Lily King: Father of the Rain

Garvey’s apartment is on the third floor of a house that has slipped off its foundation sideways. A corner of the porch is sunk into the ground. Everything is broken — the porch railing, the windows. Even the front door has a crack running up the middle.

“This is the best part, right here,” he says, stopping in the dark stairwell to breathe in. “Smell that?”

I smell a lot of things and they’re all disgusting. “Your BO?”

Garvey laughs. “No. It’s Indian food. She makes it every day at lunchtime. She’s gorgeous, too. She wears these”—he sweeps his arm along his leg to the floor—”wraps. And she has this smirk I can’t interpret.” He shakes his head and keeps climbing, saying nothing about the people through the door on the second floor and the music they’re blasting. It gets hotter the higher we go. At the top of the stairs it’s bright — the sun pours through two big windows — and broiling. He pushes open a door that doesn’t seem to have a knob.

“Here we are. Home sweet home.”

It smells like vinegar and wet dirty socks. There’s linoleum, not just in the kitchen but covering the whole apartment, and my sneakers stick to it as if I have gum on both soles.

“Here. Bring your stuff to my room.”

Off the short hallway are three rooms. “Deena,” he says, pointing into a tidy blue room with a lime green bedspread and hundreds of earrings, the dangly kind my mother won’t let me wear yet, hanging from ribbons on the wall. “Heidi”—her room is just a pile of clothes and no bed—”and me.” Garvey’s room is all bed— two queen-sized mattresses put together. “We like to sprawl,” he says. “I’ll put one back in Heidi’s room and you can have your privacy in here.”

“Do Mom and Dad know you live together?” I’ve heard my father rant about Garvey’s generation enough to know he wouldn’t like this at all.

Garvey’s eyes widen and he covers his mouth with both hands, mocking me. “Ooooh, don’t tell them. I’m so scared of what ‘Mom and Dad’ think.”

“They’re not dead. They’re just getting a divorce.”

“Oh, thanks for the clarification.”

“They’re still your parents.”

“They’re my progenitors, not my parents. The word parent suggests something a little more hands-on.” He starts to drag one of the beds toward the door. “Besides, they’re both getting more than I am now.”

“Getting what?”

He drops the mattress and pats me on the head. “Little babe in the woods. So much to learn.”

There’s a fan in the corner of the room. I squat down to feel it on my face. My sweat turns cool, then disappears.

Garvey lies down on the bed by the door. “I’m surprised you let Mom escape for an assignation with her paramour.”

I have a bad feeling about what he’s just said. “Do you mind speaking English?”

“You let Mom go off with her boyfriend.”

“She just went to Sylvie’s. I’ve been there before.”

“She went to Sylvie’s. But Sylvie’s in France. And so a guy named Martin is going to be there with Mom. You are definitely not the sharpest tack in the box.”

Tears rise and the fan blows them toward my ears. Say hi to Sylvie for me , I just said to her in the car before she dropped me off. I will , she said.

“You really didn’t know?”

I shake my head. When I find my voice, I say, “Is he from Ashing?”

My brother laughs, loud because he’s on his back and because he loves it when I’m stupid. “Shit, no. God, Daley, do you think she’d ever have anything to do with the warmed-over corpses in that town?”

“But that’s where we live . We’re moving back there on Monday. I’m starting sixth grade. Mom found an apartment downtown on Water Street.” I say all this to make sure it’s still true.

“I know. And that’s all for you. For your benefit. Mom outgrew that town a long time ago.”

“So who is Martin?” I can barely move my lips. I forgot how bad my brother could make me feel when he wants to.

“I don’t know. That’s what I was trying to ask you.”

If my mother lied about who she was with, she could have lied about where she was going, too. It makes me woozy to think of a whole weekend of not knowing.

At least I know where my father is. On a Friday night at five-thirty he’ll be sitting in the den with his second martini. He’ll be looking at the local news, thinking about the pool and how he’ll clean it in the morning, test the chlorine balance. The dogs, just fed, will be moving swiftly around the yard, looking for the right place to pee and poop. Scratch will be trained by now, but if he lifts his leg in my mother’s rosebushes, my father will leap up and holler at him.

“Have you seen Dad?”

“Yeah. I went up there last weekend. Stupid.”

“What happened?”

My brother covered his eyes and groaned. “I don’t think I should tell you.”

“What’s wrong with him? What’s the matter with Daddy?” I picture him on the kitchen floor, for some reason, unable to stand. I can see it so vividly. I stand up myself, as if I can go to him.

“Nothing’s the matter with him, Daley. Have a seat.” He says this like a homeroom teacher. “He’s hooked up with—” He looks at me, deciding whether I can handle it. But it turns out I already know.

“Patrick’s mother.”

“I knew you weren’t as dumb as you look.”

Mr. Amory and me went to Payson’s. Mr. Amory and me cleaned out the shed . I’ve been reading about it all summer.

At six, we walk to the Brigham’s where Heidi works. After my brother’s roasting pan of an apartment, the street is cool; Brigham’s is like walking into a fridge. Heidi is waiting on a boy and his grandmother. She gives us a small smile, then turns her back to us to make their frappes. A blue apron is tied loosely at her waist and her hair hangs in a frayed braid. She slides the tall drinks and two straws to her customers and takes their money without speaking to them. Her face is moist, despite the air conditioning. She looks different than I remember, faded somehow.

“Hi there,” she says to me, but she is not glad to see me or Garvey. Her eyes are dull and olive, not the clear green I remember. “You made it.”

Garvey and I share a raspberry rickey at a corner table until her shift is over. Outside it is hot again, and the sidewalk is crowded with people coming up from the subway stairs or racing to them. After a summer in the woods, the chaos makes me uneasy. I stick close to my brother, who leads us to a Greek sandwich shop.

“Haven’t been here since yesterday,” Heidi mutters.

“I can’t really afford La Dolce Vita,” Garvey says, pointing to a fancy place down the street.

“You wouldn’t know la dolce vita if it hit you on the head.” She smiles but my brother does not.

The restaurant is hot and smelly and it’s no wonder Heidi doesn’t like it. We sit crammed in a corner. My brother orders me a falafel sandwich that tastes like sawdust mixed with onions. He has a big plate of diced meat and Heidi tells me to watch how he chews like a cow chewing cud. My brother tells her she should have stuck it out with Graham, and Heidi’s eyes get pink. She catches her tears with her thumb. They are drinking something called grappa and it seems to make them hate each other.

That night my brother’s apartment is a cauldron, as if all the city’s heat has risen and gathered here. I lie on the remaining bed in the dark, my feet and hands swelling, my skin stretching like a sausage being boiled. They took the fan into Heidi’s room. No air is coming through the three open windows. I miss the water and its cool breezes. Neither Ashing nor Lake Chigham ever got this hot. Headlights and brakelights swim across the ceiling. The cars and people below begin to seem responsible for the heat. A siren blares, spewing hotter air. I dream that I am rebraiding Heidi’s hair over and over. I can’t get it tight enough. I wake up to the sound of a door shutting.