The Book of Speculation: A Novel

The contractor is Pete Pelewski, a heavyset man with bushy salt-and-pepper hair. He wears a checked shirt and beaten-up tool belt, and writes with a carpenter’s pencil, a trustworthy costume designed to lessen the blow. Nothing a contractor says comes without pain.

“A hundred and fifty thousand,” he says. My gasp is audible, but he bulldozes forward. “That’s the basic bulkhead repair and a start on a terrace. The house,” he shakes his head. “The foundation’s in bad shape. You’ll need masons and landscapers to secure the bluff. I work with some guys. I won’t have a full estimate until talking to them, but expect another hundred thousand. Bare minimum.” He taps his pencil on his notes. “And you need to move fast. We’ve got to be able to get trucks on the beach, and the ground’s got to be solid enough to support grading.”

I’m saying appropriate things, asking how many trucks (four if the town will allow that many), how much time (weeks, months, depends on the trucks), can I live here while the work is done (until the foundation work starts), and now I’m shaking hands, asking for an estimate in writing, and exchanging pleasantries. Isn’t Frank great? Yes, wonderful; my family’s oldest friend.

And then Pete Pelewski is gone and I’m leaning on the kitchen wall, next to the key hooks. The wallpaper is stained with fingerprints, Dad’s fingers, Mom’s, mine, Enola’s, touching the wall as we hung up our keys, for years and years.

Four, three, two, one.

“You need to ask Frank for money,” Enola says from the kitchen table. She’s in Mom’s spot, where the string from a teabag would hang over her cup, swaying, as she clinked spoon against porcelain.

“I’ll try the historical society, see if they have landmark restoration grants.”

“Sounds like it’d take awhile,” she says.

“I’m good at grants. It’s what I do.”

“Did,” she says. “If you asked Frank he’d probably say yes.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Why?”

“Why do you care?” There are harsher things I could say, things I’ve compiled and archived, each with a catalog card.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Dad lived here. I lived here.” Past tense.

“You don’t anymore.” The divots in the floor from the chair, those are mine. The stained quilt is hers. The clothing she didn’t take. A one-eyed teddy bear. Things she left behind.

“It’s still mine.” She slides her hands into her pockets, shuffling the cards.

Fine, let’s play direct. “What’s with your cards? I see you playing with them and you tore that picture out of my book.”

Doyle answers, “She’s had some really bad readings lately. Messed-up kind of shit.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Doyle.” She stomps. Chair legs scrape linoleum. “I’m not talking about it. That means you don’t get to talk about it.” She yanks open the kitchen door and stalks into the backyard.

Doyle grimaces, dragging down the tip of a tentacle, shadows mixing with ink. “She’s been touchy.”

“For how long?”

“Couple months.”

Shit. And I have a week. “Any reason?”

“She just says she’s worried.”

I sit in my chair, the one that faced Dad’s. It will always be my father’s table though it’s been more than ten years since he died. I don’t have to close my eyes to see him, where Doyle is, waiting—though he would never say it—for Mom to come back.

I was nineteen, Enola was fourteen, and his was the first dead body we ever saw. Eyes bloodshot, paused over a newspaper he’d never finish reading. Enola came home from school and found him. A stroke, a tiny vessel blocked then burst like a snapped string. He’d been dying since the day Mom left.

We didn’t cry until after his body was removed.

She sat on the sofa with her knees in an inverted V, staring out at the water. From then on she would be the only other person to know how we grew up, how to cook a steak like Dad, how it felt when he knocked the backs of our heads, the only one who understood the loneliness.

“I hate you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I hated him.” We looked at the walls. The first sign of a crack starting.

“Me too,” I answered.

“What happens?” she asked.

In the dark I said, “I’ll take care of you.”

Doyle and I look out the window, but Enola isn’t there. He chews on his thumb. I hadn’t noticed before, but his fingers are like mine, gnawed to the hearts.

“She won’t go far,” I say. “There’s nothing to do in Napawset.” I should probably tell him that most relationships with my sister involve leaving. The tattoo makes it difficult to see him beyond elliptical suckers and hours of pain. “How old are you anyway?” I ask.

“Twenty-four.”

I had thought him closer to my age, edging thirty, maybe older. “I have to ask what you’re doing with my sister.” I am careful not to say intentions, because it’s fatherly.

“Whatever she wants for as long as she’ll let me.” A right answer to a question that had none. “What’s with you and staying underwater so long?”

“It’s a family thing. Our mom taught me. She did circus and carnivals for a while, too.”

“Didn’t she drown?”