Dolly All the Time(5)
“Stewart,” the driver calls, and we both look up just as he snaps a photo and drives away.
Stewart pops up and puts both hands on his head as he watches the car drive away. “This fucking day,” he says.
“Who was that?”
“The press? The Post? Who knows. But someone just got a photo of me standing by while a tiny woman changes my tire.”
“I am not tiny.” I stand up to show him just how huge I am, and the top of my head is level with his chin. I give him another silent sniff.
He reaches through the open car window and pulls out a copy of the New York Post, folded back to Page Six. “I was served this with my breakfast this morning,” he says. The headline reads Fever Pitch and there’s a photo of his beautiful chestnut-haired fiancée, Audrey Mills, with her lips on the neck of a guy in a New York Yankees uniform. “That’s my fiancée. And the relief pitcher for the Yankees.”
“Ouch,” I say. His expression reads more annoyed than hurt. I decide not to mention striking him out in Little League.
“Yeah, it’s really been a day.”
“So are you breaking up?” It’s the stupidest question. I feel like I’m in high school, comforting a girlfriend. “I mean, it’s none of my business.”
He takes the paper from me and tosses it back into the car. “It’s everyone’s business now.”
I sit back down and start replacing the lug nuts to secure the spare. I lower the car with the jack and then get up, wiping my hands on my shorts and then wiping my forehead with the back of my hand. And I know there’s grease on my forehead; I can feel it before I see his eyes go there.
Stewart Whitfield pulls a handkerchief out of his inside coat pocket the way a sheriff in the old West whips a gun out of his holster.
I take it and wipe my forehead and then my hands. “Thank you,” I say, and try to hand it back to him.
“Keep it,” he says. “So now what?”
“We roll this tire to the trunk. You take it to get fixed. You’re good on this spare for sixty miles, but not too fast.”
When he’s closed the trunk, he says, “Why were you delivering my shrimp?”
I laugh and gesture to my T-shirt. “I’m Dolly Brick. My dad is Freddie Brick of Brick Fish House.”
“Ah, best crabcakes in town.”
“Yep.” I am out of things to say to Stewart Whitfield, so I give a half-hearted wave and say, “Drive carefully,” and make my way back to my bike.
“Wait. How much do I owe you?” he asks.
I get on my bike. “On the house,” I say. “Hope your day turns around.” I pedal off toward town with his handkerchief in my back pocket.
Chapter 2
I get to Goose Lane at six with ground beef, sliced cheddar, hamburger buns, and a bunch of romaine lettuce for salad in my basket. I’ve biked more than a reasonable number of miles today, and I’ve changed an aristocrat’s tire. If my dad doesn’t have oil and vinegar in his cupboard, I might lose my mind.
I sent Naomi a series of texts from the grocery store: There was a fire. I’m home for the summer. Hilarious story to tell you, unrelated. Come for dinner
She said yes with a dozen exclamation points, per normal. She’s leaving Sully and their girls at home, which makes it feel like old times. Naomi runs Whitfield Tees, our local tourist-trap gift shop. She and I spent weeks brainstorming names for the store and landed on this one because we thought it was funny when it was said out loud: Whitfield Tease. Naomi is the kind of hot that actually stops traffic. Throughout my life, I have seen cars slow down to take in the bounty of her. Blond, curvy, with lips that fall into a perfect pout. She trails pheromones wherever she goes, and it’s possible she was a bit of a tease in high school. Like my dad, she makes most of her money in the summer, peddling hoodies and faux mansion artifacts, cheaply made replicas of vases and flatware to remember your mansion tour by.
I turn away from the water, up Goose Lane, so tightly packed with houses that you’d know if your neighbor’s back porch was on fire. I haven’t been to the house yet to assess the fire damage and am a little worried. Ours is white clapboard with a luxuriously oversized but drooping front porch and green shutters gone gray from neglect. If I tackled only the shutters, I could sand and prime and paint them before August. I’ll need to borrow a ladder and see what outdoor paints are on sale at Hubbard’s. The planters at the bottom of the front steps have gone to seed, and Christopher is on the top step, whittling a popsicle stick.
“Dolly!” Christopher says, just as I say, “Pants!” and redirect him inside.
I grab the broom that lives on the porch and start to sweep. This is the first step of tending to this house and, ever since it became mine to care for, I always start here. First the front porch, then the kitchen floor. The dishes, the wiping, the general degunking starting with the refrigerator door. Sheets and towels, up the stepladder to dust the ceiling fan, vacuum, done.
Christopher reappears in the doorway, clad in Big Bird–orange pants that cannot possibly be his. He wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the ground.
“Dolly!” he says, stretching my name into a song the way he always does. “You’re home.” He’s a full head taller than me and soft around the middle from spending his days on this porch. He smells of the same baby shampoo we’ve always used and the butterscotch candies my dad keeps in a mason jar by the sink. For the second time today, time folds in on itself—he is three and perfect, he is eight and broken, he is thirty-six and both of those things at once.