“It’s not the offer to accept, Tom,” said Gwen. “It’s some developer who would just bulldoze the place. I know you don’t want that.”
“No, of course not. But you know what I do want? To send both my kids to college. I want to give them the same debt-free education that we spoiled brats had. God, you three don’t even know how lucky we are. You want to say no to that money? You want Kerry and Buster living with me ’til they’re thirty because they can’t afford rent on top of student loans?” He was on his feet now. “Fine, then just give me seven hundred thousand dollars, and this place is all yours. You want to exist in your own walled-off little world, the three of you? Go right ahead. You’ll be buried alive in this place.” Tom slammed his napkin down on the table.
“Tom.” Melissa looked at her husband. “Loans can be paid back. We can work this all through. Libby’s right, you’ve got what you need for now.” She stood up beside him and put her hand on his arm. “If this guy wants the house, I’m sure there will be a whole slew of people just like him.”
“It was a handwritten note,” said Gwen. “Who knows if the guy was serious or even sober when he wrote it.”
“There’s one way to find out,” said Tom. He went into the china closet between the dining room and the kitchen, and returned with the rotary phone, its cord trailing behind it. He set the phone on the table next to his place and held his hand out to Libby. “The note, please.”
“Tom, you can’t be serious,” Gwen said. Libby didn’t move, but she looked at the sideboard. Tom followed her gaze, walked over, picked up her wallet, and opened it. The note was wrinkled and missing a corner. Tom dialed the phone, the sound of the rotary spooling out each number. He didn’t look at any of them.
“Voice mail,” he whispered. “Yes, my name is Tom Willoughby, you made an inquiry about our house on Vinalhaven. If you’d like to come and take a look at the place, we can discuss this further. We will be here until the twelfth. Again, this is Tom Willoughby, w-i-l-l-o-u-g-h-b-y. Thank you.” He hung up the phone. His color matched the lobster shells.
“Way to go, Tom, very respectful,” said Gwen, shaking her head.
“You are unbelievable,” said Libby. Had she not been elbow deep in lobster juice, Gwen thought Libby would’ve stormed out. “Danny is right. You’re not in control here. No matter what you think. You can’t do anything without all of our consent. Being the executor doesn’t mean anything,” said Libby.
Danny was silent, staring at his plate. Gwen was fairly sure he was crying. Melissa slid her napkin under the edge of Danny’s plate and stood up next to Tom.
“None of you need to make this decision now,” she said, rubbing Tom’s back absently. “You shouldn’t. Tom. Scarlet has only been gone for six months. You don’t need to lose this house in the same year. Give yourselves some time.”
This is how it must go at home. Melissa always talking him down, defusing his prickly, wired heart. Tom sat down. Melissa did too. He nodded. He reached for her hand.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just think this is an opportunity we need to seriously consider. I need us to. I need things too.” He coughed and scrubbed his nose for a second.
Libby bent over her lobster in concentration, working out the tail fins like loose teeth.
“We’ll think about it, Tom. Everyone’s opinion matters,” Gwen said, looking at Danny. “We’ll make this decision together.”
Danny started to eat his baked potato fast, breathing heavily through his nose. The only one who’d wanted a potato, he’d cooked it in the microwave right before dinner.
“I like how the potato soaks up the lobster juice,” Danny said to Melissa, trying his best, “like a poor man’s shepherd’s pie, but with lobster.”
“A rich poor man,” said Melissa.
Tom leaned back in his chair, sighed. Libby held her lobster tail pinched in her fingers and dunked it liberally in the butter dish. Gwen watched her as usual, poised on her gnarled branch. Soon they would be done with dinner, and she could hide from this decision, from all decisions, in the dark of the porch, while the boys set off fireworks. Maybe it was time for a real cocktail.
SEVEN
DANNY
July 4
It was dark. They had waited almost too long, the neighbors’ weak fireworks long since faded from the sky. Their smoke was somewhere over Rockland now, mixing in with the city-funded pyrotechnics. Danny and Tom stood together on the float facing the house, both with hands on hips. Danny bent down and repositioned the colorful tube in a coffee can half filled with sand. Tom shook his head, pulled the thing from the sand or pushed it deeper. Back and forth. Danny couldn’t believe he had to stand next to Tom, to follow his instructions.
“Insert stay firmly in fireproof foundation,” Tom read.
Danny found that each direction did its part to remind the reader of the fireworks’ ancestral origins, coming off more like a koan or a haiku than anything remotely instructional. Danny was more of the light-it-and-run-like-hell school of thought. But for Tom it was always a slog, always take-it-slow and let’s-just-go-over-it-one-more-time.
This wasn’t rocket science, not exactly. It was mini rocket science, much like Libby’s Easy-Bake Oven, passed down to Danny in some hope of reversing centuries of gender profiling. He had used it as a parking garage for his fire engine collection. No, this rocket, like the oven, would not live up to its full-size version. It would fly but not terribly high.
“Point it out more. You don’t want it on the roof,” said Danny.
“I can manage this a little better than Dad,” said Tom.
During Danny’s fifteenth summer, his father, all heft and stiff knees, clambered out onto the roof from Libby’s porch to stamp out an errant firework in a muddy gutter.
“Lucky he didn’t blow his foot off,” said Tom.
It’s an overgrown sparkler, not a land mine, thought Danny. But he kept quiet. He had plenty of experience watching Libby say the things he was feeling, and Gwen do the things he was afraid to do. He knew it was not worth fighting Tom on much. Particularly since emotion and sentiment seemed to have no effect on him. Maybe Tom was a robot. Maybe Scarlet and Bob got him as a baby prototype, My First Kid.
Snap, the lighter, fizz and flare, the fuse. The two of them running up the ramp, ducked low, but high-kneed, looked like burglars.
This first one fizzled with a shrieking whistle, but without a light. Catcalls from the porch. The women enjoying themselves up there, leaning back in wicker chairs, moving from wine back to cocktails.
“Gotta try harder than that, boys.” Gwen.
“Yeah, Washington wouldn’t have seen much glory by that light.” Melissa, such a nerd sometimes, thought Danny.
“You’re thinking of Francis Scott Key,” called Tom back toward the porch.
“Just blow something up,” shouted Gwen.