June 25, 1975

JUNE 25, 1975

“This is it?” Matt asked.

Mom gave a harried sigh. “It doesn’t look like much from the outside,” she said, far too cheerily if you ask me, “but wait until you get in before you judge.”

My brother mumbled something and pushed open the passenger-side door, groaning as he stretched.

Drama queen, I thought. I scrambled out of the back seat, and the cool sea breeze hit me. It smelled salty and fishy—and I loved it. On the enthusiasm meter, I was way closer to Mom than to Matt.

“What are we even going to do here?” He picked up a rock and tossed it lazily toward the beach.

“Are you kidding?” I cried, “the house is practically right on the water!”

“Yeah,” Matt said with a glare, “and we don’t know a single person, dildo.”

“Matt! Watch your language.”

He shrugged and shuffled toward the beach. I followed, keeping my distance.

“Take a quick look around, then come right back and help me unload,” Mom called.

I waved to acknowledge her then jogged a few paces to catch up to my big brother as he crossed the empty street. We stepped over a chain that separated the diagonal parking spaces from the beach. And that was it. Sand under our feet and waves crashing in front of us. I bent to pick up a cool shell, placing it in my pocket and keeping my eyes peeled for whatever other treasures might await me.

Matt had stopped just at the water’s edge. I came up behind him as he stood motionless, staring out at nothing in particular.

“It might be kind of fun to live here,” I said. I didn’t think he was going to respond, but then he turned to me. He wasn’t crying, but was pretty close. He wore his pain openly: lips tight, eyes narrow and wet. Then the corners of his lips moved. Not a smile, but something other than his grim expression of a moment ago.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Maybe.”

He was only three years older than me, but the years between eleven and fourteen were longer than most. At least they seemed like it, to me. My brother was closer to being an adult than he was to being a kid. I looked up to him, but was in no hurry to get to where he was. I liked eleven just fine. Even without a father.

We walked back toward the house, carrying our sneakers and dragging our feet in the warm sand. I picked up a few more shells along the way.

At the end of the driveway, I stopped to examine the house. It was in rough shape; the merciless sea air had taken its toll. The washed-out paint, once some shade of blue, I guessed, had faded to a sad gray mess. The white trim was mostly chipped. The shutters were all broken or crooked, one swinging in the sharp breeze, banging against the house, then bouncing back the other way. Home, I thought, and trudged over to the car to grab something to carry in.

Mom was already unpacking a box of kitchen stuff and I heard Matt walking around upstairs.

“What’ve you got there, Ryan?” Without waiting for an answer, she peeled back the folded box cover and looked inside. “My bedroom,” she said. “Top of the stairs, last door on the right.”

I lugged the box up the creaky stairs, noticing every crack in the wall, every spot of peeling paint, every dirty smudge. I reached the top, realizing I was looking for negative things, looking at the house the way my brother does. No more, I thought. I shook my head and started down the hall. As I passed the first door on the left, gurgling water sounded on the other side of the door. Bathroom, I noted, and kept going toward Mom’s bedroom. I placed the box on the floor and looked around. It wasn’t a huge room but it was big enough. I noticed a bathroom attached, and a good-sized closet. Not that I cared about stuff like that, but it would make Mom happy.

I left the room to check out the rest of the upstairs. I opened the next door on the same side as Mom’s room: a small closet. Next, an empty bedroom. Since Matt wasn’t in it, I assumed two things: it was mine, and it was smaller than the other one. Mom had told us on the way—to our great relief—that we would not have to share a bedroom. My room was cozy . . . meaning pretty small, but I didn’t care, I could see and hear the ocean from it.

Across the hall was the bathroom. I opened the door and found myself in an old black-and-white movie. The bathtub stood on clawed feet and had no shower. The sink had separate hot and cold taps, and the toilet . . . well, the toilet looked like most toilets, I guess that technology never advanced much. It used to be white porcelain but it was now so rust-stained it was hard to tell. The wallpaper hung in tattered strips and the room had an unidentifiable stench that I really didn’t want to identify. I closed the door and walked to my brother’s room. I knocked, waiting for a response. I’d made that mistake before.

“Enter,” he called, in his finely-tuned Bored Teenager voice.

I stepped into the room and was immediately happy he’d picked it. It was much larger than mine, but it looked out onto the tiny backyard and the other houses beyond.

“What do you want?” he asked, without turning from his spot at the window with the crappy view.

“Nothing,” I replied, trying to sound cheery. “Just checking the place out. Did you see that bathroom? How could you use it? It’s nasty!”

“This whole place is nasty,” he said, glumly. “And I wasn’t in the bathroom.”

I shrugged. “Must have been Mom. Anyway, it ain’t that bad, really. I mean, the beach is cool.”

He shrugged but didn’t respond.

“Matt, do you think . . . ” My voice hitched, the words stuck, refusing to come out.

He must have heard something in my tone, in my silence. “No, Dad isn’t going to find us.”

I wanted to run across the room and hug him, but that wouldn’t end well for me. Instead, I just nodded. “Good.”

He didn’t reply.

“I’m going to get my stuff from the car,” I said. I waited there a while, but he never left his post at the window.

I spent the next couple of hours lugging boxes into the house. The moving van arrived, adding to the chaos, but at least it looked more like a house afterward, once they were done setting up the furniture. My brother had snapped out of his morose persona and we actually had a few laughs. We found a Chinese take-out place and sat at the kitchen table eating chicken fingers and rice and a bunch of boogery-looking stuff that Mom and Matt ate but I refused to touch. We were all too tired to talk so we went to our rooms. Not exactly a Saturday Evening Post cover of our first night in the new house, but at least nobody got beat up.