Stay with Me

by Sandra Rodriguez Barron

  “Oh man,” I say, shaking my head. “You went from high class to no class.”

  “I know,” she gushes. “Isn’t it great?”

  From behind me, Adrian shouts his sometimes-nickname for me, “Flaco!” He slaps me hard on the back, almost knocking me over. His luggage consists of a guitar case and a duffel bag, which he puts down to embrace me. What can I say about my ace? The bastard’s as talented with the guitar as he is with the chicas. As his brother, it’s my job to keep him humble, so I look him up and down and shake my head. “You look like shit.”

  “Yeah? I stink too,” he says and shoves his armpit to my face. I catch a whiff of expensive cologne, but I lean back, coughing and wagging a hand in front of my face. “Don’t they have soap in Miami?” I grumble and turn my head. No one enjoys fraternal insults—directed at Adrian, that is—more than our brother Ray. He laughs like a kid on a playground.

  “Quick picture!” Julia shouts, holding up a camera.

  “Wait! Our hats!” someone shouts. They scramble off in different directions and rummage through bags. Ray slips a Phoenix Suns hat on backward, Holly pulls out a canvas fishing-style bucket hat, and Taina half-disappears under the wide shade of a straw belle hat. Adrian is already wearing a red bandana on his head like a biker, or a pirate. Ray explains by pointing at my head. “It’s our way of showing support. You know, for your chemo and all,” he says, then looks down. “We’re not ready to shave our heads just yet.”

  I shake my head. “That’s so nineties after-school special.”

  “I told you guys it’s passé,” Taina scolds as she smoothes the front of her sundress. We crowd together, and Julia snaps the first photo of the trip, with the old house looming in the background. When I peer into the camera’s preview screen, I see that Adrian has his hands folded into a gangsta pose, Ray’s making horns over my head, and Tai is sticking her tongue out.

  I ask Julia to take them up to the house. I point to the water taxi and she nods and takes a couple of bags. I watch them lug their suitcases and boxes of food and liquor up the stone steps. “Need help?” I call out feebly.

  “We’re fine!” Taina says as she grabs the handle of her leather trunk with both hands and drags it across the crumbling walkway leading up to the house. The boatman from the water taxi runs over to help her. I watch from the bottom of the steps.

  Back on the dock, I thank him for his repeated offers to be of service. It’s easy to change the subject on a Connecticuter, especially boaters. Just mention the weather and they’ll go on about it. When he’s done rattling off the forecast for the next month, I ask if my clan tipped him, and he holds up a hand and says, “Plenty.”

  All the while, I’m trying to remember his name, which starts with an “A” (Albert? Anthony? Andrew? Hell, I’ve known him for six years). His name is gone. He pulls away and I wave to him while my other fist is curled into a ball. I step off the dock onto the beach and pick up a handful of smooth, heavy rocks and start tossing them hard, one by one. They sail across the water then fall, falup, falup, falup. They disappear into the water along with my anxiety. I put a few of the rocks in my pockets for the sake of convenience, figuring that it won’t be long before I need to throw something again. Then, remembering Julia’s words, I drop them back onto the sand. She’s right. I have to control my impulses. The last thing I want is to take my frustration out on anyone—or on the house.

  I catch up with the group just as Julia begins to give her famous Griswold House tour. It’s both tradition and a measure of security, that everyone be aware of its history. What I’m hoping will happen is that my siblings will begin to get a rare glimpse, as I have over the years, of what it’s like to have deep roots; a concept that was totally foreign to me before I met Julia. Their luggage is parked at the foot of the stairs. Julia begins the tour in the foyer. Holly and Ray are sniffing the air, processing the musty, shut-up old home smell that never goes away, the subtle scent of rotting wood and yellowed cotton, of sea salt, old canvas, and citronella. But, if you’re to believe Julia, the introductions go both ways. The Griswold spirits are getting to know them too.

