Etiquette for the End of the World

by Jeanne Martinet

  She had not told her brother or sister-in-law she was coming. Surprising him was risky, she knew. What if they had guests? What if Stuart slammed the door in her face, or Nancy did? But there seemed to Tess too much space to bridge, too much ground to recover, for a phone call at this point. She needed to see him face-to-face.

  It was a little after four when Tess pulled up in front of the house. The weather-beaten old wooden “101 Philadelphia St.” sign, carved in the shape of a bluefish (it really just looked like a generic two-foot-long fish, but anyone who had ever known of Dr. Eliot’s passion for bluefishing knew it was supposed to be a bluefish), was still hanging from rusty hooks at the edge of the porch roof. Stuart and Tess had commissioned it from a local sign maker for their father’s seventieth birthday. She got out of the car, leaving her suitcase on the backseat. If this didn’t go well. she wanted to be able to make a quick getaway.

  It felt odd for Tess to be knocking on the door of a house where she had spent every summer of her life. Through the plate glass window she could see her favorite white wicker rocking chair, sitting where it always had. It even had the blue throw pillow on it she liked, the one with the whale design. For a split second, she had the feeling that a childhood version of herself was going to answer the door and greet her.

  A figure emerged from the dimness of the house onto the front porch. It was Nancy. Her straight blonde hair was back in a ponytail; she was in khakis and a polo shirt.

  “Yes … ?” She squinted through the screen door for a second. Tess held her breath. “Is that … Tess?!” Nancy slid back the door so abruptly it came off the tracks. It had a tendency to do that; it used to drive their father crazy.

  Nancy ignored the off-kilter door, grabbed Tess, and hugged her. “It’s so good to see you, Tess! What are you doing here? How did you get here? Has Stuart seen you? Oh, Tess, he’s going to be so glad.”

  Enormously relieved at this reception, Tess stepped up into the porch and regarded Nancy. She had forgotten just how young and pretty she was. This was Stuart’s second marriage; he was forty-two and Nancy was only thirty-three. She had big, round cornflower blue eyes and millions of freckles she was always trying to cover, unsuccessfully for the most part, with makeup.

  “He’s out in the garage, cleaning his clubs … . Do you want me to get him, or do you …” She looked inquiringly into Tess’s face, one foot out the door. Her eyes were moist.

  “Nancy, don’t you cry or I’ll lose it,” Tess said, laughing, feeling her eyes already blurring. “No, I’ll … Let me just put my purse down and I’ll go give Stuart a heart attack.” That did not come out right, she thought.

  Tess made her way around to the back of the house. She could see her brother just inside the half-open garage door. (The old garage had always looked more like a barn than a garage; the doors swung open on hinges, like the doors of a house.) The portable radio was playing a Steely Dan song, to which he was singing along, very softly. Stuart was too responsible to risk bothering the neighbors, even in the afternoon. She didn’t want to go in without warning. “Stuart? ... Hey, Stu?” she called tentatively from outside, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

  “Yes? What?” he answered, and the music went off. She opened the door a bit and went in. He squinted for a minute at her backlit figure.

  “Hello? Who is it?”

  “Hi, Stu.”

  “Tess?” Her stomach was flip-flopping, and tears welled up in her eyes.

  He was standing in the middle of the workshop part of the garage, where all the tools were kept, holding one end of a golf club. The other end was immersed in what looked like a trash can of soapy water that had a bunch of PVC pipes around its edges, the kind of pipes their father used to use for sand spikes when he went fishing. Leave it to Stuart to invent a special contraption like this for washing his clubs, instead of just using a bucket and sponge like everyone else in the world. He was in khakis and a polo shirt, just like Nancy. His light brown hair had a few more strands of gray in it and he had put on a few pounds.

