The Summer We Fell Apart

by Robin Antalek

  The steep, sloped roof was covered in so much foliage and layers upon layers of pine boughs that at first it appeared thatched. There was a broken arbor that had once held a gate, and parts of a picket fence that led to the front door. The windows, those that were not broken, had multiple leaded panes in a diamond pattern with an old iron hardware that latched in the center in the shape of an S.

  Naomi rattled off the specifics from the sheet in her lap: bungalow built in 1939, two bedrooms, one bath, pool, and a pool house. When she got to the part about the pool, she snorted and then looked at Kate and apologized.

  But Kate wasn’t paying any attention. She had her hand on the car door handle and stepped out onto what was once a lawn. Rose bushes lined the path and twined across the stones as she stepped over them. Several times she needed to bend down and untangle a prickly branch from the cuff of her pants before she continued on toward the door.

  Once she was there, she turned the large iron knob that barely fit in the palm of her hand and was surprised when the door swung open. It was a thick Dutch door, painted black, but now the wood was dull, buffed, and faded like driftwood, and the top latch was rusted shut, so after a brief struggle she gave up trying to separate the doors.

  Despite the broken windows that should have supplied adequate ventilation, the air inside the house was like stepping into a litter box. It was obvious from the shredded upholstery of an abandoned wing chair and the multiple droppings on the tiled floors that the house was inhabited, just not by humans.

  The room was larger than she had expected; at least twenty feet from end to end. Kate looked down, careful where she stepped. Beneath her feet and the filth were the most marvelous Mexican tiles. She took a water bottle from her bag and spilled some onto the floor. The fanciful patterns were in salmon, cream, and a deeper red with a touch of brown. The walls, she could tell, were once painted a deep salmon as well, although the plaster was flaking so badly they looked like they were infected with a bad case of dermatitis. At the north side of the room, by the wing chair, the tile continued around a simple fireplace and black iron sconces dangled by wires, as if someone had tried unsuccessfully to rip them from the wall.

  The main room opened into a dining room with leaded-glass doors that exposed the garden beyond. Mostly, the panes of glass were broken and in their place was wildly overgrown clumps of bougainvillea that pushed pale green tendrils yet to unfurl through the empty framework and into the room and pressed against the remaining intact pieces of glass with leaves. The leaves were so large they looked like something from the plant in Jack and the Beanstalk. Kate found herself having nothing to compare the house to save the occasional children’s fairy tale. Perhaps the nostalgia was part of the lure of the place.

  Next to the dining room was the kitchen, but they couldn’t walk very far into the room because a large portion of the ceiling had fallen in. Kate looked up, expecting to see sky, and instead she saw rafters from the attic. She supposed that might be a good thing, although she had nothing to go on other than having lived in an old house. Unable to go into the kitchen, they also couldn’t get to the other side of the house, where they assumed were the two bedrooms and the bath.

  Naomi had her hand covering her mouth and nose the entire time they were inside. Now, with her remaining free hand, she gestured wildly for Kate to leave the house. Once they were back outside, she let her hand drop and took in a massively large breath before she spoke.

  “Oh my God,” she cried. “It’s worse than I thought.”

  Kate caught Naomi’s expression, but instead of stopping to respond she walked with purpose down the drive. As she picked her way around the house to the pool area, she already knew the house was hers, and that was even before she saw the tiny cottage on the far side of the pool. The pool itself, identifiable only because the paperwork on the property claimed there was one, looked like it had formed its own ecosystem inside the concrete basin after years and years of neglect.

  From behind her, Naomi said, “That must be the guesthouse.”

  Kate stepped over the trunk of a needle-thin pine that had fallen and split in half across the walkway. Actually, the proliferation of piles upon piles of sticks and twigs made the yard look like a series of abandoned campfires in a fantastical gnarled forest where trolls ruled. Sensing Naomi’s hesitation, she picked up and moved the largest of the spindle-sized pieces and then cleared a path with her feet. Ironically, unlike the main house, the door to the pool house was locked, and Kate stepped aside and waited impatiently for Naomi to punch in the code.

