20
Cavity Nests:
Nests in trees or holes. Safer but stuffy.
My first day of work is Monday after school. When I get to the marina office, it’s locked. I step back from the window, wondering what I should do. I walk outside and look around. The masts of the boats tip in the wind. The state flag flaps hard. A storm must be on its way. A gull passes over me. I wave. It squawks.
I stand on the sidewalk. I mumble to myself, “Doesn’t anybody keep track of things around here?”
Pete comes out of the women’s restroom, holding a wrench and a pipe that is dripping something. “Hey, you’re here.”
“Yeah,” I say, trying not to look at the pipe.
He laughs and twirls the pipe once, but it falls out of his hand and lands on the ground with a clank. After he picks it up he laughs again. “Pretty much do everything around here, whether I know what I’m doing or not.”
“Yeah,” I say profoundly. I’m suddenly a bag of nerves being alone with Pete. He’s someplace weird in my head. Not my age. Not a grown-up. Not ugly enough. But with really germy hands.
After he unlocks the office, we go inside and survey the mess. Let’s say it’s impressive.
Pete says, “So I have to go up to school now. The university, I mean. You have any questions?”
“You’re leaving?” I say. I try to override my panic button. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Just kind of organize things. Make Bobbie happy. Answer the phone if it rings.”
“What do I say?”
“Hello?” he says, walking toward a camper.
“What if they ask me something?”
“Bobbie left you a sheet. It’s on my desk somewhere. It has the hours and the rules. You could probably read that.”
Why is it that adults are always giving me a job and then walking off before they explain what I’m supposed to do?
He keeps talking like I’m following him, which I’m not. “And put up a sign, would you? Restroom is closed for today.”
“I’ll do a better job if you show me where to put things.”
He says, “That’s assuming I know where things go.”
When I open the first file-cabinet drawer in the office I find ten pounds of paper, a squeaky dog toy, and a half-eaten bag of Tootsie Rolls. There are receipts, invoices, and Victoria’s Secret catalogs all mixed together. I burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” says Pete.
I startle. “You’re still here?”
“I thought I’d better show you the trash heap and all.”
“How do you know where anything is?”
“I just find it when I need it,” says Pete.
“But what about the bills getting paid?”
“We had someone doing that. But she quit.”
“How do you do all your stuff for school and work here?”
“I’m researching my dissertation right now, so I only have to teach one class this semester. I live here, so it doesn’t take up that much extra time some days.”
“You live here?”
“I live in the camper. Weird, huh?”
I shrug my shoulders. “I live in my parents’ unfinished basement in a sleeping bag.”
“Sounds like me at your age.”
Except for the beard, Pete looks like he could be my age. I say, “Is getting your PhD a killer?”
“School’s easy. It’s jumping through all their hoops that slows me down. Arrested development, I guess. Do you need anything before I go?”
I lift the lid on a prehistoric box of donuts poking out from under a stack of newspapers. I may have found the epicenter of the mold. “Because you know where it is?”
“Good point,” says Pete.
I stack and sort and chuck for two hours. At four o’clock I get a call on my cell. It’s Andrew.
“I’m not sure where Danny is!”
I remind myself to breathe. “What? How long has he been missing?”
“I’m not sure. He was playing hide-and-seek with Carson and then Carson couldn’t find him.”
“Where’s Melyssa?”
“Asleep. Mom told me not to wake her up unless it was an emergency.”
“Okay. Let’s try something first. Were they playing inside or out?”
“In.”
“Okay. Did you look in all the hampers and the cupboards? Start with the hamper in their room.”
Andrew leaves the phone and comes back. “Got him.”
I say, “Just hold on to him until Dad shows up.”
There’s no sign of Ranger Bobbie. When the marina phone rings, I read the info sheet Bobbie left for me. At one point an old guy shuffles in to ask for Pete and then scowls at me. He says, “You doing this permanent?”
“Not sure.”
“You don’t look too old.”
“I’m not.”
“I give you two weeks, tops.” He looks at me, waiting for me to argue.
“Why only two?”
“You’ll find out.”
He shuffles back out and turns to scowl at me again as he walks away.
