What Makes a Family

by Colleen Faulkner

  Abby slept with Mom Brodie last night. In Joe’s chair. I don’t know how she got it in there. Maybe Joseph moved it last night. I didn’t hear them come in. Of course Celeste didn’t come in ’til after dawn. No surprise there. It used to bother me that my daughter is a slut, but I guess I’ve gotten used to it. Can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear; that’s what Mrs. Brodie always says. And a mother sow loves her little one just the same, doesn’t she?

  “Sarah just went through. Going for a run,” I tell my husband, stalling for time. I’m not good at talking with people. Not even my family. Especially when it’s the kind of conversation a person feels like they have to announce before they get to it. I don’t like that. It scares me. A person just ought to say what they want to say. I hold tight to the cabbage. “Wouldn’t have breakfast. Not a bite. Running. For no reason. Going nowhere.” I shake my head. “Never understood it. Never will.”

  He pushes his hands deep into his work pants pockets. “Celeste up?”

  I shake my head. “Still ’sleep.” No need for him to know she just went to bed not long ago. “Abby’s in the shower.”

  He looks up, like he can see through the ceiling with X-ray eyes. Then he tilts his head toward the porch and walks away. The dog falls right in behind him. Always does. Mrs. Brodie says they all follow him around, Dukes living and dead. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, but I darn well know I don’t believe in ghost dogs. I think Mrs. Brodie used to say things like that just to get me riled. She knows I’m easily spooked.

  I follow my husband and his dog. I take my cabbage with me. I don’t know why. Something to hold on to? This has to be bad. Otherwise why would Joe want to talk outside? But I can’t think what it could be. He never says much to me about the farm, about his businesses. Never has. That was always Mrs. Brodie’s department. They used to sit in his office and talk and laugh. I had to learn things about what was going on secondhand through the wall while folding his drawers.

  He opens the back door and then the screen door, and Duke shoots out. We keep doors closed in the summer now. It’s not like it used to be with screen doors and windows wide open, to let the salt breeze off the bay blow through and air the house out. Air conditioning running. I don’t care for it. Air conditioning. But Mrs. Brodie insisted on it. Central air.

  Little Joe holds open the door for me and waits for me to pass. His forehead creases, furrows so deep it could be one of our plowed fields in the spring. “Birdie, what you doing with that cabbage?” he asks me.

  I feel awkward. “Slaw.”

  “I meant . . .” He shakes his head and follows me out. Closes the doors behind us as we go out in the yard.

  I think about setting the cabbage down on the table, but now that he’s said something about it, I don’t.

  Outside, Joe just stands there. Hands in his pockets like they’re glued in.

  We’ve got a nice view of the bay from the backyard. Million-dollar view Celeste calls it. On a morning like this, the water spreads out all sparkly in front of us. Almost looks pretty. But I don’t usually see it that way. It scares me. I’m not like the Brodies, who seem to be born with salt water in their blood. All my brood could swim by the time they could walk. Little Joe taught them right out there in the shallow water. Scared the liver out of me. I can’t swim, and people drown out there every year. And then crabs eat the bodies if they don’t wash up fast enough. Crabs Little Joe wants to put on my table.

  I can see the bridge, far off. I remember when it was built. Folks got on one side of the argument or the other. Either they hated every beam of steel that rose in the sky, or they loved it. I never knew which side I fell on. In a way, I felt protected without an easy way across the water. People and things that scared me couldn’t come across a bridge that wasn’t there. But in other ways, I felt so trapped on Brodie, even when I was a little girl. After the bridge was built, connecting us with the rest of the world, it occurred to me that it wasn’t just a road onto Brodie. It was a road to get off. A road that could take a brave soul away from this. To a new life. A better life.

  A braver soul than me.

  Duke barks and takes off across the lawn. Seagulls. I’ve never seen a dog that will chase a gull like this one. Oh, he’ll chase a rabbit. Or a skunk. I’ve had to bathe him more than once in tomato juice after a tangle with a skunk. But who ever heard of a Labrador retriever that chases seagulls? They’re water dogs. Like the Brodies. They live and breathe this bay. Water dogs aren’t supposed to chase seagulls.

