“That old mutt sure does love you, kid.” Dad beached the white boat on the sand and hopped down. I could see where the sun had darkened his face and neck, he looked younger somehow, happier. I tried to picture him with Mama. Her graying hair and his deep tan, the flip-flops and high necklines wouldn’t mesh. It was like imagining Jimmy Buffett and Jane Austen together in holy matrimony.
“Yeah. She’s all right,” I said.
“I ain’t never seen no dog love the ocean as much as that one.” He threw the tennis ball across the sand as the sun melted down the sky behind us.
“I couldn’t believe it when Mama brought her home last month,” I said.
“Me either, Kiddo.” picked up the ball to throw across the sand.
“Daddy, what happened to you and Mama?” I looked him straight in the eyes when I asked it, somehow the summer and the sun were giving me confidence. Mama would’ve brushed me off or told me not to be nosey, but that wasn’t Daddy. He didn’t feel the need to hide.
“She didn’t tell you?” His voice went up at the end, which told me he knew the answer.
“Yeah. Well, I guess that isn’t very much like Carol now that I think about it.” He looked down at the sand. “Your Mama and I were too different.”
“Well no shit, Dad. Look at you and look at her. You don’t get any more opposite than that. But what made you finally leave?” It just sort of slipped out before I had a chance to stop it. He smiled at me, though.
“Yeah, you’re right. And at first, our differences were charming. But after eighteen years, it got to be too much.” He shoved his hands into his blue swim trunks.
“We’ve always had our issues, but we managed it. I told her shortly after your brother was born that I wanted the family to move out here so that I could run the marina with my brother when the time was right. She agreed, but when the time came, she said she couldn’t do it. Never would tell me why though.”
“Mom doesn’t do change very well, Dad. Never has, never will.”
“Oh, I know. But I couldn’t stay. I made a promise to my brother and I couldn’t stay stagnant. We were never supposed to live there that long anyhow.” We climbed back into the boat and began trolling out of the shallows. Darcy lay on the deck and looked up at us lazily. Daddy wasn’t looking at me anymore.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, Lil?
“I understand, I think… I mean, I get why you felt like you needed to go.” His green eyes connected with mine.
“You do?” he asked.
“Yeah, Dad. I do.” He kissed my head and squeezed me to his side.
“You know we both love you and your brother, right. Nothing that happened between us was your fault. If anything, the two of you gave us a love we’d never know otherwise and that made us love each other.”
“Yeah, I know dad.”
“Do you remember when we used to act out stories for you before bed? That was before John Luke was even born. She loved doing that.”
“Yeah, my favorite was the story where the mama wolf saved her baby from the hunter. She always looked so beautiful when she played that part.”
“We might not have gotten much right, but we knew how to love you guys,” he said.
#
“Lilianna Jane! Why on God’s green earth isn’t this front door locked? Someone might use it!” she said. I heard her latch the screen door and lock the deadbolt. The air seemed thinner. Spring break seemed so long ago; I longed for the sunshine and sea.
“I don’t know, Mama. Maybe John Luke forgot to when he went out earlier,” I said.
“John Luke isn’t supposed to be usin’ the front door, Lily. You are in charge of him when I’m not here!” I tried to fight the urge to roll my eyes, but lost just as she walked into the kitchen.
“Lilianna, please don’t roll your eyes. It’s not very ladylike,” she said. Just like that the urge hit me again.
“Yes, ma’am.” I plunged my hands a little deeper into the scalding-hot dish water.
Chores were never an option. Even when Mama and Daddy were together, I still had a list of things I had to check off before I could do anything, even do my homework. Mama felt the need to write it on the white board every single day, even though I was sixteen years old and it hadn’t changed since the third grade. She’d put the first letter of the day that she wanted each thing done. If it needed to be done everyday, she put E.
- Fold any clothes on the couch (E)
- Get all of the dirty clothes and put them in the laundry room (E)
- Wash the dishes (E)
- Wipe down the counters (M, W)
- Sweep the hard floors (T, TH)
- Vacuum the carpets
- Dust the living room
- Clean your room (E)
- Start the laundry (E)
My favorite thing on the list was laundry. The laundry room sat at the back of the house and it let in so much sunlight that the white walls would buzz some days. The wooden windows held glass that never truthfully portrayed the outside world. The backyard always seemed indistinct through the aged glass. It couldn’t be windexed off either. Like most things in life, age had found it and wouldn’t let it go. I would watch my little brother play outside through strange glass and wonder if the world would ever look any different. I think it was my favorite because of the way that all the light seemed to pass through the murky windows. It was best during the spring when the sort of cool air seeped through the holes where the windows were.
