Dedication (3 page)

December 22, 2005

Antsy, I lean forward in the cab, peering up through the frosted glass as we pull into my parents’ snow-covered driveway, the headlights illuminating the colonial’s façade. I knew they painted the shingles yellow last year, but part of me is still shocked at the change, as though time should have stopped out of deference to my absence.

“So, that’ll be fifty-three bucks.” He turns off the meter and flips down the visor, a pack of Camels dropping into his hands.

As I reach across the seat to where my messenger bag has tipped and lodged on the floor behind the driver, I catch sight of a Prudential realty sign sticking out of the snow. I squint in the near darkness to make out a rectangular
SOLD
placard lodged in the top of the drift. Excuse me?

“Miss? Fifty-three bucks.”

“Right…” I rummage in my wallet while replaying the last months of phone calls to pinpoint where I might have missed that the house was for sale. “Thanks.” I pass him my remaining cash and reach for the handle, looking out to the black branches of the towering Chinese maple they planted the day I graduated Croton Middle. That someone
else’s
grandchildren will apparently be swinging on.

“Miss? You don’t want change?”

“Sorry? No, keep it. Merry Christmas.”

“Hey, you, too.”

I release the door handle, a lash of icy wind blowing against me as I swing my legs outside, the snow enveloping my feet, the fabric immediately soaking through, short-circuiting my shock. “Hah! Hah! Hah!” I bleat as I run for the house, flashing to myself racing brazenly out to collect the mail barefoot at an age when being impervious to the winter was a sign of social cool.

I pause by the trellises to dig manically in the dim spillover from the neighbor’s Christmas lights—“Hah! Hah! Hah!”—where the zinnia bed should be. I feel around, snow spiking pins into my bare hands, until I find a rock whose surface is artificially smooth. I pull it out, extracting the key from its hollow plastic center. Thanking God they never got around to improving their security system, I bolt up the porch steps and let myself into the entryway.

Slamming the door behind me, I rest my bag down and kick off the wet sneakers, crouching to squeeze warmth into my bare toes. Flipping on the overhead, I automatically turn the thermostat dial up to a reckless sixty-five degrees, disbelieving that, despite being yet another decade from their postwar childhoods, they still regard heat and electricity as special treats. The furnace clanks to life one floor below, joining the steady tock of the wall clock and I hug my arms to my chest, trying to land here, trying to anchor, trying to get a grip on the fact that our house is sold. I reach under my slip to peel my wet yoga pants off and hang them on the hat rack beside the faded Venetian mask I made at art camp. I touch its glittered triangle nose and look down at the red sparkles on my fingertip, affected to see my presence still tucked among Dad’s collection of Red Sox caps. But beneath the rack, visible on the cream paint, is only the dark outline of where the hall mirror should hang. I look to the stairs, where more rectangular smudges mark the places of the seed catalog illustrations I helped Dad hang when we first moved in.

My stomach sinking, I pass the door to the dining room, coming to an abrupt halt when I see Granny Kay’s walnut table gone, the oriental rug rolled along the wall, and the floor littered with boxes of bubble-wrapped pictures. I twist up the dimmer, letting the pewter chandelier cast a glare on the bare walls. Through the door I can see into the living room, its pine bookcases stripped clean of their prodigious shelf-sagging contents, its rug also rolled up, its furniture gone. I flick the switch off.

I step back into the front hall, pausing at the boot bench, which is now laden with every piece of displaced bric-a-brac—dusty kachina dolls standing side by side with Brahmin elephants and the base slivers of every Christmas tree trunk we ever had, each one scrawled with the year of its service in Dad’s permanent marker.

And it strikes me that this is what it will be like when they die. I’ll get a call, scramble onto a plane unexpectedly, dressed inappropriately, to process the artifacts of their interrupted existence. All of this, from the useful—can openers—to the vital—pill bottles—to the frivolous—ugly wooden fruit from Guatemala—will lose its context, most of it transformed into rubbish at the moment they stop living—and I suddenly want them home with a childlike urgency.