  “Clancy rang me this morning,” Little Joe says. He tugs on the brim of his John Deere ball cap. Always wears John Deere even though lots of companies give him free ones all the time.

  I think it’s funny he says that because the phone didn’t ring this morning except when Mae Bower called to ask me if I could bring banana bread for tea, next Naomi Circle meeting at the church. Means Joe called Clancy. But I don’t say anything. I learned that lesson a long time ago. No need to tell everything you know.

  “About Mama’s will.”

  I nod. Not sure I knew she had a will. The land and the house and the businesses passed to Joe forty-odd years ago when his daddy died. I imagine Mrs. Brodie has a little money of her own, but how much could there be? What would she need her own money for? Her name’s right on our checkbook with mine and Joe’s. Always bought whatever she wanted. But she’s the one who told me to tuck a little away for myself. Showed me how to take a little from here and there and tuck it away in the bank. For a rainy day. “A girl needs her own money for a rainy day,” she used to tell me.

  I guess Mrs. Brodie’s rainy-day money is what Joe’s talking about. I don’t know why, but I smile to myself. The old bird. I guess she was talking from experience.

  I look at Joe. His eyebrows need trimming. Next time I cut his hair—what little he’s got left—I need to trim his brows. If I don’t, they get to looking like caterpillars. Like the big, thick white ones. The kind you see on the sidewalk every blue moon.

  “She didn’t tell me she changed it, Birdie. I didn’t even know she met with Clancy.”

  Something about the tone of his voice makes me meet his gaze. He’s got his mama’s eyes. They were bright blue once. Now they’ve faded to a gray color. But they’re still Mrs. Brodie’s eyes.

  I always thought Joe had nice eyes. It’s the first thing I remember about him when I came to Brodie, even though I was just a little girl nine years old. They were kind eyes. He was kind to me. First night I sat at the table, Mrs. Brodie told me to keep my mouth shut when I chewed. Then she told me to stop shoveling my potatoes. She said there was plenty more and she’d make more if need be, but she didn’t want me eating like a wolf at her table. Which was funny, thinking back, because that’s what it was like at the orphanage, come suppertime. Eating with a bunch of wolves. If you didn’t eat up fast, some boy would reach right across the table and take your potatoes right off your plate with his hand and gobble them down. It’s not like we went hungry at the orphanage, but there were sure no seconds. A girl who liked to save her mashed potatoes for last to savor them ended up going without.

  I remember fighting back tears at the table that first night here in the house. It wasn’t so much what Mrs. Brodie said. I think I was just overwhelmed. Then Joe looked at me, and he winked. And smiled. And then I ate my potatoes slow, and I learned to keep my mouth shut when I ate. But I never forgot that kindness.

  “What did she change in her will?” I ask.

  As the words come out of my mouth, I daydream for just a split second that he’s called me out here to tell me she’s left me something. Maybe her diamond wedding ring, or a little money. Or maybe her car. She’s got an old Cadillac. She keeps it in one of the sheds out back with a cover over it to keep it clean. It’s a fine car. White, with a blue interior. I wouldn’t mind driving it. Maybe Mrs. Brodie left me something because she realized that even though we’re not blood, I’ve taken care of her like she was. Especially these last few months sinc
e she got the cancer. Maybe she thought someone who changed her diaper ought to get a little something,

  I wait for Joe to go on, and finally he gets around to it.

  “She’s cut Celeste out.” He turns to face the bay again, clearly upset. His voice barely sounds like him. “Completely.”

  I rub my forehead with my free hand. I can’t find my voice. Mrs. Brodie can’t do that. Not to my Celeste. Not to my little lost bird. I try to make sense of what Joe’s saying. “So . . . she’s . . . she’s leaving what she has just to Abby?” When I say it, I know very well my name’s not in that will, but still there’s just a little part of me that . . . hopes.

  “Joseph, too. Abby and Joseph.”

  I look down at the cabbage. It’s a decent one for summer. I won’t pick mine until early October. I wonder where cabbages are growing in August. Somewhere else in the world, I guess. When I came to Brodie, we ate mostly from our own garden, but anything we did get from the market came from Brodie, or maybe Snow Hill or Salisbury. Now, fruits and vegetables come from California, Mexico. Even Peru. The wonders of a bridge.