Even though my list of duties seemed rather exhaustive, the house was never perfectly clean. Although it was just Mama, John Luke, and myself, the place was obviously lived-in throughout the week. By the time Friday rolled around, there were too many dishes in the sink and not enough clean clothes on hangers.
“Cleanliness is next to Godliness, Lilianna Jane. Now don’t you forget that.” It was easy to imagine Mama in a dusty old dress with lots of layers the way they dressed in Jane Austen’s time, especially when she said things like that. I could see her sweeping creaky wooden floors with her hair pulled back into a tight bun, creases beginning around her eyes and lips. Gray hairs sprouting randomly about her dark hair.
I had gotten my chores and homework done early the night Mama showed up with a dog that cold night in February. It was an Australian shepherd with piercing blue eyes just like those glaciers on the Discovery Channel. Daddy had just left the week before. Mama picked her out, brought her home and told me to name her. Darcy was what I decided on. I could have named her Alaska or Patagonia. It would’ve been clever, but I chose the name from the book that was in my hands when Mama walked in the door with her. I was excited, but not thrilled. I had always been partial to cats, but a dog would do.
Puppies seem to have in them this divine impulse to chew up things. Darcy’s first night at the little house on Fedelon Trail taught us that giving her free range to the house was not a solid plan. We woke up to three chewed-up books, one mangled John Cena wrestler, a shredded basket that my mother had gotten from her late grandmother, and pillow stuffings all over the living room. I remember thinking how it was like reverse Christmas. I almost laughed when the thought popped into my head, but my mother’s eyes warned me against it. When Mama got angry, she didn’t really yell. She would get quiet and dramatically try to fix the problem. For instance, if the dog had chewed something up, she, all of a sudden, wasn’t just mad about that. She was mad that the dishes hadn’t been done or that her boss was being a jerk. It was as if one crack in her life would send everything around her splintering into chaos and strife. She cleaned extra when something was bothering her. The weeks before she and Daddy split, I’d come home to find her on her hands and knees in the kitchen, scrubbing away at already clean floors. She didn’t work then.
“Mama, did something happen?” I asked as she examined the floors closely.
“What? Oh. No, Lily. Everything is fine.” She’d just keep scrubbing and I would walk away. Usually when that happened, Daddy wouldn’t come home for a couple days, then a couple weeks, until finally he wouldn’t come home at all. He moved to the coast and I got no say in where I lived.
After anti-Christmas, Darcy went into the laundry room, where Mama swore she wouldn’t be able to mess anything up.
“There’s nothing she can chew up in there,” Mama said when I asked her if she thought it was a good idea. She had stopped by the dollar store on her way home from work and picked up a couple of toys she didn’t mind Darcy chewing on. She stared at me with her tongue hanging out—a happy fool—totally unaware of the fact that she was stuck in a room for the next eight hours. I was a little jealous she got to sleep in the big, clean room.
“See you in the morning, pup.” I patted her head and pulled the door closed behind me.
Mama’s yelling woke me up just as the sun slid into my room. I walked to the kitchen and saw her standing at the laundry room door. She hadn’t opened it yet, but she was looking through the door’s window. I peered down beside her. The crisp white walls were overlaid in a brownish substance about a foot and a half up the wall. The two metal boxes that Mama had dared her to chew up were also coated in damning defecations. The linoleum floor was no longer simple patterns of squares, but rather an artist’s canvas coated in Van Gogh-esque swirls of shit. There was even some that had splashed up on the window. Darcy clearly had multiple bowel movements during the night, which didn’t please her enough by just sitting there, being poop. The once calming white walls had become a canvas in which her bowel was her paintbrush and her secretions were the paint. She sat staring at us, her tongue hanging out of her mouth as she panted happily. Fur was matted up around her paws and her stubby tail. When she finally opened the laundry room door, the stench hit us like a brick wall.
“Oh sweet mother of Moses,” Mama said. Her face puckered up as she tried to hold her breath. She immediately ran to open the back door, but Darcy shot past both of us.
“Go open the front door, quick!”
