“Wow. I’m sure it looks really neat inside. Does Abby love it?” she asked as she flipped a corkscrew of blond hair behind her shoulder and took another sip of her drink.
“I think so. She certainly loves to boss the crew around.” I laughed, still shooting glances at Matt, who was carefully polishing the already-spotless grill tools.
“Oh, I’m sure she does.” Julia craned her neck into the dark-paneled, sunken living room, and smiled at where Abby was playing with the crateful of old Barbies that Susan had bought at a garage sale. “She’s just the neatest little girl.”
“I’m not going to argue with you on that,” I said. Which, of course, left the silent statement of, But I will on other things, hanging between us.
“Well, I’m going to go see if Susan needs any help with pulling things together,” she said and then disappeared into the family room.
I took a step forward, to offer assistance as well, but stopped. She wasn’t my mother-in-law anymore. Should I let Julia offer? I am purely a guest at the party, even though it is for Abby. What is my role?
For a few terrifying moments, I stood planted while Matt stared at me, having given up all pretense of preparing utensils.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, placing his palms on the scratched white countertop.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and nodded. “Oh. Of course. I’m happy to be here. For Abby. And I don’t think your mom would have let me say no, anyway.”
He smiled. “You never could say no to her.”
The intimacy of his statement, referring back to our years together, surprised me. We were supposed to—or it felt like we were supposed to—pretend that we had never been in love, had never shared a life together. We were supposed to be like two acquaintances, nodding quickly at each other during the custody exchanges. An invisible cobweb between us, long thought to have been swept away, suddenly glimmered in the poorly lit kitchen.
I shifted. “Well, you know I always tried,” I said. “Like the time when she asked us to all go tent-camping in November at Whitewater State Park.”
“Ah, yes.” He shook his head. “What a trip that was. If memory serves, I had said no, but she went after you.”
“And I, of course, said yes,” I said.
It was a year after we were married, and Susan insisted that we all take a family-bonding trip together. I had agreed, assuming it meant a weekend in a hotel or maybe a rustic lodge somewhere in the Dells. Instead, she proudly showed us a brochure of a state park just off the highway that advertised clean Porta-Potties, like that was a luxury feature. We spent the weekend trying to convince her to go to a restaurant for every meal and the nights freezing to death, huddled in our sleeping bags to ward off hypothermia. And on the second night, huddled alone in our tent and under our sleeping bags, Matt and I made our own heat. Our faces were freezing, but everything else was warm.
I felt my face flush at the memory, and by the embarrassed look on Matt’s face, I knew he was thinking of the same thing. He looked at me, and for a moment, I didn’t see both sides. I didn’t see the hero and the monster. I just saw him, and who he was, and in that moment, I forgot about all the tears, screams, and silence. I saw the laughter, the hands, and the embraces.
My breath caught in my chest as I saw it reflected back to me on his face. My ears started to ring, and my head felt light as I felt something inside me, for the first time in years, hurt in a new way.
I wondered how that memory triggered so much more. If I allowed it, it could lead down a very steep path of examining everything I’d thought to be true over the past four years. If I entertained those thoughts, I would also have to be willing to let them override all that he had done, and forgive.
His eyes stopped on my ring, the ring he gave me when Abby was born. “You still wear it.” It sounded like a question. What he was really asking was why.
I nodded and looked down at it, twisting it slightly before I turned back to him.
The moment was thankfully shattered before either of us said anything we might regret, when Denny busted through the garage door, reeking of cigarettes.
“Okay, time to grill! Alex, come be my wingman. Wing-woman. Whatever,” he said and pointed outside.
Saved by the grill, I thought as I followed him outside, not meeting Matt’s gaze.
I held an enormous platter of burgers, hot dogs, and brats as Denny carefully laid each on the grill. The heat from the fire disguised my flushed face, and I balanced the tray on one hand and took a long sip of beer, steadying my nerves.