  I take a step toward Joe, looking up at his back. How could Mrs. Brodie do that to my baby girl, I think, when Celeste’s the one who needs it most? And leave money to Joseph, who will inherit all this land someday? Who will inherit the Brodie empire. “She left something to Joseph and not Celeste?” I ask.

  “Joseph is my child. Same as Abby and Celeste, Birdie.”

  But not mine, I think. But what would that mean to Mrs. Brodie? All that matters to her is Brodie blood. It’s all that ever mattered.

  Joe’s words aren’t mean, but they’re stiff. He gets like that when we talk about Joseph. Not that it happens that often, once every couple of years. And then when we talk about Joseph, we don’t really talk about him. Not about how he got here and what Joe did to bring him into this world.

  When I close my eyes, I remember the night, like it was only a day ago. A Thursday night. I was washing dishes at the sink after supper. A plate. I was taking a scrub brush to it. Cheese from macaroni and cheese. Abby was at the kitchen table doing her homework. Mrs. Brodie was beside her, reading a magazine. Celeste was in the den. She was supposed to be doing homework, too, but Celeste was never much for homework. She was singing into a microphone we gave her for Christmas. She was singing one of those nasty Madonna songs. I’d just told her to cut it out or I’d wash her mouth with soap. But she just kept it up, “Like a virgin . . . ”

  Joe’d been gone two days. He’d called the day before, just to say he was all right. He didn’t say where he was, and I didn’t ask. He’d been disappearing on and off for almost two years. Just hours, never a night before though. I knew he had a woman on the side. I’d even heard rumors of who it was. A colored girl that worked in the cannery, then started doin’ office work. Mrs. Brodie knew it, too, I think. She never said anything to him that I heard, but when he’d come home late, she’d give him a look that would melt paint off the side of a barn.

  “It’s money . . . a lot of money,” Joe goes on, pulling me back from that night when he handed me that little baby and said, “He’s my son, Birdie,” like he was going to cry. And then he walked out of the kitchen, leaving us all to stare at the bundle in my arms.

  I stare at him and shake my head. “What do you mean . . . a lot of money?”

  He says something under his breath. A number. And I pull the cabbage to my chest and hug it. “Where did she get so much—” I cut myself off. No need to go there. One thing could lead to another, and then the focus could end up on me and not where it belongs right now. Which is on Mrs. Brodie. And Celeste, my poor Celeste.

  “Is . . . is there something that can be done?” I ask him. “To give Celeste back her money? Because it’s not right, Joe!” I raise my voice. I don’t think I’ve ever raised my voice to him in all the years I’ve known him.

  He stares at me for a minute. I can’t read his face. He’s shocked for sure, but there’s something else there. “Mama had Clancy write a new will. She was of sound mind,” he tells me. “It’s her right to leave her money to whom she pleases. Hell, Birdie.” He points to the Labrador retriever that is trit-trotting down our dock. “She could have left it to Duke if it suited her.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I snap back. “A woman doesn’t leave money to a dog!” I shake my head. “It ain’t right. It ain’t right, and you know it, Joe.”

  “She left Celeste a letter. Giving her reasons, I suppose.”

  I hear a splash, and we both look up. That dog has gone to the end of the dock and jumped into the bay. Right about now, I could do the same. Only I can’t swim. The idea is appealing. I’ve played with that thought time to time over the years. It moves in close, then into the background again. I can feel it creeping in. “What’s the letter say?”

  “I didn’t read it. Not mine to read. Clancy gave it to me, sealed in an envelope. Gave me her new will, too. To replace the one she gave me years back. Mama told him to. I’m supposed to pass the letter on to Celeste after Mama’s gone as a way of explanation for what she did.” Joe takes in a breath, lets it go. “I suspect it has to do with Mama’s not approving of the way Celeste has led her life. The way she’s spent her money.” He’s quiet again, but I wait. “I think she borrowed money from Mama that maybe she didn’t pay back.”

