I know Matt’s just trying to be helpful. That’s what John said when he saw my body tense, and of course he’s right. Just because I don’t want his help anymore, that doesn’t mean that Matt wasn’t born to be helpful, to be useful, and that he always tried to do the right thing even when he did the wrong thing. If Matt ever broke the law, ever lied, ever hurt someone, it was for good reason. Everyone knew this about him; it was why he was the most popular caretaker on the island. A job he was born to. A job he could have performed magnificently, even when he was young. When he tried to fix me.
When he looks at me now, though, I can’t meet his gaze. There is a searching in it, as if he’s surveying me, trying to find the loose floorboard, the hanging hinge. I want to tell him that I’m fine, that he can leave it. I guess his wife is too healthy, too whole; Matt always needs a project, a wounded bird. That, or maybe he is unhappy. How am I to know? I don’t want to get too close to him to find out. When he walks in, I can still smell the tang of his lime deodorant, the familiar scent of his neck. You can love another man and be perfectly happy, and still be lured by another scent. You can. I know it. But the scent can be false. The scent can be empty as salt and sugar once they leave your tongue. In Matt’s case, it was like opening a drawer and smelling the dark and earthy aroma of my youth.
But this time, he really was helpful. The gratitude in my mother’s eyes is the rarest sight in the world, and he sparked it. Found a client whose rental had canceled in a house on Dix Street, one of the short lanes tucked around the corner from our house.
John helped my mother pack up my father’s things. I left him in the master bedroom while I packed ours and Sydney’s. Tom threw all our bags into the trunk of his car and drove the three blocks while the rest of us walked. The cottage was in an ideal location, considering. My father could walk to the same beach in front of our house and to Jetties for lunch and almost feel as though he was at the same place. But we wouldn’t have to see our own house or walk by the Brownsteins’.
Dad had been confused by the hubbub, couldn’t seem to remember what a swastika was or the name of the man who lived behind us. When Tom had said, “He’s upset because he’s Jewish,” Dad had thought he’d said “fluish.”
The cottage had three bedrooms plus a sleeping porch with a daybed that sagged a bit in the middle. Tom bounced on it, testing its springs, then offered to take it, since he stayed up the latest, drinking bourbon and smoking cigars in any outdoor location available. I told him fine, but he had to wake up earlier now, because the family needed somewhere to gather for coffee and the paper.
“You can’t gather in the kitchen?” He mocked me on the word gather as if it was foreign, snobby, accented.
“Dad likes being outside.”
We stood together, surveying the small backyard through the screen. Ours was the middle cottage in a trio, each small, old but well maintained. On the left, the yard held traces of construction—a sawhorse, a Dumpster. On the right, a brick patio with two Adirondack chairs. A tall hedge shielded all three from the neighboring property, which spanned all of the backyards. Three lots. The neighbor had three lots.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You’re using Dad as an excuse for everything now.”
“It’s only a few days.”
“It’s five days, actually. If I make it that long.”
“If you make it that long? Is that what you said?”
“Well, you’ve appointed me Dad’s jailer, and now you and John have decided Mom needs a bodyguard too. I’ve got two hands and two eyes and one week of vacation, and I think everybody’s overreacting just a smidge.”
“You sound just like Mom.”
“What the hell is that supposed to fucking mean?”
I don’t think I’d ever seen him get that angry that quickly. Tom was usually more a low-level kind of permanently pissed-off type, defaulting to grumpy, ignoring what he wanted to in order to preserve his precious status quo. It’s like he was both above and beneath anger.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Does that threaten your precious masculinity? Are you afraid I’m suggesting you’ve gone soft like an old woman?”
“You don’t get it,” he said.
“Oh really? What don’t I get, Tom?”
“You’re not the only one who’s been hurt by her.”
My mouth hung open. I felt like I was in some kind of alternate universe.
“Oh, it must have been awful all these years, being her favorite, being her precious firstborn prince! You poor thing!”
“You don’t know anything, Caroline.”
He walked away from me like he always does, to all of us. I’d been staring at the back of his blond head, the slight curve in his shoulders, my whole life.
“I know this much,” I yelled after him. “I’ve had it, okay? There’s a fucking rapist loose on the island, and from now on, the only person I’m watching is my daughter. You got that?”
“Fine,” he shouted over his shoulder.
The most commonly spoken word between us, always.