After we cut the cake, and Abby got her fill of ice cream, I kissed her good-bye and left. Denny was already asleep on the couch, and Susan insisted that I take home an embarrassing amount of food, as though she suspected that I didn’t have any in my fridge. Matt nodded a quick good-bye—he still hadn’t made eye contact since inadvertently sharing that intimate memory—and Julia leaned forward and kissed my cheek lightly.
As I lay in bed that night, a million thoughts swirled through my head. Why does she have to be so nice? I’m supposed to hate her. I want to hate her. Now I have to like her.
And why did I get so rattled when I remembered the camping trip?
I tossed and turned for hours, waiting for sleep to come, but it never did. Finally, I got up and picked up my phone, reading real estate blogs and social media. I slowly typed Julia’s name into Google, half-hoping she was one of the few people who had virtually no online footprint.
A few dozen results popped up, and I clicked on the first one. I studied her profile picture, a photograph of her on the bow of a boat, wearing a bikini. She had one arm slung across the side of the boat and a glass of champagne in the other. She wore huge sunglasses, and her hair was tossed into a messy updo on top of her head. I squinted at the picture, trying to find a flaw. Of course, I came up empty.
I turned off the computer and went back to bed, the ghost of Julia’s white teeth and Denny and Susan’s kitchen following me into my dreams.
CHAPTER 22
I nervously waited in the office of Richmond Burton High School, running my sweaty palms down the length of my jeans. I wore my best, least ripped and stained jeans for the occasion, and found an old button-down shirt in the back of my closet that I hadn’t yet used as a rag. I had brushed my hair and pulled out my flat-iron again, thinking my straight hair might offer some level of protection.
The secretary behind the desk gave me a sympathetic glance as I fanned my face again. I cursed my sleeves, wishing I had remembered that high schools were always a little stingy with their air-conditioning.
“Don’t be nervous, honey. They don’t bite,” she said, then frowned. “Usually.”
The door to the office pushed open and Gavin appeared. “Thanks for coming,” he said. He looked even cuter than I remembered. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and he wore khaki carpenter pants. His hair flopped slightly into his eyes, and he brushed it back with a flick of his head. I knew that if I had had a teacher who looked like him when I was in high school, it would have been very, very hard to concentrate on schoolwork. The closest thing I had to an attractive teacher was Mr. Sherpa in tenth grade biology, who was in his mid-fifties with male-pattern baldness.
I was incredibly thankful to see Gavin again, especially after Abby’s graduation and all of my confusing thoughts about Matt.
I followed him down the high school’s hallway, feeling very much like a teenager myself. When he had invited me speak to his class, I thought it was one of those nice gestures without any action behind it. We would both nod about it, but it would never actually come to fruition.
Yet he’d called me the day before and asked if I was still interested. I weakly protested, thinking of standing in front of the class and slowly dying a death of sweat and stuttering—in front of a guy I liked—but he insisted. I tried to tell him that public speaking wasn’t my thing, that in eighth grade I almost blacked out during a presentation on the life of Grace Kelly and accidentally
muttered a four-letter word when I dropped all my note cards. From then on, college included, I would quickly scan the syllabus on the first day of class, searching for the dreaded words Presentation and Speech. Once, I even switched out of a class in college because it required weekly presentations of current events, something that seemed like the highest level of torture imaginable.
I had majored in Mass Communications at the University of Wisconsin, a subject that seemed safe and comfortable. It was as close to Undeclared as I could possibly get, since I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. And then, after school, I got a job working in marketing for the Grand Geneva Resort, which was a natural progression. Move back home, find work in town. “Don’t you want to find something that you’re passionate about?” my dad would always ask me when he saw me during Sunday dinners. I would shrug and pretend to be offended that he didn’t see me as passionate about my job. It wasn’t until I started renovating my first house after the divorce that I realized what passionate actually meant.
It meant not wanting professionally to do anything else ever again, and finally feeling like what I was good at, and what I enjoyed, had intersected.
