Oliver arrived Monday morning with a trunkload of groceries and wine.
“Hey, girl, give me a hand,” he said to Ava. “There’s lots more in the car.”
“How was New York?” Ava said.
Oliver shrugged. “Hurry up, there’s ice cream melting.”
She brought the bags up the steps and piled them at the front door, then went back for more. Oliver’s car was always messy, strewn with assorted bags and hoodies, an old blanket, a camping chair. Take-out containers, empty cigarette packs, pay stubs for parking lots littered the dash and the floor. Ava began to gather the empty cups and other detritus to throw away. She unearthed another layer on the floor of the backseat. A porcelain lamp wrapped loosely in bubble wrap, missing a harp and a shade, a pair of tasseled loafers encrusted with dried mud, and a plastic bag that Ava assumed was more old food cartons until she lifted it and felt its weight.
Inside, loosely wrapped in newspaper, was a pair of candlesticks. Ava recognized them immediately. Silver clusters of grapes, black tarnish in the crevices of the design. They were larger and heavier than Ava had realized from Lane’s drawing.
Oliver called from the porch, “Iowa, what are you doing out there?”
“I’m cleaning out your car,” Ava said.
“Well, quit it. Help me with the groceries.”
Ava deposited the trash in the rolling can at the back of the driveway and brought the candlesticks upstairs. Oliver had retreated down the back hall. Ava found him in the pantry opening a case of chardonnay.
“Get the cold stuff in the fridge, will ya?” he said. “Lane still asleep?”
“Yeah, she was up late working.”
Ava unpacked the grocery bags. Milk, frozen dinners, bread, a wedge of cheese oozing from its rind.
“Here, stick this in there,” Oliver said, handing her two bottles of wine.
After the groceries were put away, she showed him the candlesticks.
“Lane was going crazy looking for these. We searched everywhere.”
“Ah, shit. That’s too bad,” he said. “She gave them to me. She must have forgotten. She asked me to get them appraised, so I took them to John’s shop. He just got them back to me.”
“Why did she need them appraised?” Ava asked.
“Fuck if I know,” he said. “This was a couple of months ago, before you came. I got here one day and the dining table was covered in this old silver and china she’d pulled from the sideboard, and she was talking nonstop about who it belonged to, great-uncles and aunties and such. She went on and on about those candlesticks for some reason. She thought they might be really valuable.”
Ava nodded. It was easy to imagine Lane fixated, inexplicably, by some random thing, enlisting Oliver’s help. Ava had seen Lane issue orders, imperious, and later forget all about them. Last week Lane had sent Ava on her bike to the corner store for limes. How could we be out of limes, for heaven’s sake, what’s Oliver thinking? She had been furious. Ava brought the limes back twenty minutes later and found Lane immersed in her work. The limes were still unused, going brown and hard in the crisper.
“What’s the matter with her, anyway?” Ava asked.
Oliver took the candlesticks, unwrapped them, and put them away in a low cupboard in the pantry.
“She’s always been this way, a little,” he said. “Impatient, absentminded. She’s so fixated on her art, she doesn’t notice lots of things.”
“I know,” Ava said. “She left the stove on the other day. It started a fire. I got home just in time.”
“Fuck,” Oliver said. “That’s never happened before.”
“She didn’t even notice,” Ava said. “She was drawing. And she was really stoned, I think. But I couldn’t tell for sure.”
“She didn’t notice the smoke alarms?”
“They didn’t go off,” Ava said. She hadn’t thought about them until now.
“That’s not safe. We can fix that. There’s batteries in the corner cupboard. I’ll get a ladder.”
Ava found the batteries and Oliver brought a folding ladder up from the basement. Together they replaced the batteries. Ava was surprised Lane could sleep through the noise, the creak and thump of the ladder, and the piercing bleat as they tested the alarms one by one.
They ran out of batteries and went to the hardware store to buy more. When Oliver got in the car, he said, “Aww, man, what happened to my car?”
“Your trash is gone,” Ava said. “It was time to say goodbye.”
“What if I wasn’t ready?”
Ava smiled. “Think of it this way,” she said. “Now you have room for more take-out containers and empty Coke bottles.”
“Speaking of takeout, we may as well pick up lunch. Where you wanna go?”
“Guy’s.” Ava loved their shrimp po-boy.
“Guy’s it is. Hey, the car does look nice. Much better. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Over lunch, Ava said, “We have a toaster and a microwave. Maybe we don’t even need the stove.”
“Interesting idea,” Oliver said.
“I mean, when did you last use it? Or see her use it?”
“Years ago.”
“Could we turn it off somehow?”
“Let’s do it when we get back,” Oliver said. “I think we can live without it.”
“Hey, I have to ask you something,” Ava said.
“Uh-oh, here we go. Now what?”
She told him about Kaitlyn’s new roommate. “She wants to ship our stuff, mine and my mom’s. But I wasn’t sure…”
“What kind of stuff we talking about?”
“Boxes of things, some furniture.”
“This is some extra shit I’m not getting paid for.”
“Sorry,” Ava said.
“So this is it, you’re moving here? Like permanently?”
“Where else can I go?”
“Back to Iowa?”
“And do what? I’d have no place to live.”
“What does Lane say?”
Ava shrugged. “When I ask her, she says, ‘We’ll see.’”
“Ava, I don’t know about this. I really don’t. This is beyond my job description.”
“Well, I have to tell Kaitlyn something. She asked to talk to Lane on the phone.”
“I can imagine how that would go.”
“It’s not a good idea, right?”
“Look. I think Lane’s getting worse. She’s forgetful. She gets confused, that never used to happen. She can’t take care of a kid.”
“I don’t exactly need taking care of,” Ava said. “I can help. I already am. I mean, if I hadn’t been there with the fire … You were out of town.”
“True,” he said.
“And when school starts I won’t be in the way as much.”
“School. Shit.” Oliver would be the one who ended up enrolling her in school, that would be a mess of bureaucracy, he’d probably have to chauffeur her every day. Would there be a carpool? “This is fucked up,” he said.
Ava looked miserable. “Oliver, what am I supposed to do? She’s my only family. I’m just a kid.”
“Now you’re a kid. I thought you were all mature, here to help out.”
Ava said nothing.
“God, I’m ready for another vacation,” Oliver said. “I’ll figure it out. But not today, alright? I got other shit to do.”
This sounded a lot like Lane’s We’ll see, but Ava said, “Thanks, Oliver.”
They finished eating and got Lane’s lunch to go. Back at the house Lane was awake and already working in her studio. Oliver and Ava replaced the last few smoke alarm batteries, then Oliver pulled the stove away from the wall far enough for Ava to reach the gas knob and turn it off. They tried the burners and nothing happened. Oliver angled the stove back in place.
It was not until after Oliver left that Ava’s thoughts returned to the candlesticks. She wondered if she should show them to Lane, if Lane would even remember they’d been missing. Had she been thinking of selling them? Ava wondered if she needed money. She hoped not. They had enough to worry about.