The Ferlin’s Secret

I WASN’T READY TO look through the rest of the house, so I settled down at
the table to write. As usual, the blank document stared accusingly at me,
refusing to fill itself with words or characters, no matter how long I stared
back.
Here’s the thing about writing Happily Ever Afters: it helps if you
believe in them.
Here’s the thing about me: I did until the day of my father’s funeral.
My parents, my family, had been through so much already, and somehow
we always came through it stronger, with more love and laughter than
before. There was the brief separation when I was a kid and Mom started
feeling like she’d lost her identity, started staring out windows like she
might see herself out there living life and figure out what she needed to do
next. There was the kitchen-dancing, hand-holding, and forehead-kissing
that followed when Dad moved back in. There was Mom’s first cancer
diagnosis and the wildly expensive celebratory dinner when she kicked its
ass, eating like we were millionaires, laughing until their overpriced wine
and my Italian soda sprayed from our respective noses, like we could afford
to waste it, like the medical debt didn’t exist. And then the second bout of
cancer and the new lease on life after the mastectomy: the pottery classes,
ballroom dancing classes, yoga classes, Moroccan cooking classes that my
parents filled their schedules with, like they were determined to pack as
much life into as little time as possible. Long weekend trips to see me andJacques in New York, rides on the subway during which Mom begged me
to stop regaling her with stories of our pothead neighbors Sharyn and Karyn
(not related; regularly slid informational “Flat Earth” pamphlets under our
door) because she was afraid she was going to pee herself, all while Dad
debunked the flat Earth theory under his breath for Jacques.
Trial. Happy ending. Tribulation. Happy ending. Chemo. Happy ending.
And then, right in the middle of the happiest ending yet, he was just
gone.
I was just standing there, in the foyer of his and Mom’s Episcopalian
church, in a sea of black-clad people whispering useless words, feeling like
I’d sleepwalked there, barely able to recall the flight, the ride to the airport,
packing. Remembering, for the millionth time in the last three days, that he
was gone.
Mom had slipped into the bathroom, and I was alone when I saw her: the
only woman I didn’t recognize. Dressed in a gray dress and leather sandals,
a crocheted shawl tied around her shoulders and her white hair wind-tossed.
She was staring right at me.
After a beat, she swept toward me, and for some reason, my stomach
bottomed out. As if my body knew first that things were about to change.
This stranger’s presence at Dad’s funeral was going to wrench my life off
track as much as his death had.
She smiled hesitantly as she stopped in front of me. She smelled like
vanilla and citrus. “Hello, January.” Her voice was breathy, and her fingers
twirled anxiously through the fringe on her shawl. “I’ve heard so much
about you.”
Behind her, the bathroom door swung open and Mom walked out. She
stopped short, frozen with an unfamiliar expression. Recognition? Horror?
She didn’t want the two of us to talk. What did that mean?
“I’m an old friend of your father’s,” the woman said. “He means …
meant a lot to me. I’ve known him all my life, just about. For quite some
time, we were thick as thieves, and—he never shut up about you.” Her
laugh tried for easy, missed it by a light-year.
“I’m sorry,” she said, hoarse. “I promised I wouldn’t cry, but …”
I felt like I’d been shoved off a building, like the dropping would never
end.
Old friend. That was what she said. Not lover or mistress. But I knew,
from the way she was crying—some funhouse mirror version of Mom’stears during the funeral. I recognized the look on her face as the same one
I’d seen on mine this morning while I tapped concealer under my eyes.
Dad’s death had irreparably broken her.
She fished something out of her pocket. An envelope with my name
scrawled across it, a key resting atop it. A tab hung from the key with an
address scribbled in the same unmistakable handwriting as the chicken
scratch on the envelope. Dad’s.
“He wanted you to have this,” she said. “It’s yours.”
She pushed it into my palm, holding on for a second. “It’s a beautiful
house, right on Lake Michigan,” she blurted. “You’ll love it. He always said
that you would. And the letter is for your birthday. You can open it then, or
… whenever.”
My birthday. My birthday wasn’t for another seven months. My dad
would not be there for my birthday. My dad was gone.
