Julia woke to the smell of bacon. She’d had a fitful sleep in the guest cot at the top of the stairs, and her arms and legs itched like they never had before. Now she felt something light on her hand and she slapped it instinctively. The white morning light beamed through the window, and when she pulled back her hand, pinched the black speck between her fingers, and held it up to the pane, she realized it was a flea. Fleas!
She leapt up and threw on a pair of running shorts and ran downstairs to find Heath at the kitchen counter spreading peanut butter on toast with little Charlie by her side bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Chocca chocca milk.” The little boy tugged on his sister’s T-shirt. He had a crazy bed head with a tuft of tangled curls in the very back that resembled a bird’s nest. He started to scratch the tuft and she could only imagine what a field day the fleas might have in there.
“In a minute.” The girl handed him the plate, and he ran to the screened porch where he turned on an old portable television and sat down in a well-worn rocking chair to take in a fuzzy version of Curious George.
Julia surveyed the old kitchen of her childhood summers. It looked as though it hadn’t changed or been upgraded at all in twenty years with the exception of a pink microwave in the far right corner beneath the cabinets and an icemaker beneath the island that appeared to be leaking and had been for some time, considering the mold lining the baseboard beneath it. She noticed that no one had bothered to replace the far left windowpane above the sink, still cracked from where her father threw a football at it when he was teaching Meg to catch back when she was in middle school. The windows didn’t look like they had been washed in decades either, and the appliances were worn out with rusty handles and layers of grime. Julia noticed a large cockroach clicking out from a crack between the dishwasher and the counter. It scurried down to the ground and across the linoleum floor where Heath stamped and nodded approvingly as it crawled beneath the oven.
“CHOCCA MILK!” the voice from the porch hollered.
Heath rolled her eyes, pulled out a plastic cup from the cabinet, and poured two heaping spoonfuls of powdered Nesquik into it before pouring in a little tap water and stirring it with her finger.
She shrugged and muttered, “We’re out of milk.” But this remark seemed more addressed to the window overlooking the dock and the salt marsh creek than to Julia. “He can’t tell the difference.” The girl walked the cup out to the boy and set it on the wooden floor beside him. When she returned she took an overripe banana, sliced it, lathered it in peanut butter, and walked out toward the dock where she sat down on a bench, the light breeze picking up the strands of her thick brown hair.
Julia took in the scene in the morning light. The dock framed with live oaks, Spanish moss dripping from its limbs like a Dali painting, the almost iridescent late-spring green of the salt marsh, the creek water pulling outward, always pushing and pulling itself one direction or another, and the sun piercing through the scrub palmettos and pines on the little spit of land beyond the creek. As she noticed a pale gray heron alight from a tree and settle on a nearby mud bank, Julia swallowed back a wail somewhere deep in her gut. She couldn’t tell if it was a cry of grief or of longing, of beauty or of horror. What in the world was she doing here? How had she allowed herself to be cornered into this?
“More chocca milk!” The high-pitched voice was both warm and demanding.
Heath ignored it, so Julia walked, as if pulled by the same force of the tides, out to the porch, picked up the plastic cup, and filled it with water and two scoops of powdered chocolate. She found a spoon in the drying rack and stirred it.
“I want Mama.” He didn’t look at Julia but instead fixed himself on Heath, who had walked quietly out onto the dock with her rotten banana.
Julia found her voice. “I’m . . . I’m not sure when she’s coming back.” She noticed the dirt beneath his fingernails as he licked his thumb and pressed down on his plastic plate to pick up the last crumbs of his toast. “But I’m going to try to find out today.”
Then he turned to face her. “How do you know me?”
It’s the first time that he’d let her gaze into his rich brown eyes. She noticed the curve of his chin and his furrowed brow. Though his hair was a lighter shade, she was unable to ignore the resemblance. Looking at Charlie was like looking at pictures of her father as a young boy, barrel-chested, sharp-jawed, bright-eyed. He was handsome. He was angelic. He was filthy.
He glanced toward Heath, who had propped herself on the dock railing. “Etta said you’re my sister.” Then he met her eyes again. “I didn’t know I had you.”
She exhaled deeply. “I’m not your sister the way Heath and Etta are.” She shrugged.
“Why not?”
She bent down and looked him in the eye. “Would you like to take a bath?”
“In Mama’s room?”
“Sure.”
He glanced at the television. “After George?”
She nodded. “Okay.” Now Julia turned to look at the dock. She feared if she walked out there and took in the whole vista, she might break down. So she went back to the kitchen, ate a rotting banana, found some instant coffee, and made herself a cup. On the refrigerator was Marney’s surgeon’s number. Apparently he had a place on Edisto and was going to stop by with an update, which was good because Julia didn’t think she could just call up a hospital—a stranger—and check on a patient. Even if she had somehow found herself caring for the patient’s children.
Julia’s scalp began to itch. What was she going to do about these fleas? As she scratched, she felt a presence behind her. She turned around quickly only to see the hem of the girl’s nightgown as she darted up the stairs, each step creaking as she went.
So Etta talked, but not to Julia. She didn’t even want to be seen by Julia. Oh well, she’d get hungry eventually and need to show her face. Julia started taking an inventory of what the kitchen needed: milk, eggs, fruit, vegetables, bread, meat.
She opened the pantry’s cockeyed door and spotted the old ice cream churn on the top shelf. The one in which her father always made fresh peach ice cream every Fourth of July. Her mother was a great cook, but her father liked to make dessert, especially ice cream. He’d check on it all day, filling it with salt, churning it, turning it over and over. And everyone’s mouth would be watering for it by nightfall.
They’d had it the first summer Marney had stayed with them. They all sat on the wicker porch and watched the fireworks being shot off at the docks farther down the creek.
Julia suddenly remembered something Marney had said to her that night. She didn’t allow memories of Marney to surface, and she wanted to push it back, but it was up and running away from her before she could catch up to it. “You have a real family. You’re lucky.”
Julia had taken in the scene through Marney’s eyes. She saw her mother chuckling over something Aunt Dot had said and her father agreeing to fire off a few roman candles with Meg and two of her friends from school who were staying with them.
“I guess so,” Julia had said. She had never really thought about how fortunate she was. Then she had turned back to Marney, who picked at her cuticles, something she did when she was reflecting or fighting off a down spell.
Now Julia looked at the brown banana and tossed it in the plastic trash can that looked as though it had been around and hadn’t been washed for years. When she turned back, Charlie was naked as a jaybird standing right in the center of the kitchen. “I’m ready!” he said, proud and free in his birthday suit as he came over and took her hand. “Bath time!”