Her father was only allowed three visitors at a time and her mother and brothers were there, so Sasha drove to her parents’ house, and when she pulled up she saw Mullin’s truck in the driveway. The front door was locked and the lights were off, so she fished the spare key from beneath the rock and let herself in. She dropped her bag on the floor, walked to the refrigerator, and got a can of Coke. She was tilting her head back to drink when she saw Mullin in the backyard. He was the last person she felt like talking to, so she ignored him, leafing through the unopened mail on the counter, unloading the clean dishwasher, and helping herself to a box of Girl Scout cookies in the cupboard.
When Mullin tapped on the sliding-glass door she startled.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He looked tired. He had grown a beard and his jeans were covered in dirt.
She eyed him warily across the kitchen. “What’s going on?”
“Just trying to keep busy until we hear about the blood clots.” Mullin shrugged. He walked over to the refrigerator, pulled out a can of Narragansett, and popped the beer open.
“Help yourself,” Sasha said sarcastically.
“I bought them.”
“Then keep them in your own house.”
“Why do you have to be like that?” Mullin asked, scowling.
“Like what?”
“Like such a bitch all the time.”
“Because I don’t want you here. And yet,” she paused, “you’re always here.”
“And you’re not. So why do you care?”
“Because it just seems like you should have moved on by now. We broke up more than fifteen years ago, but I still have to see you all the time. I just don’t understand why.”
“Well, it’s certainly not to try and win you back, charming as you are,” he said bitterly.
“Obviously.” Sasha scowled. It enraged her that he was here at the house, playing the doting son when he wasn’t even part of her family. When he had elbowed her out of the way. She stalked out the sliding-glass door, down the steps of the deck, and into the yard. There was a new Japanese maple planted in the back corner of the lot, about five feet tall, with dark red, shiny leaves. All around it were bluestars, the leaves a brilliant yellow, a swath of plumelike astilbes, and a row of small boxwoods. “Wow,” Sasha murmured. It looked like a spread from Cottages & Gardens, a far cry from the cinderblock beds where they had dug for worms and made mudpies when she was a kid. She walked over to the maple tree and looked at it more closely. She peered at the careful strings someone had tied around the base to keep animals away. She looked at the neat grass now covering what had once been a bald and lumpy pitch. She closed her eyes and listened for a while, the noises of her childhood so different from the noises on Pineapple Street. Here she heard the distant sound of a dog barking, the creak of a neighbor’s screen door opening, the rattle of the leaves in the breeze. In Brooklyn Heights she was surrounded by the rhythmic purr of a refrigerated truck parked outside her window as groceries were delivered, the sirens of police cars and fire trucks along Henry Street, and sometimes, on Sunday mornings, the clang of the knife truck, a charming neighborhood feature, a guy who drove around Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and the Heights ringing a bell so that you could run down your kitchen knives and have them sharpened for twenty bucks. Sasha let her mind wander. Was it possible she’d never live here again? Would she spend the rest of her life in Brooklyn, raising her baby hours away from her parents? She wanted so desperately for her father to be okay, for him to be able to teach her son to fish and flip a pancake, to wade around in the river looking for the mooring, to whistle with a blade of grass, to spend hours picking through the hand-tied flies they sold behind the bar at Morgan’s.
Why was she so mad at Mullin? Why did it make her so angry to see him in her home? Yes, he’d been a horrible boyfriend, but that was ages ago. She was still punishing him. Was she just as bad as the Stocktons? Desperate to keep her family of origin sheltered from outsiders? The irony crashed down on her. She was such a hypocrite. She’d moved into Pineapple Street and felt furious at Georgiana for the very thing she had been doing to Mullin for the past decade and a half. Fuck.
“Hey, Mullin?” she called, and he ambled to the door. “Did you help with these plantings?”
“Yep,” he said, taking a swig from the can.
“They look really good.”
“I know. People pay me a lotta money for it.”
“Well, it’s worth it,” Sasha said contritely. “I’m sure Mom and Dad appreciate it.”
Mullin sauntered down the steps and surveyed the garden. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“They cost more these days,” Sasha deadpanned, and Mullin smiled. “I feel guilty I didn’t realize things were so bad with my dad.”
“I think it surprised everyone,” he offered.
“I know. But I’ve had my head up my ass. I’ve been a terrible daughter. I hope my mom will forgive me,” she confessed quietly.
Mullin thought for a minute. “Do you remember the dances we’d have in middle school? The ones in the gym?”
Of course Sasha did. They were her favorite thing. She and her friends would pick out their outfits weeks in advance, they would get together ahead of time and spray themselves with drugstore perfume, would wear dangly earrings they bought at Claire’s Boutique, would spend ages with curling irons and hair spray getting their bangs just right.
“There was one dance in seventh grade where you danced with Andrew Bowalski, do you remember that?” Mullin asked and Sasha shook her head. Sure, she remembered Andrew Bowalski. He was in her classes from kindergarten through high school. He was in their gifted and talented program. He had a dark buzz cut, wire-rimmed glasses, he was lanky and nerdy and had just the biggest crush on Sasha for years. She found it mildly embarrassing, but he was a nice enough guy. She never went out with him, and sometime in high school he moved on. He was in the chess club and got into Rutgers and ended up dating a girl from Boston. Sasha thought they were married now.
“Andrew liked you so much, and he told everyone that night that he was going to ask you to slow dance to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ because it was the longest song.” Mullin laughed remembering it. “And you did. Everyone knew you didn’t like him that way, but I remember you being so nice about it and letting him put his hands on your waist and rock back and forth for all seven minutes. That was when I fell in love with you.”
“Mullin—” Sasha tried to interrupt him. Whatever he was about to say, she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t love Mullin and wasn’t going to change her mind.
“But here’s the thing,” Mullin pressed on. “I loved you, but what I really saw was how loved you were. How you had this amazing family, parents who would do anything for you, a mom who took you to buy the clothes you wanted for a dance, a dad who coached your softball team. You had friends, you had so much love surrounding you that it was easy for you to share it. You could dance with Andrew Bowalski and make his night. You were just so open and light, and I saw how closed and dark I was. I was like twelve years old and I knew I didn’t want to live like that. I wanted to have that kind of love. So I fell for you. And no, it didn’t work out between us, and that was my fault. I acted like an idiot. And who knows? Maybe even if I hadn’t it wouldn’t have worked out anyway, we were kids. But being with you and being with your family saved me. I know that. I knew it then too. Your mom will forgive you because that’s how she is.”