My Kind of People

by Lisa Duffy

  “That’s what my mother used to say about her mother. My grandmother,” she says. “I’d ask about her—we don’t even have one picture of her in our house. My mom said that her mother always made her feel bad about herself. That she didn’t want her in our life.”

  Joe reaches over and takes the sandpaper out of her hand. Hands her a new sheet.

  “She’s moving down the street. Into Agnes’s house.”

  “Your grandmother? How do you feel about that?”

  She shrugs. “My mom liked everyone. So why didn’t she like her own mother?”

  “I don’t have the answers, Sport.” He gestures for her to keep sanding. “I don’t know what happened between your mother and grandmother. I do know that when David said we made him feel bad about himself, it was the disease talking. He wanted to get better. And then he’d fail and feel awful about himself. Over and over again, he’d try to get sober and fail, and then in his mind, we were the ones making him feel broken. Not the drugs or the alcohol. Not the disease.”

  They hear a knock on the door, and Leo pokes his head in.

  “Hey, Joe. Got a minute? I have an issue I could use your help with.” He waves to Sky, holds his thumb up when she holds one of the legs in the air to show him.

  “Keep at it,” Joe tells her. “I’ll be right back.”

  Joe has the radio set to a talk station, and two men are going on and on about the Red Sox. She tunes them out, concentrates on running the paper evenly over the wood, smooth now under her fingers except for several rough spots.

  She wonders what Frankie is doing exactly at this moment. She pictures her out on some rocky cliff, painting the view of the ocean below. She knows this is silly because the camp where Frankie goes is in western Massachusetts and as far as she knows, there’s only lakes and ponds out there, and she’s thinking about a cliff over the ocean only because that’s where she wants to be right now.

  Out on the cliff in the woods, painting on her new easel.

  She told herself she’s only going back in the woods during the day now though, after what happened when they lit the sparklers. She can still hear that clapping.

  Frankie had told Sky she was being ridiculous—there was a farm on the other side of the woods. Obviously the owners were having a party and the clapping just trickled over to them.

  Sky had nodded, agreeing. Except she hadn’t ever heard any noise from that farm.

  Not in all the years she’d walked through the woods. And the clapping hadn’t come from the other side of the woods. It had come from behind them. Right behind them.

  Fifteen minutes later, when it feels like her arm is about to fall off and both the legs are done, she puts down the sandpaper and walks over to her house, looking for Joe.

  The basement door is open, voices trickling up the stairs to the kitchen. She skips down the stairs, the wood creaking loudly under her feet, and rounds the corner, bumping straight into Joe’s back, who jumps as though she’s quietly snuck up on him.

  Leo is bent over, leaning into the storage space under the stairs.

  “There’s more in here. A lot more,” he calls out, then steps back and straightens when he sees her, his eyes wide.

  There’s a cardboard box at Joe’s feet, full of empty bottles. All the same size and shape. Jim Beam printed in black letters on a white label. The only thing her father drank.

  Leo has a bottle in his hand. The brown liquid sloshing, half-full.

  He looks at Sky, and she sees him move the bottle out of sight, behind his leg. Then he sighs, puts the bottle on top of the others.

  “I was going to make up some lie about your father collecting these. But I get the sense you know that’s not true.” He looks at her. “Did you know he was drinking?”

  She shrugs. “Only because they fought about it. He never drank upstairs.”

  Leo stares blankly at the bottles. “He was coming up on fifteen years sober. Three weeks before he died, we sat in a bar and watched the game and he had a Coke. I didn’t even think about it anymore. I just assumed he didn’t either.” He nudges the box of bottles with his toe. “There must be thirty here.” He looks over to the space under the stairs. “How did I not know? Why didn’t Ann say anything?”

  She isn’t sure if he’s asking her, but she knows the answer.

  “Because he told her it was nobody’s business. Then she’d say that she was going to tell someone. And he’d say that he was going to tell someone she wasn’t taking her pills. They fought about it all the time when they thought I was asleep.”

