“Girls,” my mom said, in the same tired voice I’d heard her utter this word at least a million times before.
For a moment, we just sat there not talking, the only sound the sputtering of some kind of machine starting up down in the living room. Finally my mom said, “The floor issue aside, Emaline, you really haven’t been around here much lately. I miss you.”
“You see me at work every day.”
“True,” she agreed. “But it’s not the same. And with you leaving at the end of the summer …”
“It’s still June,” I pointed out now. “I leave in August. We’ve got weeks.”
“And you have a new boyfriend,” she replied, taking a sip of her coffee.
I looked at her. “This isn’t about Theo.”
“No, it’s about Mom being codependent,” Amber said from underneath the comforter, her voice muffled. “God, you’d think she was going to be left on a desert island alone or something. Hello, the rest of us will still be here. Only Emaline is going anyplace.”
My mom sniffed. “But she is going.”
“You did fine when Margo left,” I told her.
“I gained fifteen pounds!”
Whoops. I’d forgotten about the onset of her sudden, and serious, Twix bar habit. “It’s not fair to make me feel bad for going to school. You would have killed me if I hadn’t gone.”
“Says the Smart One and the Favorite,” Amber added.
“I have no favorites,” my mom said, another of her mantras. To me she added, “I just thought you’d be home more this summer. And then you and Luke broke up, and …”
“So this is about Theo,” I said.
“Yep,” Amber replied.
“Not exactly,” my mom protested. “He seems perfectly nice. And I do want you to be happy. But it’s just … different. And so suddenly so.”
I felt tired just hearing this. Mostly because, even though I was perfectly happy with my life and love life as it was, I seemed to be the only one. Luke had his faults, too, but at least he’d been familiar. Theo was Not From Here, didn’t drive, wore girl jeans, and was monopolizing my time, all of which were apparently punishable offenses. The thing was, he wasn’t getting penalized. Just me.
“Luke cheated on me,” I reminded my mother, again. “With a girl he met at Tallyho.”
“Plus,” Amber added, “he’s already got a new girlfriend anyway.”
I turned, looking down at her. “What?”
“You didn’t know?” she asked. I shook my head. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Who is she?”
“This friend of Brooke’s, Jacqueline Best. She was my year. You know her, red hair, really pretty. Drives that black convertible.”
None of these were ringing bells, for which I was actually kind of grateful. In some cases, and especially small towns, it’s better when it’s the devil—or girl—you don’t know.
“My yearbook’s over on that shelf,” Amber offered. “If you want, you can look her up, critique her outfit, black out her eyes.”
Which is just what she would have done—half the girls’ pictures in her class had already been defaced in this way. Amber was known for having a long, ever-changing list of enemies. “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve moved on, too, remember?”
She shrugged. “Up to you.”
I pushed myself off the bed, taking my mug with me. Immediately, Amber took up the space I’d vacated, burying her head again. I said to my mom, “You know, I thought you’d be glad I’m not dragging around all summer, crying about my broken heart.”
“Of course I am,” she replied. “It’s just …” She trailed off, shaking her head. The half-finished sentences were the worst, as if she expected me to somehow fill in the blanks for her.
I forced myself to take a breath before saying, “Just what?”
I was standing in the half-open door now, with her still on the bed, her legs pulled up to her chest. I watched as she closed her eyes, then looked up at the ceiling for a long moment. Finally, she said, “You’re my baby. And I’m just really going to miss you, honey. That’s all.”
I bit my lip. “I’m going to miss you, too. But I’m not gone yet. Okay?”
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. Oh, for God’s sake, I thought, but just like that, I was gone, too, my vision blurring. I could handle just about anything but seeing my mother cry. It struck at something deep and primal in me, flipping a switch I couldn’t reach no matter how I contorted myself. I put my mug down, then walked over to the bed and slid in beside her, looping my arms around her waist.
“I love you,” she whispered into my hair. “To the moon and more.”
This time, it was easy to know what to say. “The moon and more.”
We stayed like that for a minute, the sounds from the living room muffled in the distance. Finally, Amber broke the silence. “Whenever you all are done, I could really use some coffee. I think it’s the least you can do for co-opting my bed.”
My mom elbowed her—more gently than I would have—then laughed. “Fine. But only because I need to get going anyway.”
We started down the hallway, where the sputtering was still going. The living room, kitchen, and dining room were all empty now, sunlight slanting in on the bare floors. Morris and my dad were bent over some kind of compressor, a big floor sander now between them. From what I could see, the hardwood was just fine. Then again, I’d just see a windmill and an open sky, too, never feeling the need to conquer either. You think it’s all obvious and straightforward, this world. But really, it’s all in who is doing the looking.
13
“OKAY, SO WHAT I was thinking was that we’d take out these prints, and you could …”
“Holy crap. Is that marble over there on those countertops?”
Ivy pressed her lips together, which meant she was doing her best not to scream, berate, or otherwise verbally abuse someone. This was an effort that, in my experience at least, she made only when it came to Clyde.
