. They found her under the North Avenue Bridge wandering the Oak Leaf Trail.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re making this up.”
“Why would I do that? God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think I would be the first person to tell you.”
Her mother, who knew every twist and turn of the Milwaukee River, who walked all over the East Side, couldn’t possibly have gotten lost there. No, no. “She was fine.”
“That’s why I moved in, Poppy. Your dad wanted me to help keep an eye on her. It came on fast.”
“No!” She wished she could cover her ears.
“Haven’t you noticed all the prescriptions lined up on the kitchen shelf? What do you think those were for? Donepezil, galantamine.”
Yes, Poppy had seen the prescriptions, but she hadn’t checked the labels, in case they were pills she’d be tempted to take herself.
“There are crossword-puzzle and sudoku books on every surface. Poppy, she hadn’t worked in almost a year.”
The Second Home Page 22