Cathleen Schine - They May Not Mean To, But They Do

“I hope you don’t mind that I brought Mother,” he said, nodding toward a small white-haired head just showing above the passenger seat. The ancient limousine rocked and swayed. The two heads swung back and forth, rhythmic and synchronized. “But she likes an outing, don’t you, Mother?”

Mother did not answer.

“Very thoughtful of you,” Joy said. She glared at her children, one on either side of her, both giggling like infants. Daniel hummed the Psycho shower music under his breath. In the enormous well of the car were a pile of black garbage bags, like so many lumpy corpses — Joy’s luggage.

“Thank you for taking the dog,” Joy said.

“Oh, we love dogs, don’t we, Mother?”

The traffic was heavy. Where were they all going? Why couldn’t they stay home and tend to their business? “This is a disaster, darling,” she said to the dog.

Daniel looked at the trees, so green and full. “Traffic or no traffic, the house will still be there.”

“You’re too complacent, Danny.”

“I wonder if anyone can be too complacent. Complacent seems like a good thing to be, Mom. Maybe you’re not complacent enough.”

“Don’t you start with the Prozac. I am not taking any of your pills.”

“I didn’t say anything about Prozac.”

“Well, your sister did.”

“No, I didn’t. Not today.”

“I know it’s what you’re both thinking. But forget it. I’m in mourning.”

“So am I,” Daniel said.

His mother said, “Oh, sweetie, of course you are,” and gave him a package of peanut-butter crackers.

Daniel wished he could wear a crepe hatband, he wished wearing black meant something these days, meant mourning instead of fashion. His father’s death had taken some layer of earth out from beneath his feet. He thought of his father more than he ever had when Aaron was alive. He thought of him when he shaved, remembering watching his father shave the two patches above the beard on each cheek, the neck beneath the beard. Daniel had never wanted a beard, never liked his father’s fussy attention to its shape and fullness. Now, all of a sudden, he thought about growing one. He thought of his father when he ate. Dad liked bratwurst, he would think. Dad loved smoked whitefish. Dad hated beets. And yogurt. He thought of his father whenever he paid his credit card bills, too. Daniel always paid them on time, the full amount. Dad ran up huge debt, he would think. And along with the anger that had plagued him for so many years, he would think, Poor Dad, poor Dad, always in debt. Daniel had a strong, easy-to-access financial plan. What would Dad do? he would think, and then he would do the opposite. He was not rich, but he was not gambling his family’s life away on one lousy business venture after another. But poor Dad, now that poor Dad was dead. His father had always been hopeful, cheerful, sure his next venture would make him a fortune. There was strength in that, he supposed, and he missed his father’s strength.

Joy began to rummage in a shopping bag. She extracted aluminum foil packages. “Want one, anyone?” she asked, pulling the foil off a hard-boiled egg. The smell of hard-boiled eggs filled the rocking car.

“No,” Molly said, turning away quickly.

“Protein,” Joy said. “Yummy protein.” She pinched a piece off for Gatto.

Daniel shoved the rest of the egg, whole, into his mouth.

“Is it okay if I open the window?” Molly asked.

“It’s very noisy,” said Joy. “And with the dog…”

“Just for a minute. I feel kind of sick.”

“You should eat something,” Joy said. She unwrapped another egg.

* * *

“Oh, how your father loved this house,” Joy said as they pulled in the driveway.

“No, he didn’t,” Daniel said.

“Yes, he did,” said Molly.

Molly stepped out of the car and took in the familiar trees, the warm summer light, the clean white clouds against the rich blue of the sky. She had been going Upstate every summer since she was born. Her mother had spent summers there before that when she was a child. How many people could say that? How many families were that lucky? It was a wonderful house, a family house, full of family memories and full of family every summer. Molly felt the ground beneath her feet, felt it hold her weight, felt its solid, gentle welcome.

Her mother’s little dog flew out of the limousine and began to sniff the ground.

“He’s happy,” Joy said.

Molly sniffed the air, light with honeysuckle and privet.

The house had a front porch, which was already piled with stuff. Coco and the girls had come earlier, the car packed to the roof with toys, all toys and electronics, as far as Joy could tell. She got out of the car with some difficulty, she got so stiff these days, and walked up the flagstone path to the house. She put her hand on the doorknob and waited to be as happy as the dog. A breeze blew. The smell was there, that mixture of humid earth and humid air, of wet bark and grass. She could hear the children calling to each other, her children, but of course they were Danny’s children, her children were no longer children. She opened the door to the slight sting of mildew. The dog rushed past her, brushing against her legs, a butterfly of a dog. He was wet, he was fast, he was gone. She held the doorjamb to steady herself. The girls ran past her. Hi, Grandma, they called. They did not stop. They were gone.

“Mom?”

Joy opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized they were closed.

“Mom, sorry, I just have to squeeze in here…” Molly pressed against her, trying to get inside. “Mom, come on…”

“Okay, okay, sorry.”

Molly darted past her to the bathroom.

Coco had already unloaded most of the contents of the station wagon: the bicycles and scooters, the computers and Wii console, the electric piano, the stuffed animals, the toy wheelbarrow, and the puppet stage. The volume of child equipment was incomprehensible to Joy. She remembered Daniel’s and Molly’s toy box when they were growing up. It was yellowy unfinished wood with a top that crashed down on their fingers if they were not quick enough. It was a good size, or so they all thought at the time, the size of a small steamer trunk. What was in it? A truck, some blocks, a doll, a robot, a stuffed monkey, toy pistols and holsters, boxing gloves, a cowboy hat, maybe. She looked at the mound of possessions on the porch of the house.

“Is this really all yours? All that stuff?”

Danny gave her a look, a warning look, as he dragged her black garbage bags into the house.

“Matching luggage,” Joy said to the girls.

They barely acknowledged her. “Gatto! Gatto!” they cried, running out the door, this time followed by the clatter of the dog. They ran in circles around the maple tree, then the girls rolled down the hill, getting themselves dizzy, the dog chasing after them. Joy remembered doing that. Now she got dizzy without any rolling.

“Goodbye!” she called to Mr. Bailey as he backed out of the driveway. “Goodbye, Mother!”

Joy wondered what she had packed in all those bags. They looked so anonymous and lumpy. Each July, she would take the bloated garbage bags to the house, and each September she would drag them back, most of them undisturbed since their arrival.

“Upstate is perfect,” she said, running her hand along the back of the sagging sofa. “It never changes.”

“Everything changes,” Danny began in his environmental voice.

Please don’t start with climate change, Joy thought. She felt as if the house had taken her hand and said, Welcome home. “Welcome home,” she said. “That doesn’t change.”

She sat on the porch swing and listened to the stream that ran behind the house. Sunlight floated through the maple leaves above. The sounds of decades of summers surrounded her — the robins, the peepers.