  While she worked, Naomi mumbled something about this being the place they stored the bodies and hadn’t Kate seen any horror movies as a child? Now was the part in the movie when all the smart people got back in their cars and drove away.

  As the padlock fell apart in her hands, she looked at Kate and said, “Last chance to run.”

  Kate laughed as she gently maneuvered Naomi aside for a grip on the door handle. She needed to be the first to see the space, before Naomi could say anything and color her impressions. The thing that hit her right away was the sunlight streaming in from above. She looked up, again, like in the kitchen, half-expecting to see the sky. However, this time she was pleasantly surprised by a skylight. And not just any skylight: one without a single broken pane of glass. The room was another deceptively long rectangle, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves at one end and a fireplace nearly identical to the one in the main house at the other. Beyond the main room, there was a rudimentary kitchen alcove with an old turquoise refrigerator, a two-burner stove top, and a skirted sink with a cast-iron drain board attached. Kate twisted a spigot to see if any water would come out, but all she got was a burst of air that popped and echoed against the porcelain basin. Above the sink was a window that looked out onto a gnarled tree so loaded with lemons that they grew double, even triple from the branches, the skin of the fruit stretched tight, so swollen with juice that the pointed tips of the lowest-hanging ones rested on the ground. Just past the kitchen was a tiny black-and-white-tiled bathroom with a claw-foot tub and a minuscule square of a window above eye level, which opened to a closet-size room with another window and a soiled twin-size mattress abandoned on the floor.

  Kate returned to the living room. Unlike the main house, this building was actually inhabitable. There were no broken windows, and the only glass was a collection of empty liquor bottles on the bookshelves. The place had been cleaned out except for another dirty mattress without benefit of a frame on the multicolored tile floor and a yellowed copy of Life magazine from 1956, with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner in The King and I on the cover.

  Kate had it all figured out by the time Naomi caught up to her. She could live here while the main house was getting worked on. That way she could get out of the hotel and supervise the construction at the same time. Never mind that her commute to the office was going to be twice as long as it was now. She would get the little house wired for Internet so that she could telecommute if need be. Surely, that would be doable. That café in town had had wireless, as had most of the others on that main street area, and that was less than two miles from here.

  When she turned around to tell Naomi her idea, she was surprised that the Realtor was not looking at her with a horrified expression. She shrugged. “Okay…so this place at least would probably NOT get condemned.”

  Kate raised a brow. “You need to work on your sales pitch.”

  “Ha! I’m feeling like nothing more than a prostitute here…”

  “I want it.”

  Naomi sighed. “Kate, do you even have any idea what kind of money it would take to start from scratch?”

  “I have money.”

  “Okay.” Naomi bit her bottom lip. “So you have money. But I’m thinking you don’t really have time. You need someone, a contractor, someone that can be your eyes and ears twenty-four/seven. Those people are hard to come by—at least the trustworthy ones.”

  Kate was ready to acknowledge she wasn
’t entirely thinking straight, but was she crazy for thinking of her brother Finn? He was the first person who popped into her mind. When he was working, large-scale construction but especially carpentry were his areas of expertise. What if she brought Finn out here, gave him a place to live, and he turned his life around by bringing this house back to life? What if? She closed her eyes again and saw the four of them lined up on the bank of the swimming hole, poised to toss their father’s ashes. Finn had worn a suit so old and ill-fitting that something in Kate had broken when she saw him. He’d reeked of mouthwash, she supposed, to hide the booze. And his face was raw and nicked to shit because he had obviously taken a razor to it for the first time in months. She didn’t know whether to turn away from him or hug him. Then, when they had gone over to their father’s depressing apartment and Finn had asked them if it was okay if he had Dad’s old leather jacket, Kate had left and gone outside because she couldn’t bear to see him put it on. Amy and George had looked at her like she was devoid of any feeling, when in reality she would rather have joined their father in the casket than let them know how hard it was for her to see Finn like that. She would wager a guess that it wasn’t out of sentimental reasons that he took that jacket.

