Ginger didn’t have a favorite grandchild, but Nick had been her first one, and he’d brought Laurie over to her house for dinner a handful of times when they were dating as teenagers. So when she invited Laurie and Nick for brunch, there was no question they’d go.
The house was at the end of a jetty, and it made for a windy walk on Sunday morning. Windy enough to ruffle a jacket, but not so windy you had to lean forward to walk. “She’s going to be so excited to see you,” Nick said, bumping Laurie’s shoulder gently with his.
“I haven’t been here in such a long time. I’m impressed she’s still so independent, especially since she basically lives in a cartoon house that goes straight up.”
He laughed. “I have to warn you, even though she’s owned it for like twenty-five years, she still might tell you how cheap it was and how much work she put into it.”
“Do you think she ever thinks about moving? Since the entire thing is a giant circular staircase?”
He gestured toward the smaller part of the house attached to the lighthouse tower. “She can live on that main level if she has to. She did it when she broke her foot. Her bedroom is down there, and her kitchen. I kept trying to get her to come stay with me or with somebody, but as you can imagine, I didn’t get anywhere, especially since I didn’t have a way to contain the dogs.” He pointed at a tall wooden fence that surrounded the base of the house and opened at a wide gate.
“I know you—it must have driven you nuts, not helping.”
“She let me drive her to Claws games. She had an aide who came for a few weeks. Most important, she had somebody make a boot for her that was covered with pink rhinestones, and that’s what she’d wear when she was at the ballpark. She also had bright pink crutches.”
“There’s something very comforting about the fact that Ginger is still very, very Ginger,” Laurie said. The water was slapping the rocks on the jetty, and two fishing boats going in opposite directions motored by in the middle distance. “I still like it here,” Laurie said as she tasted salt on her lip. “I like it a lot.”
“You can come back anytime,” he said, not looking toward her, keeping his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
When they got up to Ginger’s door, Nick went to knock, but it flew open before he could make contact. She wasn’t anywhere near as small or as frail as Laurie realized she’d been imagining. She was dressed like an ad for a lush senior living facility, in white pants and a navy blue top. And as had been the case every time Laurie had ever seen her, her hair was perfectly curled and brightly colored. It was often some shade of red—sometimes more auburn, sometimes more pink—but right now, it was a robin’s-egg blue.
“Well, come here and put your arms around me, Laurie Sassalyn,” she said. Ginger’s arms were thin, but her embrace was emphatic, and Laurie could smell vanilla and lavender that lingered faintly around her hair and her shoulders. “You look just beautiful, my love,” Ginger said to her as they pulled apart.
“You do, too. I’m so happy to see you,” Laurie said as she and Nick followed Ginger inside.
“Now, darlings,” Ginger said, “I’m afraid my babies are on a playdate with their besties, but I’m sure they’ll be sorry they missed you.”
“The…dogs?” Nick said. “The dogs are on a playdate.”
“Of course the dogs,” she said. “They play down the street with Mr. Waltham’s pugs. Otherwise they get lonely. Chrissy especially.”
“Oh, tell Laurie what the dogs’ names are. She hasn’t met them.” Nick looked over at her and raised his eyebrows. “You’re going to love it.”
“They’re named Jack, Janet, and Chrissy,” Ginger said. “Like on Three’s Company. But Jack isn’t gay.”
“Jack wasn’t gay on the show,” Nick said.
“I know that.” Ginger scowled. “But they said he was.”
“I love the fact that you introduce your dogs by telling people, ‘My dog’s name is Jack, but he’s not gay.’？”
“Oh, go ahead,” Ginger said, “come by to drink a lady’s coffee and tease her about her heterosexual dog.”
When Laurie was a teenager, she had loved coming with Nick to visit Ginger. There were people who would visit the house and expect that it would be rehabbed in some basic-cable way that would conceal its origins, so that you wouldn’t know it had ever been a lighthouse except perhaps for a tasteful oar mounted on the wall. This was not that kind of home.