I was already halfway there when she finished getting the words out. I quickly unbolted the door and unlatched the screen door. Darcy darted out, but didn’t look down. The drop off to the porch got her and she rolled down the steps. It was hard not to laugh when she stood back up, looked at me for assurance, and took off the back yard. I returned to the laundry room and the smell hit again. The meaty smell was beginning to spread to the rest of the house.
Mom called into work late and we cleaned it out. It seemed to stain the walls and the air. When Saturday rolled around and we had gotten the place as clean as possible, we spent the day painting. She didn’t go with the same crisp white color. Instead she used a sage green shade that she found in the barn. It didn’t quite allow for the sunshine to do its magic. Mama made us start keeping the door to the laundry room shut too.
#
“Mama won’t let her back in the house, Daddy. It’s just not right; she’s a puppy,” I said.
“I know sweetheart, but you know how your Mama is with dirtiness. I tried to bring a dog home once for you and John Luke,” he said.
“You did? When?” I said,
“You were probably about 10 or 11; John Luke was about 6. I thought that vein in her neck was going to burst when she saw it,” he said, scoffing as he remembered. “She came out of that house quicker than I’ve ever seen. Told me it wasn’t going into her house and I was better off taking it back where I got it from. It was just an old mutt that came up to me at work. Hadn’t been fed in a while.”
“Well, where’d you take him?” I asked.
“You’re uncle Joey had been wanting a dog, so I took him over to him. Figured that was better than nothing,” he said.
“I wish she wasn’t so uptight. Did I tell you she won’t even let us leave the laundry door open now? She’s convinced everyone who comes over here will smell it,” I said.
“When she gets something in her mind, it’s hard for her to change it, Lil. She’s your Mama though. Gotta do what she says as long as you’re living with her,” he said.
“Do I have to be living with her? Couldn’t I come and live with you?” I asked.
“I’d love for you to come stay with me. Don’t think she would though,” he said.
“But if I can get her to say yes, can I?”
“Of course, Lil. Nothing would make me happier.”
#
“Mama, please. Summer is coming up soon and I miss Daddy. It’s the perfect plan,” I said.
“No. End of discussion. You’re staying here this summer to look after your little brother.”
“Mama, he’s almost 11 years old. He can look after himself!” I said.
“The answer is no—”
“If John Luke is your reason for why I can’t go then let him come too. He needs Dad just as much as I do,” I said.
“Oh and you two don’t need me? Is that what you’re saying?” she said.
“Are you serious? I never said that, Mama. But something has to change. I’ve got to get out of here before I lose my mind.”
“You sound just like your father,” she said. I could tell that she wanted the comment to hurt, and it did, not because of what she said, but because of the disgust in her eyes when she said it.
“I’ll ask John Luke if he wants to come with me,” I said as a stared into her eyes, “but I’m leaving Saturday morning.” I could feel her eyes on me as I walked out of the room. I expected her to yell after me, to demand I come back, but she didn’t.
John Luke was outside pulling weeds from the flower bed when I found him. He had dirt smeared over his forehead and his headphones cupped his ears. He pulled them off when he saw me.
“Got much more to pull?” I asked.
“Nah, I’m almost done. What’s up?” he asked.
“I’ll just get straight to it. Do you want to go live with me at Dad’s this summer? I’m leaving Saturday.”
“This Saturday?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“What about Mama? Is she okay with it?” he asked.
“She’s not super happy about it, but she knows we miss him,” I said. Hesitation flashed across his face and he looked 3 years old again.
“Don’t feel like you have to answer right away, buddy. Just think about it. I know Dad misses you a lot.” I turned to walk away, but he spoke.
“Why doesn’t he come to see us, then? He’s only been back twice to see us since he left.” I could tell his question was genuine, not accusatory.
“Uh, Mom and Dad don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of stuff, bud. It’s hard for them to be around each other without arguing, so they try not to be together too much. They don’t want us to see them argue.” I knew it was a lie. Mom and Dad didn’t come around each other because there weren’t two people in the entire world more opposite than them. Their unwillingness to not be around each other was solely for selfish reasons. They hated each other.
“Still, you’d think he’d come around,” he said.
“You’re right. Grown ups sort of suck though.” He smiled after that and pulled the headphones back over his ears. I went inside and filled the sink up with soap and hot water. The dishes slowly became clean.
#
Mama was in the kitchen that Friday morning when I got up for school. We maneuvered around one another for ten minutes before we spoke.
She spoke first, “How’d that last exam go yesterday?”
“Not bad. I got an A- on it,” I said.
