When Michael returned home from work, Deedee took one look at him and knew something was wrong. That couch had thrown him off balance. The couch, and before that, the Starbucks cup and the broken glass over the photo.
Deedee pointed at the small kitchen table covered in invoices and gestured for him to sit.
“Avery,” she said, “go upstairs and do your homework.”
Avery looked from Deedee to her father. “I thought you were going to take me to the harbor.” She was a stunning child, everyone said so. She had his thick, dark hair and Shelby’s pale skin. Her features were delicate, and her eyes were big, soft, and brown. At eleven, she was just beginning to shape-shift, like a human anibitz—not exactly a child, not exactly a teenager.
“I need to talk to Deeds,” Michael said. “I’ll take you to the harbor when you finish your homework.”
Avery could see that Michael was in no mood to mess around. “Fine,” she said, and she ran upstairs, her small footsteps light and quick.
Deedee pulled two Coronas out of the fridge. Deedee was short and skinny as a rail, with olive skin, small black eyes, and long, dark hair that had turned silver only in the front, where it hung to the sides of her face. She looked cool, Michael thought, wearing her Yoko Ono circle eyeglasses, leather necklaces, and big rings made with natural stones. She also had a sexy way of moving, crossing her legs, tossing her hair back, sucking on a cigarette when she was drunk. He could see why Shelby was into her. If Deedee were straight, and if she weren’t his ex-wife’s partner, Michael would be into her, too.
“Can you take a look at the toilet in 2B when you get a chance? It’s leaking. The flange or something is the wrong size.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Deedee reached across the table and playfully tousled his hair and sang a few bars from “Handy Man.”
When Shelby and Deedee asked Michael to move in with them, they said he could be the caretaker. He lived for free, fixing the occasional leaking faucet and cracked window and working on the gardens. He ran the bed-and-breakfast when Shelby and Deedee went on vacation. It was an unconventional arrangement, but it made sharing custody a hell of a lot easier. Deedee and Shelby encouraged Michael to go out more, meet someone, but he was perfectly happy to spend his time with Avery, and with the women. It was hard to explain to people, him living with his ex and her girlfriend. All that mattered was that it worked.
“Where’s Shel?”
“Client.”
“It’s late for a client,” Michael said. He winked at Deedee. “You know what happens when she works late.”
“You know I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
They were both Shelby’s former “clients” at the day spa where she worked as a massage therapist. Michael was referred to her by his chiropractor, who said massage would help get rid of the constant pain in his lower back. Shelby was five years older than Michael. When she found out she was pregnant a few months after they’d started dating, they were both excited about having a kid, although their relationship had already settled into a platonic friendship. Michael wasn’t upset when he heard about Deedee. He couldn’t deny that Deedee and Shelby were together in a way he and Shelby never were.
Deedee said, “What’s up, Michael?”
“Nothing.”
“Nah, something’s up. You’ve got a look in your eye. There’s a bug in your rug. A crab in your crotch. A tick in your prick.”
Michael picked at the soil under his fingernails. His sweatshirt was covered in dust from the pavers he’d moved for a patio job. He hated that he always came home dirty. He could feel the dried sweat on his face and back and the grease in his hair. “I think something’s going on at the house.”
“What house?”
“The house in Wellfleet. Where I used to live.”
“Your family, Michael.”
“They’re not my family. You guys are.”
Michael regretted that he’d ever told Shelby and Deedee about his past with the Gordon family. He stood up and walked to the window. He looked out over the miniature waterfall and hyacinth bushes in the small courtyard surrounded by the rental units. Shelby had painted them a blue-green that reminded him of the color of toothpaste. He hated the color, but he wasn’t in a position to complain, and he didn’t care very much anyway. Someday he’d have his own place, but for now, his unit was fine. It was small, mercurial, and had nothing to do with him, from the lace curtains to the floral-print bedspread and old-fashioned washstand. He didn’t care about the décor or the fact that he had to share a bathroom with strangers. The guests weren’t a problem; they were courteous and fun, happy, on vacation, and some of them came back every year and became friends.
Deedee threw a spoon at his shoulder. “Would you look at me so we can have a conversation?”
Michael took a long drink of his beer. “I’ve got something for you guys.” He pointed out the window at the green couch.
“The hell you do.”
“It’s from their house.”
“I don’t care if it’s from the Palace of Versailles. That’s an ugly beast and we don’t have a place for it.”
“Yeah you do, the courtyard. It would be perfect out there. It’s for the outdoors.”
Deedee stared out the window at the couch, perched upside-down in the bed of his truck. “It’s for a dump.”
“It’s not a puppy I’m asking you to take care of. I live here, too. I want it.”
“Why do you suddenly want something? The only thing you own is the shirt on your back. You live like a monk. And now you want an ugly-ass couch you found on the side of the road? Forget the couch. Buy something nice for yourself.”
“It’s mine.”
“It’s going to look awful against the blue paint.”
“Anything would look awful against that blue.”
Michael saw Shelby walk past the window, the sunlight glinting off the tiny sapphire stud in her nose. Her hair was so fine and fair that in the light it almost looked see-through. She entered the house smelling of eucalyptus, wearing her ugly cork nursing clogs that were comfortable for a long day of standing over prone bodies.
“Hiya!”
Deedee and Michael didn’t respond.
“Let me try that again. Hello!”
Still no response.
“What’s going on?”
