Twice Shy

A FEW HOURS HAVE PASSED since I first began cock-blocking Wesley’s mission to run afoul of Great-Aunt Violet’s dying wishes, and I’m forming a hunch around how he justifies this behavior.

He and Violet were close, I’m guessing, being the only two people all the way out here, cohabitating in the very close quarters of the groundskeeper’s cabin. When you live with somebody long enough, you pick up kernels of information about each other that lead to anticipating what the other person might say or do, how they might react in any situation. You learn their habits, you establish rituals. You grow comfortable. This spawns an easy rapport.

I didn’t have an easy rapport with Violet, or at least I haven’t had one in a long time. Our relationship was a chasm, basically. I sent a holiday card every year, because holiday cards were easy. Thinking of you! Short and sweet, with the thinnest slices of personal information. Apartment-hunting again. Saw a sweater with jingle bells on it and thought of you. We sure are having a rainy month. She replied with checks for twenty dollars and a few odds and ends: a bookmark with kittens on it; a newspaper feature on My May Belle, the historical Knoxville riverboat I was named after.

For birthdays and Christmases and Thanksgivings, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone. Too much time had passed, which led to awkwardness and putting it off even longer—and you see where I’m going with this.

What would I say? What if she didn’t care about me anymore? Didn’t remember me? Didn’t want to hear from me? The possibility I might be accused of being a negligent niece—or worse, that she’d confess what a disappointment I’d turned out to be . . . my guilt grew steadily, but I couldn’t face it, so I locked it in a drawer. Now I’ll never get the chance to make things right with Violet.

Wesley doesn’t carry any such guilt. Maybe he feels the inheritance was owed to him, after taking care of Violet. He must’ve had his hands full as a caretaker, because he certainly wasn’t doing any groundskeeping. The landscape looks like a child’s drawing of a tornado.

Maybe neither of us deserves the estate. But this is where I can make it up to Aunt Violet. I can honor her list. I owe her that much, at the very least.

It goes like this:

Wesley carries a crapload of stuff out of the house, and I make him put it in the Inspection Station (it’s the spot near a shrub that’s shaped kind of like a flamingo). I sort out anything salvageable into Keep and Donate piles. A sticker book I saved from the hoard has found new use designating what to do with it all.

Wesley delivers three more boxes to the Inspection Station and braces himself for interaction with a sharp inhale. “Does the yellow sticker mean ‘donate’?”

“It means ‘keep.’”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Be reasonable. You can’t possibly expect me to part with everything.”

“Me be reasonable?” He points to himself. “Me?” Wesley leans across me suddenly, causing me to jerk back, and extracts a sweatshirt from the pile. It’s older than I am, a paisley crime against fashion in brown, orange, and mustard yellow. “What are you going to do with this?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to wear it.” I’m still recovering from almost being touched by him, even though it was accidental and meant nothing. And also didn’t happen.

“Really,” he deadpans.

“It’s vintage.”

“There are, no exaggeration, hundreds of vintage clothes in the house. You’ve got to narrow it down. Be a little more discerning.”

“Says who?” He isn’t my boss. I’ve never seen this much stuff in my life, and I can’t believe it’s all mine. Most of my shirts have the Around the Mountain Resort & Spa logo on them, since I got a discount at the gift shop and gift shop clothes were a trendier, management-approved alternative to the staff uniform (blue pin-striped hat and overalls, which management stressed the importance of wearing while dodging the dress code themselves).

I grab a velour skirt from the box he just put down. It has a few holes, but I could patch them up easily with one of Violet’s (twelve and counting) sewing machines. “Oooh, I want this, too.” I swipe a Sonny & Cher shirt with a (broken) zipper that goes up and down the turtleneck and Wesley pinches the bridge of his nose.

What a Grinch. If anybody’s going about this the wrong way, it is him, ignorer of Wish #1. Violet held on to her belongings for a long time, so I can’t picture her being thrilled with our tossing out too much. If I can find a use for something, then I will. Wesley walks away shaking his head, and even though we don’t know each other and his opinion shouldn’t affect me, I can’t help but feel like I’m failing a test of adulthood.

