like an advertisement without words: neon poured into shingles. Here. Stay here. The restaurant train car had a new seating area outside with white canvas umbrellas. People were lined up, waiting for tables. I circled round and turned onto San Ysidro Road, past the craftsman-style church. Jacaranda blossoms parachuted along the railroad ties and drifted over to the beach. It made me laugh to see the small purple flowers descend through the air, as if a drama had been saved up to greet me. I punched in the code to the gate and drove through. Then I sat for a while, my car in idle, taking in salt air like an overload of memory. Each summer I’d almost forget what that was like, an intrusion of ocean sound that builds and tears down other sounds until it disappears entirely.
I parked behind the garage. It was the only house that still had one. Years ago the buildings had been spaced apart and there had been some open parking. But all the additions, the desire to cram more in, had pulled them together like row houses. I unloaded the car.
Jane answered the door that day. She seemed confused by my presence, though we had gone over our flight schedules together two nights before. She was thinner than the last time I had seen her, her hair pinned back with tiny butterfly clips, several of which had come loose, as if they were trying to get away from her head. She stepped back into the hall and caught her foot on the cord of a belly board leaning by the door.
—Goddamn it.
Mike stood in the middle of the living room, knee-deep in luggage. He was bare except for his khaki shorts and a pair of battered flip-flops. He smiled when he saw me staring at him. Jane untangled herself. She kissed me on the mouth. I heard the girls upstairs. Mike took my two bags, kissed my mouth as well, and threw on a t-shirt. Jane asked about my flight and if I were thirsty.
—I wouldn’t mind a drink.
Mike put his arm around my waist.
—You’re insane for doing this, he said.
—That’s me.
—How was the flight? Jane asked a second time.
—Direct, I said.
—And the most interesting person you’ve spoken with in the last twenty-four hours? Mike asked.
—The Hertz rental agent?
—The next twenty-four will improve, he said.
—The hotel’s been purchased by foreign investors. They’re going to do a major remodel, make it more of a resort, Jane said.
—Sorry to hear it, I said.
As if she were coming out of a stupor, Jane suddenly offered me something to drink again. But shortly after I said yes, I was thirsty, she looked around, as if she had forgotten something, and then dropped onto the couch. My patience felt like a third suitcase I couldn’t put down. Mike made me a Campari and soda. When I think back on that afternoon, I realize they were like two people with broken whisper phones in a science exhibit. They barely made eye contact with one another.
Finally Jane went off to the kitchen and Mike pushed a handful of dolls in various states of undress to one end of the couch so we could sit.
—You okay? he asked.
—I keep expecting Franny to walk through a door. Mike rubbed my shoulders a little.
—You think the foreigners will leave the blue roofs alone?
—Not a chance, I said.
When Jane returned, I dealt with the topic I imagined she and Mike were avoiding or polarized by.
—I’ll help you work out a rough plan, I said, breaking the skin on the silence.
Jane flinched. Franny’s estate was sizable. She’d been an avid collector of fine and decorative arts. There were the collections of small objects from Africa, Greece, and Egypt; tribal masks; leather-bound books; Moroccan and Chinese rugs. A shelf of skulls: bobcat, hummingbird, pelican. Steel molds once used in making balloons were mounted on marble bases. On the coffee table, a red carnival-glass dish was filled with black wooden spools. And the Louis XIV table. Franny had impressed its existence upon Jane and her sister, Nan, and me each time we had flown into the living room instead of walking. I noted the photograph of Franny that had been framed for the funeral. She looked like one of those Avedon models from the ’50s.
—I don’t mean anything too detailed. I just need to get an idea of which items will be held out for the family. You can think about what you’d like an exact appraisal on—I’ll help you with that. And if you hope to sell by the piece or the lot. But we’ll get there, I said, opening my briefcase. I felt like a realtor or mortician giving a pitch. I don’t think they understood what it meant to settle an estate, especially one like Franny’s. The time for each appraisal, lining up buyers. And things tended to change daily where several interests were involved: the items Jane and Nan would fight over. I knew Jane would hand me the phone, expecting me to settle things between them.
I took a half-dozen yellow rule-lined pads and a box of pens from my case and set them in the middle of the coffee table so they would have them when they were ready.
—You brought office supplies from Chicago? Jane laughed. I struggled with the shrink-wrap covering the tablets. Seeing me grow flustered, she smoothed my hair as if it were flying about from static electricity. Mike gave me a sympathetic look.
It was a cool morning, but a couple of swimmers were out in the short waves now. For the first time I saw the cat lying in a corner of the room, looking dead. A small rug of an animal.
—Is Trader all right? I asked.
—I gave him too much of the tranquilizer. By mistake, Jane said. Then she picked up the box of pens and spilled them onto the table as if she were about to read a fortune with yarrow sticks. I wanted to say I miss Franny, that it seems impossible that the house will be sold, that it isn’t necessary to dump all the pens out.
I thought it was the large business of settling Franny’s estate that had them so keyed up. I’d seen this before: the sense of separation people can feel from themselves or each other when sorting the objects of the past. My boss often said you have to have a particular deficit of emotion to move freely through other people’s lives. Some families pay the auction house to go over every last thing of their relative’s. Letters, photos, spice jars, closets full of clothes, carried off in plastic bags for salvage or trash until they get down to the things they can sell. It’s a stupid way to break down, but I never wanted another career. Even if I’m left to wonder if strangers will rake through my things eventually.
Just then Mona ran down the stairs carrying one of Franny’s ivory jars from the matched set on her dressing table. She sprinkled face powder everywhere. Livvy ran after her until she saw me, then slowed to a walk and went over to look in a suitcase for something. This was the first summer she had made dramatic alterations to her appearance. The ear cuffs, the hair, the piercings, the black clothes.
Jane took the powder away.
—Hi girls, I said.
—Hi Mat, Mona said.
—Mattie, Livvy corrected her. Hey.
—Hey, I said.
She surfaced with a pink swimsuit, which she handed to Mona, who held it up so I could read the words emblazoned on the front: LOVES TO SWIM.
Mike winked at Livvy. Then he turned to me and said:
—We should invite the neighbors over for dinner tomorrow night.
He seemed eager to include me in things.
—To get in the mood? Jane said.
But I wasn’t sure which mood she referred to, and I knew she didn’t want me quizzing her, and it didn’t matter to me if we had a dinner party or not. Mike didn’t say anything, went out to the deck.
While Jane unpacked, I looked around the living room. The early-afternoon train came through heading north. It rode Franny’s house like an act of nature. A familiar door above the stove always swung