My mother was at the sink, already dressed, rinsing out a coffee cup. She didn’t see me until she was turning off the water, at which point she shrieked, jumping backwards and disappearing, momentarily, from my view. When she popped up again, she was pissed.
“What are you doing?” she huffed at me, through the glass. “You scared me to death!”
“I was barricaded in my room,” I replied. “The window was the only way out.”
In response, she turned, looking behind her at my dad, who was at that very moment carrying the couch onto the side deck. Morris, at the opposite end, was already outside. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry. I think he thought—”
“Can you let me in, please?” I interrupted her, aware of my damp backside and the fact that Mr. Varance could probably still see it.
She scurried over to the door and unlocked it, then held it open as I came in. “I think he thought,” she said again, “that you were already gone.”
“My car is here,” I pointed out. “And it’s not even eight on a Saturday.”
“I’m not driving this train,” she said, holding up one hand. “Take it up with him.”
When I turned to my dad to do just that, I instead found myself facing Morris, who was grinning. “Nice jammies,” he said. “You always sleep in the grass?”
I looked down. There were green clippings all across my tank top and midsection. Of course the lawn had been mowed yesterday. “What are you even doing here?” I asked him.
“Working,” he replied, as if this was something he actually did, ever.
“All right, let’s get that love seat out and that should do it,” my dad said, walking back into the room. When he saw me, he said, “Whoa. What happened to you?”
“I had to climb out the window,” I replied.
“Why’s that?” I just looked at him. “Oh, right. The hallway. Well, you knew the floors were getting started today. Can’t do them with the furniture here.”
“How was I supposed to know that, again?”
He bent over one end of the love seat, gesturing for Morris to get the other one. “About the floors?”
“Yes.”
“Because,” he said, squaring his shoulders and lifting, “we did the trim, then painted. Floors are next.”
As if I had some kind of flow chart in my mind, keeping up with every step of this never-ending remodel. “I’m not a contractor, Dad.”
“No,” he said, holding up his end of the couch, “but you are in our way. Scoot, now, we’ve got work to do.”
I moved aside as they passed by, taking the love seat out the door I’d come in. My mom, standing across the empty room, held up two coffee mugs, a questioning look of her face. When I nodded, she gestured for me to follow her down the hall to Amber’s room.
“You’d think,” I said as we walked, “he could leave me a note or something.”
“I think the plan was to let you know when you got home last night,” she replied. “But you were . . . late.”
Whoops. I bit my lip, remembering how far past curfew I’d actually walked in from the First True Date the evening before. Late enough that my dad had gone to bed, something he rarely did before everyone was in and accounted for.
“I lost track of the time,” I said. “Sorry.”
She said nothing to this as she pushed the door open, revealing Amber, her now-blonde head buried under the covers. We walked over to the bed, where my mom nudged her aside, making a narrow space for us to share. She pulled up the comforter over our legs, handed me my coffee, and we settled in.
“I don’t understand,” I said, after a couple of sips, “why he can’t just let it be.”
“Who?”
“Dad. And the house. Why is this”—I swirled my hand in the general direction of the door—“always going on?”
She shrugged. “Don Quixote had windmills. The Wright brothers had the sky. Your dad has home improvement.”
“But it was fine like it was before the last project. And the one before that, actually.”
“Well, fine is a relative term. And your dad has always wanted better than that for us.” She twisted her cup in her hands. “You see a perfectly good dining room and kitchen. He sees the potential for a great one.”
“Right now I just see furniture in the hallway and us in Amber’s bed.”
“Which,” my sister’s voice came, muffled by the pillow, “I bet is looking pretty good to you right now, huh, Miss Get-Out-of-My-Room-or-Else?”
I kicked her, albeit gently, with my foot. “You owe me.”
“Says you.” She grunted, turning over. “And for the record, I was actually sleeping before you two decided to pig-pile in here. Some of us have to work today, you know.”
Amber, as part of her cosmetology school training, spent one morning a week shampooing and sweeping up hair at a local salon. From the way she talked about it, you would have thought it was the chain gang. I kicked her again. This time, she kicked me back.
“Girls,” my mom said, in the same tired voice I’d heard her utter this word at least a million times before.
For a moment, we just sat there not talking, the only sound the sputtering of some kind of machine starting up down in the living room. Finally my mom said, “The floor issue aside, Emaline, you really haven’t been around here much lately. I miss you.”