“Plus you were on your bikes, and”—he waves at the window—“it’s raining again.”
Mab and Monday are dry as deserts. River is wet as his namesake, a puddle formed on the floor beneath his chair.
“That’s not what I meant,” Nora says.
Mab squeezes her eyes shut. River looks lost. Meandering.
“Pardon?”
“Not what brings you here to our home this afternoon. What brings you to town. To Bourne.”
Ahh.
“Oh.” He smiles, relieved. Here’s a reasonable question it’s reasonable to expect a reasonable adult to ask. “My dad got transferred.”
“Really.” A statement from Nora, not a question.
“His company sent him here.”
“What company is that?”
“Belsum Basics?” River’s voice sounds like a question.
“Belsum Basics?” Nora has stood up.
“It used to be called Belsum Chemical?”
“I remember.” Her voice is rising.
“But they changed the name.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, why?” She’s stopped being reasonable.
“I…” He looks lost again. And slightly alarmed. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Mama,” Mab interrupts, and waits for Nora to look at her. “He doesn’t know.”
Nora blinks. She blinks again. She sits. This is true, of course. He doesn’t know. He’s just a boy. He doesn’t know.
But then he says, “Maybe something about the reopening?”
No one moves. No one even breathes.
“The reopening?” Nora says.
“The reopening of the plant?” Earnest, trying to be helpful. “A new start and everything? I mean, I’m just guessing. No one tells me anything. But, you know, the sign on the roof?”
The plant is topped with rusted, wind-racked metal letters taller than our house that spell out B-E-L-S-U-M. Kind of like the “Hollywood” sign.
“What about it?” Nora has bright red spots on paling cheeks.
“Well, it just spells ‘Belsum,’ so I guess they could change the second half of the name without costing anything or inconveniencing anyone, you know?” He shrugs and goes right on, sparing us all Nora’s answer to that question. “A whole bunch of stuff got messed up when they decided to reopen the plant, so I guess they wanted to leave whatever they could the same.”
“What got messed up?” Nora keeps her voice low, steady, but she’s got her hands balled into fists so tight they look permanent.
“Well, my whole life for one thing.” He laughs. “Not that they care. You know?”
“Yes, indeed I do.” Nora starts laughing too, but hers is more of a cackle really. “Welcome to the club.”
Mab’s eyes meet mine then flick back. We want the same thing, she and I, for River Templeton not to be here to watch while our mother loses her mind.
“It’s totally not fair,” River is saying. “I had to change schools, leave all my friends. Boston’s a lot … bigger than Bourne.” I notice that pause, take it to heart, the adjective he went with politely rather than the ones that must have presented themselves first. He’s not thoughtless, just oblivious. He doesn’t know. He can’t possibly. He’s just trying for banal conversation with a slightly weird adult.
A slightly weird adult who’s turning colors.
Monday’s confusion is about to spill over into questions it’s not polite to ask in front of guests. Especially when they concern the guest. River is talking about how unjust it is that there’s no marimba elective at Bourne Memorial High nor even one available for him to continue his practice on as an independent study.
He needs to leave now. But how to effect this graciously? Or how to tell Mab without him overhearing? My Voice is about as inconspicuous as I am.
I tap my finger once, and my sister’s eyes shift instantly from River to me as if I’ve poked her with it.
My finger points at Mab. It points at River. It points at the door. Mab, River, the door. She nods once.
“River,” she says, and he turns to her, but her eyes are still holding mine. “Let’s take a walk.”
One
We are the last house before the woods. That’s why my parents bought it. My mother thought it was too small, even though they were only two at the time, because they planned probably to have a baby someday and maybe even another one after that. Who could see that many years in the future? “We’ll build an extension,” my father promised. “There’s so much room here.” She thought the house was too dark, but my father said he’d cut holes in the walls and fill them with glass. When she told me this story when I was little, I pictured smashed windshields and wineglasses swept up and piled into big gaps punched in the walls. At some point, years later, I realized he’d meant windows, and it blew my mind—that a window was nothing more than a hole cut in a wall and filled with glass, that even something as stable and permanent as a wall was no more solid or nonnegotiable than anything else.