Michael didn’t say anything.
“Tell me.”
“I think something happened.”
“To what? To whom?” She began to look panicked. “Avery?”
“She’s fine,” Michael said. “Someone was at the Gordons’ house. Something’s up.”
“If you’d just stop by in the summer and talk to them like I’ve always told you, you might know what’s going on.”
“Nobody’s there now.”
Shelby walked up to him and poked the cell phone in his front pocket. “Jesus, Michael. Call them in Wisconsin. All these years I’ve been telling you to just call. Stop by when they’re here during the summer. Clear the air.”
“They don’t want to hear from me.”
Shelby stood behind Michael and gently rubbed his shoulders, even though her hands must have been tired. “Remember when Avery was born and you called, and Ed answered, and you just held the phone and didn’t say a word? I’m sure they aren’t holding a grudge. What happened with Ann is in the past.”
Deedee took a seat in front of her iPad. “I’ll Google them.”
“Don’t.” Michael felt funny having Deedee search for his old family. He’d thought about looking them up a thousand times, the way he might have tried to find an ex. But every time he’d start typing their names in that awkward way he used the dreaded computer, he’d get a sick feeling in his stomach and stop. He couldn’t do it. Now the sick feeling he had was different. Before, he worried what they might think of him. Now he was worried for them.
“Don’t tell me what you find out.” He stood up to work something out of his system and accidentally knocked a glass to the floor, and it shattered. “Goddamn it!”
Avery came running down the stairs and into the kitchen. She looked scared. Jesus, he knew what it was like to be a scared kid and swore he’d never put her in this situation. He felt that old anger and fear and frustration build up in him, and he heard Connie saying, Jump, Michael!
He looked at his daughter and jumped, and all the dishes in the cabinets rattled. Connie’s advice still worked better than anything he’d learned in therapy and meditation. He’d gotten so good at managing his anger that he could pull over to the side of the road and meditate for ten minutes when he felt it coming on, searching for silence and stillness. But this feeling he had building inside of him was bigger than that—bigger than anything he could jump or meditate away.
“You need to cool it,” Shelby said. She knew all she needed to know about Michael’s moods.
Shelby took Avery’s hand. “C’mon Avery, let’s go get an ice cream at Turner’s while your dad gets some exercise.”
Deedee kept typing. “Gordon. Milwaukee, right?”
Michael didn’t answer. He shot out the back door, ran into his unit, changed into his running clothes, and hit the road toward the abandoned air force station in Truro. He remembered when Ed and Connie brought him here with the girls. Ed blindfolded them in the car, and when they got there he led them to the front of an empty barracks and took the handkerchiefs off their eyes. It was the strangest place, so wrong for the Cape, ugly and empty like a ghost town, especially this time of year, with chunks of snow littering the parking lot. Connie had said, “Walk around. Try to come up with a story. What happened here?”
What happened here?
He bent over to catch his breath. When he stood up, he wiped the sweat off his eyes with his sweatshirt and noticed that the place was still as big and as lonely as it had been back then—even lonelier, because it wasn’t summer, although summer always filled him with painful nostalgia.
Calmer now, he turned around and ran back to Provincetown on Route 6 instead of the back roads. There was hardly any traffic, just a few trucks rumbling by. That was how Michael liked it.
When he got back to the house, he knew something was wrong, because Deedee turned off the water and Shelby, who’d been cutting carrots, put her knife down. They didn’t usually stop anything for him. He liked being part of the flow of the house, part of the rhythm.
Avery was at the table doing homework. Deedee said, “Can you do me a favor, Aves? Can you run to the store and get me some milk?”
“I’m doing math.”
“Now.” Deedee handed her a five-dollar bill and everyone fell silent.
Avery rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She sounded just like an adult, and why shouldn’t she? She was constantly surrounded by grown-ups.
As soon as she was gone, Shelby walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. He shrugged them off. He knew what was coming. He remembered when the Gordons’ old dog Fender had died, shortly after he’d moved in with them. Poppy sat on the stairs crying. He sat next to her and watched as she pulled at her fingers, which was what she did when she was upset. “It hurts too much,” she’d said.
Shelby said, “So about Ed and Connie.”
He hadn’t heard their names out loud in so long. They sounded strange coming from Shelby, who didn’t even know them. “I don’t want to—”
“Baby,” Deedee said, “they passed away.”
“They?” Michael said. He thought of the one-two punches his dad had taught him. “Both of them?” His lungs were burning from the run and he could still feel his heartbeat in his eardrums. Sweat dripped down his back and it felt cold. But it made sense. If it was just Ed, or just Connie, they’d never let the house slip into other hands.
Shelby looked him in the eyes as if she needed to be direct in order for him to believe her. “They were on their way back home last fall. A semi.”
Deedee said, “They died together. In Ohio.”
“No.”
As awful as it was to get such horrible news, he was grateful that Shelby and Deedee were the ones to tell him. Who, he wondered, had told Ann? Who told Poppy? Had they been alone when they’d found out?
Shelby tentatively reached for his hand, unsure if he’d take it or push it away. He gripped tightly, the way a patient might clutch a nurse’s hand while undergoing surgery without anesthesia. This pain he felt was real and intense, inescapable. He couldn’t even cry, although he wished he could, because crying might have offered him the slightest relief.
Deedee held his other hand, and the women moved closer to him, pillars for him to lean against.