I was fifteen years old when my mother was thirty, so that number used to feel a lot older to me, practically middle-aged. Watching Julie’s decision-making was a lesson in what not to do. I thought I’d surely be married to my soul mate by thirty, not necessarily with a teenage daughter in tow but definitely a slew of pets, living happily ever after in a cute cul-de-sac Cape Cod. I’d have a walk-in closet with sophisticated pencil skirts and chiffon scarves. A dependable best friend who was always there for me, thick or thin—a fiery, independent businesslady who brought out my sassy side (I hoped to develop such a side one day). We’d drink wine and laugh. Commiserate. She and her husband would double-date with me and mine, a perfect quartet. Perhaps she deserved it, perhaps she didn’t, but I judged my mom back in the day because I compared our lives to these arbitrary markers of success and wondered how she could be so careless. Like she could have had it all, if only she’d wanted it enough.

I’m now at the age my mom was when I thought she was a letdown and it’s terrifying to still be in this stage, bewildered, guessing my way through life on shaky baby-deer legs. No soul mate husband, no down-for-a-good-time best friend. Too many failures to speak of. So much of living is struggling instead of enjoying. And where’s the utopia I thought society would have leveled up to by now? Somebody sold me a bridge.

To prove that I’m capable of parting with material possessions if I want to, I make sure Wesley watches me throw away two whole bags. The bags are actually filled with other bags, but he doesn’t have to know that. When I catch his eye, I get that pang again. That oof right to the chest, when, for a split second, before the scowls and the curt responses, Jack McBride could be real. I miss knowing somebody out there cared if I didn’t text for a couple days. My daydream world floats nearby like a lifeboat, ready and waiting for me to drift away, but I’m a masochist today. I want that pang again. I want to hold his gaze for just a little bit longer and pretend he’s someone who cares. I am a sad, pitiful lady.

“When did she paint the house gray?” I ask.

Wesley frowns (it’s his default expression, but he has the standard I hate everything frown and the deliberate I hate you personally frown that he goes back and forth between). “What do you mean?” Glances at the house. “It’s always been gray.”

He turns around, already moving beyond the conversation. How can he not be as lonely as I am? How can he not be starved for human attention?

“It was pink when I was a kid,” I insist, unwilling to let him go.

The permanent frown doesn’t abate but there’s a subtle shift, agitation crossing into confusion. “How’s that possible? I’ve seen pictures from ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago—it’s gray in all of them.”

“It was definitely pink when I was ten.”

The corners of his mouth turn down, hardening in place. He doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m off my rocker.

“That one isn’t so bad,” he says, eyes cutting to the pool of red sequined fabric in my hands. I didn’t notice I’d drawn it out of the box. I glance down, and when I glance back up he’s vanishing into the house.

“He doesn’t want to talk,” I say quietly to the dress, tilting its sequins this way and that to catch the light. “That’s okay. We don’t have to get along.” It emerges sounding like a question, a common theme for me, so I say it again with confidence. “We don’t have to get along.”

I hate this gnawing sensation, that I am more alone than I’ve ever been. This is the first full day of Maybell’s Fresh Start, so you’d think I’d be at the top of my game. I’ve inherited a (dilapidated) manor and two hundred and ninety-four acres of (completely wild) land with a view of the mountains, but I feel nothing. I haven’t had a proper cry over Aunt Violet’s death, either, which means there must be something wrong with me.

My absence from work today has been noted by Christine, who’s sending increasingly threatening texts: You’d better be in the hospital. Gemma, too, who wants to know if I’m sick, and reminds me that if so, I’m already running out of sick leave, which isn’t information she’d know. Paul definitely ghostwrote that text. I’m an hour away from that place, never to return again, so I’m free to give them a middle-finger emoji and block all their numbers from my phone. I don’t know why I can’t. I type out several responses but delete them all. Leaving all their messages ignored is probably the more chaotic choice—soon I’ll be receiving “official warnings” sent to my company email that I won’t check.

Next, I do what I always do and yet always regret doing whenever I’m spinning in lonely circles.

She answers her phone after six rings. “Hey, you.”

“Hey, Mom.” I put on my cheery, everything-is-fine smile even though she can’t see me.

“You must be psychic, because I was about to call. I just listened to your voicemail.” Her tone is a touch superior. “Too bad.”

“Yeah, it’s so sad.” I realize I’m holding a box of White Diamonds perfume, and it’s a mistake. My vision blurs. I’m in the kitchen with Aunt Violet, sifting powdered sugar over fudge brownie donuts, making a terrific mess, while she assures and reassures me how well I’m doing. Maybe I’ll finally cry, and it’ll be cathartic, and I’ll be able to appreciate Falling Stars. Maybe it will all sink in.