Braced, I step into the den, but find it thankfully unchanged. Swapping my damp trench for the age-softened afghan, I nestle into the overstuffed green couch, retreating from the agglomeration. The clock chimes for seven o’clock. The refrigerator hums faintly from the kitchen. Unable to snap out of the morbid frenzy I’ve worked myself into, I reach for the phone to call Laura.

“Ulo?”

“Mick?” I ask, winding the cord around my finger, unsure which of her twins has answered. “Keith? Is that you?”

“Ulo?” the three-year-old voice says again. “I’m Keith. Mick is frosting.”

“This is your Godmother Kate—”

“Fairy Godmother!”

“Hi, Keith. Is your brother better?”

“He barfed. It was Christmas color. But it didn’t smell like Christmas.”

Smiling, I tuck the afghan around my bare feet. “I heard. Is Mommy there—”

“Kate?” Laura takes the phone.

I pull out my ponytail. “Word is you’re frosting.”

“We’re making holiday blobs.” Her voice drops to a conspiratorial timbre. “You’re here?”

“Tah-dah. I took the first flight.” I slide the black elastic onto my wrist. “Did you know they sold the house?” I rise up onto my knees.

“They sold the house?”

“Uh-huh. My parents sold the house,” I say slowly so I can hear it, too.

“You’re
kidding.”
Her incredulity soothing as always. “I didn’t even know it was on the market. Where are they moving to?”

“I have no idea! There’re boxes everywhere. It’s so creepy. So—”

“Completely irrelevant at this moment. Did you really fly all the way here so we can discuss real estate and shirk the long-distance fees? Turn on your TV, my friend. It’s the second coming.”

I reach for the remote, its batteries still held in place with masking tape. “What channel?”

“Every channel. Start with E!.”

I flip to a woman in a pink wool coat standing on our Main Street under a banner that proclaims
WELCOME HOME JAKE!

I taste bile. “You must be fucking kidding me.”

“You didn’t see it?” she asks.

“We didn’t come through town—the cab took the back roads.”

“Well, they’ve erected a statue of him made out of Spam, covered Main Street in one long red carpet that runs all the way to his bedroom, the mayor has declared this National Jake Sharpe day, and twelve vestal virgins will be blowing him at tonight’s Christmas pageant. This town—has gone—insane…Kate? You there?”

I shake my head, incredulous.

“Kate?”

My jaw agape, I click through the news channels, all of which show some pastel-coated blonde trying to blink against the snow while locals bounce up and down with
HI, MOM!
signs in the background as if outside the
Today
show.

“Multiplatinum recording megastar Jake Sharpe has just announced—”

“In—of all places—his hometown—”

“His engagement to international recording superstar, Eden Millay—”

“MTV sat down with Jake six months ago—”

“E! will be bringing you live coverage as the story unfolds—”

“Some cynics have noted the announcement of this relationship dovetails conveniently with the pending release of her first film and his greatest hits album—”

“Here at CNN we are all very happy for him and wish the couple a very Merry Christmas indeed—”

“Some say this is just the tip of the love iceberg—” comes through the receiver in stereo.

I shut it off. “Fuck.”

“Do you think it was a
love
iceberg that sank the
Titanic?”
I hear the tin clang of a baking sheet hitting the floor and the twins “uhoh”-ing in chorus. “Gotta go. Stay strong, The Moment has arrived.”

Furrowing my eyebrows, I click the screen back to life, the town center just a few hundred yards outside the picture window falling under siege as I fire through the channels…

“Jake Sharpe—”

“Jake Sharpe—”

“Jake Sharpe—”

“Hello?” Mom calls out, her voice tinged with apprehension.
“Kate?”

“Yes, hey! I’m in here!” I call.

“No.” She wings into the doorway, ankle-length down coat still on, her pale cheeks flushed. “Dammit. I knew it. Who told you? I wasn’t going to tell you. Laura. Laura told you—”

Ready since I boarded the first plane, I stand, clasping the blanket around my shoulders. “Mom, you could’ve put every resident of Croton under a gag order and I’d still be at the gym in Charleston right now getting a blow-by-blow from Anderson Cooper.”