  “What … How did … ?” He was trying to figure out what was going on, Tess could tell. “Where’d you come from? Did Nancy know you were …” They both just stood where they were for a long moment. Then the realization that she was really there seemed to dawn on him. He made a sudden awkward move toward her, and in the process ran smack into some golf clubs that were propped up against the Peg-Boarded utility wall. With a tremendous clanging and crashing, a myriad of hammers, wrenches, bicycle pumps and fishing reels all came tumbling down in a chain reaction. Tess and Stuart yelped, dodged a couple of falling objects, and then started laughing.

  “What’s happening out there? Are you two killing each other?” came the sound of Nancy’s worried voice from the house.

  After a dinner on the screened-in back porch, during which they had talked mostly about the house in a general, cautious way—the new hot water heater, the new neighbors next door in their brand-new, horrid McMansion, the new leak in the roof—Nancy urged Tess and Stuart to go out for some sibling alone time. “I’ll take care of the dishes. Get out there before you miss the evening light.”

  Although it had been a hot day, the evening was mild. Carrying light jackets, Tess and her brother walked the block and a half to the ocean in silence. Now that the initial reunion was over Tess felt the tension resurfacing and did not know how to begin to fix it. She knew they were going to have to talk about the will, the contention between them, their father. The breeze rustled through the pine trees, the noise soothing her nerves somewhat. But as they walked past the old frog pond—the pond where the frogs mimicked the screams of the kids on the Funland rides so much it had always been like a funny horror movie—still they said nothing to each other.

  Tess and Stuart crossed over the boardwalk and took off their shoes to walk on the white sand. The evening was Tess’s favorite time on the beach—the water was silvery and the sky was the color of salmon. Their mother had always called this the “pink hour.”

  “Hey, Stuart,” said Tess, breathing in the salt air. “Let’s go sit on the lifeguard chair, do you want to? Should we?” And she took off over the sand at a jog. After a moment’s hesitation, Stuart followed.

  The guards always dragged the big stands back from the surf at the end of the day, so at night they were halfway between the water and the boardwalk. Tess started to climb up the side slats, which were spaced about two feet apart.

  “How did I ever do this?” she said, struggling, trying to span the wide gap between the boards.

  Stuart was the first up, and reached over to pull her up the last rung. Just that one action, the familiar feeling of his strong arms helping her up to the top, made everything better. Soon they were seated atop the tall white chair, looking out at the horizon, watching the other beachcombers and shell seekers walking at the water’s edge.

  Tess and Stuart had spent many evenings—and, when they were teenagers, late nights after their parents were asleep—perched up on one of these chairs. “There’s not as much room up here as there used to be,” said Tess.

  “Yeah, they must be making these chairs smaller,” grinned Stuart.

  Tess looked north, up the boardwalk. The arcades and T-shirt stores and the red Dolly’s Taffy sign looked the same as ever, and out over the ocean, a little to the east, she could see the lights from Cape May making a glow on the darkening water. When she was very little, Tess thought that glow was a mermaid island way out in the sea—not realizing that because of the shape of the coastline, the magical land she was seeing was actually New Jersey.

  “So,” Stuart said, after they had been sitting there for a while, staring out at the surf. Then there was a pause that lasted about a minute. Stuart was definitely not good at any kind of conversation that involved complicated emotions. “It’s good ... I’m glad you came.

  “Me too, Stu.”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but you … I wasn’t sure how …” He looked off to t
he south and stretched back into the chair, trying to be casual. “We missed you at Christmas.”

  “I know. I was still mad. Sorry.”

  Stuart grabbed the back of her neck with one hand and gave it a quick affectionate squeeze. Then he leaned back again and looked up at the sky. The stars were beginning to come out. “I realize it wasn’t fair, what Dad did. He never was really … I don’t know. Nancy says sometimes I’m exactly like him.”

  Tess managed a small smile and looked out at the waves. “Well, maybe not exactly.”

  Stuart looked at her and chuckled in an embarrassed kind of way. “Tess, I had already decided before you came. I’ve told Harrison” (Harrison was the family lawyer), “I want to sign the papers over to you for half the stocks, and half of the other money that was left.”

  Tears filled Tess’s eyes and her throat constricted so that all she could manage was a quiet “Okay. Thank you, Stuart.”