  Double French doors creak open and we follow Julia into the great room. There are huge, narrow floor-to-ceiling windows that let in bright rectangles of sunshine, but the rich paneling on the walls keep this room feeling gloomy all day long. It’s the only formal room in the house, and it stands in stark contrast to the beachy shabbiness of the rest of the house. There are oil paintings and yellowed portraits of Victorian brides and a great gilded mirror over the marble hearth. The heavy, claw-footed furniture has its talons dug deep into the balding scalp of a Persian rug. Sunglasses and hats come off one by one, and we lower our voices, as if we have just stepped into a church. I make a beeline to the wall of shelved books and pull out a heavy, leather-bound tome and hold it up for all to see. “The Griswolds of New Haven County,” I say, “commissioned by the State of Connecticut Archival Libraries. It has eight volumes.” I pause for effect and look them each in the eye. “Eight freaking volumes.” I plop it in Ray’s hands. “That’s the last one: 1911 to 1973. Volume nine is being written.” I hand out two of the older books. My siblings draw close and start thumbing through them. Holly takes a step back, as if she’s in the presence of a Gutenberg Bible. “This is just amazing, Julia,” she says. “Amazing.”

  Taina isn’t impressed. When it comes to culture and history, she’s seen it all. For starters, she’s a New Yorker, and her parents both happen to be art scholars at NYU. So she’s hanging back, too cool to swoon over Julia’s treasures. Her spine is pressed against the frame of a door. With one hand she’s turning an unopened package of cigarettes over and over onto the palm of the other.

  Adrian points to an open page. “Julia Abigail Griswold. Born in 1972 at Yale–New Haven Hospital. Daughter to John Crew Griswold and Diane Amelia Sophia Emerson.”

  “You’re four years older than David,” Holly says, turning to Julia. “I never knew.”

  Taina pipes in from the back, “So that whole rush to marriage thing was all about the biological clock, huh?”

  Julia drops her head to one side and squints at her. “I think I was more than patient when David and I were dating. You call six years a ‘rush to marriage’?”

  “In some circles it is,” says Adrian without looking up from the book.

  Holly hangs an arm briefly on Julia’s shoulder. “I can only imagine the pressure on females in your family to fill those books with descendants.” She points at the wall behind her.

  “Sure. I’ll admit it. And it’s no joke. We have to produce descendants who will help pay for this place. If the family dwindles, we’ll lose Griswold Island. ‘Not on my watch’ is our motto, as we slave to pay our share of the bills.”

  I raise a finger and look at Julia. “I keep telling her I’m ready to help. How many babies do you want? Four? Eight? Ten?” Julia gives me a half-smile and shakes her head.

  “Wait. The house isn’t paid off yet?” asks Holly. “How can that be?”

  “Oh, it’s been paid off for like, a century,” says Julia. “But Connecticut has the highest cost of living in the nation; our local taxes are outrageous. Beachfront? Ka-ching! Many of us have had to have two or even three jobs to keep up on the taxes and maintenance bills.”

  “That part sucks,” I agree. “But it’s home. And I love that most of the state is forest and wetlands.”

  “. . . But trees don’t pay taxes,” Julia says. “So we pay over two thousand dollars a month in property taxes, and that’s with connections at town hall.”

  “The tax assessor is her uncle,” I explain. “Sucks that he’s honest.”

  Holly says, “What would happen if you couldn’t keep up the payments, or if the family gets smaller and smaller? Could you actually lose it?”

  “Of course.” Julia shudders and shakes her head. “It would be like a death in the family.” She stops. She can’t even stand to think about it. My hand wanders back into my fro
nt pocket, and again I pinch the cold, circular hardness of my grandmother’s engagement ring. We will have two boys and a girl, I decide.

  “Jeeze,” says Taina. “Don’t you feel trapped?” She points at the books and then opens her arms to include the whole house, and presumably, the whole island. “How do you break away from two hundred years of family history in one city and make your own life? What if you want to move to Paris?”

  “I’ll never leave because nothing is richer than being a part of a huge, tight-knit clan living in the same region for generations. People leave, but they always come back. They discover that it’s lonely out there. So we take menial jobs if we have to, in order to stick with the herd.”

  Taina straightens and steps away from the doorframe. “I can actually relate to that, but in reverse. It’s my lack of family history that defines me. It’s what makes me fascinating to other people. Without ‘the mystery’ I’d be just like everyone else. Bo-ring,” she intones. She looks at Adrian as she speaks; and a conspiratorial look is exchanged between them. Adrian walks over to the baby grand piano and lifts the key cover. Pink, pink, pink. He flashes Julia a smile. “Nice,” he says. “You finally got it tuned.”