Behind the woman, Mom unfroze, moving toward us with a murderous
expression. “Sonya,” she hissed.
And then I knew the rest.
That while I’d been in the dark, Mom had not.
I closed the Word document, like clicking that little X in the corner
would shut out the memories too. Looking for a distraction, I scrolled
through my inbox to the latest email from my agent, Anya.
It had arrived two days ago, before I left New York, and I’d found
increasingly ridiculous reasons for putting off opening it. Packing. Moving
things into storage. Driving. Trying to drink as much water as I could while
peeing. “Writing,” heavy on the scare quotes. Drunk. Hungry. Breathing.
Anya had a reputation for being tough, a bulldog, on the publishers’ end
of things, but on the writers’ end, she was something like Miss Honey, the
sweet teacher from Matilda, mashed together with a sexy witch. You always
desperately wanted to please her, both because you had the sense that no
one had loved and admired you so purely before and because you suspected
she could sic a herd of pythons on you, if she so chose.
I drained my third gin and tonic of the night, opened the email, and read:
Helloooo, you beautiful and miraculous jellyfish, angelic artist,
money-maker mine, know things have been SO crazy on your end, but Sandy’s
writing again—really wants to know how the manuscript’s
coming slash whether it will still be ready by the end of the
summer. As ever, I’m more than happy to hop on the phone
(or instant message, or a Pegasus’s back as need be) to help
you brainstorm/hash out plot details/WHATEVER it takes to
help bring more of your beautiful words and unparalleled
swoon into the world! Five books in five years was a tall order
for anyone (even someone with your spectacular talent), but I
do believe we’ve reached a breaking point with SLB, and it’s
time to grin and birth it, if at all possible.
xox,
Anya
Grin and birth it. I suspected it’d be easier to deliver a fully formed
human baby out of my uterus at the end of this summer than to write and
sell a new book.
I decided that if I went to sleep now, I could pop out of bed early and
crank out a few thousand words. I hesitated outside the downstairs
bedroom. There was no way to be sure which beds Dad and That Woman
had partaken of.
I was in a funhouse of geriatric adultery. It might’ve been funny, if I
hadn’t lost the ability to find anything funny in the last year spent penning
rom-coms that ended with a bus driver falling asleep and the whole cast
going off a cliff.
It’s SUPER interesting, I always imagined Anya saying, if I were to
actually send in one of these drafts. I mean, I would read your GROCERY
list and laugh-cry doing it. But it’s not a Sandy Lowe book. For now, more
swoon and less doom, babycakes.
I was going to need help sleeping here. I poured myself another G&T and
closed my computer. The house had gotten hot and stuffy, so I stripped to
my underwear, then circled the first floor opening windows before draining
my glass and flopping onto the couch.
It was even more comfortable than it looked. Damn That Woman with
her beautifully eclectic tastes. It was also, I decided, too low to the groundfor a man with a bad back to be climbing on and off of, which meant it was
probably not used for S-E-X.
Though Dad hadn’t always had a bad back. When I was a kid, he’d take
me out on the boat most weekends that he was home, and from what I’d
seen, boating was 90 percent bending over to tie and untie knots and 10
percent staring into the sun, your arms thrown wide to let the wind race
through your swishy jacket and—
The ache rose with a vengeance in my chest.
Those early mornings, on the man-made lake thirty minutes from our
house, had always been just for the two of us, usually the morning after he
got back from a trip. Sometimes I didn’t even know he was home yet. I’d
just awake to my still-dark room, Dad tickling my nose, whisper-singing the
Dean Martin song he’d named me for: It’s June in January, because I’m in
love … I’d jolt awake, heart trilling, knowing it meant a day on the boat, the
two of us.
Now I wondered if all those precious chilly mornings had been literal
guilt trips, time for him to readjust to life with Mom, after a weekend with
That Woman.
I should save the storytelling for my manuscript. I pushed it all out of my
mind and pulled a throw pillow over my face, sleep swallowing me like a
biblical whale.
When I jerked awake, the room was dark, and there was music blasting
through it.
