I had started work on a dandelion chain when Nathan Duffy’s dented old VW pulled up to the house. The passenger door opened with a rattle, and out tumbled Caroline in a short flowery dress, her waist-length dirty-blond hair falling like a cape behind her.
“I’m so glad you guys haven’t left!” Caroline called to Joe. “I thought we’d missed saying good-bye.” She scanned the lawn. “Where’s Renee?”
I pointed: Renee was sitting on the bumper of the rented UHaul, the U-Haul she’d packed up the night before with everything she’d need for her first year of medical school at Boston University. A fine sheen of sweat covered her tan limbs, legs in micro running shorts. Her arms were crossed against her stomach, her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that bobbed slightly as she tapped her foot. Renee, impatience personified.
“We’re still an hour away from leaving,” Renee told Caroline. She checked her watch, then looked pointedly at Joe. “At least.”
Joe grinned back. Look after your brother, Noni had said when it became clear they would both be going to school in Boston. And Renee had answered, Have I ever not?
Nathan ambled around to sit next to me on the grass. “Morning, Fiona,” he said.
“Renee, should we bring the snow boots now or wait till after Thanksgiving break?” Joe called across the lawn.
“Bring them,” Renee answered, examining a cuticle. “It might snow before we get back home.”
Back home. They were leaving, all of them. In one two-week stretch, I was losing Joe to college, Renee to medical school, and Caroline to Lexington, Kentucky. That spring Nathan had graduated early from University of Connecticut and was set to start a biology Ph.D. program. Caroline would transfer schools. Although there was still some question about her credits, there was no question that she was going with Nathan.
Noni and I would remain alone in the gray house.
“I’ll miss you, Fi,” Joe said. Sighing, he lay down beside me on the lawn and shaded his eyes with his hand. “A lot.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“You’ll be happy we’re gone. Really, you will. No more noise. No more of that awful Indigo Girls.” The last he said loudly in Renee’s direction, but she ignored him apart from a quick flip of her middle finger.
“Or farting,” said Caroline, staring pointedly at Joe. She lay down and settled her head on Nathan’s thigh. “The house will be a lot less stinky.”
“Um, Caroline,” said Joe, “perhaps you haven’t noticed, but our mother can pass gas like a champ. Right, Noni?”
“What? Joe?” Noni was coming out the front door carrying another box. “Joe, why are you lying down? Why is everyone on the grass? Aren’t we still packing?”
“I’m taking a break,” said Joe. “Fiona looked sad.”
“I am not sad,” I said quickly. It was a lie, of course, but I objected to the idea that I was so easy to read. The truth was that I didn’t want this, us here sprawled on the lawn, to end. I wanted this miserable, hot day to go on forever. I wanted Joe beside me, Caroline and Renee within earshot. All of us close enough to touch.
“Noni,” said Joe from his prone position, “I just want you to know that I plan to be home a lot, so don’t forget the Dr Pepper and the sour-cream-and-onion Lay’s potato chips, not that Pringles bullshit, and those peanut butter M&M’s and mint-chocolate-chip ice cream—any brand is okay, but it must be green.”
Noni stood above Joe, hands on her hips.
“Are you taking notes?” he asked. “Mental notes?”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Now, would you get up and help me finish here?”
“Fiona needs me more,” Joe said, but he pushed himself up just enough to throw his arms around me and kiss me on the cheek, and then he was up, running back into the house.
“Yuck.” I rubbed Joe’s spit off my face. Nathan smiled, but there was tension and distraction in his face.
“Caro,” Nathan whispered to Caroline. Her eyes were closed. “Now?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered without opening her eyes.
“Now what?” I said. I’d heard a tremor in Nathan’s voice, an unmistakable wobble of excitement.
“I think we should get your mom,” Nathan said. Caroline’s eyes fluttered open.
Soon all of us stood in a loose circle in the shade thrown by the towering locust I had never been able to climb, all of us looking at Caroline and Nathan.
“Caroline, what is it?” asked Noni.
Nathan looked to Caroline, who smiled and nodded. Nathan cleared his throat, but it was Caroline who spoke. “We’re married!” she said, and clapped her hands quickly like a child.
The words dropped quiet as a cloud into our circle, and for a moment we all stood muzzled, stunned. A crow called across the empty street. Somewhere, a lawn mower started up with a bewildered buzz. Caroline was nineteen years old.
“Oh, Caroline,” Noni said, her voice thick, her face fallen.
“We did it last week, at the courthouse,” Caroline said, ignoring Noni. “Here’s the ring.” She held out her hand, and yes, there it was, a thin silver band with a stone so small it seemed merely a nick in the metal.
“And I thought I would be the last,” Noni said.
“The last what?” asked Caroline.
“The last to … to decide something like this. For a man.”
Caroline said nothing. Nathan shifted, his discomfort clear. We all waited as our mother considered the news of Caroline’s marriage. She shook her head and looked up at the sky, which was flat and heavy and absolutely blue. I thought she might yell or begin to cry, and for a moment all four of us stood poised to receive that, ready in that far-off, distant way we would always be ready to lose our mother again to turbulent, unbearable emotion.
Noni exhaled. She shook her head and grimaced and wiped her eyes. “Well, at least you’re not pregnant,” she said with a laugh. And then, anxiously: “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Caroline giggled and shook her head no. “Well, congratulations, then,” Noni said. “This is … exciting!” And with that we all breathed once again.
“Congratulations!” I said. “What a surprise!” I hugged Caroline and stepped back to examine her. She didn’t look any different. I almost expected the weight of this event to show on her face, alter the light in her eyes. But no, the same limpid blue, the same pale smattering of freckles. Only Nathan seemed physically altered: he stood straighter, it seemed to me, shoulders more square. The responsibility perhaps weighed on him, or maybe it simply made him proud. Husband. Wife. Despite our mother’s lessons, or maybe because of them, I believed secretly and fervently in the heady promises of love. I believed it would mark us all in some irreversible, wonderful way. Even me someday.
And then, before I knew it, Renee and Joe were in the car, the sun falling in long lines through the low branches, Noni calling out last-minute driving directions, and Renee nodding and yelling out the window, “Don’t worry!”
“We’ll see you next week!” Noni called. In a few days, when Noni could take time off work, she and I would drive to Boston for the end of Joe’s orientation week. Then I would see his drafty dorm room, Alden’s emerald quad and sparkling baseball field, and meet a few of the boys