fairies who lived inside, and sometimes I would come home from school to find a new piece of furniture: a bed made of daisies or a bathtub carved from wood, painted with flowers. He made birdhouses and gave them to friends as gifts.
My father. He smelled like cigarettes and cardamom. When I was small and wanted comfort, he would put down the wooden spoon when he was cooking, or the pen when he was writing. Always, he would halt what he was doing and crouch down. I would press my cheek to his warm chest. In his arms, I was safe. The sleeping bags nearly filled the tree house. Alex poured the soda, and I heard my mother’s laughter as I sipped. Sometimes, when I concentrate, I can still hear her.
We pretended we were on an adventure and talked about where we were sailing. I said, ‘Alexandria, Captain!’ and my brother told me he saw the great port outside the tree house window. The pyramids were in the distance, and the sphinx.
At some point, our parents called to us. I remember my mother saying, ‘Good night, my loves!’
‘Good night!’ we cried, waving to them. They stood below us, next to each other. My father, as always, was disheveled, his hand in my mother’s long hair. As they walked to the house, I saw him wrapping her hair around his dark wrist: a golden bracelet.
This was the last night I dreamed. The last night, anyway, that I remember any dreams. Now I don’t sleep very well, and I am scared of midnight visions. I take pills that lower me into slumber cleanly, and ebb away until morning, when I wake fuzzy, my mind pleasantly numb until after a few cups of coffee.
That night I dreamed of dolphins, of riding a dolphin in a warm sea. I slipped underwater and was scooped up again. Then a bolt of lightning cracked in the sky and my dolphin disappeared under the waves for good, leaving me alone. Rain hammered the ocean; I felt water on my head, driving me down.
My house was underwater. I swam across the lawn and floated upstairs. There were terrible noises coming from my parents’ room. I saw bad things – it is a blank now, a black hole of memory – and I fled the house, back to Alex.
When I woke, my father and brother were sitting on either side of me on the floor of the tree house, tearing into cinnamon buns. My father often took us to the Holt bakery for pastries – this morning he had risen early and gone himself, he said. He held the bag open for me, and I selected a bun, took a bite sweet with frosting.
We finished our breakfast and walked to the house to get our swimsuits. I was rummaging in my room for my red one-piece when I heard an awful sound – a cry like a screeching cat.
There was a long carpeted stairway in the house on Ocean Avenue. I was halfway up the steps when Alex slammed my parents’ bedroom door behind him and rushed to me, grabbing my shoulders.
‘Turn around,’ said Alex. His face was white as milk.
‘What—’
‘Turn around!’ he screamed.
I fought, straining to find out what had happened, but Alex was stronger. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me back outside. I asked him what was going on, and he said, ‘Shut up. Just shut up! Just shut up!’
I was dizzy and too hot. I clutched my bathing suit in my fist.
A police car arrived – flashing red lights and sirens. An ambulance followed. Brawny, stone-faced men rushed inside our house. When they came back out, they were no longer in a hurry. They bore a heavy stretcher.
My father emerged on the lawn with two policemen. I heard him shouting about his children, Find my children. The men put my father in a patrol car, shut the door, and drove away. Alex and I waited to see what would happen next.
Book One
AUGUST 2010
Chapter 1
‘A road trip,’ said Alex, sounding hopeful for the first time in a long time. ‘To see Gramma. We can visit her and then go to the beach. We can rent a cottage in Galveston. We can rent a condo.’
‘A condo?’ I said, clamping the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I gathered tomatoes in the produce aisle.
‘I have some news, Lauren. Can you get away this weekend, so we can talk?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s a hundred and ten degrees. I have three open houses on Sunday. What do you mean, news?’
‘Well, at least you have your priorities in order.’ My brother sounded like he was pouting. I remembered the way he would hide under the kitchen table when our parents fought, refusing to come out.
I placed tomatoes on the scale, printing out the price and pressing it to a plastic bag. It was August in Austin, and the cost of tomatoes was rising with the temperatures. ‘Oh, Alex, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Just tell me the news. Is it good news?’
‘I get it,’ said Alex. ‘Mr. Cheapskate won’t let you out of his sight?’
I shut off my phone and stowed it in my handbag. I picked out a bunch of bananas, just a bit green, then gathered organic baby spinach, fresh thyme, and new potatoes. In the meat department, I asked for lamb and a pound of ground chuck. I passed the lobster tank, grabbed a six-pack of Lone Star and a bottle of cheap white. I tossed two boxes of strawberry granola and a pint of Mexican vanilla ice cream into the cart. Cheddar cheese, skim milk, bagels, baguette, warm tortillas, chocolate-chunk cookies. I was shopping for a family of five, it seemed, though it was just Gerry and me in the one-bedroom rental. I smiled when I thought of Gerry: the slight curl in his auburn hair, his broad shoulders. Gerry had been a wrestler in high school and still had a rangy, stocky build. He was my height, and when we swayed in the kitchen to a slow tune on the radio, we fit together like wooden jigsaw pieces. Like Illinois, nestled next to Missouri in my old puzzle of the United States.
By the register, I grabbed a lemon soda and a bouquet of tulips. I paid with my MasterCard, my shock at the total assuaged by the knowledge that I was earning a hell of a lot of airline miles. Besides, what was money for if not sumptuous evenings with your boyfriend? By the time Gerry finished work – or ‘work,’ as he labored for himself, and what he was doing in the shed in his sweatpants was nothing I recognized as taxing or taxable – I would likely be curled in bed, asleep, but hope sprang eternal, and romance (I believed) was about faith and expensive groceries.
Though I had finished squiring around a couple named the Gelthorps by four, dropping them at the Four Seasons for dinner and discussment (Mrs. Gelthorp had assured me she’d call in the morning with an offer on either the Tuscan-style palace in Pemberton Heights or the Provençal villa in Westlake), it was already dark as I wheeled my booty out of Central Market. I angled the cart toward my Dodge Neon. I had hoped for a glamorous convertible, but Gerry had been firm, armed with a stack of old Consumer Reports and Epinion printouts. I unlocked the car, opened the trunk, and screamed when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ said my brother, panting in the cool evening.
‘How did you—’
‘You had that calm I’m buying foodstuffs tone,’ said Alex. ‘I rode my bike over.’
‘From the hospital?’
Alex nodded. He wiped his forehead. ‘I came to say I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to insult Gerry.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘He is Mr. Cheapskate, after all.’
‘I just think a trip would be fun. The two of us. We need to visit Gramma – and I’ll reserve the campsite, or condo, whatever. We haven’t camped since . . . since we were kids, you know? I’m feeling a bit mortal.’
My older brother filled me – always – with bafflement, irritation, and gratitude. He had never recovered, not really, from that morning. I had not made it all the way upstairs, so in some sense, I had been spared. By the time I saw my mother, she had been cleaned and made up, slipped into her favorite dress. He had taken care of me ever since.