Page 24 of High Season
She wipes condensation from the small mirror that she has looked in a hundred times before and lets this version of herself stare back, scrutinize. She is different now, she tells herself. She is an entirely new person.
She gets changed in the bathroom, the tiles slippery with moisture, a suitcase sprawled open on the floor. She can’t stand to go to her bedroom. Not yet. Later, when she is tired enough to collapse into bed without thinking too much. When she can pretend that this is somewhere new, someplace she has never been before. A place that might eventually feel like home.
“I thought you might want a beer,” Calvin says when Josie walks down the stairs that lead into the kitchen. A pan of tomato sauce is bubbling on the ancient stovetop, and her brother is ladling wet tendrils of pasta into bowls.
“Sit,” he says. “Make yourself at home.”
Josie traces the knots of the table, places where the wood has collected a thick scuzz of age, softened varnish and decades of spilled drinks, hot mugs scorching its surface. She touches a cigarette burn that her father made years ago, the orange butt smoldering against the thinning varnish. Thinks of her mother, sitting here with her head in her hands, on the day that he left them.
Calvin sets the plates down in front of them, the sauce a vivid and unnatural red, a heap of pale cheese wilting on top.
“Looks good,” Josie lies.
Calvin sits opposite her and shovels a forkful into his mouth.
“So, what have you been doing for work lately?” Josie asks.
“This and that.”
Calvin’s fork continues to move rhythmically from his plate to his mouth, scooping up more pasta before he’s even finished chewing.
“Up at the house?”
She doesn’t need to say which house. His fork stills.
“Jo,” he says. “I haven’t been to the house in years.”
“You didn’t want to?”
He snorts.
“Not really a case of whether I wanted to or not. It’s not like they’d let me anywhere near the place.”
“They had Mum in their house, though,” Josie says. “Mum worked for them right up until…” she trails off. The look on Calvin’s face tells her all she needs to know.
“Didn’t she?” she says, her voice wavering. “She worked there until she died, didn’t she?”
“Is that what she told you?” Calvin asks.
Josie doesn’t answer. He sighs. His chair scrapes back against the stone floor as he stands and gathers up his plate.
“’Course she did,” he says. “She always wanted to protect you. Never wanted to give you anything else to worry about.”
He drops his plate in the sink, letting it clatter against the cracked porcelain. For a moment he stays there, his hands resting against the countertop. Then he straightens.
“Look,” he says. “It’s been a long day. I might go to bed. But help yourself to whatever you want. Beer. Stuff out of the fridge. Whatever.”
For a moment, Josie sees her brother as she used to know him. Limbs too long for his body, skin too pale for the summer heat. A perpetual streak of sunburn on the bridge of his nose.
“A lot happened,” he says. “After you left.”
The rain outside is heavy now, beating down on the roof, a wall of sound against the vast quiet of the house.
“It never went back to how it was,” he says. “Don’t expect things to be the same as they used to be. Everything’s different now.”
TEN
2004