Gavin stopped in front of the classroom door and flashed me a smile. “They can smell fear, like a T. rex.” When he saw my face, he laughed. “I’m kidding. You’ll be great.” He pushed open the door, and we stepped inside.
The students stared at me as I stood in the front of the classroom. I felt my face grow warm with embarrassment, and a trickle of sweat ran down my back.
“Class, please welcome Ms. Alex Proctor. As I’ve told you, she restores and renovates historic houses, and has a passion for history itself. She’s the best in the business, so to speak, so let’s all extend her the courtesy of listening to what she has to say. That includes you, Peter.” Gavin shot a pointed look at a boy in back whose eyes were half-closed in boredom, and who seemed like he would rather be set on fire than listen to one more minute of Gavin’s class.
Gavin extended an arm forward, stepping back as he did. I stood in front of the class, still thrown by his introduction. I began by talking about what I did, and how many houses I had renovated, and what I knew about the history of the Maple house.
“It was built in 1901, and it’s a style considered an American four square. A four-square house is basically one big box. It’s usually two stories, with a wide front porch. A lot of them were delivered as a kit, with all the pieces intact and the plans, just like you would assemble a piece of furniture,” I said.
As I went on about the details and the design elements, all of the students, not just Peter, began to look like they wanted to set themselves on fire. I flashed back to the near blackout during my eighth-grade speech.
“And then, in the dining room, we discovered quarter-sawn oak built-in china cabinets, and—” I stopped abruptly and cleared my throat as I saw a student slowly nod off. “You know what? How about if we switch gears?” Slowly, life began to appear in their eyes. “So, flipping houses means that I encounter quite a few things that make me scratch my head. You wouldn’t believe the idiotic things people do to houses.”
That had their attention. They perked up, watching me, waiting for me to deliver on my promises.
“My first house was a complete disaster. I bought it at auction, and couldn’t get inside before I paid for it—huge mistake. When we did get in, we found a ridiculously dangerous setup in the bathroom. The previous owners had installed the circuit breakers basically right next to the shower. And then, the second day, about a million flies appeared. We couldn’t figure out where they were coming from, but one thing you learn quickly in house flipping is this: There’s always a dead animal. Always. Without question.”
They laughed, and I relaxed against Gavin’s desk. I told them how we finally found the source of the flies: a duck that had crawled inside the fireplace and died, which led to a very expensive bill from the animal control people, and a chimney sweep who refused to return to the job after he discovered the decaying animal, so I had to crawl up there and remove it myself.
“Another house I bought had a problem with bats on the outside.” I shuddered as I remembered the first time I walked around onto the sagging deck and saw what I thought was black mud everywhere, only to discover it was bat guano when I looked up and saw small, mouse-like figures hanging off the eaves. “Which would have been fine—call an exterminator, right? But bats are protected here in Wisconsin, so the exterminator told me there wasn’t anything I could do.”
A girl in the front with long blond hair that fell over her shoulder like a waterfall wrinkled her nose. “So you just had to leave them?”
“Well, the exterminator did tell me I could ‘discourage’ them from hanging out at the house, by applying Vaseline to the eaves to make it so slippery that they couldn’t grip onto the wood. So we did, and the next day my contractor and I came back to the house to find a bunch of angry, goopy bats frantically trying to latch on to the house.” I laughed as I thought of how Eddie ran right back into his pickup, shouting that he didn’t sign up for bat duty.
I also told them about the strange things I had found in the walls of houses: old photographs, postcards, a few dollar bills, cigars, a snifter of whiskey.
“Clearly Grandma was having a rough time that day,” I said with a smile. They laughed, and I glanced at Gavin, who smiled. I was surprised to realize I wasn’t nervous anymore. In fact, I was actually enjoying myself.
I glanced at the clock and saw that my time was almost done. “Well, I know class is almost over, but I was wondering if you guys had any questions for me.”
