Dresser Street

He’d come by while the kids were at the beach.

She told how comfortable she was with coming and going. Her whole life it was a series of short-term love affairs. Her first two boys were the product of a navy guy who was stationed in town for several years before being sent back to Japan. He paid off the house and pecked her on the cheek, and that was that. The boy stopped asking about him after he stopped sending birthday gifts. The twins were the result of another summer fling with a rich guy from Long Island in town for a wedding. The girls looked so much like her, she sometimes thought she could have gotten away with telling them they had no father. Some kind of miracle that gave her a matching set of little despots. The boys were a good six years older than their sisters, but you’d never know it from the way the girls bossed them around.

Every day in the summer, the girls woke up, and stomped down the hallway in the way only eight-year-olds can, bursting into their brother’s room demanding that they get to the water as soon as possible. They knew she was not a beach person. How ironic to grow up on an island and not like the beach--except that was exactly why. You can take anything for granted if you see it enough. The four of them looked at their mother all the time and thought every parent made high-fashion knockoffs for their kids to wear to school and bought them professional cameras for their birthday so that their social media accounts could look as impressive as possible. She knew some people balked at the way she let her kids engage with the online world, but the way she looked at it, you had no control over the reality your children existed in. Your job was to teach them how to conquer that reality. They were five broke people living in a house on Dresser Street in one of the most expensive places in New England getting by on a bartender’s salary. That was the reality. The other reality was the one they created. Her daughters in what looked like Prada on their first day of second grade. Her sons wearing fake Belstaff leather jackets standing next to a car that wasn’t theirs. By the time they were ready to leave the nest, they might not be able to fly, but they’d have everybody thinking they were hawks.

He never asked about her kids other than the first time when he wanted to know how long they’d be gone. She told him they stayed out until sunset, and sometimes beyond that. The boys complained about having to watch their sisters all day, but she knew she could trust them not to take their eyes off the girls. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. The twins had taught themselves Krav Maga using nothing but YouTube videos. One time while roughhousing with her oldest son, they’d nearly crushed his esophagus. She pitied anybody that would try and kidnap those two.

When he showed up, he brought donuts. Half a dozen from Ma’s. They watched tv. Something about murder. Something about cults. She met him one night dancing at Pelham. He was in town for the two music festivals. First folk, then jazz. He handled the sound equipment. Now the festivals were over, and, despite the calendar promising another month of summer, one couldn’t escape the feeling of a wind-down. There would still be sunny days and warm weather, but there would also be back-to-school displays at the CVS and patio furniture being pulled inside. September was getting warmer every year, because of climate change, but seasons aren’t just about temperature. They’re about who stays and who goes.

Laying in bed, a thin sheet covering up part of her and nothing on him, she traced a Tic Tac Toe grid across his chest and played a game against herself. He snored lightly, and she felt a deep urge to let him sleep. To let the kids come home and find the door locked. To ignore their knocking and be the worst mother on the planet with a strange man in her room. To wait until they finally gave up and went to their rooms and only then would she wake him to tell him that he could stay the night. This was all the stuff of dreams. Nowadays, all her fantasies involved shirking responsibility. There were no tropical islands or winning lottery numbers. Just knowing what she was meant to do and doing something else. Worrying about the next twenty minutes instead of the next twenty years.

After a half hour or so, he woke up on his own. He swung his legs over the bed, and muttered “Oh shit.” Not about anything specific. Just one of those acknowledgements that you’re old and naked and acting like a kid. She liked the way he pulled up his jeans. She liked that he didn’t wear underwear. She loved watching him cinch his belt. He turned around and smiled at her. How many more days until he was gone? He leaned down to kiss her goodbye. How long before he was in some other woman’s bed? He pulled back, pouted his lips a little, and leaned forward to give her another kiss. How long until he could only remember what her name sounded like, but not the name itself?

She put on her robe to see him out. She thanked him for the donuts. He said he’d text her tomorrow. His pristine rental car pulled away slowly, then turned the corner with some speed behind it. She considered making herself more coffee. Then, she’d be up all night, asking herself questions she didn’t want answers to. She could envision herself failing at activities all evening. Sitting with a sketchbook, uninspired. Trying to focus on a book for a book club she hadn’t attended in months. The twins screaming about small patches of sunburn they’d gotten, because the boys had missed a few spots. The boys playing a video game that involves murdering as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time possible while talking on a headset to some guy in France who was probably a human trafficker.

There were so many things she was supposed to worry about, and she couldn’t bring herself to work up a fret. Not about anything that wasn’t September. That was the only thing that scared her. That was the only thing left that made her quake.