I stood and ambled, dazed and gin-fogged, toward the knife block in the
kitchen. I hadn’t heard of a serial killer who began each murder by rousing
the victim with R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” but I really couldn’t rule out
the possibility.
As I moved toward the kitchen, the music dimmed, and I realized it was
coming from the other side of the house. From the Grump’s house.
I looked toward the glowing numbers on the stove. Twelve thirty at night,
and my neighbor was blasting a song most often heard in dated dramedies
wherein the protagonist walks home alone, hunched against the rain.
I stormed toward the window and thrust my upper body through it. The
Grump’s windows were open too, and I could see a swath of bodies lit up in
the kitchen, holding glasses and mugs and bottles, leaning lazy heads on
shoulders, looping arms around necks as the whole group sang along with
fervor.It was a raging party. So apparently the Grump didn’t hate all people, just
me. I cupped my mouth around my hands and yelled out the window,
“EXCUSE ME!”
I tried twice more with no response, then slammed the window closed
and circled the first floor, snapping the others shut. When I was finished, it
still sounded pretty much like R.E.M. was playing a concert on my coffee
table.
And then, for a beautiful moment, the song stopped and the sounds of the
party, laughter and chatter and bottles clinking, dipped to a static murmur.
And then it started again.
The same song. Even louder. Oh, God. As I pulled my sweatpants back
on, I contemplated the advantages of calling the police with a noise
complaint. On the one hand, I might maintain plausible deniability with my
neighbor. (Oh, ’twas not I who called the constable! I am but a young
woman of nine and twenty, not a crotchety old spinster who loathes
laughter, fun, song, and dance!) On the other, ever since I’d lost my dad, I’d
had a harder and harder time forgiving small offenses.
I threw on my pizza-print sweatshirt and stormed out the front door,
marching up the neighbor’s steps. Before I could second-guess myself, I’d
reached for the doorbell.
It rang out in the same powerful baritone as a grandfather clock, cutting
through the music, but the singing didn’t stop. I counted to ten, then rang it
again. Inside, the voices didn’t even waver. If the partygoers heard the
doorbell, they were ignoring it.
I pounded on the door for a few more seconds before accepting no one
was coming, then turned to stomp home. One o’ clock, I decided. I’d give
them until one before I called the cops.
The music was even louder in the house than I remembered, and in the
few minutes since I’d shut the windows, the temperature had risen to a
sticky swelter. With nothing better to do, I grabbed a paperback from my
bag and headed for the deck, fumbling for the light switches beside the
sliding door.
My fingers hit them but nothing happened. The bulbs outside were dead.
Reading by phone light, at one in the morning, on the deck of my father’s
second home it was! I stepped out, skin tingling from the refreshing chill of
the breeze coming off the water.The Grump’s deck was dark too, except for a lone fluorescent bulb
surrounded by clumsy moths, which was why I nearly screamed when
something moved in the shadows.
And by nearly screamed, I of course mean definitely screamed.
“Jesus!” The shadowy thing gasped and shot up from the chair where it
had been sitting. And by shadowy thing, I of course mean man who’d been
chilling in the dark until I scared the shit out of him. “What, what?” he
demanded, like he expected me to announce that he was covered in
scorpions.
If he had been, this would be less awkward.
“Nothing!” I said, still breathing hard from the surprise. “I didn’t see you
there!”
“You didn’t see me here?” he repeated. He gave a scratchy, disbelieving
laugh. “Really? You didn’t see me, on my own deck?”
Technically, I didn’t see him now either. The porch light was a few feet
behind and above him, transforming him into nothing but a tallish, personshaped silhouette with a halo ringing his dark, messy hair. At this point, it
would probably be better if I managed to go the whole summer without
having to make eye contact with him anyway.
“Do you also scream when cars drive past on the highway or you spot
people through restaurant windows? Would you mind blacking out all our
perfectly aligned windows so you don’t accidentally see me when I’m
holding a knife or a razor?”
I crossed my arms viciously over my chest. Or tried to. The gin was still
making me a little fuzzy and clumsy.
