Cicada Summer

by Maureen Leurck

  “And they’re just about the dumbest things ever created,” Gavin said as he put his hands in his pockets. “They literally have no sense of direction and will just fly into anything, including people, while buzzing loudly.”

  “Oh, I remember. Last time, one landed on my neck and I couldn’t get it off. I ran into the house screaming, and my mother had to pluck it off of me. Can’t wait for that.” I was about to turn away and head back to the office to sign out, when a small paragraph printed in red ink, pasted on a yellow background with scalloped edges, caught my attention. “The meaning behind a ‘Cicada Summer.’ ” I turned to Gavin. “I didn’t realize there was a meaning to the invasion.”

  “Everything means something,” he said with a smile.

  I leaned forward and read the paragraph out loud. “ ‘The symbolic meaning of a summer when the cicadas come is one of rebirth and renewal. The cicadas only emerge every seventeen years, to live briefly, mate, and then return to the earth. Their presence encourages us to reflect on how life and the world has changed since they were last here, as they symbolize a starting over and new beginnings.’ ”

  I read the paragraph over again, silently, before I slowly leaned back and exhaled. It was everything that I had hoped for the summer to be, summed up on construction paper. The house, Elsie, Gavin, me. Yet a corner of my mind still whispered, Matt. Was there a possibility of a new beginning there? Even one as simple as forgiveness? The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and a slight chill ran through my body.

  “Is it cold in here? They usually keep the AC on low, like a sweatshop.” Gavin said. “But today it seems to be actually working.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s—” I looked at him, but couldn’t find the words to express my thoughts. It was all too deep, too important, to gloss over in the halls of a high school. So instead I just smiled and relaxed my shoulders. “Yes, it must be the air-conditioning.”

  CHAPTER 23

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Careful, Mark,” I said as I nearly ran into a crew member who was carrying one of the broken leaded-glass doors from the dining room buffet out to the front porch.

  He stopped in the foyer and gave me a fearful look. “So sorry.” He set the door down carefully, resting it against the plaster wall. He motioned through the entryway. “Please, go ahead.”

  “Let me give you a hand,” I said as I reached down to grab a corner.

  He hesitated, a bewildered look flashing across his face as I smiled brightly, but picked up the opposite edge of the door.

  “Let’s put it right into my car. I’ll take it to the restoration place myself,” I said, and we carefully loaded it into my backseat.

  “Thanks for the help,” he said quickly before he darted back inside. I heard him whisper to someone inside that “she” was smiling and he thought they all might get fired later.

  I laughed, and climbed into my car. The smile hadn’t left my face since I’d driven home from Gavin’s high school. It had stayed with me as I woke up, ate Cheerios out of a mug, and even when I spilled coffee all over my lap on the drive over to the Maple house that morning. And it was still with me as I drove to Delavan, dried coffee stain covering my thighs.

  Eddie had found a glass restorer in nearby Delavan, but the catch was that we had to deliver the doors over to his studio for the repairs. It would be expensive and inconvenient, but worth it to fix them. As I had first suspected, some of the lead was missing from the doors. Only a restoration company would be able to repair them, since it involved taking the whole door apart, replacing the glass, and then soldering new lead into the frame—all of which were out of the scope of any of our abilities.

  As I pulled west onto Highway 50, my phone buzzed again with a voice mail from overnight. I sighed as I listened to my mother’s voice.

  “Hi, honey. Just wanted to let you know that we will be in town at the end of the month for a few days to see you and Abby. We would love to stay with you, but we can make other plans if that isn’t possible. Let me know. Love you.”

  It was typical that they would choose to come visit during the busiest time of the year. They were both retired, my father from teaching and my mother from working as a school social worker. When they ended their work lives, they seemed to forget all sense of nine-to-five life, or workweek schedules. Before they moved to Florida, my mother would often call me on a Wednesday at eleven in the morning and ask to go shopping.

