Chapter 28
Robert
There are dents in the carpet where the fish cabinet stood. I know Aunt Whitney sees them; her eyes are smoldering with anger. I’m considering inviting her to tour the bathroom as well, but at that moment, Mom emerges from the closet. She removes the heavy flight jacket from the hanger and hands it to Aunt Whitney.
The jacket belonged to my dad’s father, my grandfather, an Air Force physician before he retired and took up a highly lucrative private practice in Louisiana. I hardly knew him. He died a few years after Dad’s diagnosis, after it became clear Dad wouldn’t live to see his own son grow to be a man. A car crash, I think. The fur collar looks like it’s been chewed by rats, and there are white lines in the leather from years of creasing. Dad wore the jacket a lot when I was younger. I assumed it would be handed down to me one day.
But Aunt Whitney wants to keep it in the family.
It’s not the jacket. I don’t care about the jacket. It’s the slight. I carry the Westfall name. My cousins are Blooms and Abbotts. And yet, through some twisted logic, they are more family than I am.
Aunt Whitney folds the jacket and smoothes the leather before laying it on top of the owl throw and the few trinkets that she’s also reclaiming. She scans the room, then runs her hand along the foot rail of the bed. “I’d like to have the bed frame back, too, when you’re finished with it, of course. It belonged to my grandmother.”
Mom steadies her gaze, and I suddenly understand the phrase stare daggers.
“You know what, Whitney?” she says, “I’m finished with it now.”
She yanks the spread off the bed, scattering Aunt Whitney’s stack, and discards it on the chaise. Then she lifts the corners of the sheets and gathers them up in a big wad. Before Aunt Whitney can close her jaw, Mom has completely stripped the bed and is wrestling the mattress off the box springs.
There’s only one thing to do—I grab the other end.
“This is hardly necessary, Kathryn.”
“You want the bed, you got the bed.”
She watches us in stunned silence as we remove the box springs, then dismantle the frame.
“I can’t just stick a bed in my car,” she gasps when she realizes we’re serious. “Michael will have to borrow a truck and come get it.”
“Well,” Mom says as we feed the headboard through the bedroom door, “it’ll be out on the front lawn. Tell him to help himself.”
When we come back in, Aunt Whitney is on her phone, pacing in the living room. As Mom and I remove the footboard and then collapse the rest of the frame, we catch little snippets of her conversation, things like absurd and vindictive and ungrateful. As we gather the frame up, Mom busts a laugh, and I can’t help but join her.
When it’s all laying in a heap on the lawn, there’s one other thing I’d like to toss on top if I could—my last name. I’m sure as soon as she thinks of it, Aunt Whitney will ask for that back too.
As she backs out of the driveway, I pray her wheel will slip off the drive and into the ditch. But it doesn’t. She drives off with a glance that screams, You’re crazy. And maybe she’s right.
The bed is still there when the sun goes down. It’s gone when I wake up. Whether Uncle Michael picked it up or some flea market troller, I don’t know. And I don’t care.
Andrew
“I get to pick out the book tonight,” I tell my daughter. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” I prop Kiki up on her bed and choose some books, then climb over the guardrail and settle next to her. Maya appears in the doorway.
“Okay, how about . . . oh, this is a good one—Math Curse.”
“No!” She pushes the book out of my hand.
“Okay, then, um, The Greedy Triangle. This is one of my favorites.”
Kiki doesn’t even bother with a no. She just shoves the book out of my hands. “I want Wobert!”
Me too, baby girl. Then, What? My mind has to be playing tricks on me now. I shake it off and shuffle through the next couple of books. “How about this one—Ten Apples Up On Top, or 365 Penguins. ”
This time Kiki swivels around on her butt and kicks the offending books off the bed.
“I want Wobert!” She pushes out her bottom lip.
“She means Robert the Rose Horse,” Maya says, clearly amused at the little scene. “Her teacher told me it’s her favorite book right now. We picked it up at the library on the way home. It’s in the basket. You probably deep-sixed it when you shuffled through to find all those math books.”
“What? Me?” I smile at her and roll onto my side and locate the book.
“Wobert!” Kiki squeals like she just got a new pony for real. She snuggles up to me in her striped Carter’s with the pink heart embroidered on the front and pops her thumb in her mouth. I gently remove it.
“I’ll leave you two to your story,” Maya says. “When you’re done, we can watch a movie. Night, sweetheart.”
“Night, Mommy.” Kiki throws out her arms, and Maya comes in for a quick kiss.
“Okay. Robert the Rose Horse.”
The book turns out to be about this little horse with a big allergy—roses. Every time Robert gets near a rose . . . KERCHOO! Kiki knows when the sneezes are coming. Her eyes get big, and she waits in breathless anticipation as I dangle the moment just enough beats and then let loose with a big sneeze. She giggles and then delivers her own line: “Bess you, Wobert.” I smile each time she says it.
It’s an old book with illustrations by P. D. Eastman. The robbers have guns. Oh, well.
On our third read, the fun starts to wear a little thin. By the end of the book, Kiki has her thumb in her mouth again, and nobody is blessing Robert anymore. I find that sad.
“Okay, baby girl,” I say, closing the book at the end. “It’s time to go to sleep.” I ease past the guardrail and she snuggles under the covers and sighs. I tug her thumb from her mouth again and lay her tiny hand on the pillow. “Night, baby.”
“I love Wobert,” she says softly.
“Me too.”
“Asleep?” Maya asks when I return to the living room.
“Down for the count. So, what are we watching?” I settle on the other end of the couch.
She names some movie and I say, “Great,” but I’m not really paying attention. She curls up next to me, which I find both comfortable and not, like putting on a cashmere sweater on a hot summer day. We’ve been here before. I can’t help feeling like I’ve made a huge mistake already.
Maya has set a bowl of popcorn on the table in front of us. I stare at it for a long moment, remembering. Then the movie starts, and I have to force my eyes to the screen, but I’m not watching. The truth is, I just want to be alone. I force myself to sit for as long as I can, and then I pat her on the knee and get up.
“I’m going to bed.”
“Aaah, come on. The movie’s only half over.”
“Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
She pouts. She looks so much like Kiki when she does it. But it doesn’t melt my heart in the same way. I stretch, yawn, and make my exit. I actually think about locking my door behind me, but dismiss the thought as silly. Maya wouldn’t invade my privacy.
Before I turn out my light, I unblock Robert’s number.
I’m so sorry. I want to start over.
I stare at the text so long that seven times the screen goes black, and seven times I have to press a button to light it up again. I want to press Send, but I don’t. I press Discard instead and turn out the light.