When no one said anything, Gavin cleared his throat. “If no one wants to volunteer, I’ll call on someone to ask something. Your choice.”
Their smiles vanished, and they looked everywhere but at me—their desks, the walls, the floors. I remembered that well: Please don’t call on me. I didn’t do the homework. I didn’t read anything you assigned. Just forget I’m even here. Just let me get through this period without any embarrassment.
“I have a question, Ms. Proctor.” A pretty redhead with a peaches-and-cream complexion raised her hand in the back row. Her shiny hair fell over her shoulder, and she had bright blue eyes with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. She confidently flipped her hair over her shoulder, and all I could think was that I’d looked nothing like that in high school.
“Yes?” I smiled.
“I was wondering what your thoughts are on the effects of preservation versus rebuilding on a community,” she said, with a knowing smile. “After all, doesn’t it benefit a town more if there is new business and new construction, rather than trying to save old structures?”
“I’m sorry, what?” I dropped my hands to my sides.
“I’ve just heard that it’s usually better to just build new and revitalize an area. To make things more modern to attract better buyers,” she said.
I studied her. Who is this kid? Before I could answer, Gavin spoke.
“Time’s up, guys,” he said. “I’ll walk you to the office, Ms. Proctor,” Gavin said as he held the door of the classroom open for me. I heard a snicker go through the classroom, and he turned back to them. “Essay on the silk trade routes through Asia in the sixteenth century next week—your choice.” They immediately quieted.
“Impressive,” I said as we walked down the hallway. “So, who’s the redhead? The really pretty one who seems to know too much.”
“Oh, Annie Sullivan? She loves to challenge everyone and everything. She even tried to correct one of my test questions last week.” He laughed. “She’s a total overachiever.”
“Sullivan,” I repeated slowly. “Any chance she’s related to a Jack Sullivan, the Lake Geneva real estate developer?”
He nodded. “Could be. I think she might have mentioned something like that. Why?”
I shook my head. “She was just a little too on top of it.” I sighed. “Nice to see that Jack is recruiting his family to
spread his message of destruction and demolition.”
“She’s harmless,” Gavin said with a laugh.
“Yeah, but Jack’s not.” I sighed. “I don’t know how you do what you do. I don’t think I could handle educating teenagers. They’re too smart.”
He laughed. “That’s why I love teaching them. That, and their universe centers around themselves. Through history, I try to show them that it doesn’t.”
“How noble of you.” We passed a girl in the hallway with long, wavy blond hair who was standing at her locker, texting.
“No phones in school, Chelsea,” Gavin said as he swiped the phone from her hand and kept walking. She shrieked in protest, and he held it in the air, walking backward. “Three p.m. Office. You know the drill. Next time this happens, I’m locking you out of your phone.”
Chelsea grumbled but nodded. I glanced over my shoulder at her and shook my head. “Man, where are the geeky kids around here? The braces, glasses, pocket protectors?”
“I don’t think pocket protectors exist anymore,” he said.
“You know what I mean. The awkward, dorky kids. The kids who look like I did when I was sixteen,” I said with a laugh.
“I find it hard to believe you were once dorky and awkward,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “You have no idea. I used to—”
Gavin almost collided with me as I stopped suddenly, staring at a bulletin board on the wall.
“Ah, cicadas,” he said as he followed my gaze. “One of the students got caught texting in class and had to make this in detention.”
The bulletin board was decorated with pictures of the black, orange-eyed, winged creatures, and I wrinkled my nose slightly at their appearance. The prettiest bugs in the animal kingdom, they certainly weren’t. In fact, they looked like something from another planet.
“Abby’s going to flip,” I said as I pointed to a picture from the last time they were in Lake Geneva, in 1998. Their black bodies covered the trunk of a tree in haphazard fashion, stacked on top of one another until no bark was visible. It looked like a moving, breathing black river that coated everything.
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