  When they retired, they suddenly realized the meaning of the word bored and began to fill up their lives with various clubs, activities, and social engagements. But without jobs to anchor them to the area, they quickly grew tired of the winters and moved south to Fort Lauderdale a year prior. They had been talking about doing it for a few years, but I had some suspicion that they delayed it after everything that happened between Matt and me, almost as though they wanted to make sure I was stable before they left.

  Their delay didn’t dull the sense of loss when they packed up their car and drove south. Their departure meant the true end of unconditional love in a ten-mile radius.

  My phone buzzed again, and I looked at it, expecting it to be my mom calling from the beach or maybe a boat, but I didn’t recognize the number. It was a local 262 area code, so I picked it up. It was a woman from the Children’s Society of Southeast Wisconsin. Her voice creaked with age when she spoke.

  “Ms. Proctor, I did some research on the adoption you requested records for,” the woman said.

  “And?” I clutched the phone to my ear and sat back, the air in my car stifling.

  “Well”—she cleared her throat—“I’m sorry to tell you that the child we thought might be a match wasn’t a match.”

  “Oh.” I sat back against my chair and exhaled slowly. “Are you sure? Maybe it . . .”

  “No, I’m sorry. I double-checked the records, and it’s not a match. That particular child was already in touch with her birth parents, so it couldn’t be the same baby. I’m sorry,” she said.

  I cleared my throat. “So, where do we go from here? I don’t really know the next step. Do you have any advice?”

  “That’s not really something I can tell you. Honestly, the chances of finding a match are probably very slim,” she said slowly. “With the sealed adoption records in the state, it’s really a matter of both parties wanting contact and having a lot of luck.”

  “Please? Anything.” Elsie’s face as I would tell her that the child wasn’t a match flashed before my eyes, and I put my head on the steering wheel.

  “Well, has she registered with local and state agencies that specialize in matching up birth parents?”

  It was the same advice we’d heard before. It seemed to be all that anyone could offer. I sighed and told her we had, and hung up the phone. I left my head on the steering wheel, the hot sun beating down through the windshield. It now seemed suffocating, rather than warming. I turned the AC on full blast, letting the sweat evaporate from my forehead.

  I closed my eyes as I realized that I would have to tell Elsie she was much further from finding her daughter than either of us thought.

  CHAPTER 24

  “How is it possible that there are at least ten layers of paint on this stair rail?” I muttered as I cocked my head to the side and stared at the chipped layers of rainbow paint that wouldn’t budge off the wood rail. I suspected that there was gorgeous oak underneath all the dirty paint, but so far, my green, nontoxic strippers hadn’t made a dent in dissolving any of it.

  “Alex, you know anything’s possible,” Eddie said from his position on the floor. He dumped more stripper onto a rag and wiped it onto the baseboard, waiting to see if the cream-colored paint bubbled up. “People do all kinds of weird shit to houses. And with this one, you have over a hundred years of bad ideas and screwed-up design plans.”

  “But who just keeps painting and repainting a staircase?” I said. I ran a finger over the glossy railing, leaving a trail down the middle of dust and debris. “I imagine you’d have pa
int chips everywhere anytime anyone touched it.”

  “Probably idiots who didn’t have little kids to eat the paint chips.” He cocked his head to the side. “Correction: very, very smart people who didn’t have little kids.”

  He shook his head and wiped at the painted baseboard again with the stripper. “This isn’t doing anything. We need to move to the hard stuff.”

  I nodded. “Let’s do it.” Normally, I tried to avoid using hard-core chemicals and stripping agents, especially on wood that old, but there was no way we were going to get down to the grain without the serious power of chemicals. The downside was that the chemicals were toxic and flammable, and we’d have to use extra precautions when applying it.

  Eddie went to his truck and retrieved the industrial-strength stripper. “On the baseboard first,” I said.

