“Can we get one, Mom?”
“One what?”
“A lava lamp.”
Catherine hadn’t liked lava lamps back when they were new. To her they were in the same category as Chia pets and diet tablets that helped you lose ten pounds overnight.
Aly was staring at her through the liquid of the lamp.
“We’ll see.”
“Where’s the TV?” Dana looked at her and popped her gum.
Here it comes, Catherine thought. She opened the refrigerator and started putting things inside. When she had her head sufficiently hidden behind the door she said, “There is no TV.”
It took a few minutes before she could get a word in between their melodramatic protests. Aly was going to miss “Nick at Night” and Dana just plain hated the island and wanted to go home, where “it was normal.” And she wanted to go now.
“You need to give this place a chance. And even if I was willing to leave—which I’m not—there’s no boat until Thursday.”
Catherine crossed the room to the bookcase made of cinderblock and wood planks. “There’s a whole wall of books here.” She opened a huge cabinet. “Look in here. I see stacks of puzzles and games.”
Dana shifted her gaze to the cabinet. “Oh yea!” She clapped her hands like a baby. “Candyland and Chutes and Ladders.”
Catherine looked inside. “Don’t be smart. There are adult games in here, too. And puzzles are always fun. We used to do those at home.” She pulled out the top puzzle box. “Look at this one. It’s a thousand-piece puzzle of a pepperoni pizza. You both like pizza.”
Aly stood next to her and looked inside. She tilted her head sideways to read. “What’s this? Two thousand pieces.” She looked back at Catherine. “We’ve never done a puzzle with that many pieces. Have you?”
Catherine shook her head.
Aly read the puzzle label. “It says Classic Puzzle Series: Metal Rockers.”
Catherine pictured a photograph made up of sleek, chrome and black leather Brancusi rocking chairs cut up into thousands of tiny pieces all shaped like Mickey Mouse. She smiled. It would be the kind of puzzle that was almost impossible to do in less than three days. “Take it out, Aly, and let’s take a look.”
Aly held up the box and they stared down at the lid. A whole group of chalk-white faces framed with wild black hairdos stared back at them.
Catherine felt her smile fade.
“Cool!” Dana said, taking the box from her sister. “It’s Aerosmith and Kiss.” Both girls moved over to the sofa as if they were chasing concert tickets, sat down and dumped out a huge pile of tiny puzzle pieces on the coffee table.
Dana looked up impatiently. “Come on, Mom.”
“Let’s get comfortable first.” Catherine ran toward the downstairs bedroom. “Last one in their sweats has to make dinner!”
A few minutes later when she walked back into the room wearing old sweats, she found Dana already in her flannel pajamas and sprawled out on the sofa with Aly’s cat asleep on her stomach.
“No Aly?”
Dana shook her head. “She couldn’t find her boxers.”
Catherine grinned. “Good. I don’t have to cook.”
A minute later Aly came running down the stairs wearing a pair of white cotton boxers patterned with bright red lips and a cropped T-shirt that said Smile and Kiss Me. She looked at Dana, then at Catherine. “I’m last, huh?”
They nodded.
Aly was a trooper. She just shrugged, walked over to the sofa and scooped up her cat. “I know exactly what I’m fixing for dinner.”
“What?” Catherine asked.
She exchanged a sly look with Dana, then said, “It’s a surprise.”
Catherine didn’t care what she made as long as the girls were reasonably happy for now. She’d take this one moment at a time. She walked toward the coffee table, then started to sit opposite it on the floor.
“Sit here, Mom.” Aly tucked the cat onto her hip, shifted sides of the coffee table, then sank gracefully down to the rug. “You don’t want to sit on the floor. Remember that time you couldn’t get up?”
“I’d been skiing all day,” Catherine said defensively.
Her daughters exchanged a look that said, “Yeah. Sure.”
“I had.” Catherine sat down on the Dale Evans sofa.
Dana laughed, a refreshing sound, then in a falsetto voice she said, “Help! Help! I’ve fallen down and I can’t get up!”
Aly caught on and said, “We’ll order you one of those clapper things, Mom.”
“Funny. Real funny.” Catherine tried to look serious and failed. Both her girls were grinning at her. For the first time in the last few days she thought that perhaps her plan just might work. The three of them were talking together and joking with each other. The girls were laughing instead of ignoring her.
“I found a corner piece!” Aly said, hunched over the puzzle with Harold purring in her lap. She sat up, her pert little nose in the air. “I was first.”
A minute later, in the name of good old healthy female competition, they all lost themselves to the other one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.
Six
Michael was outside cutting wood when the air began to fill with the smell of rain. Daylight had faded away and the wind was picking up, so he went inside. He hung his jacket on the old iron coat-rack, next to where his grandfather’s tool belt still hung on the exact same hook as it had for almost forty years.
He’d kept that belt around long after his grandfather had died. The canvas was frayed, the edges were black with grease, and the leather was cracked. At first he’d told himself he kept it around because they didn’t make tool belts like they used to, with a slot for a flashlight and for tools.
Hell. Now they made tool belts out of space-age, NASA-developed weave that was stronger than canvas and leather could ever be.
The truth was, he’d kept it for sentimental reasons. And he still used it. Maybe he wore it because he was trying to recapture his past. Maybe he was just old and needed something from his youth to cling to.
He turned away, not really giving a damn why he wore the thing. He just did.
He crossed the room and started a fire, then went into the kitchen where he made some soup. He stood at the stove and ate right from the pan. He ate most of his meals that way, when he was home alone and too lazy to dirty a plate or to bother with sitting down at a table.
Unless there was a football game on TV, then he sat down in front of his big screen while he ate from the pan.
Single people had singular habits. He drank milk and orange juice from the carton while standing at the open refrigerator, his arm resting on the door. He dipped his toast in the jam jar. He didn’t pick up his socks or make his bed unless someone was going to join him in it. He usually left the cap off the toothpaste and squeezed the tube from the middle.
He knew himself pretty well, he thought as he crossed the room. He picked up the latest issue of Money magazine, then set down a glass of Jack Daniel’s on a small table and sat in an old comfortable chair in front of the older rock fireplace that blazed and crackled with a fire.
He propped his feet up on a tired leather ottoman and relaxed—something he couldn’t seem to do much of lately. At