  Naomi had gone over to the bookshelves and propped open the folder on the house. “You could probably get it for way under half a million…it is an estate—and it seems the original owner has been dead over a decade, I have no idea even if the heirs are alive.”

  Kate was already moved in: she didn’t even have to try that hard when she imagined Eli out by the lemon tree, filling a bowl with the fruit and then coming inside to make the limoncello recipe their landlady in Florence had taught Kate all those years ago. And she wanted to go back. Oh God, she would give anything to go back.

  Naomi was right, and so the dollar amount Kate paid for a dream was nothing in comparison to its metaphorical worth. On her way to the airport to pick up her brother, she rationalized that the money she was about to dump into the house along with the money it cost to purchase it was akin to all the money she could have wasted on therapy over the years if she had gone.

  Kate had been mildly surprised that it had taken so much to convince Finn to come west. As far as she knew, he had gone back to Boston after their father’s funeral only to find out that he had been replaced on the job. He’d been living off a friend who hadn’t minded, or so Finn believed, so he at first had turned Kate down. But then, a week later, he called collect to say his friend’s new girlfriend wanted him off the couch and he would come to Los Angeles after all. But he wouldn’t promise her anything. Maybe it was his pride, who knew? But again, Kate had to stifle the urge to either back away or take him in when he finally got here.

  She agreed to meet him at the luggage carousel, and there was a moment, when a glut of people pushed forth from a gate and surrounded her at the previously empty area, when she felt a little panic. What if Finn cashed in the ticket and went on a bender? What would she do?

  Then she saw him. He was hunched over, studying the ground as he walked, an olive-colored duffel bag slung over his shoulder. His hair, long at the funeral, was shorn close to his head, as if he were ready to enter boot camp. Save for the unusual tint to his skin, gaunt cheeks, and wasted frame, Metallica T-shirt and faded Levi’s, he could be a soldier on leave. Or a crack addict fresh from rehab. Even so, with his bone structure more exposed, there was an uncommon beauty to his fragility, which made him stand out more than blend in with the crowds.

  She stayed perfectly still, waiting for him to look up and see her. When he was almost upon her and still hadn’t looked up, she said his name loudly. More loudly than she intended but it worked. He stopped and brought his chin up slightly and she saw from the slight movement of his eyeballs that he connected his name to her voice, but still he didn’t speak, just continued to move forward until she could smell the peppermint gum on his breath.

  “Hey,” Kate said, reaching out to touch his shoulder. She pulled back her hand too fast when she felt something sharp. Something sharp that she realized was his shoulder blade. How in the world was he healthy enough to work construction? “How was the trip?”

  Finn let the duffel slide off his shoulder to the ground, not bothering to turn around and see if there was room. A girl behind him called him an asshole as she tripped. His cheeks flushed and all of a sudden he seemed embarrassed. He turned away from Kate and picked up the bag and mumbled, “Where’s the car?”

  Kate gestured to the left and he followed her through the crowd and out the double doors into California sunshine. Finn squinted, and Kate wished she had remembered to pick him up a pair of sunglasses. She was shocked to see that his skin looked even bluer out here than it had inside.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I had peanuts…and gum.”

  Kate laughed but Finn didn’t seem to think his answer was funny. They found the car and she navigated the parking lot and the freeway entrance in silence. Please don’t let this be a mistake, she said over and over to herself as she sneaked looks at Finn hunkered down in the passenger seat, a hand thrown across his eyes to shield the sun.

  Finally, he said, “Stop, Kate. Please.”

  They were in the middle of four lanes of traffic. If he meant stop the car, there was no way. She looked at him, alarmed, and he rolled his eyes in response.

  “STOP. THAT.”

  “Looking at you?”

  He sighed. “Feeling sorry for me.”

  “I don’t,” she half-lied.

  “Okay. Then stop looking at me like you think I’m going to break open a beer from my duffel.”

  “Finn,” Kate said as she hit the steering wheel with her palms. “Why did you come here if you’re so suspicious and contentious? I really need you. Really.”

