Page 18 of Lies and Lullabies
As it happened, I did not move back to Maine at all. I couldn’t spend another winter with my father’s constant reminders of his disappointment.
“Honestly,” I’d told Adam, “I don’t think I can do it.”
“You’ll move in with me,” he’d offered without hesitating. “In Boston.”
I’d cried some more after that, but they’d been tears of gratitude.
Now, four years later, my father had a completely different attitude. Vivi was his favorite person in the world. And the minute he came home from the store, Vivi began to pepper him with her demands. “I didn’t get to go in the rowboat yet,” she complained to her grandfather, climbing into his lap.
He stood up, lifting her with him. “Is that so? I think it’s time to light the grill right now. Come outside with me.” He gave me and Adam barely a nod of greeting before taking his princess outside.
Luckily, Adam’s mood rallied. Setting aside his magazine, he opened a bottle of white wine, pouring three glasses. Humming to himself, he cooked up the sausages, grilling onions and peppers on the side.
At some point he noticed my long silences and began shooting worried glances in my direction. And when that failed to lighten me up, he tried another tactic—making cracks about how much helurvedsausages.
“So plump and juicy,” Adam deadpanned, rolling the food on the grill with a set of tongs. “They’re myfavorite.”
Our father gave him a dark look after the third or fourth sausage joke. Then he slunk around the corner of the house to smoke a cigarette away from Vivi. After all these years, he was still dismayed by Adam’s sexual orientation. I’d never understood it. Adam was a successful lawyer who took good care of his friends and family. What more could a father want?
My contribution to dinner was a salad, which I served with forced cheer at the appointed time. But I didn’t fool anyone. During dinner, my brother’s concern radiated across the table.
Later, after the glacial movement of the mantel clock finally brought about Vivi’s bedtime, we three adults spent a polite half hour in the living room. After enduring thirty minutes of Dad’s baseball game on TV, Adam popped off the sofa. “Kira, take a walk with me? You’ll listen for the little skeeter, won’t you, Pop?”
He gave us a stoic nod. “Could you wheel Mrs. Wetzle’s groceries over to her door? She didn’t answer when I rang earlier. I parked them behind your car.”
“Sure thing,” Adam said, pulling me off the sofa.
Together, we went outside, where the last of the day’s light was just a stripe in the western sky. My father had left an old red wagon in the driveway, with three bags of groceries tucked inside. Wordlessly, Adam caught the handle and pulled it down the drive.
A minute later we approached Mrs. Wetzle’s place, and I tried not to stare at the room in the back. He wasn’t there, of course, but the ghosts from five years ago were all around me. They always swarmed when I came to Maine for a summertime visit.
Adam stopped beside the kitchen entrance, knocking twice on the old metal door.
Mrs. Wetzle appeared a minute later. “Could you carry those inside?” she asked.
Adam met my eyes, and we exchanged a moment of silent irritation that the old lady did not even sayplease.
While Mrs. Wetzle held the door open, I grabbed a bag filled with hamburger buns and condiments and ran it into the house, leaving it on the first available kitchen surface I could find. Then I turned tail and got the heck out, then waited for Adam a few yards away under a big pine tree.
The winter I’d been pregnant, and totally starting to show, the whispers about me grew loud in town. Even though I’d been mortified to ask, I had knocked on Mrs. Wetzle’s door one afternoon to inquire as to whether she might have a phone number for John Smith who had spent the summer there.
I didn’t tell Mrs. Wetzle why I’d wanted it, but the old lady had known. A long and terrible moment of silence had passed between us, while I’d squirmed under her dismayed gaze. “I never should have rented to a musician,” she’d said, while I’d wished that the frozen earth would open up and swallow me.
“Did you save his number?” I’d had to ask a second time.
Mrs. Wetzle shook her head. “He pre-paid. I didn’t need to even ask for it.”
“Thank you anyway,” I’d mumbled, making my escape.
I’d been avoiding Mrs. Wetzle’s gaze ever since. And when the Christmas popcorn balls arrived each year, I gave mine to Adam.
Adam abandoned the wagon under the tree, because nobody would bother stealing it. “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Spill it, sis. You look destroyed. Like Sarah Conner at the end of Terminator 2.”
“That’s an apt comparison. Because the crud is about to hit the fan,” I said.
Adam giggled. “Just say ‘shit,’ Kira, like everyone else does. Or pick a different metaphor. Flying bits of crud just aren’t scary.”
“In this case they really are.” Before we could reach Main Street, I steered my brother toward the lonely dock, instead of the ice cream place.