“You’re kidding.” She comes around the corner and stares at the screen as I click through the channels to demonstrate. “The world’s gone mad.” She takes the remote from me and presses
OFF
.

Indignity flickers like a lit filament through my jaw. “And what about you two?” I point accusingly through the door to the entryway’s stripped walls. “Why haven’t you told me anything about this?”

“We didn’t want to do it over the phone. Good Lord, it’s broiling in here.” She rips the snaps of her coat apart. “We thought we’d wait until we saw you at the beach.”

“Okay. That’s one strategy. Where are you moving
to?”
I peer at her as she looks down to unzip the lining layer.

“Oh, Kate, the agent said it was going to take months and then we got an offer the first weekend and it’s all happened very fast.” She shakes off the gray down and drops it on the couch. “Your father’s left his post at the library—”

“He’s
what?”

“He’s done. He needs a change of scenery.” She lifts her shoulders, her characteristic move to summon positivity. “So I just do a little bit of packing every weekend; it helps me adjust to the idea.”

“Of
what?”
I cock my head, unable to imagine them anywhere but here doing anything else but what they do. Did.

“Sarasota. We’re going to move to the condo for a year and then see what we feel like doing next. Dad needs a break from the snow.” She gives me a wan smile. “And I’m adjusting.”

“Adjusting?” I ask, low panic a rumbling submarine beneath the surface of my mission.

“I’m retiring at the end of next semester.”

“…Retiring.”

“So!” she cheers. “We’re going to sit on the beach and figure it out.”

I spin to the doorway as I hear Dad stomp off his snow boots in the front hall. “The Cashmans’ collie’s been digging up our zinnia bed again.”

“Simon, in here!” Mom calls. “With your daughter.”

“Katie?” He rounds the corner, hazel eyes lighting up. “Oh my God, Katie.” I let him wrap me in a hug while I inhale his scent of ink-stained cuffs and newsprint. I stifle my questions, knowing any direct inquiry will only be met with infuriatingly enigmatic redirects. He pulls back, holding my elbows. “Well, let me look at you.” Given the news, I study him in turn, the attuned expression, the meticulous shave.

“Yes.” Mom puts her hands on our huddle and pushes us toward the door with renewed purpose. “She can drive and you can look at her the whole way back to the airport.”

“Mom.”

“Don’t ‘Mom’ me. You are getting on the next flight to anywhere and we will see you as planned in Sarasota on Friday for our vacation.”

“No.” I throw the blanket off my shoulders.
“This
is The Moment. This is it.”

“He’s not worth it.” She tugs at her cashmere scarf. “It’s a hundred degrees in here. Simon, open a window.”

“I know he’s not worth it,” I reprise as I pull off her knit hat, her gray bob rising in the static, and hand it to her. “I know that.”

“In that flew-four-hundred-miles-in-your-nightie sort of way,” Dad snorts, lifting the sighing mullioned panes.

“This
is my Alamo. I’ve waited
thirteen years
to have the home-turf advantage.”

“What’s the news on Kyrgyzstan?” Dad rolls up the sleeves of his burgundy cardigan and reaches for the remote. “NPR said thirty people were killed in the capital today.”

“You have not been
waiting
for anything,” Mom picks up the thread. “You have a very happy, successful—”

“Yes,” I concur as the chant of
JakeSharpeJakeSharpeJakeSharpe
resumes in the background. “The point is that The Moment has arrived.”

“Nothing? Maybe BBC America,” Dad mutters, peering over his wire rims.

“At last count forty-two bodies line the square.”

“That’s better—”

“SIMON, WOULD YOU TURN THAT OFF!” Principal Hollis surfaces.

Dad clicks it, dropping the remote on the ottoman, and we both watch as he pats the pockets of his corduroys for his wallet. “Right, then. I’m going to go get a tree. When I get back I expect you two to have come to some sort of consensus on the plan of action here.” Smiling, he lightly squeezes Mom’s nose between his knuckles as he passes to the front hall.