  He nodded and tossed me a ventilator mask, while I opened the front door to let air circulate through the foyer. He put on gloves and bent down, applying the stripper to the baseboard with a paintbrush. As we waited to see if it would work, I saw him stifle a yawn.

  “Late night?” I said.

  He sighed. “You could say that. Mia’s got a cough and couldn’t sleep . . . so we didn’t sleep. She just cried all night, and Janie and I took turns holding her. I think she finally passed out around four this morning.”

  “Probably in your arms, right?” I said.

  “Yup.” He stretched his arms overhead. “Still have a cramp in my back.”

  “Welcome to parenthood, where you’re always battling some varying degree of tired.”

  He wiped his forehead. “You know, I thought working at a job site for sixteen hours in ninety-degree heat was exhausting, but I had no idea what tired actually was.”

  “Preaching to the choir, my friend.” I leaned forward and peered at the baseboard. “It’s working!” I grabbed a wide putty knife and moved it gently across where the paint was beginning to bubble. A small piece of cream paint flaked off. Underneath another light layer of paint, I could see wood grain.

  “Great. Now only about a thousand square feet of moulding to strip,” he said as he slowly gazed around the foyer. “And then the rest of the house.”

  For all of the painted wood trim—of which there was some in virtually every room—we would have to scrape all of the paint, and then go over any leftover residue with steel wool. Then, we would have to fill in any cracks or chips in the woodwork before sanding it with a handheld sander before we stained and sealed it. A lengthy, tedious process for sure, but like most good things, worth the effort.

  I headed toward the stairs, paintbrush and putty knife in hand, and began to methodically apply the chemical. As I waited for the paint to start bubbling, I let my thoughts drift to earlier that day.

  I had stopped over at Elsie’s house that morning before I started work and told her the news about the adoption agency not having a match. She smiled and thanked me for my work, again stating that she was sure we would find her daughter, but her eyes brimmed with sadness. As she closed the door, I called out that I would keep looking, and checking to see if there were any more leads, but she didn’t respond. Or if she did, it had been too quiet to hear.

  The sound of someone walking up the front porch pulled me away from the memory. A pretty, blond woman in a black suit and wearing aviator sunglasses appeared at the door.

  “Eddie, watch this spot and scrape it when it’s ready,” I said over my shoulder as I walked outside. I pulled my respirator down around my neck. “Yes? Can I help you?” As I opened the screen door, I sized her up and down. Realtor, I thought. A few of them had wandered into my renovations in the past, looking to drum up business.

  “Alex Proctor?” she said with a frown. When I nodded, she thrust her hand forward. Instead of Realtor business cards, it was a manila envelope with an official seal on the front.

  “What’s this?” My heart began to pound when I saw County of Walworth on the seal. “All of our permits are legit. I can go grab them. . . .” I trailed off when she shook her head.

  “I’m from the office of the county assessor.” She stuck her hand out, but I waved my dusty fingers, covered in paint chips, at her, and she quickly withdrew it. “Well,” she said as she pointed at the envelope. “Were you aware that there’s a tax lien on the property?” she said with a sympathetic look that meant she suspected that I was clueless about the situation.

  I shook my head, tore open the envelope, and scanned the document. The most recent owner, a Mae Sweeney, had fallen behind on the property taxes before the house went into foreclosure, an amount that had compounded with interest. My hands started shaking as I read the money due: ten thousand dollars.

  “So, you’re saying what? That I owe this amount?” I said, my eyes darting from the zeros back to her.

  She nodded. “As the current property owner, you are responsible for the debt. And you can’t transfer the title to anyone else before the lien is paid off. Since the property was in foreclosure when you purchased it, you are the responsible party.”

  “I—” I looked down again. “I know what a tax lien is, but . . .” I trailed off. “No. This has to be a joke,” I whispered.

  “Sorry, I don’t make those kinds of jokes,” she said before she turned and walked down the steps.