  He slumped farther than she thought possible into the seat and mumbled into his collarbone, “We’ll see, we’ll see.”

  Finn didn’t speak again until Kate pulled into Shelley’s driveway. He roused himself enough to study his surroundings. “This is the house?” he asked.

  Kate looked through the windshield at Shelley’s and the artist’s house. It was a mid-century modern ranch, all one-level glass and wood with a slightly Asian feel. To get to the front door, you had to walk on a bridge over lily pads and gold and black spotted koi.

  “No,” Kate said as she opened her door. “A client’s.” She went around to the trunk and retrieved the lone box of paper she saved from the original five Shelley had given her. Inside the box, she had divided and labeled the artist’s assorted crap, not even worthy of a memoir or an addendum to an obit. She figured as long as she was out here to show Finn the house, she might as well return this junk to Shelley.

  With the box in her hands, she stopped by Finn’s window. He’d lowered it down before she had turned off the engine and was resting his head on top of his elbow. Kate found herself hoping that a little sun would change the alarming shade of his skin. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Okay,” he mumbled into the crook of his arm.

  Shelley took forever answering the door and Kate was uncomfortable in her dark suit; she was still dressing for D.C. and hadn’t yet adjusted to casual Los Angeles. She shifted the box of paper from hip to hip, all the while worrying over Finn in the car and having to go back to the office tonight. She glanced back only once and saw that Finn was in the exact same position as when she had left him. When the door finally opened and she tried to step inside with the box, Shelley, like she possessed a sixth sense as well as double-jointed hips, peered around Kate and stared at her car.

  “Who’d you bring?” she asked.

  “Oh, oh. That’s my brother,” Kate floundered, caught off guard.

  “Brother?”

  “Yes.” Kate nodded. Her head and the cords in her neck were killing her. “I just picked him up at the airport.” For the first time since Shelley answered the door, Kate realized the woman was wearing a black tank-top wi
thout a bra and stretch pants. Her breasts were small, nearly like a boy’s, and her body was surprisingly toned. It was definitely not the body that the artist so lustily described in his menu memoirs. Although when you’re with someone as long as the artist had been with Shelley, who knew the difference between fantasy and reality? With her gray hair back in a ponytail, she looked younger by twenty years than she had the first time Kate had met her. Her face was shiny with sweat and she gave off the odor of something sweet, but Kate couldn’t identify it.

  “It’s rude to make him stay in the car,” Shelley said.

  “Oh. Well. Then I’ll just hand this to you here and I’ll be off.” Kate could only imagine how pissed off Ben was going to be when he found this out.

  Shelley opened the door wider. “Why don’t you come in?” She jutted her chin out in Finn’s direction. “Go get your brother. It’s hot and I made sun tea.”

  “Sun tea? Really?” Kate found herself repeating this as if the idea of tea brewing in a jar in a sunny spot was miraculous.

  There seemed to be a sixty-second delay between the time Kate motioned to him and the time Finn comprehended what she wanted him to do. Eventually, he got out of the car and shuffled toward the door.

  “Not too quick, is he?” Shelley muttered as she turned and went ahead of Kate and Finn. Kate noticed that Shelley’s rear view looked more age-appropriate. Low and flat, her ass cheeks seemed to be born from the backs of her thighs.

  Finn closed the door behind him. Inside the house it was blessedly cool. Kate heard Finn take a deep breath. She couldn’t bear to turn around but she hoped he was at least standing up straight and looking forward, not down.

  They were in the room where Kate and Shelley had met the last time. This was where several of the artist’s large, presumably famous paintings were hung. Today on the floor was a purple yoga mat, which explained the sweat, and next to that a thin reed of incense, which explained Kate’s instant headache from the cloyingly sweet smell. Shelley picked up a towel off a chair and wiped her face as Kate set down the box on the floor between them before taking a seat. She assumed Finn would join her, but instead he wandered in front of the painting with the blue-green blob being birthed from a beige blob. In the upper right corner of the painting, a yellow blob was either descending or ascending, depending upon your view.