  Stuart’s jaw clenched. “I should probably have done this right away but Harrison kept reciting things about the deceased’s ‘stated wishes’ and ‘irrevocable disposition of property,’ and I … I don’t know what happened. Nancy says it was my way of grieving, that I just became super-passive. I don’t know … . But I do know that Dad wasn’t thinking clearly. After Mom died he was so angry all the time … but he would never have done it if you hadn’t had that fight. Why did you have to have that fight?” Stuart shoved her a little with his shoulder, as if to say “You dummy!” It was his attempt at levity.

  That horrible fight had been no laughing matter. It had happened two and a half years ago, at Christmas, one year after her mother died. Her father had started teasing her about not being married; she had gotten pissed at that and then he was suddenly, out of the blue (or so it seemed to Tess), shouting at the top of his lungs at her for “quitting a goddamn real job at Samson-Gold” when she could have just done that “scribbling at the paper” on the side. Then he had called her a bad daughter for not moving home to take care of him after her mother died. They had not spoken after that for a few months, and neither of them ever referred to it again, but there had always been a coolness between them from then on.

  “You know Dad didn’t mean any of those things he said,” Stuart told her. “But why did you have to always react to him, take the bait?”

  “Well, why did Dad put the bait out only for me?” snapped Tess. “He never treated you that way. He never found fault with you. You know that. You had, like, a suit of invincibility.”

  “Be that as it may, that night was different. I never saw him get that mad at anyone. Nancy thinks it might have actually been some mental lapse, like some kind of dementia, a precursor to his illness.”

  Tess laughed ruefully. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could believe the only way anyone could yell at us was if they were mentally ill? But, actually I have wondered about that, now I have had enough time to process it. I wish I could have understood how unlike him that was, and just forgiven him. I mean, he might have been critical, but he was never a screamer. I don’t think you can be a dentist and be a screamer, can you? I remember him as being calm all the time. You inherited that, Stuart. I on the other hand didn’t.”

  Stuart was silent for a moment. Then he laid his hand on her forearm. “Tess, I have some news.” She looked at him. He had a tender look on his face Tess had never seen before. “Our family is about to get bigger. Nancy is pregnant.” He beamed and for a minute she thought he was going to cry.

  Tess felt a rush of excitement and joy, mixed with envy. But she pushed the envy aside. She was going to be an aunt! Stuart had always wanted kids, which was one of the things that had broken up his first marriage—Patricia hadn’t wanted any. “Oh, congratulations, Stu. That is so great.”

  “Thanks. But, Tess, about the house. The house here.”

  Uh-oh. Somehow from his tone Tess could tell old Harrison didn’t prepare the same kind of papers for this item.

  “Dad set it up so the house could not be split. He was pretty adamant about keeping the house in the family—“

  “You mean in your family.” Tess felt the old hurt surge up again.

  “Tess, it’s almost impossible to legally share a house.”

  “Says who?”

  “You know you can come down anytime you want, you’re always welcome—Nancy agrees.”

  “Oh, she does, does she?” Tess felt like storming off, but she realized she had no idea how to get down from the chair.

  “Tess! I did not write the damn will!” She could feel his frustration. He felt really guilty; she could hear it in his voice.

  Suddenly Tess remembered Charlotte saying, “You’re not mad at your brother. You’re mad at your father.” And Tess knew it was true. Stuart had been under no obligation to give her anything, and now she was getting half the money. And Tess didn’t care that much about owning the house. It was only a deed; it wasn’t as if either of them would ever sell it. Besides, who knew if this beach would even exist by next summer? She checked inside herself and found that worn old box of jealousy empty. And when she realized she truly no longer cared, she felt as light as the sandpipers skittering along at the edge of the surf.

  “You know what? It’s fine.” Stuart looked confused, and she laughed. She rubbed his shoulder. “So is it a boy? I think Charlotte was foretelling that for you and Nancy when I had my birthday tarot reading.”