“I have no idea,” she told him, her voice flat. “But as I was saying, about the prints …”
“It can’t be marble,” Clyde said, craning his neck to look at the kitchen again. “Nobody would be stupid enough to spend money on that for a rental, would they, Emaline?”
I glanced at Ivy again, having learned my lesson about commentary from the peanut gallery while she was filming. She sighed, giving me a nod. I said, “It’s granite.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. It’s on the Web site write-up.”
“Man.” Clyde whistled between his teeth. “Granite. Add that up with just the fridge over there and you’ve got more money than the value of my entire house.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Ivy said.
“Pretty close.”
“Would you like to prove it? I’ll grab a camera and we can go there right now.”
Now I bit my lip, ducking over the payroll sheet I was filling out at the kitchen island. It was odd to admit, but at times like this, I actually felt kind of bad for Ivy. She was so desperate to get into Clyde’s head, to win his trust and open access to his world, and yet she kept doing things that did the exact opposite. Like when he balked at her suggestion that they do interviews at his home, she told him to come here. Bad, bad idea.
“Why?” Theo had asked me earlier, when I’d come with the sandwiches from Da Vinci’s I’d picked up for our lunch, only to find him busy getting the main room set up for filming. “This is a great space.”
“This is a mansion.”
He put down the light he was carrying, then glanced around, as if seeing it all for the first time. “You think?”
“You don’t?”
“It’s a rental house,” he replied, shrugging. “I mean, it’s nice. But it’s not a Central Park penthouse.”
“Clyde grew up on a dairy farm, Theo.”
“And went on to be a successful artist in New York. He’s no stranger to money, if the names of the collections that have
bought his work are any indication.” He nodded at Modern Coast, the large, glossy book with pictures of many of Clyde’s paintings that I was flipping through. “He’s seen fancier than this, I promise you.”
“Maybe in New York,” I said. “But this is Colby. It’s going to be a distraction.”
“I don’t think you give him enough credit,” he replied. “It’ll be fine.”
Now, I glanced over at Theo, who had studiously avoided eye contact with me since Clyde’s arrival. Which, sure enough, had been followed by him insisting on the full house tour, during which he expressed awe, shock, and amazement over everything from the crown molding to the large soaking tubs in every bathroom. I kept quiet. Nobody likes to hear “I told you so.”
“Emaline,” Clyde called out now, gesturing at the long, double-story-height windows beside him, “you have any idea what the window budget was for this place?”
“No, can’t say I do.”
“Had to be at least one hundred and fifty, I’m guessing,” he mused. “I mean, you look at how much glass and it’s already gonna be a lot. But the sizes of these big ones? And the shapes of some had to be custom—”
“We get it,” Ivy said loudly, cutting him off. “The house is grand and opulent, entirely excessive, and therefore we are offensive for living in it. Can we talk about your work now?”
He looked at her, surprised. I think we all were. So far, Ivy had played all of Clyde’s games, from reading Irma Jean Rankles to, most recently, enduring a hands-on fish-cleaning tutorial he insisted was crucial for understanding of his collage technique. Now, suddenly and finally, she’d had enough.
I expected Clyde to get up and leave, or at least fire back. Instead, for the first time I could remember on camera, he smiled. “You think I’m saying you’re offensive?”
“I think,” Ivy replied, “that considering how much you talk about wasting money, you have absolutely no problem with wasting time. Especially mine.”
Yikes, I thought. Now Theo did look at me, both of us totally on edge. I was beginning to wish I’d eaten lunch at the office.
“I’m wasting your time,” Clyde repeated. He was still smiling. In fact, he looked more comfortable than I’d seen him so far in this entire process.
“From day one,” Ivy replied, clearly emboldened now. “It’s one thing if you have no respect for your own work. But by diminishing the value of both our passion for it and the project we are making out of that passion, you insult us both. And frankly, I’m tired of pretending otherwise. So if you want to talk about windows, or countertops—”
“Tell me what you want to know,” Clyde said. “Right now. Tell me.”
Ivy leaned forward, over the clipboard in her lap. “Why did you leave New York and stop making art?”
A beat. Then another, before Clyde replied, “I sold a painting for a half a million dollars. It made me sick to my stomach. I was twenty-seven years old and I didn’t know who I was anymore.”
Silence. All I could hear was the ocean outside. When I swallowed, it sounded deafening. Ivy said, “This was Terns?”
“Yeah.” Clyde picked up the book I’d been looking at earlier and flipped through the pages. It was weird for this to be the only noise in this huge house. He found the page, then looked at it for a long moment. “It’s canvas, ground shells, plaster, some tubes of paint. You think that’s worth a half a million bucks?”
“I think it was the centerpiece of your first solo show. I think it put you, officially, on the map as one of the rising stars of the art world at the time.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“I’m not sure I understand it.”
Clyde looked back down at the photo, and I realized I was holding my breath. “The last year before he sold the farm, my father made thirty thousand dollars. And that was a good year. Farming is back-breaking, soul-killing work. His body was ravaged by the time he was sixty.”