“Well.” Mom’s cold detachment brings me back to earth. “She was old.”

I swallow. “Still sad, though.”

“So you’ve moved in already, huh? You find a job there yet?”

I’m abruptly reminded of why I don’t call Mom often. “No.”

“Oh, honey, that’s not good.”

“I only just got here. I’ll find something soon.” Hopefully. I don’t want to think about applications right now, not when my employment history qualifies me to be a housekeeper and basically nothing else. “How’ve you been?”

“It’s kind of an insult that Violet gave you the house, don’t you think?”

The left-field question catches me cold. “How so?”

“The fact that it’s trashed. Which! Hah!” Mom snorts loudly. “She thought we were trash. You and I.” She’s speaking faster; I can picture her on the terrace, half in the sun, one of her knees bouncing. “If I were you, I would have walked away. We’re not the type of people to accept pity presents. That isn’t how I raised you.”

I don’t know what to say.

“You couldn’t pay me to live in that mausoleum,” she continues haughtily. “No offense. I’m happy for you if you like it, but that could never be me. Never. And all the work she’s just dumped on your plate? Inconsiderate. What an awful old lady.”

“She wasn’t awful.”

“She nearly killed you.”

“I was fine.”

She blows cigarette smoke into the speaker. “That phone call still gives me nightmares.”

Me too, because it signified being taken away. Aunt Violet felt it was her duty to let Mom know about the minor car accident—it wasn’t her fault, the roads around here are loopier than a Slinky and neither of us saw the other car coming. The teeniest of swerves. The barest of guardrail bumps. We were okay! The other car was okay! Violet’s trusty, clunky car absorbed the impact and we were fine, if a little rattled. Some light bruising from our seat belts and a few tears, but those were close-call tears. Happy-we-were-okay tears.

Mom raced straight to the Falling Stars, used the situation to try to extort money out of Violet, and it all went to hell. Each of them said the other was unfit to parent, but Mom was the one with legal rights.

“So damned irresponsible, driving when her eyesight was getting bad. And she really thought you’d be better off in her custody! Imagine.”

I have. Vividly.

“You’d have turned out a mess.” I hear a cigarette lighter click. “So. Totally trashed, then.”

“Yeah. Can’t hold out my arms on either side of me without knocking into stuff.”

A peculiar pause. “What kind of stuff?”

I get that bad-faith awareness, the one that grips me every time we talk and makes my stomach churn—the one I forget about after we hang up because my brain is in perpetual repair mode and wants desperately to believe the best of people. “Vines, I mean. Just a bunch of vines. They’ve destroyed the windows and floors.”

“Oh?”

I can see her wheels turning. She’s considering driving out here. “The mold is wall to wall. And there’re about a thousand rats.”

“Eww. God.” I envision the face my rat-phobic mother is making and can’t help a slight smile. “You’re the only one named in the will, then?”

My smile slides off.

“Ahh . . .” The part of my cognizance that registers Wesley and screams OH MY GOD IT’S JACK can’t stop cataloging his movements, and my gaze tracks irresistibly to where his army-green Wellington boots are chafing a path through the yard. Back and forth he goes, house to dumpster, to house to dumpster, pitching armfuls of maybe, maybe-not junk. Not even discriminating. Could be throwing away antique buttons worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what does he care? “Mainly,” I reply at length. I’m not getting into the two-inheritors mess—she’ll suggest I take him to court, which Violet wouldn’t have wanted.

“I’m assuming I didn’t get anything, huh?” She tries to mask her hope with flippancy, but we grew up together. I can read Julie better than anyone.

“No. Sorry.”

“Sorry? Ha! Don’t be sorry for me. Bless your heart.” Her voice picks up speed, antsier. “It was always a dump, anyway. If Violet had left me the house, there’s no way I’d want anything to do with it. No thanks.”

There’s so much I want to say in reply to this. If it was such a dump, then why’d she leave me there for a summer? Also, it was definitely not a dump. I know I didn’t invent how beautiful and clean it once was. Also, I haven’t forgotten that Mom begged to live there, too, back when I was ten and she dropped me off. Violet wouldn’t let her inside the house because Mom had tended to fill her pockets whenever she visited as a preteen.