What I meant to say—what the old January would’ve said—was Could
you possibly turn your music down a little bit? Actually, she probably
would’ve just slathered herself in glitter, put on her favorite velvet loafers,
and shown up at the front door with a bottle of champagne, determined to
win the Grump over.
But so far, this was the third-worst day of my life, and that January was
probably buried wherever they put the old Taylor Swift, so what I actually
said was “Could you turn off your sad-boy-angsting soundtrack?”
The silhouette laughed and leaned against his deck railing, his beer bottle
dangling from one hand. “Does it look like I’m the one running the
playlist?”“No, it looks like you’re the one sitting in the dark alone at his own
party,” I said, “but when I rang the doorbell to ask your frat brothers to turn
down the volume, they couldn’t hear me over the Jell-O wrestling, so I’m
asking you.”
He studied me through the dark for a minute—or at least, I assumed that
was what he was doing, since neither of us could actually see the other.
Finally, he said, “Look, no one will be more thrilled than me when this
night ends and everyone gets out of my house, but it is a Saturday night. In
summer, on a street full of vacation homes. Unless this neighborhood got
airlifted to the little town from Footloose, it doesn’t seem crazy to play
music this late. And maybe—just maybe—the brand-new neighbor who
stood on her deck screaming foot job so loud birds scattered could afford to
be lenient if one miserable party goes later than she’d like.”
Now it was my turn to stare at the dark blob.
God, he was right. He was a grump, but so was I. Karyn and Sharyn’s
vitamin-powder-pyramid-scheme parties went later than this, and those
were on weeknights, usually when Jacques had a shift at the ER the next
morning. Sometimes I’d even attended those parties, and now I couldn’t
even handle Saturday-night group karaoke?
And worst of all, before I could figure out what to say, the Grump’s
house went miraculously silent. Through his illuminated back doors, I could
see the crowd breaking up, hugging, saying goodbyes, setting down cups,
and putting on jackets.
I’d argued with this guy for nothing, and now I’d have to live next to him
for months. If I needed sugar, I was going to be shit out of luck.
I wanted to apologize for the sad-boy angst comment, or at least for these
goddamn pants. These days, my reactions always felt outsized, and there
was no easy way to explain them when strangers had the bad fortune of
witnessing them.
Sorry, I imagined myself saying, I didn’t mean to transform into a
crotchety grandmother. It’s just my dad died and then I found out he had a
mistress and a second house and that my mom knew but never told me and
she still won’t talk to me about any of it, and when I finally came apart, my
boyfriend decided he didn’t love me anymore, and my career has stalled,
and my best friend lives too far away, and PS this is the aforementioned Sex
House, and I used to like parties but lately I don’t like anything, so please
forgive my behavior and have a lovely evening. Thank you and good night.Instead, that knife-twisting pain hit my gut, and tears stung the back of
my nose, and my voice squeaked pathetically as I said to no one in
particular, “I’m so tired.”
Even silhouetted as he was, I could tell he went rigid. I’d learned it
wasn’t uncommon for people to do that when they intuited a woman was on
the verge of emotional collapse. In the last few weeks of our relationship,
Jacques was like one of those snakes that can sense an earthquake, going
taut whenever my emotions rose, then deciding we needed something from
the bodega and rushing out the door.
My neighbor didn’t say anything, but he didn’t rush away either. He just
stood there awkwardly, staring at me through the pitch-dark. We faced off
for easily five seconds, waiting to see what would happen first: me bursting
into tears or him running away.
And then the music started blaring again, a Carly Rae Jepsen banger that,
under different circumstances, I loved, and the Grump startled.
He glanced back through the sliding doors, then to me again. He cleared
his throat. “I’ll kick them out,” he said stiffly, then turned and went inside, a
unanimous cheer of “EVERETT!” rising from the crowd in the kitchen at
the sight of him.
They sounded ready to hoist him up into a keg stand, but I could see him
leaning over to shout to a blonde girl, and a moment later, the music fell
silent for good.
Well. Next time I needed to make an impression, I might be better off
with a plate of LSD cookies.