rising from the second story.
“It’s just like a castle,” Caroline said, turning to me, eager as a puppy for affirmation. It was a look I’d never seen before. I was so young when Caroline left Bexley, and then she’d always lived so far away. And all those blond, clever Goats took possession of Caroline in a way that I understood and resented only years later. They helped her through pregnancies and childbirths. They advised on what kind of minivan to buy, would Montessori be a good fit for Louis, do the twins really need that DTaP vaccine? She let herself be folded into the Duffys, and who could blame her? Two bright, chirpy parents, cousins and family football games at Thanksgiving. The Skinners were too few and too complicated to compete with all that photogenic togetherness.
But now here she was. Her hair hung lank from airplane air, her red coat was too thin for this chilly day. She’d arrived into JFK at five fifteen that morning, traveling all this way for a house she’d seen only in photographs.
“You’re right, Caroline,” I said, and smiled. “A castle.”
We opened the front door and stepped into a damp and penetrating cold. I shivered. We stood at the foot of a wide staircase that led up into darkness. To our left, the large living room was bare, with a sooty fireplace on the far wall that gaped dark and menacing as a wound. There was dust everywhere and a dry brown substance crusting the shadowy corners of the room. The place smelled of mold and something else. Something closed-in, musty, animal.
Caroline dropped the bag of cleaning supplies to the floor.
“I think we might need some help,” I said. “What about Renee or Joe?”
“Renee’s taking on extra ER shifts,” Caroline answered in a monotone. “As if the surgical fellowship isn’t enough. And Joe … I don’t know. I didn’t ask him.” The last she said vaguely, walking away from me into the dim interior of the house.
We went room to room, the only sound our dull footsteps and Caroline’s occasional sharp intake of breath as another mess or sign of age came into view. In the kitchen there was a squat white refrigerator with a long silver handle and a walk-in pantry, its shelves lined with scraps of greasy paper, smelling of old bacon and ammonia. In the hall we found one half bath with an unspeakable toilet. In the dining room, cobwebs intricate as chandeliers hung from the ceiling.
We finished our circle and arrived back in the living room.
“Caroline, can the college find you another house?” I asked gently. The kids and Nathan were set to arrive from Austin in two days.
“Oh, no, this is the only one,” she replied. “It’s rent-to-buy. It’s all we can afford.” Her eyes were bright. “But I love it. It’s perfect. That big front window? These original floors?” She rubbed a toe along a floorboard to reveal a grainy, dark wood beneath the dirt. “Let’s get started.”
And so we began to clean with spray bottles and brushes and paper towels, wearing unwieldy yellow gloves and those small paper masks I associated with Asian flus and hypochondriacs. As we worked side by side, I realized how good it felt to have her back. I’d missed Caroline for herself, but what I’d missed more was the idea of us, the four Skinner siblings, together. She was the missing piece of the puzzle of adulthood that I’d been trying for years to put together here in New York with Joe and Renee. Now I could be the quirky aunt to Caroline’s kids, taking them to gallery shows and poetry readings in the city, teaching them to swear, and buying them candy. Renee would be the role model who showed them how to work hard and succeed, who examined their cut knees with professional concern. And Uncle Joe would tell them fart jokes, give them extravagant electronics for their birthdays, teach them to catch and throw. Joe still loved baseball, even if he no longer played, and who knew? Maybe Louis would be a natural. And here in Hamden, Caroline would host family dinners where we’d all gather and make toasts and drink and eat cake and play Scrabble. At last we would be siblings who were no longer children.
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