Father of the Rain by Lily King Page A

hill into town. I flip it into the hardest gear and pedal the whole way down, moving faster than I ever have on my bike, not bothering to look around for cars turning in or out of side streets and driveways. A few hippies hanging out on a bench in the park shout something to me but I’m going too fast to hear. I rise up from the seat going over the train tracks. The bike bucks and twists but I stay on. I pass the gas station and the sub shop, the kids on the steps of Bruce’s (who make no comment today), the gift shop, the library, the Congregational church, and the chowder restaurant. This is still my town. I’m still home.
    I remember Neal. I forgot to ask Patrick about him. How did I forget? It’s like I had static in my ears up there on Myrtle Street and I couldn’t think about the other parts of my life. I feel like calling him up when I get to the apartment, then remember where he is and that my father might answer and how weird that would be.
    I turn left down Water Street. I pass our apartment building to see what’s at the end of the street. It dead-ends at the harbor. There’s a tiny patch of dirty sand and a bench. Two teenagers are sitting on it, making out. My bike makes a
tic-tic-tic
sound as I make a wide U-turn, but it doesn’t bother them.
    The apartment is nicer than I remember it. The carpet is clean and soft, the ceilings are high, and there’s a picture window looking out onto the make-out bench and the harbor beyond that lets in two huge squares of light. My mother is in her bathrobe, straightening chairs at a new table.
    She hugs me hard. She smells of lemon furniture polish. It seems at that moment like the best smell on earth. I remember I need to ask her a lot of questions about taking care of her garden.
    “How was it?” She pulls away just far enough to see me clearly. She pushes hair from either side of my face. Her skin is shiny from lotion.
    “Good.”
    I feel her eyes raking across my face, as if I’ve hidden something there really well.
    It’s the moment I could tell her about the whispering, the drinking, the word
boner
, but the moment passes.
    “I’m so glad.” She takes her eyes off me and points to the table and the high-backed chairs that surround it. “What do you think?”
    “Nice.” I stand next to a chair. It has a silky striped cushion sewn into it. “Fancy.”
    “And,” she says, pointing to the walls. She’s hung paintings from Myrtle Street. She took the ones of the sea, which are my favorites too. In her bedroom she hung the portrait of me and Garvey sitting on the lip of the fountain when we were much younger. In the painting I have no freckles, and my eyes are too far apart, and you can see where the artist had to paint in more background over Garvey’shead when my mother brought it back, complaining his hair was too poufy.
    Her room looks even bigger than I remember. I see the canopy bed and know that I’m not done feeling angry about her having it, along with the big beautiful room and the deck.
    My mother has climbed up onto the bed and is dangling her legs off it and staring out the French doors. I’m aware of something different about her, something lighter. She is happy. Beneath her is a folded duvet, velvet on one side, satin on the other.
    “Nora called, sweetie. She really wants to see you.”
    “Oh.”
    “You know your father let her go.”
    “Yeah, I guess I put that together.”
    She looks like she’s going to say more but stops. Then she says, “You should call her.”
    “I will.” But the idea of Nora is like my stuffed animals. It feels like there is suddenly no place for her. I stroke the velvet blanket. “Is this new?”
    “Yes,” she says. “Isn’t it divine?”
    “Did you get me one?”
    “They only had them for a queen-sized bed.”
    “It’s a good thing you have the bed then. Good thing you got that, too.”
    “Daley.”
    “I don’t know where you’re getting all this money. All you did all summer was worry