  “We don’t know that,” I say, but even as the words come out, I realize I probably don’t know as much about it as I think I do. I’ll give Mrs. Brodie credit; she didn’t talk about money, and she never spoke of whom she lent it to. I know she loaned people money, not just Celeste, but town folk, because they’d walk right up to her in the market and hand her repayment, saying “Oh, thank you, Miss Sarah, this, and oh, I don’t know where I would have turned, Miss Sarah, that.” And I can’t say I’ve always thought my youngest daughter was smart with her money, but who am I to make that judgment?

  “I guess Mama thought money would go to waste in Celeste’s hands,” Joe says quietly.

  “And that’s that?” I demand. “You’re not going to do anything about it?”

  He looks at me, all sad like. “I can’t change Mama’s will, Birdie. It’s legal and binding.”

  “So that is that, then,” I say.

  And then I walk right across the yard and into the house. I set the cabbage on the counter and go down the hall and up the stairs. I go to my bedroom, and I close the door and lock it. I dig through my nightie drawer to the bottom, and I pull out my scrapbook. And I sit on the edge of the bed and open it to the first page. And I trace the outline of the state with my finger. “Arizona, the forty-eighth state to enter the union,” I whisper. “Capital, Phoenix. State bird, cactus wren. State flower, saguaro blossom.” I flip forward several pages until I find the picture of the saguaro blossom I cut out of a National Geographic I found at the beauty parlor.

  Looking at the cactus blossom calms me. Helps me pull myself together so I can go back downstairs and make my slaw.

  20

  Sarah

  I knock on the office door that’s almost shut, but not quite. “Grandpop?”

  “’M’on in,” he calls.

  As I push open the door, Duke chuffs, but he doesn’t get up from where he’s sprawled on the hardwood floor. No ugly blue carpet here. Grandpop pulled it up years ago.

  I’ve got my laptop tucked under my arm. After I took a shower, when I got back from my run, I came downstairs and checked on Mom. She was drinking some of Birdie’s nasty coffee and waiting for the hospice nurse. She seemed preoccupied, so we didn’t really talk. We just had one of the obligatory mother-daughter exchanges.

  “How was your run?” She was staring out the window at the bay. She didn’t look at me.

  “Good.”

  “Have enough hot water? Birdie’s been running the washing machine and dishwasher nonstop since dawn.”

  “It was fine, Mom.”

  “I saw the palindrome. I like it. She’d like it.
”

  I nodded, and then I wandered out of the room, feeling guilty all over again that I’d taken a pic of my great-grandmother’s thigh. I mean, it’s not like I Snapchatted it or anything. But I think this is one of those cases where you know it’s inherently wrong, even if your mom didn’t say, “Don’t take a picture of your great-grandmother’s thigh tattoo while I’m asleep.”

  I walk into my grandfather’s office, which is always a pleasant surprise. It’s not what you would think it would be. I mean, he looks like an old farmer. He wears pants and shirts that are the same dirt color, like a uniform a guy in a factory would wear. Every day. And always a hat that advertises a seed or tractor company. He’s married to a woman who looks like an old farmer’s wife. But his office is . . . nice.

  The walls are a medium green, with wood trim everywhere. He has a big wooden desk that must be older than he is and a bunch of filing cabinets and a leather couch. A nice leather couch. And a cool coffee table with leather inlay that looks really old and really expensive. And a faded Oriental-style rug that I know came from Turkey at the turn of the last century because he told me so. But the most interesting object in a room with seed catalogs, farming magazines, and the old farmer behind the desk, is an antique violin on a display stand in the corner of the room.

  I stand inside the doorway. “I was wondering . . .” I shift my weight from one bare foot to the other.

  “You can close the door.” He points.

  We both smile. He knows Birdie’s a snoop. Of course he does. He’s married to her. I don’t really have anything to say that’s private, but I close the door anyway because I like the idea of being alone with him. We don’t get to be alone that often. And he’s an interesting guy, my grandfather. My dad says he’s complicated, which I always thought was an interesting phrase. But now that I’ve seen Mom Brodie’s tattoo, I think I understand what Dad means, because Mom Brodie is sure more complicated than I thought.