Nobody said anything. Outside, some kids were running along the water, a kite bobbing over them. Clyde lifted up the book, turning it so Ivy could see the picture. “Canvas. Ground shells. Plaster. Paint. It was like an insult to him. I felt like an insult to him.”
From where I was sitting, the photo was just a blur of grays and blacks. Ivy studied it for a moment. “But you were his son, and that was your work. You were getting paid for it. He could have taken it as partially his accomplishment as well, no?”
No, I thought, at the same moment that Clyde shook his head. It would have been the same with my own parents. No matter how proud they were, that much money would change the balance, not only affecting how they viewed me but also making them assume I viewed them differently as well. Even if I didn’t.
“If I stayed in New York and lived that life, making that kind of money from then on, I knew I’d become an asshole,” Clyde said now. “But turning away and coming back here … that made me one, too. I couldn’t win.”
Ivy said, “But you did come back.”
“Yeah.” He looked out the window at the kite bobbing, barely visible above the deck rail. “And I’m such an asshole.”
No one contested this. Not then, and not in the next half hour that I remained there, watching silently as they continued to talk. Clyde said a lot more about his work, his choices, his regrets. Glimpses here and there of things he might have done differently, or not, like a collage of words instead of materials. He didn’t speak to anyone but Ivy. He didn’t take breaks or ask questions about the house. And at one o’clock, when I slipped out the door to go back to work, I was pretty sure he didn’t even notice.
* * *
When I pulled up at the office, my father’s Subaru—recognizable by both color and its Connecticut plates—was parked right outside. I passed the open space beside it, which I would have taken otherwise, and parked around back instead. Then I came in through the supply room, as quietly as possible, so I could see what was going on.
As it was early afternoon on a Monday, things were pretty slow. My grandmother was on the phone, Rebecca sat picking at a salad at the front desk, and my mom was nowhere to be seen. I could hear my father in Margo’s office, so I dodged it, ducking into my grandmother’s instead, where I slid into a chair that gave me a clear view while still being hidden myself.
“Rolo?” she asked me, nodding at a half-open pack on the corner of the desk. I took one, sneaking a quick look at Margo, who was now getting to her feet as my father did the same. As they left her office and headed for the door, she suddenly glanced over, spotting me, and I ducked back out of sight. But not quickly enough.
The front door of the office swung shut. A moment later, though, I could just feel her in my grandmother’s doorway, even with the file cabinet solidly between us. “What is it with you two? He’s not a monster, you know.”
My grandmother grabbed another Rolo. “He’s not Santa, either.”
“Who else is hiding from him?” I asked.
“Your mother,” they said in unison. My grandmother pointed at me. “She was in that same spot until he turned his back long enough for her to escape.”
“Personally, I’m thrilled he’s here,” Margo said, adjusting her purse. “We’re going to North Reddemane to look at that house. If it’s half as nice as he thinks, I’m looking at a good chance for a decent commission.”
“It is,” I told her. “I was just there last week, when I was hanging out with Benji.”
“Is that the little boy that was here?” my grandmother asked.
“My half brother. He’s ten.” I looked at Margo. “Where is he now?”
“I sent him out with Morris,” Margo said.
“With who?”
“Morris,” she said, as if this was just the most normal thing you could do with a child. “What? He stopped by looking for you, the kid was bored, and we needed to talk business. I gave him ten bucks, told him to go get ice cream or something.”
Ice cream. She would not have had to tell him twice. Morris would do abo
ut anything for a fudge ripple from the Squeeze Serve.
“What I need from you,” Margo continued, “is to keep an eye on him while we do this house thing, then bring him back to North Reddemane. Say, in an hour or so.”
“What?” I said. “I have a job to do also, you know.”
“Babysitting for a client who might make the agency money is your job,” she replied. “Besides, he’s your brother, Emaline. Honestly.”
She turned, heading out of the office, and my grandmother watched her go, an amused look on her face. I pulled aside the nearby blind, looking out at my father, who was standing by his car, squinting in the sun. I knew it probably did look weird I’d gone to such lengths to avoid him. But ever since I’d discussed everything that had happened between us with Theo, the thought of seeing him made me more nervous than usual. It was one thing to be angry with him; that, I could handle. Pitying him, however, was an entirely new ball game, one I was not up for playing. At least not yet.
Once the coast was clear, I went outside just in time to catch Benji and Morris darting across the main road, ice cream in hand. “Squeeze Serve, huh?” I called out. “That’s a serious Colby delicacy.”
“Morris said fudge ripple is obligatory,” Benji informed me.
“He used the word ‘obligatory’?”
“Any other flavor’s for punks,” Morris told me, pretty much confirming my suspicions. “Is Margo still inside? I have her change. But it’s not much. Squeeze Serve ain’t cheap.”
“She went to North Reddemane, to see the house,” I told him. “I’m supposed to bring Benji back up there in a bit.”
“I can take him, if you want,” Morris offered. “I need to go to Gert’s anyway.”
“Yeah!” Benji said. “I can show you my magic set, like I told you about.”
I looked at Morris. “You have a car? Since when?”
“Ivy said I could take the van. She wants me to go buy up all their milk crates, or something.”