  The paper floated from my hand onto the porch. I stood very still, breathing heavily, as I watched the assessor get into her car and back out of the driveway. “Shit,” I said. “Shit. Shit. Shit!”

  “You alive out there?” Eddie called from inside.

  I didn’t answer, just bent down and picked up the statement, hoping I had mistakenly added a zero. The ten-thousand-dollar figure stared back at me. I would have to pay that amount just to unload the house. I had paid off tax liens on properties before, but never more than a couple thousand. It was a risk understood when buying a property at auction, but at this stage in the game, I had all but forgotten about the possibility of a lien. Usually the assessor had come knocking almost immediately after the property was sold, his or her hand out, to collect their monies.

  “Far from it,” I called to Eddie. I tried to calculate what I had left in my accounts. With the hit taken to my contingency fund due to the flood and other repairs, and all the other monies spoken for, this amount would come directly out of my own pocket. And it would clear out my savings account.

  Eddie came outside, wiping his hands with a rag. He pushed up his face mask. “Matt?” he said when he saw my expression.

  I shook my head. Blood rushed through my ears like a freight train.

  “Abby?”

  I handed him the paper.

  “Wow.” He gave a low whistle. “We’ve never had one this high, right? The bungalow had what? A couple grand?”

  “Not even,” I said.

  He handed the paper back to me and lifted his scraper in the air. “No time to waste, then.” He disappeared back inside, and I heard the scratching sound of the scraper working on the stairs.

  It was a good five minutes before I could move again, and I went back inside. I remained planted there, as though my feet were nailed to the warped wood floor. I didn’t know how it was possible that one house could have so many problems. I had certainly expected hard work, disasters even, but nothing like the half of which we had already experienced.

  I rubbed my forehead as I fought back tears.

  A mantra began to run through my head that told me I was an idiot for taking on a project of this size and scope, that I should have just stuck to what I was good at: remodeling beige condos, like Jack Sullivan—and his granddaughter—had said. Painting and replacing the windows in a few outdated bungalows. That I was in over my head, and my ambition was going to lead to financial ruin. That Matt would end up with full custody because I was going to end up living under the marina bridge.

  “Boss, I’m outta here. You okay?” Eddie said when the sun began to disappear over the horizon and dusk began to settle in the delicate nooks and crannies of the mo
lding.

  I didn’t answer, and he grunted good-bye. I stayed at the house, laser-focused on the stairs. I tediously scraped and scraped until my arms began to shake and burn, and I tried to ignore the feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me the worst wasn’t over yet.

  CHAPTER 25

  Two days later, I felt the sun move over my closed eyelids as I lay in bed. Not that I had been asleep; on the contrary, I had been up for hours. Since midnight, likely, as though my body had some weird sixth sense of time and refused to allow me a moment of peace once the day had officially started.

  It had been the same way years ago, on the day when Matt and I got married. I remembered I woke up some time around three in the morning, stared at the clock on my nightstand, and then screwed my eyes shut but never really fell asleep after that. Too many details swarmed through my head—whether the flowers would arrive on time, whether Traci’s bridesmaid dress would hold up despite barely being able to be zipped up. She had ordered a size two sizes smaller than normal, since she said it would be motivation to lose weight. Except, of course, she didn’t lose anything, and her dress had to be practically duct-taped to her body.

  I had worried about whether Matt was nervous. The week before, I’d caught him reading over the vows from the wedding booklet given to us by our priest, reciting them in different tones. He confessed that he was worried he was going to say the wrong thing and screw everything up. Or drop my ring. That was his other fear, that he would drop the ring instead of putting it on my finger and it would go bouncing across the church and under a pew.

  Looking back, it was strange that we worried about so many small things, so many details, when we really didn’t think at all about the reason we were there: to get married. Throughout the entire planning process, I didn’t spend more than five minutes thinking about what it all meant and what would be the end result. Or what would be left after the cake was cut and the dance floor empty. We never worried about the marriage, only about the wedding.