Page 20 of Play Nice

“About the house,” I say.

“I love you, Clio,” he says, “but Leda is my wife.”

“Fine.” I lean against the window, and he turns up the music, the same playlist as this morning. It’s “Freak on a Leash” by Korn. I don’t object. What’s the point? It’s been such a weird day already. Why not?

About an hour into the drive, he pulls off to get gas and we stop at a Burger King. Notably not a McDonald’s. We go around the drive-through and eat in the car.

“Cheers, Tommy,” I say, lifting my giant cup of Diet Dr Pepper to him.

“Cheers,” he says. He bites into his burger, and ketchup oozes out the sides.

I savor a fry. All I ate today was that muffin, which is probably how I ended up drunk at my mother’s funeral.

“So, how bad was it?” I ask.

He’s got ketchup on his glasses, now. He doesn’t ask me to clarify, which is an answer in and of itself. “I knew that story. Leda told me.”

The sun sets over the parking lot, bathing the grim capitalist landscape in divine light. At this hour, the parking lot is holy ground, the distant Target Valhalla.

“I’m proud of you for showing up,” he says. “I’m proud of you for speaking your truth.”

I pop another fry into my mouth. “Woof. This is worse than you just telling me that I fucked up. Do you want a nugget?”

He takes one. “Worse than me telling you that I think you should give therapy another try?”

“No, not worse than that,” I say, passing him the barbecue sauce.

He dips his nugget. “Leda didn’t know about Edgewood.”

“She didn’t?”

“Not until Aunt Helen called and told her about your mother’s passing.”

“So she did know? She knew Mom died there.”

“She knew Alexandra passed there, yes. But before she got that call, she had no idea your mom kept the house all these years,” he says. “She’s upset about it.”

“I bet.” I fold over my bag of food and drop it at my feet.

“It’s going to be a pain to sell,” he says. “Real estate is a headache.”

“That’s the reason she’s upset?”

“She doesn’t want anything to do with the house. Doesn’t want to go there. Doesn’t want to see pictures. Doesn’t want to transfer the deed, that whole rigmarole. She doesn’t want to think about it. And now she has to think about it.” He wipes the ketchup and grease from his face with a napkin.

“What if she didn’t?” I hand him another napkin because he needs it.

“Hmm?”

“Leda’s assuming that she’s going to be the one to take care of house stuff because she’s the oldest and most responsible and fancies herself the most intelligent and competent. But she doesn’t have to,” I say, with visions of before-and-after photos, of me in overalls holding a paint roller, of selling the house in a few months for a pretty profit and investing that money in a property somewhere in the Hudson Valley that I can put up on Airbnb for passive income whenever I’m not spending time there creating bucolic content. “I can handle the house.”

8

We hit traffic and don’t get back to Dad’s until after nine. Leda and Daphne sit at the kitchen table drinking tea. They pretend like they weren’t anxiously awaiting our return.

Tommy kisses Leda on the top of her head.

“Hey, honey,” he says. “Awful traffic. There was an accident. Hope everyone’s okay. We saw an ambulance.”