“Damn, it’s smells good, right?” she said.
“Always does,” I answered.
Dad was making his not-so-famous grilled fish soaked in lemon, butter, and garlic. He’d been making the dish for us since we were little. It never got old.
Sunday dinners were voluntary, but mandatory at the same time. We never had to ask if someone was available. We just knew we were going to be sitting at the table on Sunday evenings. With me and Becca living together, it was easier to just have Dad come over to our place, which was technically his place, but he had passed it on to us.
By the time the food made it to the table, the kids had washed up and were ready to eat.
“Elbows,” Becca said, without looking.
Two sets of elbows came off the table.
My father set the last dish down, stood back, and looked at all of us the way he sometimes did at the start of dinner like he was making sure everyone was present and accounted for. Then he sat down, unfolded his napkin, and smiled.
“Thank you for having me,” he said. Which was what he said every Sunday, like we’d invited him.
“Dad, it was your house,” Becca said.
“It’s your house now. And you’ve done better things with it than I ever did.”
He looked around the patio—the hanging lights Becca and I had strung up last summer, the pots of seagrass along the railing, the sun-bleached wooden sign by the door that saidno peeing off the porchin letters I’d painted myself. The sign was necessary with a young boy who assumed as long as no one saw, it was perfectly okay to pee on the grass.
“I’m not sure your mother would have loved the sign,” he added with a laugh.
“Your mother?” River repeated like the idea of Becca having a mother confused her.
And it would, considering she never met our mother.
“Your grandma,” Becca said.
River nodded as if Grandma Mae was a different person than Becca’s mother. “Is she the one in the photo in the hallway? With the surfboard?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
“She looks like Aunt Summer,” Ocean said.
Dad looked a little sad. “She does,” he agreed quietly.
The conversation moved away from Mom. River and Ocean steered the conversation from one topic to another. They had a lot to say about everything. Keeping up with their conversation was next to impossible. It was easier to smile and nod along.
At some point my father refilled everyone’s water. “I’ve been walking in the mornings with some of the folks at my building. There’s a woman named Sheryl who does the loop twice. She’s invited me to walk with her.”
I looked at Becca, making sure she was okay with the news. We always knew it was coming. We wanted him to be happy.But wanting something and then actually getting it was very different. I had a flash into the future. A woman sitting at the table for Sunday dinner. A woman at Thanksgiving and the kids’ birthday parties.
A woman that wasn’t our mother.
“Have you taken her up on the invitation?” I asked.
“I have,” he said. “She brought muffins to the common room on Thursday.”
Dad had moved out of the beach house and into the retirement community a little over a year ago. And I moved into the house. Becca was perfectly capable of living alone, but Dad and I just kind of decided one of us needed to be around to help with the kids.
I looked at Becca, gave her a slight nod to encourage her to ask questions.
“Dad.” Becca set her chin in her hand. “Do youlikeSheryl?”
“I like her muffins.”