Lily King - Father of the Rain

“Nice.” I stand next to a chair. It has a silky striped cushion sewn into it. “Fancy.”

“And,” she says, pointing to the walls. She’s hung paintings from Myrtle Street. She took the ones of the sea, which are my favorites too. In her bedroom she hung the portrait of me and Garvey sitting on the lip of the fountain when we were much younger. In the painting I have no freckles, and my eyes are too far apart, and you can see where the artist had to paint in more background over Garvey’s head when my mother brought it back, complaining his hair was too poufy.

Her room looks even bigger than I remember. I see the canopy bed and know that I’m not done feeling angry about her having it, along with the big beautiful room and the deck.

My mother has climbed up onto the bed and is dangling her legs off it and staring out the French doors. I’m aware of something different about her, something lighter. She is happy. Beneath her is a folded duvet, velvet on one side, satin on the other.

“Nora called, sweetie. She really wants to see you.”

“Oh.”

“You know your father let her go.”

“Yeah, I guess I put that together.”

She looks like she’s going to say more but stops. Then she says, “You should call her.”

“I will.” But the idea of Nora is like my stuffed animals. It feels like there is suddenly no place for her. I stroke the velvet blanket. “Is this new?”

“Yes,” she says. “Isn’t it divine?”

“Did you get me one?”

“They only had them for a queen-sized bed.”

“It’s a good thing you have the bed then. Good thing you got that, too.”

“Daley.”

“I don’t know where you’re getting all this money. All you did all summer was worry about money, and now you’re buying yourself all kinds of things. I guess you sold some of Granny’s jewelry.”

“What?”

“I know about how you emptied the safe.”

“I didn’t — I needed to have some — Jesus. He told you that?”

“He told me you cleaned it out. I saw it. It’s empty.”

“I didn’t steal it. I just needed to get some protection, Daley. For you. For me to take care of you. But we’ve agreed now on a settlement.”

“I wish you’d tell me things, Mom. I wish I knew what they were talking about when they say things like Al Carr. I wish you’d told me you weren’t going to see Sylvie but to meet some guy so he could stick his boner into you.”

My mother has gone pale. She is pointing a finger at the door. “Go. Go to your room right now.”

“Go to your crappy shit-hole room, Daley.” The anger is like vomit. I can’t stop it from coming out. “I’m only here five nights a week and I’m not sleeping with anyone, so it makes perfect sense to give me the dark smelly room with the little shitty beds.” I slam her door hard. Bitch, I think. Bitch bitch bitch.

School starts. Five new kids join our grade. It’s always the same with new kids. They come on the first day in their public school clothes, their huge pointy collars, polyester blends, and all the wrong shoes, but by the next Monday they’re in topsiders and Bean shoes, the boys with tiny buttons at the tips of their little collars and the girls in wraparound skirts. Then, once they look like the rest of us, they change everything around. No one is in my homeroom with Miss Perth. Mallory, Patrick, Gina, and Neal are all with Mr. Harding. I think on the first day that Neal will explain why he didn’t write back. I stand right behind him in the lunch line, but he never says a word. By Thursday I hear he likes a new girl named Tillie Armstrong. I decide never to speak to him again.

On Friday I take a suitcase to school and in the afternoon I wait with Patrick and the other kids from his carpool for Mrs. Utley to pick us up. She’s late because she had brownies in the oven. She brings them and we pass the warm pan from the front to the back to the way-back, cutting out huge squares. She’s even brought napkins. The brownies are dense, undercooked, and delicious. Like many of the mothers I’ve seen since I’ve been back, she’s curious about my summer “adventure” and wants me to be sure to say hello to my mother for her. I feel her watching me in the rearview mirror more than she watches the others.

All week Patrick has been saying there’s going to be a surprise at Myrtle Street, but he won’t tell me what it is. I think maybe my puppy is back, but when Mrs. Utley pulls in I see that the surprise involves construction of some kind. There’s a bulldozer in the driveway and a huge truck piled high with dirt and brush. Embedded in the dirt are glints of pale blue. I grab my bookbag and suitcase, holler out a thank-you, and run. I stop at the stone wall. The rose garden is gone. There’s still the terrace off the living room and the steps leading down, but the scrolled bushes and flower beds, the roses, the fountain, the stone steps, and the iron door leading nowhere are all gone.

“We’re building a tennis court!” Patrick has big teeth with flecks of white and he flashes them at me until I punch him hard in the stomach.

“Goddamn,” he gasps, bent over. “I thought you liked tennis.”

My father comes home from work early on Fridays. He is sitting in that armchair in the kitchen, the dogs pooled at his feet.

“Well, what do you think?” He’s proud of himself. He wants me to show my shock. He wants that satisfaction.

“Looks good,” I push out. I go outside again so he won’t see me cry. The bulldozer and the truck have driven away, but the smell clings to the air. The smell of my mother.

I have to get off the property. I head to the front, and once on the road I know where I’m going. I cross the street and follow a thin pretty driveway down to the little house at the bottom. They have geraniums in pots on either side of the front door. The bell is the old-fashioned kind, attached to the middle of the door, that you twist like a can opener. It makes a racket inside, but no dog barks.

The taller, gaunter one answers.

“Hello, Miss Vance.” I rehearsed my speech on the driveway. “I was wondering if I could just say hello to your dog.” I know I have to say your dog , so they won’t think I’m coming to reclaim him. “I’ve been away all summer.”

“Yes, you have.” Her voice is low. “Step into the parlor.”

We stand in the black-and-white entryway. She makes a funny sound with her teeth and tongue, as if she is cracking nuts, and the puppy races from a room, leaps down a few steps, and scrambles across the tiles to me. He’s whining and pressing his nose hard into my hand, but when he jumps up Miss Vance says, “Major!” and he puts his paws back on the floor quickly. When I squat down he nuzzles his nose in my neck and his tail whaps so fast back and forth I think he’s going to hurt himself. He’s grown in height and girth and his hair is longer and soft. His eyes are a pale olive green. He is a much more beautiful dog than I remember.

“Well, I think someone was greatly missed.” She sounds angry, but when I look up her narrow face has bunched into a smile. “He likes his tea in the garden at about this time. Would you like to join us?”

I follow her to a door at the back of the house. Before opening it, she calls up a thin set of wooden stairs, “Teatime, Mother.”

I thought there was just a sister. The mother would be at least a hundred. How will she get down those stairs?

Major bolts through the door as soon as Miss Vance turns the knob, but then he tears back to lick my hand. He hears a squirrel rustling in some leaves and he’s off again. The whole time I’m there he seems torn between his usual routine of chasing and sniffing and making sure I’m still there.