My cell goes off. “How’s the new job?” says Dad. He’s calling from the house.
“Why are you home so early?” I say. “Did Andrew lose Danny again?”
“Again? Danny’s fine. You going to be there all day?”
“I work until five.”
“If I feed the boys, do you think you could take Melyssa out?”
“Does she want to go out?” Mel yelled at everyone in the house before I’d finished making pancakes this morning.
Dad says, “You don’t need to take her bowling. Just get her out of the house for a few hours.”
I have a ton of reading to do on my proposal and an English lit test in the morning. Not to mention that Mel told me I was a self-righteous Betty Crock-of-Crap when I asked her to stop yelling at Brett for giving her the silent treatment. I say, “I thought she was supposed to rest.”
“Carson is threatening to run away from home.”
“Gotcha,” I say.
I take Mel to the Hungry Horse steak house. Her idea. Dad’s money. There’s a line out the door.
“You sure you want to wait in this line?” I say.
Mel pulls Dad’s T-shirt down over her stretchy jeans. “What else do I have to do tonight?”
“You’re going to be on your feet.”
“Oh, please. You’re as bad as Mom. I’m not going to keel over from standing up.”
I go to the counter to put our name on the waiting list. A girl who graduated from my high school a year ago is the hostess. She’s thin and blonde and supposedly did the whole basketball team. We’ve never spoken.
“I need a seat for two.”
“Is an hour going to be okay for ya?”
“Not really,” I say. “Could you seat us at the bar faster?”
“Help yourself,” the girl says, and then loses all interest in me.
I get Melyssa and we sit down at the bar. A bald bartender in his twenties comes over to us. He focuses on Mel’s stomach. “I’m sorry, ladies, we can’t serve you here.”
“Hey, Steve,” says Melyssa unhappily. “It’s me, Melyssa Morgan.”
The bald guy looks carefully at my swollen sister. “No shit.” Then instantly looks embarrassed. “It is you.”
“No shit,” says Mel. “You can serve us. We aren’t going to drink. Not tonight, anyway.”
He does the eye shift thing for a minute. “Yeah, I think that’s all right. How you been, Mel? I thought you were off at college getting famous or something.”
“I went with ‘or something.’ How you been, Steve?”
“Good. Well, sort of. Working here at night and for my dad in the day. Me and Hally just had our first kid six months ago.”
“Congrats. Girl or boy?”
“Boy. Hally would get a kick out of seeing you. You and your hubby should come by.”
“No hubby.”
He rubs the mug he’s holding with a bar towel. “Wow. Sorry, Mel. It happens, man. It happens.”
“Apparently,” says Mel. “How are the cheese fries?”
A waitress eventually shuttles us to a booth after Steve puts a word in for us. By the time we’ve eaten, three women from town have come over to wish Melyssa a happy baby. She’s about as friendly with them as she was with Steve.
“Why do you do that?” I say after the last woman leaves to go back to her booth with her tail between her legs. “They’re just trying to be nice.”
“Do you think so?” says Melyssa. “Or maybe they’re just rubbing my face in it.”
“She was just being nice.”
She eats another cheese fry. “If you believe that, you’re as stupid as they are.”
“Probably,” I say. “And you’re probably better at taking tests and writing papers than most of the people in this restaurant. Maybe most of the people in this town, except Dad.”
“If I have to live in this town for another six months, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t make you smarter.”
Melyssa scans the crowd. I watch her eyeball all the baseball caps and overprocessed hair. “You’re so trapped in this hole you don’t even know how bad it is.”
“If it’s so bad, why’d you come back?”
“I’m broke and pregnant, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“You could have stayed with Zeke.”
Melyssa sits back in her seat and sizes me up. I guess she’s not used to the doormat asking questions. “He moved out, remember?”
“Only after you told him he was a loser,” I say.
“Look.” She stares past me, done with my little sister commentary. “If I make mistakes they’re my mistakes. I’m not trying to please anyone or buy into anyone else’s idea of what’s right, including Zeke.”
“So why’d you get pregnant with him?”
Melyssa doesn’t answer for a few seconds. She’s counting baseball caps again. “It happens.”
