The Light Pirate(3)
Frida sets the potatoes on the stove to boil, the little diamond chips on her finger catching the witchy chartreuse light that is brewing beneath the bruised clouds—an unseen sunset illuminating the yard. Poppy was only a year ago, but time gulped Frida down whole. It feels as though she’s lived decades since then, and now somehow, she is here, looking at a life she barely recognizes. She’s loosely cognizant of the choices she made along the way: keeping the baby, saying yes when he offered this ring, breaking her lease and dropping out of grad school, moving to this little town on the east coast of Florida. But at the same time, she cannot shake the feeling that she’s been washed ashore on a strange beach. Did she really choose or did she just succumb? Is it a decision to hold on to a life raft, or is it something else? Tears form in the corners of her eyes. It’s the hormones, she chides herself. All of this is just hormones. She loves Kirby, she loves her unmet daughter, and in this house they will build the kind of family she has always coveted. There is even space for these two little boys who don’t belong to her. She doesn’t need sea legs anymore; this ground is firm. It can hold her. It can hold all of them. She checks the oven, where the chicken fat is spitting in the bottom of the pan but the bird is not yet done.
The boys wash their hands the third time she tells them to, and even though she can see them barely obeying—no scrubbing, no soap even—she says nothing, considering the battle won. She lays a stack of plates and a handful of silverware down on the table, and Flip, the youngest, begins to set them out without being asked. She tries not to let her surprise show at this small gesture. He’s always been her favorite of the two, and she likes to think that he is beginning to come around to her presence here. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches him line up the plates so that the pattern at each setting is straight, his little brow wrinkling in concentration, measuring the width between the edge of the table and the dishes with his fingers so they’re all evenly placed—something she learned to do working in fine dining back in Houston. She has not taught him this, and Kirby certainly hasn’t. It must have been their mother, an exacting woman she finds fearsome and fascinating and has met only once. The divorce wasn’t clean. She can feel the fissures it left behind even when she doesn’t always understand them.
Her first summer with these boys that aren’t hers was unexpectedly hard. She had no idea what she was walking into until her lease in Houston had already been broken and the ring was on her finger and the baby was the size of a grapefruit. Kirby worked long hours, and when he was gone, the boys behaved badly. Lucas in particular, with Flip always a step or two behind. No one was thrilled about how things went—not Frida; not Kirby; not their mother, Chloe; and certainly not the boys themselves—but summers and occasional weekends and every other holiday with Kirby were what the hard-won custody arrangement decreed. Frida’s preferences had no place on the calendar. So she did her best. She is still just doing her best.
Behind her, Lucas opens the fridge and begins to root through the crisper. She watches him dump a thin plastic bag of apples out into the drawer and then move on to the shelf above it, the bag floating softly down to the tile floor like a silver jellyfish.
“We’re about to eat dinner, buddy,” she says. “Nothing for you in there.”
“What is it, though? For dinner?” he asks, and she knows that this exchange is futile, that he has already decided not to like whatever she has made. A sense of defeat blooms inside her. The roast chicken is evident, steaming in its pan, stuffed with lemons and parsley, rubbed with butter. It looks good, mouthwatering even, but that doesn’t matter to him.
“Chicken and mashed potatoes and greens.”
“I don’t want that.”
“I thought it was your favorite.”
“Not the way you make it.” She tries so hard not to hate this kid, but he makes it difficult. Lucas lifts the lid on the potatoes and groans. “You didn’t even peel them? Isn’t there anything else?”
“The skins are nutritious.”
From under his breath, “Yeah, right.”
“Go tell your dad it’s almost ready, please.”
He opens the kitchen door and the sandbags come up to his waist. Scrambling over them, he goes in search of Kirby, who has moved on with his wheelbarrow. Frida drains the potatoes and begins to stamp the masher down into their soft yellow-white flesh. She is ferocious in this act of mashing, channeling all of her aggression and dread and determination into a dinner that she already knows will not be enjoyed. Again, she eyes the keys to Kirby’s truck on the table, and again, she imagines leaving this kitchen without a word—potatoes half-mashed, table set, the smell of garlic still on her hands—and driving away. It would be so easy. At the same time, it is impossible.
Chapter 2
When Lucas comes around the corner to tell Kirby that dinner is ready and it looks disgusting, he’s busy pulling out window coverings from beneath the porch. The plywood is labeled by room—NW KITCHEN, S HALL, SE BED—and crusted with a sheen of gray mildew. A hot, wet, fertile smell drenches the air, so rich with anticipation that the ferns clustered under the porch are almost quivering. In its own way, the earth is also preparing for what draws near. But Kirby does not spend his time considering such intangibles; he’s focused on what is useful.