“Like a horse.”
“I doubt it. Sleeping?”
Annie looks away. “Mostly. Sometimes.”
“How is Dad?”
The question hangs between them for a moment, waiting for Annie to wrestle with it. “The same,” Annie says finally. Her voice is brisk but the purple crescents under her eyes seem to grow deeper. “Good days and bad days, you know, as usual. Thank goodness the agency has sent us Barbara. She’s so good with him.”
Twenty-two months ago Louisa’s father, Martin, the retired chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Martin is “Dad” to Louisa, “Martin” or “Sweetheart” to Annie, and “Chief” to everyone else. Now there are days when the Chief recognizes Annie and days when he rails at her for some imagined transgression; there are days when he is clear-eyed, calm, and quiet, sitting at his desk among his papers and his books, and days when he can’t find his way out of the bathroom. Two weeks ago, a Rockland police officer discovered him walking on North Shore Drive wearing nothing but a raincoat and bedroom slippers. Annie had gone to dress for the day when he slipped out. The whole thing would have been funny, except that naturally it wasn’t. It was awful.
“Can I see him?” Louisa asks. She’s asking, but she’s not sure she wants to hear the answer. She’s of two minds about her father, and of two hearts too. In Brooklyn, absorbed in her own life and her daily worries and tasks it’s easy enough to pretend that none of this is happening, and to think of Martin Fitzgerald the way she’s always thought of him, incandescent wit, blue eyes flashing with intelligence and warmth, but here she is, about to face daily—hourly—reminders of decline. No hiding. The realization makes her palms itch.
Something passes over Annie’s face: sadness or worry or a combination of both. “Not yet. He’s resting. Late afternoons and early evenings are the hardest. That’s common. The mood changes . . .” Her voice trails off and she rubs at her temples. “He’ll be ready tosee you at dinner. We’ve got the Millers coming. I’m sorry about company on your first night, but when I asked them I didn’t know you’d be arriving today and I couldn’t very well un-ask them.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” says Louisa, although she wishes that Annie had. Louisa had moved their departure date up by a week. Abigail and Claire didn’t mind one bit but Matty groused—for the first time probably ever, he’d rather be in Brooklyn than Maine. The curse of the almost-teenager, worried about missing out. When Louisa was young she had her own life well established here, with friends, and sometimes boyfriends (Mark Harding, when she was sixteen), and she’d never wanted to be elsewhere.
“Pauline is making cod,” Annie adds. Pauline has worked summers for the Fitzgeralds for years. She has a daughter Louisa’s age, and two sons besides, but she was a young mother—still a teenager, for the first boy, and maybe for Nicole too—so she’s much younger than Annie. One long-ago summer, the summer they were sixteen, Louisa and Nicole were briefly, intensely friends. “I should be able to do without her, I’ve been thinking lately,” says Annie. “It feels like an extravagance.”
Louisa feels a drumbeat of apprehension at Annie’s words. Is Annie worried about money? No, she decides. It’s just that famous New England frugality—you might live on waterfront land valued at well over a million, but you’re still going to frown at the electric bill and buy extra bananas when they go on sale at Hannaford.
“Mom. If she’s helpful, use her. You have to take care of yourself. You’re no good to Dad if you’re exhausted. You can’t pour from an empty cup, you know.” This is a piece of wisdom she once gleaned from a SoulCycle instructor, but its origins don’t make it any less true. Louisa should know, she’s been trying to pour from an empty cup for a year now. “And who’s that in the garden?” she says, looking out the window.
“Oh, that’s Danny. He’s new this year. He’s been doing handyman work as well as landscaping. Technically he works for Gil,who’s always done the work here, but we hire him on the side to do a bit of this and that. I’m ashamed to admit what a staff I have this summer. There’s just too much for me to manage on my own.”
“Of course there is, Mom.”
Annie glances to the east, where the sky is darkening. “Looks like there’s rain coming. Should we call the children in?”
“I think they’d rather stay out,” says Louisa. “They’re mostly waterproof.”
“I suppose they are.” Annie takes Louisa’s hand and squeezes it. “Louisa, what it does to my old heart, to have children in the house. Are you really and truly staying for the whole summer?”
(Annie says nothing about Steven coming or not coming, and Louisa offers nothing.)
“I’d stay all year if I could,” says Louisa, squeezing back. “I’d stay forever.” Louisa is a tenured professor of history at New York University, finishing up a sabbatical, during which she was supposed to have completed a book:The History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church on Pitcairn Island.A working title, not the snappiest. Steven is one of the two founders of a podcast start-up in Brooklyn called All Ears. He works long hours alongside beautiful, tireless millennials with fantastic eyebrows, and he’s compensated mostly, at this stage, with hope and promise.
Annie has stepped out on the porch and is frowning at the sky. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call in the children?” she asks through the screen door. “I can’t believe how dark it got, so quickly.”
Before Louisa even has a chance to answer there’s a low grumble of thunder, like a warning from an ill-tempered dog, and almost immediately after that the rain comes.
3.
Kristie
Danny looks at Kristie with his olive eyes. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll give you a lift. You don’t want to ride home in this.”
She hesitates. “I don’t know.” But her top is already soaked through, and she thinks about all of the hills between here and Linden Street. She doesn’t even know if the bike tires will work on the wet road; they’re pretty bald.
“I’m a good guy,” he says. He opens his arms, then shrugs, like he’s apologizing for that. “Ask my mom if you don’t believe me. I live with her.” Kristie must have looked shocked because he laughs and says, “It’s not as weird as it sounds. I mean maybe it is. I just sold my place, haven’t found a new one yet. And what can I say? I’m pretty good company. Come on. Let me throw your bike in the back of the truck. I have a tarp I can cover it with. I’m done for the day anyway.”
“Well, okay. Thanks.” She watches Danny load her bike in the truck, and she climbs in the cab.
On the way to Linden Street she tells Danny that she’s been looking for a job, with no luck. Danny tells her that he does all the landscaping for the house but that he also does handyman work for the family, as requested. She feels a shiver go up and down her body when he says this, and carefully she asks, “Do they need a lot of handyman work?”
He shrugs. “Average amount. Older home, older owners. They need lightbulbs changed, showers regrouted, that sort of thing. The exterior is going to need a coat of paint soon, so there’s lots of prep to do. I’m happy to help. They pay well too.”
There’s a lot she wants to ask, but she says, “That’s good,” and leaves it there, not wanting to seem too eager.
