The road curved, depositing us straight into the glittering sprawl of Bayport’s main drag. We drove past luxe yoga studios, designer clothing boutiques, and upscale seafood restaurants, all of them closed for the evening. The dark silhouettes of palm trees thrust upward from a center divider. Occasionally, a colored spotlight cast dramatic shadows through the fronds.
After a few blocks, the shops gave way to a marina, full of ghostly white sails. A country club, lit up behind iron gates, was hosting an event, orchestral music floating down the curved driveway. And then there were the houses: overgrown foliage shielded us from peering in, but every so often, the hedges would dip, revealing a set of pillars and a gatehouse, along with the name of the subdivision.
Old Bluffs. Back Bay Estates. Pelican Crest.
The few houses that I could see, way up on the cliffs, were all glass windows and enormous balconies. It was hard to believe my laid-back mom, who padded around the house in thrifted men’s flannels, had grown up here. When we drove down last Christmas, she’d muttered about rich Republicans driving Porsches and gluten-free housewives in designer yoga pants. Which, ironically enough, was a fair description of my grandparents.
We paused at a red light, and a Land Rover full of teenagers peeled out of a subdivision, windows down, music blasting. A blond boy drove, and a dark-haired boy sat in the passenger seat, grinning. The back was crammed full of laughing girls with long, wonderful hair that unfurled in the wind. They were all so beautiful, so perfect, like something out of a movie. I couldn’t even imagine what it was like, being them. Their lives seemed easy and safe, unmarked by even a hint of tragedy. And then the car sped away, leaving me with the disappointing sensation of having glimpsed something that would never, ever be mine.
My grandparents’ house was spotless. That was the first thing I noticed, how frighteningly clean it all was, more like a showroom than a place where people actually lived. They’d left in a hurry, I knew, shoving clothing into overnight bags, and yet, not so much as a throw pillow was out of place. I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or concerned.
The sharp tang of citrus disinfectant followed us down the white hallways, past rooms filled with pale furniture and enormous pieces of abstract art. I stopped at a table displaying framed photographs: black-and-white pictures of relatives I’d never met, my grandparents outside city hall on their wedding day, a family portrait with my mom in a pink ruffled dress. There was her high school graduation, the two of us at the beach when I was a baby, my yearbook photo from second grade with the missing front teeth.
And then there was the picture that had been blown up for her funeral. Her hair was wild and lovely, her smile genuine. She’d just bought me a portrait lens for my birthday, and she’d been a champion when I’d spent the entire weekend trying it out on her.
I realized with a start that I would never have any more pictures of her. And the force of that realization almost knocked me over. Now, she was an old photograph. A memory. This was the town she’d grown up in, the house she’d lived in, and she wasn’t here. She wasn’t anywhere.
I hadn’t taken enough pictures. I hadn’t saved enough videos, or kept enough voice mails, or known I would need things to remember her by. And now I didn’t have them. I’d never have them.
I didn’t realize I was shaking until my grandfather put a soft hand on my shoulder, as if to steady me.
He was carrying Pearl, their fluffy white mop of a dog, whom he’d tucked under his arm like a football. She stared at me, squirming, her little pink tongue hanging out.
Wordlessly, my grandfather handed me the dog, her body soft and warm against my chest. I cuddled my face into her fur, and she licked my arm, where my cuts from the earthquake were fading into pink welts, and didn’t stop licking for a while. It sort of helped.
“I had Magda put fresh sheets on your bed,” Eleanor said, pushing open the door of my mom’s childhood bedroom. It had been frozen in time, from the window seat crowded with Beanie Babies to the No Doubt poster over her desk. There was a bed with a white wicker headboard. A Laura Ashley duvet. A bookshelf decorated with blown-glass figurines prancing in front of worn paperbacks. A lava lamp on the nightstand, filled with silver glitter.
A portrait of the artist as a young woman. The sorrows of young Alice. A room of no one’s own.
“Oh,” I said, staring.
I hadn’t been expecting it. I’d figured there was a guest room, or that my mom’s bedroom would have been dismantled finally, the way Eleanor was always threatening, and converted into a craft room or a gym. Of course, my grandparents had plenty of other bedrooms for that. Their house was enormous, and I couldn’t imagine how big it felt with just the two of them. No wonder they’d gotten the dog.
“If you’d rather stay in the guest room—” Eleanor began doubtfully.
“No, this is good,” I said. “I mean, this is great. I mean, thank you.”
I wanted to be as little of an inconvenience as possible. To be a good houseguest, or whatever I was. I needed my grandparents to like the idea of having me around, because without them, I was screwed. Without them, it was Child Protective Services, which led to my dad, whose sole communications after ditching us were the emails he sent every year on my birthday. I deleted them unread.
I wasn’t supposed to know that he was living in Bangkok, giving food tours, but I did. I’d found him one night on an internet deep dive, cringing with secondhand embarrassment at the pictures of him driving a tuk-tuk in a company T-shirt. His beard was patchy with gray, and he’d finished his tattoo sleeve. That was what he’d left us for. Not a successful music career, after all. Not even close.
It had been a relief when he hadn’t flown in for the funeral. Or bothered to see how I was doing. But maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he’d deleted my grandparents’ email unread.
“Bathroom’s just here,” Eleanor went on, opening the door to what I had initially taken for a closet. “There are fresh towels in the cabinet. Shampoo, conditioner, whatever you might need. Oh, and I almost forgot the most important thing: After you use the shower, you have to squeegee the glass.”
“Squeegee the glass,” I echoed.
“From top to bottom,” she elaborated.
She said this as though it was perfectly normal.
“There’s a squeegee in the shower,” my grandfather added helpfully, in case I might have worried I was expected to provide my own.
“Great,” I said. “Thank you. For, um, everything.”
“Well, of course, you’re family,” Eleanor said, moving toward me, like I was about to get some awkward hug that was all hands. Instead, she took back the dog.
After they left, I changed into my pajamas and crawled under the covers. In the cool darkness, I could hear footsteps on the stairs, the soft gurgle of pipes, the thud of a door being shut.
It was strange, realizing that these noises were unfamiliar to me, but to my mom, they were all part of the house she’d grown up in. Was this what it had sounded like when she fell asleep at night, before my dad and I were even a speck in the distance? Or maybe even when she was pregnant with me, over some school break, before her parents figured it out and lost their minds over their perfect daughter wrecking her perfect future?
My existence had always been a burden to them. And now, staying here, I was even more of a burden. It wasn’t fair. Any of it. So many people who had stood within shouting distance of us both got to keep on living the same lives. Or at the very least, got to keep on living.