Page 23 of Play Nice

“Morning. I made coffee.” Dad sits at the kitchen table behind his open laptop, probably reading the news, an article about something depressing he’ll tell us about later at an inopportune moment.

“Good morning, Daddy,” I say, tying my hair up with a jumbo scrunchie. “May I borrow your car?”

“Don’t go buy coffee,” he says. “That’s why I made some. Your generation wastes so much money on coffee.”

“My generation is never going to be able to retire regardless.”

“You’re saving for retirement,” he says. He knows because he set up my account and logs in sometimes to make sure I’m being a good girl. A responsible girl. “That seven bucks could go into your IRA.”

I almost tell him I’m not going out to buy coffee, that I’m going to Edgewood, but decide it’s better if he thinks I’m venturing to Starbucks. “Please, may I borrow your car to go buy a seven-dollar latte that will make me forget my troubles for all of ten minutes?”

He sighs. “Keys are next to the fridge.”

There’s a stretch of counter space in the kitchen that’s used more as a desk, where the landline used to be. There’s a stack of takeout menus and pens and a cell phone charger and photos of us. Dad’s wallet. His car keys.

“Take my credit card. Get some for your sisters. And Amy. And what the hell? I’ll have a mocha.”

“A mocha?” I say, turning around with my pinky up.

“If I’m going in, might as well go all in,” he says. “The blue one.”

I reach for his wallet and get out the blue Chase card. “I have to run an errand first. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Okay,” he says. “Drive safe.”

“Venti mocha,” I say, opening the door to the garage. “With whip!”

“No whip!” he calls out as the door shuts behind me.

He won’t be getting that mocha for a while, if at all. It’s about a half hour drive to Edgewood from here, and I want to look around.

I’m excited about it.

It’s a new project. A new opportunity for content creation. The chance to make something pretty, curate an aesthetic. My favorite.

I get to take the setting of the worst time in my family history and transform it into something else. Make it unrecognizable as the place where Mom lost her mind, the place where she died, the place where her demons lived.

It’s the next best thing to burning it to the ground.

9

It’s exactly as I remembered it. The long driveway sneaking off the cul-de-sac. It needs to be paved; it’s needed to be paved for the last twenty years.

The house is set back, surrounded by woods. The front lawn is pale and patchy, covered in dead leaves and twigs. I park and step outside. It’s chilly, and I’m grateful for the hoodie and to whomever it once belonged.

The roof is all angles, which gives the house character, I think. There’s a tall brick chimney that runs along the side. A working fireplace—another feature. The siding is an ugly rusty red, which doesn’t exactly help with the house’s reputation as a demon lair. But paint it white or a dark navy, and suddenly it’s chic and modern instead of evil and dated.

I dig the key out of my bag and watch my step as I head up the stone path toward the house. The pavers have sunk into the earth, thick moss between them. It’s the smell of the rickety wooden stairs that lead to the front door that gets me, that resurrects a sentimentality, a nostalgia, that I didn’t know I had. It’s such a distinct scent, these stairs. I’m surprised they haven’t collapsed by now.

There are parts of these stairs in me and my sisters. Parts of the back deck, too. Splinters we couldn’t dig out, that we gave up on, impatient after sitting for too long on the bathroom floor with tweezers and a flashlight.

This is a reunion.

I get to the top of the steps, slip the key into the lock, and twist.

The landing is brick, but not nice brick. Loose chipped brick. There are carpeted stairs that lead down to a hall, off that hall a bathroom, my old room, Mom’s room, and the garage. There are also carpeted stairs that lead up to the living room, kitchen, Mom’s office, the second bathroom, a linen closet, and then Leda and Daphne’s room. As expected, the carpet hasn’t been replaced—the gross beige shag persists. The wall to the left is wood paneled, all the way up to the cathedral ceiling. To the right are vertical wood posts that leave the space open, allow a peek into the living room from the stairs. My sisters and I used to have fun weaving in and out of these posts, jumping down onto the landing, until Daphne sprained her ankle and ruined it for us.

The wood paneling is, unfortunately, orange-toned, but the wooden posts are a darker stain, along with the wooden beams that cross the high ceiling.