“You need a haircut,” I say, sounding so much like my dad that I want to slap myself.“What I mean is,” I clarify,“your hair is always in your face.”
“I like it there,” he says, and I have to laugh at the way he deadpans it.
“Are you two just going to stand there and chat all afternoon, or can we get to work?” my dad calls.
River follows me in.“We were talking about hairstyles,” I say, nudging River with my elbow. He nudges back, harmless sparring that feels almost cheerfully aggressive.“What I’m saying is, this look doesn’t flatter the kid’s face.”
“Ass,” River says under his breath. But the corners of his mouth are tilted up.
“I think it’s fine,” says Sharon.“Reminds me of that Bieber kid, back before he started buying monkeys and growing inadequate facial hair.”
“What!” exclaims River, and it’s the loudest he’s ever been in any of our presences.
“I’ll take you to get it cut later.” Over his head, I give a thumbs-up to Sharon, who’s already gathering her stuff to leave for the day. I duck into the back to change into the clothes I’ve brought with me, and when I come back out, River’s Windexing the display cases, my dad watching to make sure he doesn’t miss any spots.
“How’s your mother?” he asks.
“Same as always. Having some big party at the Crestwood for Richard in a few weeks. We’re invited.”
“Right by the register,” Dad says to River, in the slightly louder voice he uses when talking to him.“You missed a spot.” He turns back toward me.“A party sounds all right. Do I have to wear a suit?”
“Probably.Why would you even want to go, Dad?”
“Why not? There’s going to be a lot of free food. That’s my favorite kind of party.” I shake my head, pretend to be looking over receipts from the morning.“Ben. We’ve been over this. I got no hard feelings for Richard. Or for your mother.”
“Well, I can’t say the same,” I say.
“Who’s Richard?” River says, and fuck if that kid doesn’t seem to hear only the things you’re hoping he doesn’t.
“Richard is Ben’s stepdad. Nice guy, money coming out of his ass. When Ben was younger, a little bit older than you…”
“Dad.” I don’t think anyone could mistake the warning tone in my voice.“No.”
River looks back and forth between us, holding his bottle of Windex and rag. But just as soon, it’s as though he decides the curiosity isn’t worth it. He turns back, applying himself again to the cleaning. But he’s turned so he’s facing us, I notice—he’s listening, in his way. I can feel Dad’s eyes on me, but I don’t look over.“You get that light up at Kit’s yet?”
My shoulders stiffen even more, impossibly.“No. She’s got an electrician.”
“She could probably do it herself,” says River, and Dad and I both look at him.“She’s really smart.”
“You’re right about that, Smalls. Pretty too,” says Dad, and they smile at each other.
“You guys are assholes,” I say, and leave them to their cleaning.
* * * *
I spend the rest of the afternoon up in the east wing of the second floor, which is basically a graveyard for stuff we don’t know what to do with yet—dump-offs from estate sales we need to sort, mysterious parts that even my dad can’t figure out a whole for. In a salvage yard, you get accustomed pretty quick to chaos, to the fact that you’ve probably got more material than you’re ever going to sell, that you’re going to get more inventory when you don’t want it. If you think too much about it, you’ll get overwhelmed, wondering about all this stuff, how it’ll ever find a place to actually go.
Today, though, it’s a good spot for me to hide out. It’s relaxing, I guess, to be pulling out stuff that I’ll either put into the inventory or take to the dumpster, or out to recycling. When I was a kid, younger than River and pissed off at the world, figuring out this kind of stuff had been a good way to calm me down, to stop the rising tide of anger and frustration I felt everywhere I went, the one that made me want to punch and destroy. You couldn’t be that way when you were pulling out parts of light fixtures or stairwells from different centuries. You couldn’t just hold on to things as tightly as you wanted or toss around the pieces you couldn’t get to fit. You had tonotice, pay attention to every little piece, learn how to treat it, figure out whether it belonged somewhere.
About two hours in, when a glint of sun from the skylight winks across the floor, I catch a shock of cobalt blue in a corner, where a stack of old, glassless window frames lean against the wall. At first, I think it’s part of a dismantled window, maybe some stained glass, but when I get over to it, I see it’s the bottom bowl for a chandelier, hand-carved and in improbably perfect condition.
It’s that easy for me to get lost—easier in a practical sense, I guess, than it’d ever been back when I still lived here, because now Google has image search, and for the next hour, that’s what I’m doing. First I take a photo of the bowl itself, and it’s an easy hit to Baltic chandeliers, so I look at about a hundred examples before I start to trawl the room, looking for other pieces that might match the bowl. The good news is that most of the essentials are around—the neck, the arms, the spindle, the main bobeche. But there’s probably thirty pieces I’ll have to hunt down, either elsewhere in the yard or online, and that’s not even counting prisms. I’ve only found—inside an otherwise empty lone dresser drawer on the other side of the room—about half of what a chandelier of this size must take.
By the time my dad calls up to me, telling me it’s time to get going, I feel calmer, more focused, more ready to deal with work, Dad, everything. And if my mind isn’t any more clear about Kit—well. It’s something I’m getting used to, at least.
Chapter 9
Kit
