“These from the farm?” I ask. I already know the answer. The carrots are from the farm, and the bread is from Nessa, and the music is a playlist Harper made over the summer, and the delicate bouquet of wildflowers drawn on the back of her arm is by Nova. My dad whittled the spoon she’s using, and this whole kitchen is filled to the brim with pieces of my family. The love between my parents and for all of us, mixing together with thyme and butter and pie until all the tension I usually feel in a room full of people is back in the hallway, shoved in the pocket of my coat. I’ll pick it back up later, I’m sure, but for now I’m settled.
I’m home.
Food is served and conversation dissolves within minutes into a spirited discussion of some dating show, the volume of my sisters’ and dad’s voices rising until they’re all yelling over each other.
When my dad first had his accident, he sat in the dark of his bedroom all day every day, caught in a depression that was almost as crippling as the fall that paralyzed him from the waist down. Nessa started sitting in the room with him, right at the edge of the bed. She’d turn on some show about housewives behaving badly and he’d pretend not to be interested.
Now they have weekly viewings.
Harper glances at me from across the table as Nessa shrieks something about chardonnay. “Do you want your earmuffs?”
I nod, grateful she offered and I didn’t have to ask. She tugs open a drawer in the china cabinet behind her and pulls out a fluffy pair of pink earmuffs. I thought Nessa had been making fun of me when she bought them for me three years ago, but she had been insistent that they would help.
I’ve always struggled with noise. It sets my teeth on edge, makes me feel like needles are pricking at my skin. The earmuffs muffle the sound without wiping it out completely. I can still hear what’s going on around me without an overwhelming wave of tension.
And they never fail to make my mom smile.
I slip them over my head and my chest loosens a bit, able to participate now that the noise has dulled. Nessa has an exhibition coming up in June, her biggest one yet. And apparently Nova has been talking to Stella’s brother, Charlie, about a tattoo of a scorpion on his ass.
I level a glare at her. “Why are you texting Charlie about his ass?”
Nova shrugs, unbothered. “I’m not. He’s texting me about his ass.”
“Alright. Why is he texting you about his ass?”
“Because he wants a scorpion on it. I don’t know.”
Harper keeps to herself throughout dinner, unusually quiet, rearranging her food around and around on her plate. I make a mental note to dig into that later just as my dad launches into his weekly dramatic retelling of the failed wheat crop of 1976. I spear a carrot on my plate and my mind begins to drift.
I picture Evelyn sitting at the table, in the straight backed chair with the flowers carved into the arms, right next to Nessa. I picture her smile and her glowing skin and the way her thumb smoothes over her bottom lip when she’s thinking about what she wants to say, eyes glinting with mischief. Would she laugh at my dad’s stupid jokes? Would she dance with Nessa around the kitchen during clean-up? I can’t stop picturing her in all the places I am.
“Beck? You alright?”
I nod. I’ve got no idea what’s going on in my head lately. A whole lot of nonsense. I need to sleep more or something. I fork a bite of potatoes into my mouth.
“M’fine,” I say.
My dad gives me a skeptical glance and continues to shoot me an entire spectrum worth of concerned looks throughout the rest of dinner. I manage to deflect until the end of the night, when I’m overfull from pie and trying to balance three containers of leftovers. I shrug on my jacket in the hallway and he corners me, his movements eerily quiet despite his wheelchair.
“Beckett.”
“Jesus.” My whole body topples sideways, my elbow landing in the antique clock my mom bought when I was six. One of the containers goes tumbling to the floor. “You need a bell. You scared the shit out of me, dad.”
“Paralyzed or not, I always got the jump on you kids.” He scoops up the Tupperware and balances it on his lap. “Come on, I’ll follow you out.”
I nod in agreement and he squeezes my arm once, a wordless reminder of his dinner question. He’s likely walking me to my car in an effort to interrogate me further, my mom and sisters knowing the futility of trying to get me to talk at the dinner table. Where they prefer brash interrogation, my dad has a more subtle approach.
I follow him out the front porch and down the ramp, frowning when I notice the way his wheelchair jumps over the rickety boards. His hand holds one of the wheels steady while he pivots. He shouldn’t have to maneuver his way up and down this thing.
“I’ll swing by next week and fix it,” I tell him.
He peers over his shoulder at me, his eyes reflecting the light from above the garage. “Fix what?”
“The ramp,” I kick at a board that’s sticking up half-an-inch, edging at the back of his wheelchair. “It’s falling apart.”
“Psh,” he waves his hand. “It’s only like that because I bet your mom I could get up and down in less than thirty seconds. This thing wasn’t built for that kind of torque.” He gives me a look and releases his grip on the wheels, letting his chair coast down the last foot of the ramp. He slips onto the driveway with a soft sound. “Plus, I’ve got arms, don’t I?”
“You do.”
“Good. Then leave my ramp alone. It suits me fine.” He squints up at me, his face screwed up in the same look he always gets when he’s trying to work out a puzzle. Pinched brows, scrunched nose, a downward tilt to his lips. He used to make that same face when Harper would lie to him about her plans for the night, shimmying out her window and sneaking down the road to the bonfire parties instead of studying in her room.
“You doing alright, kiddo?”
I open the passenger side of the truck and a tiny felt mouse falls to the driveway. Half of me expects Cupid or Vixen to come tumbling out after it. Of all of the cats, those two cause the most trouble. Stella found them in one of her kitchen cabinets two weeks ago, pawing through a box of Triscuits.
“I’m good,” I tell him, placing the Tupperware on the floor. I tuck the mouse in my pocket and lean up against the truck. “What’s going on? Everything okay with you?”
He nods, swallows hard, and then tilts his head back to look up at the sky. I follow his gaze and glance up, my eyes immediately landing on Pleiades, a cluster of stars shaped like a question mark. Everything is illuminated tonight, not a cloud in sight. Clear enough that you can see the slight differentiation in color. Pale blue. Crisp white. Bright and shining yellow.
“You wouldn’t shut up about the stars when you were a kid,” my dad laughs, neck still craned back and face turned up. I ignore the stars and look at him instead, watching the way his hands curl around the arms of his chair. “You wanted to go to that space camp, do you remember?”
I do. I saw the commercial and immediately started saving the money I earned around town. I devoured anything and everything about astronauts. I launched a one-man campaign to have a space-themed week during STEM units at the elementary school and I made Nova and Nessa build a spaceship out of old garbage cans in the backyard. I wanted one of those patches they handed out with “Junior Astronaut” stitched on it. I wanted to eat space ice cream.