It was another cold day. The sky was so heavy it felt like it was sitting on Michael as he drove Route 6 from Provincetown to his office in Eastham. Still, he preferred the cold to the impending summer heat and the migration of all the tourists, who drove slow and made it hard to get a seat at the Wicked Oyster for breakfast, and impossible to find a parking spot at the Beachcomber. “String bean eaters” was what Ed called them, a phrase passed down to him from his grandfather, who told him that the tourists arrived on the Cape when string beans were in season.
Ed had taught him lots of old sayings and sailing hymns, like “Pull for the Shore” and “There Shall Be Showers of Blessing.” He knew to call a thunderstorm a “tempest,” and that the morning fog that burned off was the “easterly mull.” If a storm was coming he’d hear Ed say, “Long foretold, long last. Short notice, soon past.” And after a period of rain, Ed would say, “Ain’t going to clear up until the moon changes.”
Michael could hardly think about the weather without thinking of Ed, which is what he was doing when he passed the Gordons’ driveway and noticed a couch sitting next to the road. There was a cardboard sign that said FREE! taped to the armrest.
He knew that old couch. It used to sit in the sunporch, although it was meant to be outdoors. The base was made of shellacked wicker and the cushions were covered in vinyl. He’d slept on it whenever it got too hot in the attic. He remembered the creaking sounds the hard cushions made with the slightest movement, the way his sweat would pool on the vinyl, and how his back would ache in the mornings.
It was funny how a single familiar object out of place could also conjure up such a crystal-clear image of Ed. It had been ages since he’d really gotten a good look at him, but the sight of the couch triggered an image as vivid as a hologram, right down to his receding hairline and Adam’s apple. For just a moment Michael swore he could feel Ed’s presence in the seat next to him, hear the faint whistle in his nose when he inhaled. Michael had been close to Connie, too, and he missed her, but it was Ed who haunted him—he was a father figure, and Michael felt especially awful about how he’d let him down. There was so much Michael wanted to tell him, so much he wished Ed had known and understood about what happened with Ann. He figured that one day he’d have a chance.
FREE!
Michael couldn’t stand the thought of the couch getting picked up by just anyone. He wanted to grab it himself, but he’d loaned his red truck to Jason, who needed it to tow his boat to the marina to get fixed. That’s why Michael was driving Jason’s ’82 Camaro Iron Duke instead. Why would he even want the damn couch? It was as ugly and beat-up as the car he was driving, and the cushions had a bilious green cast to them. Still, he wanted it. “Want” wasn’t the right word. You want something you don’t already have. Michael felt it was his already, and he needed to retake possession, just like he’d always felt the house was his because he loved it. He dreamed of owning it someday.
He could picture himself sitting on that couch in the Gordons’ sunroom, back when he was welcome there, looking up at the wrinkled poster of a clay Indian doll in a yellowing plastic frame. The poster said SANTA FE. Michael used to look at it and wonder why the Gordons would bother to drive all the way from Wisconsin to Cape Cod every summer only to conjure up the Southwest. They also had a Milwaukee Railroad poster in the kitchen that Michael always wished he could rip down. Maybe those posters were the reason he’d returned to the Cape and stayed here all these years, because they made him think: Why would anyone want to be anywhere else?
Michael didn’t have time to mess with an old couch. He had to get to work. He needed to hire their summer landscaping crew and fill out all the tax forms and paperwork. The business had grown from the early days, when Jason could only have as many employees as he could fit in a truck. Back then, he ran it out of his backyard, and all his neighbors complained about the tools everywhere, the trucks in the driveway, the crew coming and going. Later, Jason bought one of the last industrial lots in Eastham and built a small office, and two garages large enough to fit the trucks, trailers, and snowplows.
He had plenty of competition, although he’d been around long enough to develop a solid arsenal of regular employees and clients. Michael had already agreed to rehire three of his regulars, and he’d lined up a few interviewees that morning to fill his open spots. He liked to think he was a good judge of character, but he’d accumulated his share of horror stories over the years: the oxy addict who stole an old widow’s checkbook, and a pedophile who solicited a teenage boy. The one that gave him the most grief was the idiot who mixed up an address and tore up the wrong lawn. And there were always employees who would buy their own truck and try to poach his clients. How could you look at a person and predict what kind of damage they might be capable of doing? Is that what Ed thought when he reflected on his decision to adopt Michael? Look how that turned out.
Between interviews and two calls from Sandi about a copyright issue with Anibitz, Michael was nagged by questions about the couch. He wondered why Ed and Connie would be on the Cape already. They worked at schools, and it wasn’t even spring break yet. He pulled Carol Hargrove’s business card out of his wallet and stared at it. No, Ed and Connie would never sell their house. Never.
But something was wrong. He knew it. They never got rid of anything. But say they did? It was just like them to leave their crap by the side of the road for someone to take instead of throwing it away.
And then there was the handwriting on the cardboard sign. Ed and Connie didn’t use exclamation points, and they didn’t get excited over material possessions, free or not. That sign could only mean one thing: the girls, one or both of them, were back. But why now, before summer? He could think of little else. He waited impatiently for Jason to bring his truck back so he could snag the couch before someone else did.
When Jason finally showed up, Michael lied and said Avery was sick, and he needed to pick her up from school early. They made good partners; Jason was on top of the accounts, taxes, and paperwork, while Michael had a keen sense of timing. He knew exactly when to plant from the smell in the air and the direction of the wind.
“Nothing dies on your watch,” Jason said to him. “You should work in a hospice instead of a nursery.” It was about as close to a compliment as a salty New Englander like Jason could muster, and Michael’s dismissive shrug was about as close as he could come to thanking him.
But that damn couch got to him. It put him in a restless funk. He was a mess over an old piece of furniture. Who put it out there? Why did they want to get rid of it? He was almost afraid to touch it.