“A-? Why not an A+?”
“Because I’m an idiot, mother. I’m in the top ten of my class, but I’m an idiot.”
“I don’t appreciate being spoken to like that, young lady. I’m still your mother.”
“Oh I’m fully aware,” I said.
“What has gotten into you? Why are you being so disrespectful?”
“Because I’m just like my dad. We’ve both realized how draining it is to be in this house with you!” Her slap came hard across my cheek.
“Do not ever speak to me like that again. Do you understand?” I threw my coffee down in the sink, letting it splatter everywhere.
“John Luke, come on. We’re going to be late,” I said as I kept my eyes locked on hers. She looked away and I walked to the front door.
“I’ll take him. You go,” Mama said. John Luke looked up at her.
“I want to go with Lili,” he said.
“John Lu—”
“No, Mom. I’m going with her,” he said as he followed me out the front door.
The tears started when I made it to the car and John Luke reached across the center console and held my hand.
#
Second period was almost over when I was called to the front office. Dad was standing in the waiting area. His eyes were red.
“Dad, what is it? Why are you here? Is everything okay?”
“No, sweetheart. It’s your mother. She’s been in an accident.”
“What—what sort of accident?”
“She was on her way to work this morning, Lil, and she uh—”
“She what, Dad? What? Is she in the hospital?”
“She swerved to avoid hitting a deer and over-corrected,” he said, not meeting my gaze. “The paramedics said she died on impact.” My principal and teacher stood just behind my dad. I looked at them, their faces confirming what he’d said.
“No. No, no, no—”
“Sweetheart, I’m so—”
“No! Stop. Daddy, please! She can’t be, please!” The room changed and I suddenly couldn’t keep myself upright.
#
After the funeral, Daddy asked us if we wanted him to move back home.
“I’ll move back here if you guys want. I know you were planning to come to Beaufort at the beginning of the summer, but we can stay here. I can hire someone to run the marina while I’m not there and find something else to do here.” John Luke glanced at me from across the table, but I couldn’t look at him. He was the one I had hurt the most.
“I don’t think either of us wants to stay here, Dad,” John Luke said.
“Lili? Do you feel that way?” Dad said. I shook my head in agreement.
“I can’t stand it here.” We packed up the house in a week and left for the coast, Darcy came with us.
#
Dad helped me find a job at Melvin’s Books on Main Street in Beaufort, and John Luke went to work with him most days. Almost every day after work we rode the boat to the tiny island just across from the lighthouse. Darcy came with us, too. She would stand at the front while we cut through wave after wave. Anytime we stopped, she’d look at me for confirmation and then jump into the warm blue waters while Daddy fished. John Luke and I followed her lead. We swam to the sand bar while he lazily reeled in another pin fish.
John Luke and I looked for seashells and threw the casting net in the tide pools. He’d gotten pretty good at it. He’d just pulled in a couple bait fish when he stopped and looked at me.
“Hey, Lil. You know I don’t blame you, right. What happened to mom was an accident.” His remark caught me off guard. I thought back to the day that Dad came to school.
“I-uh—”
“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know. I think mom would too.” The tears pushed over my eyes so I turned my head away from him.
“She loved you Lil. I know it. And I know that even though you guys had a fight, she would want you to know that she loved you. Can’t you imagine her sitting you down and twiddling her thumbs while she tried to awkwardly apologize?” He chuckled. I felt my shoulders relax a little.
“She isn’t the one who should have apologized. If only I’d accepted her for who she was. It’d probably all be different now. She would have never left for work late and we’d still have her.”
“You don’t know that Lil,” Dad said. I hadn’t heard him anchor the boat and come up. He sat down in the tide pool with us.
“We can’t control much in this life. We can’t control who we lose or who we love. This is life, and sometimes it’s a terrible thing, but there are other things that make it alright. Your little brother’s right; she’d want you to let it go and be happy. We’ve still got each other. I know she’d want us to remember her and move on with our grief.”
The sun slowly moved down the sky while we sat there. Darcy lay at our feet, sand all in her fur. Dad, John Luke, and I were all brown from the sun. I couldn’t help but think about the crooked house and the white walls. I thought about the shit-covered laundry room and dog, and the new coat of paint. I thought about the aging windows and the way Mama scrubbed the floors when she was sad. I thought about the story with the Mama wolf and it all settled inside of me. I missed her. I missed her terribly.
A.B. Lee Writes 