Then comes another creak, this one the screen door. “Here you are,” Anne says. I open my eyes to find her rubbing her hands together. “Okay. Dinner. I’m grilling steak, but are you still not eating meat, Joy?”
Mercifully, Joy is gracious. “It’s okay. I’ll eat whatever else you have.”
“Your grandfather likes brown rice with his steak. Does that work for you?”
“Awesome,” she says and reaches for my hand.
I want to resist. I could stay out here forever, where there’s freedom and fresh air. But I can only put off the inevitable so long. Letting myself be pulled from the rocker, I take the screen door from Anne and follow them inside.
I don’t want to be here… don’t want to be here… don’t want to…
The thought reverberates outward from my brain to my nerve endings, because nothing here has changed, not the misty seascape on the wall, the time-stained Berber underfoot, the slant of late-day light spilling through mullioned glass—and not my sense of being an outlier in this house.
But I am here. And wallowing in the why of it accomplishes nothing.
Tamping down my unease, I breathe deeply of the sea smell that may be more faint here than outside, but that walls can’t completely block. Salt air works for me. I cling to it for strength as I look around.
The large front hall spills into the living room, both as dark with wood and fabric as ever, both as handsome—or potentially so, because my daughter is right. The place is a mess. Once there was plenty of sitting space. Now, newspapers, magazines, and books sit where we used to. Dirty glasses and mugs litter a side table seconds before Anne sweeps them up.
All of that is secondary, though, to the man in his chair. Seeing him here, I’m apprehensive as I wasn’t at Urgent Care. Here is home, which makes it different. I want him to recognize me. I want him to smile and be glad that I’ve come and say that he’s missed me. I want him to love me.
Well,thatthought just slipped out. I push it away, but the point remains. I haven’t realized how high the stakes are—haven’t allowed myself to dwell on them, but now that I’m here, they hit me in the face. I want so much.
Dad’s chair is a large leather wingback thing whose claw feet must have put down roots through the carpet and into the floorboards by now. He always loved that chair. There was something throne-like about its placement, in that it gave him a view of the entire room. The rest of us knew not to sit in it, unless he and Mom were both gone, at which point we would fight over who would sit there. Well, Margo and Anne fought. I waited until they lost interest before sneaking in and curling up on the indented cushions with the smell of leather, Tom Aldiss, and a book.
“I need to talk with Papa,” I whisper to Joy and cross to him. When he lifts his eyes, I squat down with a hand on the nail heads outlining the chair’s leather arm. This steadies me as his sharp look does not. He is the only one of us with blue eyes; like Mom, we girls all have versions of green. Mom had wanted a boy, if only to maximize the chance of having one of her children looking like Tom. One of Margo’s sons has blue eyes. But so does her husband.
“Hi, Daddy.”
His sharp look—startled, perhaps—softens with a smile. “How are you?”
It’s a polite smile, but it’s something. “I’m good. And you?”
“I’m good, too.” He pauses, remembers. “Except for this.” He twitches the cast.
“Those attic stairs are treacherous.”
“Attic stairs?” he mocks, like I’m daft. “It wasn’t the attic stairs. I was running out to the car and tripped on a rock. Your mother always warns me not to run, but do I listen?”
He’s gotten the tense wrong with regard to my mother, and certainly the details of the accident. But the story he tells is credible enough. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” He dismisses the matter with a loud, “How’s San Antonio?”
“We’re in New York, Joy and I.” I hitch my head toward the door, but she has gone out to get our bags from the car. “My daughter.”
He scowls. “Well, I know that. Why do you people think I can’t remember things? I didn’t get where I am today with a bad mind.” He returns to his paper.
“Whatcha reading?”
“I’m not read-ing.” He enunciates the word the way he always used to when he disagreed with something I said. “I’m doing the cross-word puz-zle. People without memories can’t do those, in case you’re wondering.”
“I’m sure your memory is fine,” I say in an effort to appease.
He glares at me. “And if it isn’t? And if itisn’t? I have a right to forget things once in a while. I’m seventy-two, for chrissake.” His brows are still menacing when they come together. They’re more gray than his silver hair, and messier. “Don’t you have something else to do?”
I certainly do, like ask him if he has a gun. But his own question is so Tom Aldiss–ornery at a time when Tom Aldiss is fading, that I leave the moment alone. Besides, Joy is coming through the front door with the bags. So I rise and go to help.
The stairs to the second floor hug the round turret walls, and while worn carpet runners mute sound, the creaks beneath it have multiplied since last I was here. I know. I used to be intimate with those creaks. When we were growing up, staying out late involved risk. Mom wasn’t bad; she would often appear at her door to see which one of us it was and put a finger to her lips in warning before slipping back inside.