  Leo squints at her. “What pills? Was your mother sick?”

  “I don’t know. He’d say that she acted crazy if she didn’t take them. That he worried about her taking care of me.”

  “Were you ever worried?” he asks quietly.

  She could probably lie. What would it matter? They were both dead anyway.

  “Sometimes. She’d get this look on her face. Like she was a different person. And she’d wear this red lipstick and get all dressed up.” She looked over at Joe. “Like the day you fell off the ladder and got hurt.”

  Joe doesn’t answer, but he swallows so hard she can hear it. He doesn’t need to say he knows what she’s talking about. She sees it all over his face.

  18

  She finds a holistic therapist in town and pays for the massage with cash. Gives him a fake name. Answers the few questions he asks with lies before she requests that they don’t speak. The only thing that’s true is how wonderful it feels to be touched. The one thing that makes her feel human while she prepares to die.

  After, she puts on her enormous sunglasses, a floppy hat on her head, and sits on a bench by the harbor. Not to be seen. To watch. People. Dogs. Birds. Boats sailing in and ships steaming out.

  Life.

  How had hers slipped away from her?

  She can catalog her bad decisions as if they were entries on a spreadsheet she could print out and shred, make them all disappear.

  She can do that. Forget what she’s done. Destroy the facts.

  Yet the results are here to stay. The scars on her arms from the drugs. The cancer in her lungs. Now liver and brain, from decades of smoking. Her bones brittle from starving herself between photo shoots. Her thinness was a badge of honor. Now her skin hangs, puckered and loose from lack of muscle. Her body tired and starved from the poison she’s feasted on her whole life.

  Alone, too. That’s all she is. That’s what happens when you give away everything you should keep. And keep the things that destroy you.

  But she feels as though she’s a part of something here, on Ichabod. This is where she’s meant to be. Even when the ache in her bones reminds her that she’s not long for this earth, she’s thankful to sit here on this bench and breathe in the salt air. Let the island wrap its arms around her and pull her close, safe in the harbor surrounded by the sights and sounds that nourished her all those years ago. She never told Mac she’d come and sit for hours in this very spot. Tiny feet rippling across her middle.

  She sits until dusk, when the air grows cooler. Back at the shed, she settles in front of the large window overlooking the barn and pasture, the ocean in the distance.

  She imagines the life she didn’t live. The one she gave away. All the beauty she won’t live to see.

  This is when she sketches. Pencil in hand, for hours and hours, until the candle on the table burns out, she sits at the table and becomes the woman she’s always wanted to be.

  19

  She hears about Lillian staying in Agnes’s house, not from Agnes but from Leo.

  They’re standing on her front lawn talking about the early August rain that’s supposed to pass through when a van drives past, The Moving Guys stenciled on the side. It pulls into the driveway of the vacant house three doors down.

  Agnes’s vacant house.

  “I wonder what that’s all about?” Maggie asks out loud.

  Leo looks at her. “She didn’t tell you?”

 
“Who didn’t tell me?”

  “Agnes.”

  She gives him a blank look. “About what?”

  “Lillian’s now staying in Agnes’s house.”

  Maggie squints. “Staying as in moving in?”

  “I just assumed Agnes told you. I mean, you guys are close. Lillian was at the party. You didn’t meet her?”

  Maggie shakes her head.

  She hadn’t spoken to Agnes at the party after they’d shared a brief hello. Agnes was busy catering to William’s law-firm cronies. Plus, Maggie had made it clear to Agnes that she should mind her own business when it came to Leo and Xavier and Sky. Agnes probably went to great lengths to make sure Maggie didn’t know Lillian was there.

  Her cheeks turn hot, her heart suddenly pounding. “I thought Lillian told you she was going to move slowly and give Sky some time to adjust. She has enough to deal with right now without this.”

