Things You Should Know(32)

Ray holds up a string, dangling from it is a small key. He swings it back and forth hypnotically. “I’ll give you directions,” he says.

She nods.

“Would you like some herb tea? I just made a pot.”

“No thanks.” They sit in silence. “I’m not exactly a morning person,” she says.



As she steps outside, Mrs. Lasky is across the way, getting into her car.

“How are you?” Mrs. Lasky calls out. “How is life in New York?”

“It’s fine. It’s fine.” She repeats herself, having nothing more to say. “And how are you?”

“Very well,” Mrs. Lasky says. “Isn’t Ray wonderful? He keeps my bird feeder full. The most wonderful birds visit me. Just now, as I was having my breakfast, a female cardinal was having hers.”



The mini-storage facility is called U-Store It. “U-store it. U-keep the key. U-are in charge.” She locates the unit, unlocks the padlock, and pulls the door open.

There was something vaguely menacing about the way Ray was swinging the key through the air—yet he drew the map, he seemed not to know or care what she was thinking.

A clipboard hangs from a hook by the door. There is spare twine, tape, and a roll of bubble wrap. She recognizes the outlines of her grandmother’s table, her father’s old rocking chair. Each box is labeled, each piece of furniture well wrapped. On the clipboard is a typed list of boxes with appendices itemizing the contents of each box: Children’s Toys, Mother’s Dishes, World Book Encyclopedia A–Z (Plus YearBook 1960–1974), Assorted From Kitchen Closet, Beach Supplies, etc. She pries open a box just to be sure. She’s thinking she might find wadded up newspaper, proof Ray is stealing, but instead, she finds her book reports from high school, a Valentine card her brother made for her mother, the hat her grandmother wore to her mother’s wedding.

She seals the box up again. There is nothing to see. She pulls the door closed, locks it, and leaves.



Driving home, she passes her old high school—it’s been gutted. BUILDING A BETTER FUTURE FOR TOMORROW’ S LEADERS. READY FOR RE-OCCUPANCY FALL 2002. GO BARONS.

She drives up and down the streets, playing a nostalgic game of who lived where and what she can remember about them: the girl with the wonderful singing voice who ended up having to be extricated from a cult, the boy who in sixth grade had his own subscription to Playboy, the girl whose mother had Siamese twins. She remembers her paper route, she remembers selling Girl Scout cookies door to door, birthday parties, roller skating, Ice Capades.

She goes home.

Every time she comes to visit, it takes twenty-four hours to get used to things and then everything seems less strange, more familiar, everything seems as though it could be no other way—entirely natural.

She slides the car into the driveway. Her father is in the front yard, raking leaves. His back is toward her. She beeps, he waves. For a million years her father has been in the front yard, raking. He has his plaid cap on, his old red cardigan, and corduroys.

She gets out of the car.

“Remember when I was little,” she calls down the hill. “And we used to rake together. You had the big one and I had the small bamboo…”

He turns. A terrifying sensation sweeps through her. It’s Ray.

“I want you out,” she says, shocked. “Now!” He intentionally misled her. He had to have known what she was thinking when she drove in, when she beeped and waved, when she said, remember when I was little. Why didn’t he take off the hat, turn around, and say, I am not who you think I am?

“Where is my father? What have you done to my father? Those are not your clothes.”

“Your father gave them to me.”

She moves toward him.

Ray is standing there, her father’s cap still on his head. She reaches out, she knocks it off. He bends to pick it up.

“It’s not your hat,” she says, grabbing it, throwing it like a Frisbee across the yard. “You can’t just step inside someone’s life and pretend you’re them.”

“I was invited.”

“Get your stuff and get out.”

“I’m not sure it’s entirely up to you,” Ray says. This is as close as he comes to protesting. “It’s not your house.”

“Oh, but it is,” she says. “It’s my house and it’s my family and I have to have some influence on what happens here. They’re old, Ray. Pick on someone else.” She grabs the rake and uses it to shoo him inside. “It’s over. Pack your bags.”

Her mother comes home just as Ray is trying to put the cat into his travel case. The cat is screaming, howling. The cab is waiting outside.