“Your daughter has a bladder the size of a pea,” Peter says. “It’s all her fault.”
“Untrue,” I say. “I don’t think you’ve ever changed a roll of toilet paper in your life.”
Peter turns to the kids. “On our first date, your mother pulled down her pants and peed in front of me.”
“Gross,” Jack says.
“It wasn’t a date,” I say. “You were just some guy giving me a lift back to my dorm. And it was that or pee in your car—which probably would have gone unnoticed, because that car was disgusting. It smelled like rotten meat.”
“No, no.” Peter laughs. “You wanted me. The moment I saw you squatting under a tree in your white underpants, I knew.”
“So deeply not.”
“You guys.” Jack makes a gagging noise.
“Also, I had just saved your life.”
“Your father was very heroic,” I say. Which, of course, makes the little kids laugh.
“Dixon and Andrea invited us for hamburgers,” my mother says. “They’re having an impromptu barbecue. I told them we’d walk over around six thirty or seven.”
“Ugh,” I say.
“Don’t let me forget—I said we’d bring a red onion.”
“Can’t we have a quiet dinner at home? I’m still recovering from last night.”
“Our cupboards are bare,” Mum says. “No one went to the supermarket.” There is blame-lust in every syllable.
“I know we have a packet of pasta. And frozen peas.”
“At any rate, I’m not in the mood to cook.”
“I’ll cook. It’s supposed to rain tonight.”
Peter looks up from the Parcheesi board. “I’m happy to take the kids if you want to stay home.”
“It’s just—we’ve barely been home from Memphis for twenty-four hours and it’s been nonstop socializing. I need an early night.” I need time to think.
“Then you shall have it,” Peter says.
I walk over to him, put my hands on his shoulders, lean down, and give him a kiss. “You’re a saint.”
“Don’t distract me,” he says. “This is a very serious game we’re playing,” and sends one of Finn’s little yellow pieces home.
Outside the Big House, I pause, watch my family. Finn rolls dice out of a small cardboard canister. My mother pours boiling water into an old brown teapot. A trail of steam rises from its spout. She watches the tea steep before pouring it into a chipped ironstone mug through a bamboo strainer. She peers into the sugar bowl, frowns, and wanders off.
Peter pushes up his shirt sleeve and makes a muscle. “See that?” he says to the kids. “See that? No one messes with this man.” He ruffles Maddy’s hair.
“Stop it, Daddy.”
“Grump.” He grabs her in a bear hug and kisses the top of her head, growling.
“I’m serious.” She laughs.
Jack gets up from the table and walks over to the kitchen counter, takes a plum from the fruit bowl.
“Hand me that cup of tea, would you, honey?” Peter says to Jack. “Your senile grandmother forgot to bring it to me.”
“I heard that,” my mother calls out from the pantry.
I make my way down the path, feeling the familiar crunch of pine needles under my bare feet. I can smell the promise of rain in the air. There’s a wet towel dumped on the steps of the kids’ cabin. I pick it up and hang it on a tree branch. They’ve left the light on inside their room. I go in and turn it off before the screen door becomes covered in a sea of moths and rattling june bugs. The cabin is a mess. When Anna and I lived in here, it was the same: a chaos of bikini bottoms and lip gloss and clogs and arguments. I collect their dirty clothes off the floor and throw them in the laundry basket, stuff a sweater back in Maddy’s drawer, hang a damp bathing suit on a hook. I know it’s Bad Mothering 101—they should clean their room themselves—but right now it’s soothing to concentrate on something simple and straightforward. My mother’s cure for all woes: “If you’re feeling depressed, organize your underwear drawer.”
Jack’s scratchy oatmeal-gray blanket has fallen halfway to the floor; his pillows are crumpled between the mattress and the wall. I pull his bed out. Something drops with a thud. With one blind hand, I grope around the spiderwebby floor, pull out a black notebook. His journal. My cryptic son, who barely acknowledges me these days, who sidesteps, shuts down. And I’m holding all the answers in my hand.