  “Apparently, she got an offer she couldn’t refuse. She’s staying for free as Agnes’s guest.” He makes quotes in the air with his fingers, then sighs. “I’m trying not to be paranoid here, but she’s just rude to me. Hostile, really. Xavier says she won’t even acknowledge him.” He looks at Maggie. “You don’t think it’s because we’re gay, do you? I mean, I’m assuming she knows about her own daughter? I was a summer sailing instructor for Grace when she was in the sixth grade, and I could’ve told you then that she was gay.”

  “They don’t exactly have the best relationship. So yes, I think Agnes knows and chooses to ignore it. Which is probably why Grace never comes to Ichabod.”

  She stares at the van idling in the driveway. The driver’s side window is rolled down, a man’s forearm visible, his fingers tapping along to a beat she can’t hear.

  Down the street, a door slams and Agnes appears, walking toward the van.

  “Excuse me, Leo,” she says, marching after her.

  “Oh, geez,” he mutters. Leo doesn’t like conflict any more than she does—but there is a buzzing in her head.

  A fury building inside of her.

  By the time she reaches the end of the driveway, the van driver, a short, stocky man with a baseball hat on backward, is pointing to the clipboard in his hand, explaining something to Agnes, who’s bent over to accommodate the height difference.

  He stops midsentence when Maggie strides up next to them.

  Agnes straightens, gives her a surprised look. “Oh, hi. I was going to call you later to see if—”

  “What’s going on here?” she interrupts. “Did you invite Lillian to stay here? For free?”

  She glances at the driver, who hasn’t moved, his eyes wide, his hand still offering the clipboard, which rests in the air between the three of them.

  Agnes crosses her arms. “I don’t appreciate your tone of voice—”

  “Yes or no?”

  Agnes tilts her head, studies Maggie. “Yes, I did. And this is why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d act like this. As if it’s any of your business.”

  “My business? Agnes—this is none of your business!”

  The driver points to his clipboard.

  “Ma’am. Sign here for payment. Check these boxes on the waiver,” the driver says.

  Agnes ignores him. “I invited an old friend to stay in my house. I didn’t realize I needed to get permission from you. Or Leo.”

  “Old friend—you don’t even know her!”

  “Ma’am. Just sign right—”

  “Know her? We grew up together. She’s a native—”

  “Who left the island when she was ten—I know, I know. You told me. If she’s such a good friend, why haven’t you spoken to her in forty years? You and I both know this is about Sky and Leo and Xavier and your desire to stick your big fat nose in the middle of all of it.”

  The driver chuckles. Agnes glares.

  “Can’t you be doing something?” Agnes barks at him. “Moving things in. You know, like I’m paying you to do.”

  “I can’t do anything until you sign the waiver—”

  Agnes grabs the pen and scrawls her name. “Jesus! It’s clothing and toiletries, not a crystal chandelier.” She waves him away.

  “Here too.” He points to the waiver. “And there and there and there.”

  Agnes’s jaw juts out. The driver raises an eyebrow.

  Agnes leans over the clipboard while the driver looks at Maggie and grins, as though he’s happy to stand here all day and listen to two middle-aged women scream at each other.

  “There,” Agnes says. “Do you need a copy of my driver’s license too? Maybe my passport?”

  “Nope,” the driver says cheerily, ignoring Agnes’s sarcasm. “Okay if I use the john?”

  Agnes doesn’t answer him. He holds his hands up, winks at her. “Only number one, I promise.”

  She turns to Maggie. “You know, I find it interesting that I can barely get you on the phone anymore, but the minute precious Sky is involved, you’re over here, shot out of a cannon.”

  Maggie frowns. “What are you talking about? I talked to you yesterday.”

  “Because I called you—”

  “No. You called me back,” Maggie points out. “I called you two days ago, and you were in the middle of a phone call with your doctor, so you said you’d call me back.”

  “Which I did. I called you back because apparently it wasn’t important enough to you to call me to find out what the doctor said.”

  She takes a moment to breathe. But it doesn’t help. She had called Agnes. Agnes had told her she’d call Maggie right back. She didn’t. Instead, Maggie had called again the next day. And when she asked Agnes what happened with the doctor, Agnes said she didn’t want to talk about it. And now, somehow, Agnes was upset with her?

