He then turns around and walks down the path, past the Garbage Pail and the cedars until I can’t see him anymore.
I let out a long, heavy sigh and straighten my shoulders before I open the door and step into the house.
Three
“So, new neighbor, huh?” my mother asks from the kitchen while I take off my boots in the hallway.
I slide on my sheepskin slippers (step one of decompressing from work) and pad on into the kitchen, where she’s sorting out packets of herbs that she dried herself and sprinkling them into a diffuser that fits over her giant teapot.
The kitchen is a total mess—mint and lavender scattered everywhere, unwashed dishes, leftover coffee grinds, oat milk spills—but it barely registers. Once upon a time, I would have lost my temper, which in turn would have made my mother lose her temper, so now I just let it get worse and worse and then after she goes to bed tonight, I’ll clean everything so that she can destroy it again tomorrow.
I know that sounds really callous of me, but ever since my father left us, back when I was fourteen, my mother has become my dependent. Dependent personality disorder is exactly that; when you combine it with borderline personality disorder, it means that I’m really the only person she has to keep her in line. She’s not a fan of doctors, she hates that she has to take medication (I’m here to make sure she does), I’m an only child, and my father has a new family out in Toronto (we’re friendly and talk a couple of times a month, but he doesn’t offer any help), so it all falls on me.
I’m used to it. Doesn’t mean I like it, doesn’t mean that while I provide care for my mother when she needs it, I’m not emotionally disconnected at the same time. I have to be, for my own sanity. It’s taken me years of therapy to finally come to terms with my own issues and the coping skills I developed during my childhood and distance myself from them. Avoiding conflict, always being a mediator, being attracted to emotionally unavailable men, becoming a doormat and doing whatever people want in order to keep the peace. Through my therapists (plural, because finding the right one for you takes a lot of trial and error . . . it’s like dating, but way more expensive), I learned that my coping strategies ensured my survival as a child and teenager, but as an adult, I’ve been learning to let them go.
Which I guess I’m doing an okay job of, because when I think back to my interactions with the pissy protection officer, people pleasing was the last thing on my mind, and I think I created more conflict than what was warranted.
(I should probably stop thinking about him; he’s making my blood boil all over again.)
“Want some tea?” my mother asks, grabbing two mugs from the cupboard. She always makes me a cup regardless of what I say.
“Sure,” I tell her, taking a seat at the kitchen island. “Where’s Liza?”
“Napping in the sun.”
Liza is my adopted pit bull, a short, gray, fat little hippo with the cutest face and laziest personality in the world. Her favorite place is the corner of the deck where one bare patch of trees lets the light in.
My mother named her after her obsession with Liza Minnelli, and she makes a really good companion/emotional support animal for her. Liza was rescued when she was a year old after being abused, and yet she’s come full circle and really helped all of us heal just as she was healing.
“Back to the neighbor,” she says to me, fixing her eyes on me. Despite the messy hair and the fact that she’s in her pajamas, she seems to be doing okay today. “When did he move in? I haven’t seen any moving trucks.”
“When was the last time you left the house?”
She shrugs. “Yesterday I took Liza to the ferry terminal and back. Didn’t see anything unusual.”
“Well, technically he’s looking to rent the place. Nothing has been finalized.”
“Does he have a wife?”
“No,” I tell her, even though now I’m thinking back to whether Harrison had a ring on. I mean, he could have a wife, but for this version of the story, he won’t.
“You sure?” She squints at me. “I know that’s your favorite type.”
I give her a stiff smile. Even though she’s just being blunt and isn’t trying to be mean, it always feels like a punch to the gut when she brings up my past mistakes, and I’ve made some pretty major ones.
“He’s not married,” I repeat.
“But you were grabbing on to him like he and you were together. So that’s something.” She tilts her head, studying me. “I don’t mean to be a nag, Piper, but you were so proud of those revelations you had during therapy with Dr. Edgar.”
“I’m still proud of them. And I’m not interested in this guy.”
“Harrison Cole,” she says.
“Yes. I was just being nice.”
Come to think of it, there really had been no reason for me to hang on to him like I had. I don’t know what I was thinking or what I was doing.
“So he doesn’t have a wife—does he have kids?”
“Uh, no.”
She turns her back to me as she mulls that over, checking on the teapot. “No wife, no kids. How is he going to afford that place? Doesn’t it belong to the Hearsts? What does he do for a job?”
“I’m not sure,” I tell her, and that turns out to be the wrong answer, because I see her shoulders stiffen and she slowly turns around to look at me with wide eyes.
“You don’t know what he does? Piper . . . he could be a drug dealer. A mobster. A criminal. How else would he afford that place?”
Uh-oh.
“He’s probably a lawyer,” I point out. “A successful one. Maybe a film producer. Perhaps he’s related to royalty . . .”
She shakes her head, and I know she’s not going to let go of whatever paranoid theory her brain conspires. “You can’t trust lawyers either.”
“How about next time I see him, I’ll ask him?” I say, hoping to soothe her. “Who knows, he may not even move in.”
That thought gives her pause. “I hope not. I don’t like strangers.”
“I know you don’t. It’ll be fine, I promise.”
And there I go, trying to be the mediator, trying to promise things that I have no control over. It’s hard to rise out of your old roles in life when you’re still so tied to your parents.
After she makes me some tea, I head out to the dock and sit there, taking in the peace and quiet and the soft summer air and the waning sunshine. A seal pops his head up in the water, his big dark eyes taking me in before he ducks under. A bald eagle soars overhead, heading for the group of nests by the marina farther down the narrow isthmus of Long Harbour.