  Taina twists her head to look at him. “You’ve been here before?”

  Julia ignores the question, and uses her patented method to steer Taina away from the subject. “I want you all to be happy and entertained,” she says. “I have an easel and paintbrushes for you, Taina.”

  “I don’t paint,” Taina says flatly. “I design textiles. On a computer.”

  “I was going to ask you,” I shift on my feet, “if you would paint my portrait.”

  “Uh, let me think about it.” She looks away, drums fingers on her chin, pretending to mull it over. “No.”

  “It’s either paint my portrait or shave your head. Your choice.”

  She’s about to sass back, when Holly suddenly puts her arms out and chirps, “Did I just die and go to heaven? Ten days of summer in New England?” She clamps her hands together and rests them over her heart, in a gesture that echoes a delighted Minnie Mouse; I can almost see red hearts shooting out of her ears. As Julia walks them toward the dining room, Holly swoons at the glass-front cabinets packed tight with kitchen crap in the butler’s pantry. She declares that everything she owns back home is “pure chinz.”

  Raymond bellows, “As I recall, I paid fifty bucks for one fork from your wedding registry. Now it’s ‘chinz’? ”

  “I’m talking about character,” she laments. “I don’t own anything that’s more than twenty years old.”

  Moments later, Ray is standing beneath the cathedral ceiling of the dining room, staring, open-mouthed, at a ship’s figurehead that’s hung high against the wall. The carving is of a mermaid, all bosoms and scales and sleepy eyes of seduction. Ray pinches the fabric of Julia’s sleeve and says, “Whoa. Who’s your friend?”

  “That’s Serena. She came off a Spanish galleon. Someone picked her up at a nautical antiques auction long ago.”

  Holly jabs an elbow into Julia’s rib and mutters, “I’d make sure that puppy’s bolted to the wall.”

  They drift off toward the kitchen. When Julia’s out of hearing range, I inform Ray that Serena is the mascot at the uncles’ popular poker tournaments. There’s even a drink named after her. Guys from all around the Thimbles and Branford come over for the games and the uncles do all kinds of things to Serena, the least of which is put sunglasses, hats, and negligees on her. In the last half-century, Serena’s been photographed locking lips with dozens of poker players, including two state governors and one very, very drunk Yale Law School dean.

  The next portion of the tour involves a touch of geology. Julia explains that the islands are former hilltops created after the great ice age, as she leads them past the kitchen to the segment of the porch that’s at the rear of the house. The entire deck is fitted around the upthrust finger of a large rock. “It couldn’t be moved, of course,” she explains. “But, with stubbornness being a strong family trait, Ebenezer Griswold, who bought the island for two thousand dollars in 1884, refused to change his blueprints, so they built the porch around the rock. The result is kind of crazy and awkward, but charming,” she says with a wink and a quick smile. “Like us.”

  “Guys,” I call out, “check this out! Behold the ‘captain’s punch bowl,’ a trillion-year-old stone beer cooler. Holds up to six cases, plus ice.” They step down the dozen steps or so to see a natural depression the size of a bathtub, along a stretch of rock that was mounded high with ice and drinks.

  Adrian bends down to fish out a brown glass bottle of Elm City beer. “Sweeet.”

  “Later,” I say. “Julia has this whole family tradition she has to do first. It’s important. Trust me.”

  Adrian blinks. “Screw tradition,” he says, and twists off the cap.

  We lock eyes. “Rule number one. You defer to our hostess.” He passes the beer to Taina, who is standing behind me. I hear her take a sip. It pisses me off a little, but I let it go. “Just respect the traditions,” I say. “You’ll understand later.”

  We catch up to Julia, who is calling everyone, so she can finish the tour and relax. She takes two steps to the left and points to the ground, where there is a small marble plaque. “My Uncle James is buried here.” She stomps her sandaled feet twice, right on the plaque, lifting dust. “Uncle James! You’ve got company! Meet David’s family: Adrian, Ray, Taina, and Holly.”

  Ray’s eyes grow huge. “Are you sure he’s okay with you doing that? I do not want to be stuck on an island with a pissed off ghost.”

