Meredith’s parents, meanwhile, looked almost as uncomfortable and out of place as Sam. Julia rubbed damp eyes with too-long sleeves pulled all the way over her clenched fists and tucked phantom strands of hair behind her ears. She looked grateful for her daughter’s social graces on this unspeakable occasion, but every time she acknowledged an introduction or tried to smile, she started crying again. Kyle sized things up and decided Meredith was holding it together better than Julia and so stayed by his wife’s side like they were a wedding cake topper. This proved to be true of Meredith’s parents though even when all was well. Kyle and Julia were Kyle-and-Julia-against-the-world. They were Pacific Northwest islanders and liked it that way. They owned a rainy, weathered ceramics studio, ran a shop out front, lived upstairs, ate from the garden they kept all around the place. They spent their days making pots and talking about art, taking wet, meandering walks along the beaches holding hands, exploring endless coves by kayak. It took a long ferry ride followed by a long drive to get them to Seattle, to which they referred unironically as the “Big City.” They weren’t stoners or off-gridders or even vegan or unshowered. They made beautiful art and a pretty good living besides. But they cultivated detachment, separation—from the world, from real life, from their loved ones even. They had few friends and didn’t talk to Meredith unless she called and didn’t talk to Livvie unless she called either. They loved their only child absolutely, of course. But they loved their twoness too.
In stark, stark contrast, there was Meredith’s cousin.
“Dashiell Bentlively.” He offered Sam his hand and toothpaste-ad smile.
“But not really?” Sam smiled tentatively, not wanting to offend but pretty sure that couldn’t be anyone’s real name.
“Nope, not really”—Dashiell winked—“but that’s the one I use. Even Mom admits it’s a better fit than the one she chose.”
“I hadn’t met him yet when I picked the original,” Meredith’s aunt Maddie shrugged.
Dashiell was Julia’s brother Jeff’s son. He and Meredith were born on the same day, so they considered themselves twins though in fact they had little in common but a birthday and a grandmother. Dashiell lived in L.A., sometimes gay, sometimes straight, making money hand over hand over hand over fist somehow near Hollywood but not actually in the film industry. Meredith didn’t understand or pretend to understand or ask too many questions, but they were close anyway.
“I guess I’m the matriarch of the family now,” he said after the funeral.
“What about me?” said Julia.
“You don’t have the legs for it,” said Dash. He was making a good show of it, but he was a bit of a mess.
After the funeral, after everyone finally went home, Meredith’s parents crashed at her place. Uncle Jeff and Aunt Maddie went to a fancy hotel downtown, Aunt Maddie’s argument being roughly, “When life gets you down, order room service.” Dashiell stayed at Livvie’s. So Meredith went home with Sam who, finally, had her all to himself, had her in his arms, had the reunion he’d flown half round the world dreaming about. It wasn’t quite the one he imagined, and he was at something of a loss—so ecstatic to be with her again, so sorry she was so sad—but he whispered love against her sea-smelling skin and made do.
“I’m hungry,” she said suddenly.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Weird, right?”
“There’s nothing in the house. I’ve been away for two weeks.”
“I remember,” she said, smiling, and then, awed, “I forgot.”
Sam found a couple cans of soup to heat up and some crackers. He tried to stay sad, but he couldn’t keep the happy down, so overjoyed was he to be back with her.
“I missed you,” Sam admitted, an understatement and a subject change.
“I remember,” she said, smiling. And then, awed, “I forgot.” And then, giggling in spite of everything, “You better remind me.”
WHAT LIVVIE WOULD SAY
It was a hard week. Meredith and Dash both took the week off, and together with their parents, they went about packing up a life. Sam tried to be elsewhere, to give everyone space, but he was unemployed, and here, finally, was a way for him to be helpful. On Monday, Sam wrapped wineglasses in newspaper. He wrapped plates and mugs and vases and bowls and cordials and goblets. He wrapped lamps and a porcelain statue of two dancers from Livvie’s honeymoon in Paris and a ceramic duck Meredith made in the second grade. Sam became gradually covered in newsprint. He put each carefully wrapped item in a box.
Julia came into the kitchen. “What on earth are you thinking?”
“I’m wrapping breakables?”
“And putting them all in a box?”
“Yeah?”
“No, everything needs to go in separate boxes, double-boxed, carefully labeled. Maybe I should do this. I move ceramics for a living.”
“Grandma wouldn’t care,” Meredith yelled from the living room.
“We’ll never find anything again if we just throw things willy-nilly into boxes,” said Julia.
“Grandma would say it’s nice to be surprised when you open up the boxes,” Meredith shouted back.
“I don’t know when I’m ever going to open up these boxes,” Julia muttered. “I’ll never use this stuff.”
“Grandma would say this is everyday ware. Grandma would say no point in saving the good china for a special occasion because special occasions don’t happen often enough.”
On Tuesday, they did clothes.
“Grandma would say toss it all,” said Dash, hands on hips, looking skeptically into her closet.
“We should at least donate it somewhere,” said Meredith.
“To the Old Ladies’ Salvation Army?”
Julia squeezed between them and took a much worn orange cardigan off a hook on the back of the door, slipped it on, and walked away.
On Wednesday, they did paperwork.
“Grandma would say toss it all,” Dash said again, but instead Sam made sandwiches and popcorn while everyone else sat around on the floor and sorted a million pieces of paper into a semblance of organization: personal letters versus business correspondence, old bills versus outstanding ones, accounting records, trash.
“It’ll be so different when we go,” said Meredith. “No one writes me letters on paper. I don’t get paper bills or bank statements or tax records. My grandkids can just highlight my whole e-mail account and press delete, and that’ll be the end of it.”
She came across a green flyer she folded up and stashed in her pocket. Later, she came across a blue one and a pink one and stashed those, too. In the kitchen with Sam, she surreptitiously stuffed them in the recycling bin.
“What are those?” Sam asked.
“Flyers for a ceramics guy at my grandmother’s farmers’ market in Florida. She was always on my mom to build a website like Peter the Potter and take custom orders like Peter the Potter and make garden gnomes like Peter the Potter. She thought he must be rich because there was always a huge line of old people waiting to buy his stuff. My mom thinks he’s a hack. It drove her nuts. I just thought I’d spare her the annoyance.”