“No offense, but the city’s better,” Mom’s saying. “There’s nothing out there in . . . what is the name of that dingy town? You need to come live here. I can help you find an apartment! We’ll go apartment-hunting and shop till we drop, on Alessandro’s Mastercard, of course.” She rolls the R in Alessandro.

“Maybe I’ll visit.”

The ten seconds of dead air that follow are confirmation that this call is like every other call, in which she gushes about how much she wants to see me but stops short of solidifying real plans.

“I gotta go,” she whispers. “Alessandro’s home.”

There’s yelling in the background, and she ends the call without hearing goodbye.

I’ve never met Alessandro in person. She usually doesn’t answer my calls if he’s home because he doesn’t like kids, even adult ones. It’s why she hid the fact that she had a daughter from him for months—I’m a relic of her old life, which she’s worked so hard to shed, and even though she does love me, she has been, from the start, bent on outgrowing her maternal role as quickly as possible.

It isn’t that we never had any good times, it’s that the good times, in retrospect, are kind of sad. Adolescent Maybell held tight to trivial, evanescent mother-daughter moments that made her feel warm, giving their memories a loving glow when anyone else would’ve found them depressing. It’s rough when you have a nature that begs you to avoid heartache at all costs but also makes you wear your heart on your sleeve.

The jangling of drawers bursting apart in the dumpster jolts me to attention, and I fixate on Wesley. Sharing a house with a stranger who doesn’t like me is a punch to the stomach: either I cooperate with him or I end up homeless. Again. At least I’m not embarrassing myself fawning all over him, since the Jack debacle left a bad taste in my mouth that, whether Wesley deserves it or not, extends to anyone resembling Jack. I don’t look at him and hear angels plucking harp strings. I don’t feel a hot surge of anything like love—I look at him and want to sock him in the throat. It’s a nice surprise, personal-growth-wise.

“How are we going to live together?” I call out.

Wesley jerks. “What?”

“How does this work?” I take another stab at Authoritative Maybell and put my hands on my hips. “I get the first floor, you get the second?”

I’m not being serious, or at least I don’t think I am, but he shrugs. “Sure.”

“Who gets the third floor?” It’s more of an attic, and largely unfinished, but still valuable real estate to stake a claim for.

Another shrug. “The ghosts?”

And off he goes again. I can’t pin him to one place for the life of me. Fine! This is fine. I can get the ball rolling on my new life without him—it’s not like I need his opinion or help. I’ve never had very much of anything, but I have resilience, and I have this. I have memories of Falling Stars being beautiful. I can make it beautiful again.

It occurs to me that I forgot to tell Wesley thank you for letting me stay with him in the cabin. Or maybe I have every right to stay with him, since I own half of everything. That’s an entitled attitude to have, I warn myself.

As I open my mouth to express my gratitude, he says, unprompted: “The house has always been gray.”

My mouth closes. Purses. I fade from his notice once more, no more interesting than a piece of furniture waiting to be sorted into keep, donate, or throw away.

Stalking past him, I huff, “I did not make up that it was pink. I did not make that up.” I stalk right into the foyer, where the path has been gradually widened (mostly thanks to him, I’ll admit, since I’ve been preoccupied with expanding my wardrobe on the lawn), hoist a broken microwave into my arms, and stalk right back out.

Wesley shakes his head. Mutters something.

I ignore him, and it’s empowering. We don’t have to be friends. We’re only going to be living together, not like that means anything. We don’t have to be friends.

Wesley’s muttering grows loud enough to form a distinguishable word. “Stop.”

I do stop, but only because he’s caught me by surprise. “What?”

He glares. Thrusts a . . . helmet? At me?

“Uhhh . . .” I look up at him, and he looks away, like he can’t bear to make eye contact with me. From his perspective, I’m the usurper of a dream come true, a bigger inconvenience than all the water damage, broken windows, and split floorboards combined. “I don’t have a bike.” Maybe there’s one in the house. You know, I’m not giving Violet enough credit here. There’s got to be at least ten bikes in that house.

“If you’re going to be in there”—he points to the house, eyebrows clinching together, jaw hard—“you need protection. It’s dangerous.”

“You’re not wearing a helmet.”

He glares some more. Throws a shattered vanity mirror into the dumpster with unnecessary force, which might not have been intended as a threat but is for sure being interpreted as one.

“Fine, fine.” I hold my hands up. Strap the helmet on. And I think: it really is a shame that we don’t have to be friends.