  They all look down, slightly horrified. Julia tilts her head. “He’d be genuinely hurt if I didn’t include him,” she says. Ray reads the inscription on the plaque out loud:

  If I ever forget who I am,

  bring me here and I’ll remember

  James Alfred Griswold (1847–1930)

  “Alzheimer’s,” Julia sighs. “The family curse. In the end they can only figure out who they are—who any of us are—when they come back here. Maybe it’s the sound of the waves, the view, or the smells inside the house that trigger memory. My grandmother used to say that here, on Griswold Island, she could actually hear ‘the distant music’ that was her life.”

  “The distant music,” Adrian echoes. He pats himself at the chest and hips, presumably in search of a pen.

  Suddenly Holly grips my arm and pulls me away from the group. She has a flattering, short, stylish haircut and a cardigan sweater tied around her shoulders, and looks every bit the tidy soccer mom that she is. She’s not a natural beauty, like Taina, but she knows what looks good on her and works hard at staying in shape.

  “I want to apologize for what I said back in the library,” she whispers, pointing up at the house.

  I shake my head. “What?”

  “I said, ‘Did I just die and go to heaven?’ I hope I didn’t upset you, you know, bringing up, you know . . . death.” She cringes, balls her fists up and puts them up to her face. “Oh I’m mortified.”

  I pull the fists off her eyes and move my head back and forth to force her to look at me. “I don’t want you to have to walk on eggshells, Hol. You can say die, kill, croak, kick the bucket, hell you can even say brain cancer, I don’t care. It doesn’t offend me, it doesn’t ‘remind’ me. Because you know what, I can never forget, not for a moment, of the predicament I’m in. And second,” I put my arms around her shoulders, pull her close, and lower my voice to a whisper, “I’m not going to die.” I put a finger to my lips. “Shhh. That’s a secret.” She looks up at me, eyes brightening, as if expecting me to share some news. When I don’t, she looks down and says, “Of course you’re not.” Her eyes well up with tears and she gets on her tippy-toes and kisses me on the forehead. I turn her and lead her back toward the group.

  On the seawall, Taina is lighting up a cigarette. Julia’s eyes widen and zoom in on the cigarette. “Don’t come anywhere near the house with that. No smoking al
lowed.”

  Taina takes a deep drag and blows into the wind. “Don’t worry.”

  “Nasty habit,” Ray says, taking it from her fingers. Then he takes a deep, hungry drag, puts it out on the seawall and pockets the butt.

  We walk the periphery of the island, which, in some spots involves negotiating piles of rock. Ray shoots photos of the sea, the house, and the distant view looking back to the Village of Stony Creek.

  I turn to Adrian and say, “C’mon. I’ll show you where we keep the kayaks.” He turns and follows me, and it isn’t until we’re halfway across the lawn that I remember a comment Julia made earlier this morning, about how when Adrian and I get together, we always forget about Ray. I don’t turn back, though, thinking that it will just call attention to our oversight.

  We walk out to the boathouse, which is attached to the dock. Inside there is a Sunfish, a rowboat, a Jet Ski, and eight multicolored kayaks. I predict that Adrian will spend a lot of time paddling around in them, at first for the fun of exploring the islands and to keep up his exercise routine. But in about three or four days, the charm of our togetherness will begin to wear off and his claustrophobia will start to set in. He will start to notice the lack of air-conditioning in the house, the house rules will cease to be charming, and the constant bickering of our sisters will grate on his nerves. Maybe the well will go dry right before his shower, or we’ll run out of something essential, like toothpaste or toilet paper or bottled water. In a week, he’ll be fleeing the arguments about our conflicting memories and the shadow of our invented fears. He’ll want to get away from me, the one who is forcing it, and then he’ll try to escape from his own brain, from the steady stream of thoughts that will visit him at night. But that’s the whole point of reuniting on a one-acre island. I can only hope there will be no escape, once it’s started.

  I close the door to the boathouse and Adrian starts to tell me how he might be recording a duet with a famous Colombian singer. I don’t know her, but she’s one of those so-called crossover artists. As he’s talking, my eye catches something moving in the water below. It’s just our reflection, but for a split second, I don’t recognize the bloated man standing next to Adrian. All I see is a big head and gut. I’m shocked for the hundredth time to realize that it’s me. The steroid-induced bloating is a reality that I thought I was used to, but I’m blindsided in moments like this. I make the mistake of imagining how Julia might compare us, my handsome brother, and bald, fat-headed me. My heart sags at the thought.