  “Ma’am?” the driver calls from the front steps, a box in his arms. “This one’s not marked. Where do you want it? The waiver says I have to ask.”

  Agnes sighs.

  “It’s not my stuff. I don’t know. Just anywhere.” She faces Maggie.

  “In the kitchen or the living room, ma’am? The waiver says unmarked boxes all go in the same room. Homeowner’s choice.”

  “The waiver says. The waiver says,” Agnes mimics under her breath, then turns to the driver. “Put them in the foyer. That’s the room right when you walk in—”

  “I know what a foyer is, ma’am,” the driver says, and disappears through the open door.

  “I didn’t know if the waiver said you needed me to explain the rooms,” Agnes shouts after him.

  “He’s just doing his job,” Maggie offers, embarrassed by Agnes’s rudeness. “And you’re paying for this? So you’re not just letting her stay for free—you’re paying for her to come to the island?”

  “I’m helping her get settled.”

  She can hardly believe her ears. “What does William have to say about all of this?”

  “William? What does he have to do with it?”

  “He’s a lawyer. I mean, is this even legal? Leo was specifically named as Sky’s guardian. Ann didn’t leave her in the care of Lillian. In fact, we know—and you know—that she hadn’t spoken to Lillian in years. And now you’re inviting this woman into this child’s life and you don’t know anything about the situation. Do you?”

  “I know Lillian is Sky’s grandmother. And that’s all I need to know—”

  “That’s not what I asked. I asked why Ann and Lillian were estranged. What happened between them?”

  “That’s not my business, Maggie—”

  “Oh my God! You really don’t know? Have you even asked? She could be abusive, for all we know! She could have a drinking problem that she won’t get help for. She could be a nutjob. A psychopath. A child molester—I could go on and on.”

  “Lillian is none of those things. You’ll see when you meet her that she’s perfectly normal. More normal than what’s going on down there.” She gestures to Sky’s house. “And I heard the boyfriend is out of the picture now too? Talk about a lack of stability for
the child.”

  Maggie swallows hard, tears suddenly in her eyes. “Husband. For the millionth time. Xavier is Leo’s husband. And that’s a disgusting thing to say. Leo’s sexuality has nothing to do with how good a parent—”

  “Oh, stop it,” Agnes interrupts. “I meant normal as in a person outside of the family raising the child instead of a family member. There’s nothing normal about a man—two men—raising a little girl instead of her own grandmother.”

  “Have you thought of Sky in all of this? I know what you want. And it seems obvious what Lillian wants with moving here and not even consulting Leo about it. But what about Sky?”

  “She’s a child. She doesn’t know what’s best for her—”

  “And you do?”

  Agnes pauses. “I’m not emotionally invested in the situation like you are. Sometimes you have trouble accepting facts when your feelings are involved. Even when it’s clear what the right thing to do would be.”

  The way it’s delivered is unmistakable.

  Maggie has seen that look on Agnes’s face before. She has seen that look on Agnes’s face all year long when she talks about Maggie’s marriage.

  It’s a look of pity.

  As if Maggie is weak and foolish for trying to save her twenty-seven-year marriage.

  “I’m doing what I think is best here—”

  “This isn’t about you, Agnes! You know what? Don’t call me. Don’t get in touch. I can’t be around you right now,” Maggie spits, the words scattering on the driveway between them. She sees the shock on Agnes’s face. Disbelief.

  Maggie is stunned as well. They’ve never fought like this—Maggie has never fought with anyone like this.

  It’s always been her job to fix things. To smooth edges and soothe tempers and put a smile on her face.

  Nobody likes an angry girl, her father used to say.

  Sweet Maggie.

  She turns and walks away.

  “The MRI was clear,” Agnes shouts after her. “In case you were wondering!”

  She should turn around. Give Agnes a hug and tell her that’s the best news she’s heard in a long time.

  Instead, she keeps moving in the other direction.