Chapter Nine
Curtis
On Saturday, I woke up at around eight. After a quick shower, I fed the dog and watered the plants while I waited for Mom and Dad to get up. Mom texted me at around nine to let me know I was good to come over. “Making a huge breakfast,” she wrote, “and the sooner you get here, the warmer it’ll be.”
I hollered after Jake, and he came running down the hall, looking as excited as I felt. We got into the truck and took off.
When I walked through the door of the house a few minutes later, I was immediately hit by the aroma of frying eggs and bacon. Dad was sitting in his usual spot by the window at the kitchen table reading the morning newspaper; somehow the clean-up effort in the Gulf had just made the oil spill worse. Darren lay on his back in the couch with his eyes closed tight and his nose in the air like a man who was about to be buried.
I flinched when I saw him. He must have come over the night before because he was afraid he’d sleep through our appointment if he didn’t. How was I going to explain to Mom and Dad what he was doing here?
“Curtis.” Dad set down the paper and peered over at me from behind his glasses. “Why is there a man on our couch?”
“That man is your son,” said Mama, coming over and setting down a gravy boat in the middle of the table. Gravy sloshed over the sides and onto the waxy tabletop. “Would you like me to introduce you?”
“I know who he is,” said Dad. “I would like to know why he’s asleep in my couch. Darrens are not supposed to sleep on their parents’ couches—they are supposed to sleep in their beds in their own houses like a grown man.”
“He, uh, came over to help me,” I said, glancing nervously at the windows. “I may have found someone who wants to rent out the tiny house near the barn, and he was helpin’ me get the place cleaned up before they come over and inspect it.”
“Oh, how lovely!” said Mama, her eyes aglow, but Dad only grunted.
“Is this person going to be able to afford rent?” he asked. “Are they clean, reliable, responsible? Do they have a steady income?”
“Yes to all of those questions,” I said quickly. I always hated it when Dad became the Inquisition, but there was no avoiding it, best just to grit your teeth and get it over with. “How much are y’all wanting to charge a month?”
“Oh, I don’t care,” said Mama. “I’m just thrilled that someone actually wants to live in that tiny old house. I was beginning to think we’d never find a use for it except as storage.” I could tell by the tone in her voice that she was looking forward to having another soul to take care of and was already scheduling out the meals she was going to feed them.
“So,” she said, lowering her eyes and trying not to look too interested, “who is this person? When can I meet them?”
This was the awkward part, the part I hadn’t been looking forward to. “Well, that’s just the thing,” I said. “It’s the girl, the vet’s assistant. We’d been talkin’ and she found out y’all had a space for rent, and she’s really interested to see it.”
“Oh, excellent,” said Mama with heroic restraint.
“Sweetums,” said Dad in a warning voice.
“What, dear?” said Mama, turning round sharply.
“I can see the wheels turning in your head,” he said. “Whatever you’re planning, you can put it out of your mind. Just let the boy be.”
“I’m not…planning anything,” said Mama, in a tone that left no doubt that she was.
“I know you, Mama,” I said, coming over and tousling her hair. “There’s no need to play matchmaker. If it works out, it works out.”
Mama set her rolling pin down on the counter with a sigh of disappointment. “Well, alright,” she said. “But when do we meet her? Is she coming over?”
“I hate to disappoint you,” I said, “but I think I ought to be the one to show her around. At least for now. If we keep seeing each other, there’ll be plenty of time to meet her later on.”
Mama looked like she was going to protest, but Dad held up his hand in warning. “Let ‘em be,” he said. “Boy wants to show her around by himself, he has that right.”
“I know,” said Mama ruefully. “It just feels like I’ve been waiting forever to meet this girl.”
“Since the day Curtis was born,” Dad replied.
There was a loud cough, and Darren sat up on the couch, looking groggy. “Where the hell am I?” he asked.
“You’re eating breakfast with your mother,” said Mama, setting the orange pitcher down on the table in front of my plate. “And then you’re going out with your brother to look over the tiny house.”
“I just had the strangest dream,” said Darren, still looking befuddled. “I was down at the bar when I got drafted into an MMA fight. I got into the ring and come to find out that my opponent was Elizabeth Philips Davies. I thought, ‘Well, hell, this’ll be easy.’ So the fight starts and she just—she destroys me. I mean, it was the smackdown of the century. I was like, ‘Damn, where is she getting this strength?’ She’s a tiny woman, but man, she was fierce.” He laughed lightly. “I’m just glad it was just a dream.”
I winked at Mama. “You sure about that, Darren?” I said, grinning.
“Whatchoo mean?” he asked, his face paling.
“You really don’t remember a single thing about last night? The fight, the beat-down?”
“You don’t remember little Lizzie giving you the unholy beatdown of your life?” asked Mama, barely able to contain her laughter.
“Are you—are you funnin’ me?” Darren shouted, half-rising from the couch. A single vein in the center of his forehead throbbed dangerously. “You know I got the memory of a goldfish! Shit, don’t do that!”
We laughed the rest of the way through breakfast.
***
At Mama’s insistence, we left her to clean up the dishes while we went out to the tiny house. It had taken us several hours to clean it out the night before, they had stored so much in there: an old cello case belonging to Marshall, a sofa that had been set on its side because there was no other room for it, some moldy board games that needed to be thrown in the waste basket, a couple of rusty tennis rackets, a half-empty pesticide bottle.
“Lord, what do they need all this stuff for?” Darren had asked.
“They don’t,” I said, waving a hand over my face to dispel the musty odor. “That’s why it’s in here.”
Now, as we stood looking it over in the warm light of mid-morning, it didn’t look nearly as bad. I had swept away the dirt and covered over the wood floor by laying down a hand-sewn rug I’d found in one of the hall closets. Then, I had gone out and bought a couple of framed paintings at Hobby Lobby and hung them up on the walls—one Van Gogh and a couple of Monets. She seemed like the sort of woman who’d appreciate it.
“I know it’s not much,” I said to Darren. “But it looks better’n it did. You think she’ll like it?”
“I suspect as much as anyone could like living in a yard outside a barn,” said Darren. “If you want to impress her, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“I wonder where she lives now that could be so bad that she’d want to live here,” I said.
“Maybe her lease is up,” said Darren, going over to the fold-out desk and picking up a dusty rug, which he tossed in the waste basket. “Anyway, our place ain’t so bad. Sometimes I think we had it good growing up, living here like we did with Mom and Dad to take care of us.”
“Maybe we did,” I said quietly. “I just don’t know what I’m thinking, asking a girl to come live out here with my parents.”
“Well, it’s a place to live,” said Darren, “and it sounds like she’s looking. If she ends up movin’ in, it’ll be because she wants to live here because she checked the place out and she liked it.”
“I guess so. If she ends up turning the place down, I’ll have to remember to not take it personally.”
“No, it’s nothing against you. Whatever happens between you and her in the future, it’s got nothin’ to do with this. This is about her seeking out new lodgings, and you’re just helping her out.”
I smiled. It was weird having siblings sometimes, how pretty much your whole life they were just there, not really doing much, and then there were those moments where they said the right thing at the right moment and you remembered how glad you were to have them.
My thoughts were interrupted by Jake’s barking. Darren turned, shielding his face against the intense heat of the morning sun. “Looks like she’s here, man,” he said, giving me a thump on the shoulder.
I turned to look. A battered green car was pulling up into the driveway, and through the windshield I could see Allie, grinning and waving awkwardly.