“I’m the parent here. Not you. And I’m in charge of my sobriety. I’m in charge of staying clean. Not you. So mind your own business. And enjoy your new bed.” He left, and then returned a moment later to add, “I’m going to build blocks to raise it up. We need to store a few things underneath.”
“Sure.” I sat on the edge of the new-not-new bed. “Thanks, Dad.”
“I almost forgot.” He came back into the room and took down a shopping bag from the closet. “Claire bought you this.” New sheets, robin’s-egg blue, with pillowcases to match. They were as soft as any of Dan’s. Dan loved linens. People sleep better on delicious fabrics, he said. Truly.
“They’re beautiful.” Our sheets at home were so old that I could see the pattern of my mattress through them.
Dad set his hand on my head and kept it there—heavy and warm—for long enough that I started to wonder when the moment would end. But then he lifted his hand away and kissed my head where his hand had been and left the room, closing the door behind him.
“When you come in the summer, to stay, your little room will look amazing.”
My little six-month space.
Before I made the bed, I crawled around it on all fours, examining the crevices along the piping—that’s where you’ll find the bugs—and then I made the bed and pushed it into the empty closet that was going to be my very own, micro-tiny room-not-room. My own space—albeit infinitesimally small—not a blow-up bed that squeaked and creaked and leaked in the middle of the room.
While I was back in Port Townsend, Claire and the boys painted the closet to match the sheets and hung white fairy lights along the ceiling. Claire put up a curtain rod for butter-yellow curtains with tiny white polka dots. She emailed me a picture when she and the boys were done. The subject said, Look! PRIVACY. Which was cute, considering the curtains—replacing the bifold doors—were nearly sheer.
Now there was a framed poster at one end: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.
As if it were that easy. As if that was all a person ever needed to do. The British government commissioned that poster as war propaganda in World War II. Sure, keep calm, everybody, while your street is bombed and bits of your children end up where your kitchen used to be. Keep calm while Hitler packs all those innocent people and families into train cars and sends them to their deaths. Keep calm as you fight over a tiny ration of sugar and the U-boats blow your husband’s ship to smithereens.
I lifted the poster off the hook and leaned it against the wall. I had no intention of looking at that thing every time I was lying in bed. I hated that saying on posters; I hated it on pencil cases; I hated it on mugs and T-shirts and tea towels. I hated all the ways people had changed it. Keep calm and fill in the blank. Even Dan had one. KEEP CALM AND RIDE UNICORNS.
The poster was just as offensive where it was now. I turned it so I couldn’t see it, but it was still there, nagging at me. I tried to slide it under the bed, but there was no room because of the boxes and boxes of fabric scraps and tubs and tubes of paint and stacks of blank or abandoned canvases, and rolls of wrapping paper and two different irons, and the ironing board, and a broken easel Dad said he was going to fix, and another easel that he didn’t like but used as a spare when he was working on more than two paintings. All of that had been stuffed into the closet before Claire and Dad gave it to me, and now it was stuffed under the bed. They couldn’t afford to give me that space, but they did anyway. Which was so generous of them. I could’ve been on that leaky air bed forever.
If I took down the stupid poster, Claire would notice right away. She’d be hurt, but she’d say that she wasn’t.
And it was just a stupid poster.
She didn’t mean any harm by it. She wasn’t being sarcastic or ironic when she put it up there. She was being sweet and nice and thoughtful and supportive. I did need to keep calm and carry on. I knew that. However, to have a poster ordering me to do it every time I fell asleep or woke up was unbearable. But to hurt Claire’s feelings was worse.
I hung it back up, but above my head, so I wouldn’t see it unless I made a point of looking at it. I’d tell Claire that I wanted to draw something for the other wall. Maybe even paint a mural. She would be okay with that. She was always saying that I needed to take my art more seriously, because I was talented. You’re so talented, Maeve. You have no idea. Just like your dad. You just do, and it comes easily. You have no idea how lucky you are.
Upstairs, I heard my dad walking from the living room to the kitchen and back. And then Joel Plaskett on the stereo. The creak of the couch. Two clunks, which would be him kicking off his boots. He didn’t get to listen to his music very often. The twins preferred stuff that Dad referred to as “kiddie-pop barf,” which was a little harsh. But he was more entitled to an opinion than most, I figured. Until I was five he’d been a professional musician.
The Railway Kings were almost famous. They filled small stadiums. Their songs got a lot of play on the radio. There were posters and T-shirts and autographed set lists. They had groupies—mostly underage pot-smoking waifs wafting patchouli and hummus, but groupies nonetheless. The Railway Kings had an image: part hobo, part hillbilly, part rock and roll. And it worked. They got people dancing. So much so that they had a “dust-kicker” clause in their contract for all the outdoor festivals they played. The organizers had to spray the ground in front of the stage with water before they started their set; otherwise, Dad said, his throat would be on fire for days after and he’d have to drink gallons of hot lemon juice with honey. As if that was what he was drinking. Sure.
That’s how he met Claire—a waif, but not a flake. She waited by the tour bus one night, a warm and starry night, the way he told it, and when Dad saw her through the window, he brought out a bottle of wine and two glasses and they took a walk in the field behind the bus. She never went home, he said, because he was her new home. Claire told a much longer version, but the gist was the same.
One of Dad’s ex-bandmates came over for supper once, and when I’d gone to bed, he ribbed them about the night they met.
Come on, did you even make it to the bus that first time, Claire? By my recollection it was backstage.
The details don’t matter, Claire said quietly. Either way, it was love at first sight.
Yeah? You were both so shit-faced I bet you could hardly see at all. I bet your nose was full of it, right, Billy? We whooped it up back then, hey? He was laughing, but he was the only one. Good times, right?
And then Dad’s voice, low and angry. Some scuffling, and then the door slammed. I never saw that guy again.