Darling Rose Gold(9)

“Maybe all Wattses are doomed to awful fathers.” Rose Gold sneers. “You always said I was better off without Grant anyway.”

She is. I told her that her father overdosed before she was born, a misfortune both timely and fortunate in my book. True, she’d never met him, but at least she could imagine her father was a good guy. He wasn’t.

“Well, you’re not alone anymore. You have me now.” I beam. Fifty-eight years of cheeriness—I deserve a medal.

Rose Gold keeps watching the rearview mirror. She cradles the steering wheel with her knees and wipes her palms on her pants, leaving sweat marks behind. Is she nervous because of me?

She flicks on her turn signal, and I realize how familiar the route is. The right off the highway, the long straight stretch, another right, two lefts. Unease grabs hold of my stomach. I am ten years old again, sitting in the backseat after swim practice, dreading going home.

“Mom?” Rose Gold prods. “Did you hear me? What do you want for dinner tonight?”

I push the memory away. “Why don’t I make us something, darling?” My daughter flinches ever so slightly. “It’s the least I can do with you taking me in and all.”

Rose Gold makes another right turn, and now we’re one street away. Maybe she’s made a mistake. She slows the van as we approach the stop sign at the intersection of Evergreen and Apple. I clutch the armrests. Beads of sweat form along my hairline. I haven’t made a left turn onto Apple Street in decades. There are two houses in that direction, and one of them is abandoned.

The van stalls at the stop sign; it doesn’t want to go any farther either. Is Rose Gold making me wait or am I imagining things? The van and everyone inside it—even Adam—are still.

Rose Gold reaches for the blinker and turns the steering wheel left. We can’t be turning left; Mr. and Mrs. Peabody live in the house now.

The van creeps down Apple Street, tree-lined but leafless at this time of year. A pothole lurks in the middle of the road; it wasn’t there when I was a kid. Neither was the guardrail at the street’s dead end—I wonder offhand when it was installed. I try to make sense of the situation. Maybe somebody renovated the Thompsons’ old house. But their place is already coming into view, and it’s still as run-down as it was when I was a kid.

By now we’ve reached the end of the subdivision and stopped in front of 201 Apple Street, a half-acre lot with a small one-story ranch house. The brown brick building is still unexceptional, dull but well cared for over the decades. A tall wooden fence surrounds the back half of the property. “To keep the riffraff out,” Dad explained while hammering the fence posts into the ground.

I gape at Rose Gold, unable to verbalize the question. She pulls into the driveway and presses the garage-door opener clipped to the sun visor. The door to the detached two-car garage starts to open.

“Surprise,” she says in a singsong voice. “I bought the house you grew up in.”

I’m too dumbstruck to formulate sentences. “The Peabodys?”

“Gerald died last year, and then Mabel moved into a nursing home. But we made an agreement they’d sell it to me once they were ready to move on. I got such a good deal. Way better than anything else I could have bought around here.” Rose Gold is proud of herself, like the day she learned to tie her shoes. She pulls the van into the garage, empty without my dad’s yard tools and all the cases of Budweiser.

I feel sick.

“I was going to wait a few weeks to show it to you, so I could decorate more. But maybe now you can help with that”—she lowers her voice and squeezes my shoulder the way I had squeezed hers—“since we’re reconciling and everything.”

My mind is fuzzy, like a room with carpeted walls. I keep reaching for clues, but instead am consumed by one thought: I can’t go in there.

Rose Gold pulls the key out of the ignition and opens her door. “I knew you’d be surprised.” She simpers, then gets out of the car.

“You know what happened here,” I say, still in shock. “Why on earth would you buy this house?”

Rose Gold’s eyes widen. “I thought we’d keep it in the family,” she says earnestly. “Four generations of Wattses—think of the history!”

She opens the backseat door and makes baby noises at Adam. He kicks his feet. She takes him out of his car seat.

“I missed you,” she coos, hugging Adam tight to her body. He nestles into her, yawning.

I am still belted in, hand frozen on the buckle.

Rose Gold carries the baby toward the garage’s side door, then turns back when she realizes I’m not following her. “Come on, Mom.” Why does she say it that way, sarcastically, as though I’m not her actual mother? “Come see what I’ve done so far.”

I should have stayed at a motel. I could have stayed in prison. The hair on my arms stands straight up. My mouth is dusty. I press the buckle, and the seat belt strap retracts. My fingers reach for the door handle. The soles of my feet find the running board.

“You coming?” Rose Gold watches me, cradling Adam in her arms.

I nod and muster a grin, the ever-agreeable Patty. Slamming the van door behind me, I drift out of the garage and toward the house.





4





Rose Gold