Ways to Spend the Night by Pamela Painter

Author:Pamela Painter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781938126369
Publisher: Engine Books
Published: 2015-12-06T16:00:00+00:00

Home Depot

“James. James, what is that big ugly orange building?” my father-in-law says, peering out the sliding door past our scruffy deck.

There is no hiding anything from Henry—especially anything that large. “Home Depot,” I say.

My in-laws arrived after dark last night, and by then we’d closed the door to the deck and pulled shut the drapes. This is their first visit since they moved to Miami last winter. As usual, Henry was up at the crack of dawn. An hour ago, the coffee grinder pulverized the beans to powder. Dressed in a white golf sweater and ironed khakis, he’s still staring at Home Depot. I’m in my ratty plaid bathrobe.

“It’s so close to your house,” he says. “Isn’t this a residential neighborhood?”

I don’t take the bait. I treat Henry’s questions as if they are statements with which I have no argument. Wait till he sees the New and Used Gun Emporium, the three tattoo parlors, and all the fireworks stores that flank Home Depot. Seabrook is famously just over the Massachusetts state line. There’s a long stretch of road leading into town where one side of the road is austerely Massachusetts and the other side a bustling, sleazy New Hampshire. No doubt Henry will want a tour today and will soon learn that we are just a mile from the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. Its unmistakable silhouette will surely lead to penetrating questions about the federal government’s security measures and the town’s evacuation procedures. Maybe my in-laws will leave early. But they are, after all, concerned parents. Ten years ago, in my mid-twenties, my parents died within a year of each other and I miss them: my father’s sweet skepticism and my mother’s discerning grace. I regret that Maida never met them. Maida who changed her name from Margaret in college, though her puzzled parents still call her Maggie. Maida who never changed her last name to mine. Not a complaint, I tell myself, merely an observation. I am surprised, however, that her parents still don’t know the real reason we invited them to visit: Maida and I are embarking on a trial separation. One of us will be moving out.

Joining Henry on the deck, I give him the only good news. “Look closely down through the locust trees? There’s a tiny creek—more like a marsh, actually a wetland—behind the house.” I point with my coffee mug to the stand of trees hiding the low, fertile waters. “It separates us from Home Depot’s parking lot.” They often seem to build on wetlands—Seabrook and Medford, Mass.

Upstairs, the ladies are beginning to stir. Pipes are clanging and closet doors need oiling.

Henry is bending over the railing, his keen attention now focused on the marsh. “That’s probably where all the mosquitoes are breeding. They feasted on us when we unpacked the car last night. Which reminds me that Pony said to ask if you have any Benadryl lotion.”

Pony is a nickname I refuse to use when addressing my mother-in-law.

Henry elaborately scratches his arm, and I resist scratching my own three newly acquired bites.

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