  “We decided not to find out the sex in advance … . You went to Charlotte’s? How’s that wacky old broad doing? Man, you’re brave to go into that house. I wouldn’t go in there.”

  “Stuart! There’s nothing wrong with Charlotte. She’s just a little eccentric, that’s all. God, you can be such a stuffed shirt … .”

  He grinned impishly at her. “Okay, just tell me this. Did you have any salad, Tessie?”

  This sent them into gales of laughter. Tess laughed so hard her stomach hurt. After a whole year of not talking and not sharing the same old family jokes, it was like all the stored-up laughter was coming forth at once.

  Suddenly a bright light zigzagging across the sand caught Tess’s eye. She realized it was a flashlight.

  “Hey! You two, up there!” The voice had that intimidating southern Delaware drawl Tess remembered most of the state troopers having, slow and mean. A voice that said, “Y’all don’t bother telling me your story, ’cuz I sure as hell ain’t listening.” Stuart and Tess used to call these Delaware state troopers “beach Nazis” when they were kids. After Memorial Day, Rehoboth had rent-a-cops, who were usually younger—and always nicer. But Memorial Day was still a week away.

  “Do y’all know that that stand is city property? And that sitting up there is against city ordinance? I’m going to ask you to dismount that chair right now, if you please.” Tess scrambled behind her to find her jacket and make sure her cell phone had not dropped out of the pocket. “Sir, ma’am, right now! And I’ll need to see some ID.”

  Oh my god, Tess thought. This is getting to be quite a habit with me, being in trouble with the authorities.

  It was the hat that always made them seem so over the top. It was big and round at the top, with a stiff wide brim. A very serious hat. The officer shined his flashlight into their faces. Tess was a little nervous, but she also felt a giggle surfacing. Especially when she tried to clamber down and had obvious trouble, like an old person, and Stuart had to practically catch her to keep her from falling.

  “Y’all seem way too old for this kind of behavior. So I’m going to let you go with a warning this time. I could give you a Breathalyzer, but …”

  Tess wanted to ask “Were we going that fast?” but she restrained herself.

  “Officer,” said Stuart, sticking out his hand, “I’m Stuart Eliot and this is my sister, Tess. We own a house up here on Philadelphia Street. Sorry if we were doing anything illegal—we were just looking at the water.”

  Stuart’s words sank in: “We own a house.” “We,” as in both Stuart and Tess.

  “T
hank you, officer!” Tess smiled so brightly at the man that it disarmed him.

  After he left, Tess and Stuart walked along the beach south toward Dewey. “So when did it become illegal to sit in the lifeguard stand?” asked Tess.

  “Hell if I know,” said Stuart, “Though, there have been a rash of vandals moving them as pranks.” He sounded disgusted. “But it’s so ridiculous—all the rules there are now. I swear sometimes it feels like it’s the end of the world.”

  Tess put her head in her hands and made a wailing sound.

  “What, what?” Stuart wanted to know, putting his hand on her back and laughing at her.

  “It’s just that I never realized how much people say that, about the end of the world,” she said. “And now it has this whole other meaning for me.”

  As they walked along the shore, with the icy cold surf running over their bare feet, Tess told her brother the entire story of WOOSH and Etiquette for the End of the World, from the moment she had gotten fired from her column up to the recent meeting with the creepy Alfred and the slit in her coat.

  “One day I think WOOSH is not going to leave the end of the world up to fate, that they are going to try to cause it; and the next day I am positive I am just being paranoid about this NSA computer bug thing.”

  Stuart, who had been exclaiming in amazement throughout her story, now was quiet. Tess waited for her brother the biochemist to tell her the whole thing was impossible.

  “I don’t know,” he said carefully.

  “Oh god!” Tess moaned. “What do you mean you don’t know?!”

  They were just passing the big dunes near Silver Lake where they used to play Sahara Desert so long ago, with dish towels tied around their heads. They would find hermit crabs by poking dune grass down into their holes, and when the crabs came scrambling out, they would chase them down the beach, pretending they were going to eat them out of starvation.