And then you…” She turned to Marshall.
“What did I do now?”
“You told Henry he mustn’t tell, no matter what. You
told him his mother couldn’t take it if one more thing
happened. You made him promise. You said a promise
has to stick or else. Then you just…” She mimed the rest,
closed her mouth, locked her mouth, threw away the key.
Shelley nodded. “That’s exactly what Henry told me.
He made a promise that he wouldn’t talk. And a promise
has to stick or else. He’s been worrying a lot about the
or else part. He’s not sure what that means, but he knows it isn’t good.”
Lane took it all in. “But he did speak. He never stopped
speaking to me.”
“I know,” Shelley said. “He tried. But it didn’t work.
He could stay quiet with everyone but you. So he made a
deal with himself. He just wouldn’t talk to you about the
part where Grandpa got mad and Grandma fell down.”
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“He got it all mixed up,” Sylvie said. “I saw that in his
drawing. It was the other way around. I hit your father.
Not hard. It wasn’t a real fall.”
“She caught me off guard,” Marshall said. “I didn’t
expect her to shove me.”
“It’s because it’s been so hard.” Sylvie patted Marshall’s arm. “For such a long time.”
Marshall’s eyes went from one daughter to the other
and then stopped at Lane. “He’s a good boy, your son. I
didn’t mean to frighten him. I regret that. I regret a lot of things. But I regret that most of all. I’m tired.” He
sighed. “So very tired.”
They heard it at the same time: Henry, who’d been
sitting on the bottom step listening, was now running
up the stairs. He came back a moment later, with a pil-
low and a blanket, which he handed to his grandfather.
“You should take a nap. Then you won’t be tired. You
can sleep on the couch. Or you can take a nap in my bed.
We don’t have rules about that anymore.”
h h
h h
Later, after Henry was in bed and her parents were down-
stairs waiting for their taxi, Lane and Shelley went to put fresh sheets on the bed in the room in which her mother
had been sleeping.
Shelley jammed a pillow into a case and asked, “When
did you tell Henry about Ivy?”
The question was not unexpected. “It’s because I put
up window guards. In the house in New Jersey. And
he wanted to know why. So I told him. Not all of it.”
She sat down on the freshly made bed. “Why are they
so uncomfortable around me?” Shelley shrugged. Lane
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went on. “Mom’s been here the whole summer and she
still gets all fluttery if she thinks I’m going to ask her a question. She gets fluttery and then she leaves the room.
Dad won’t even risk hearing a question; he avoids being
alone with me altogether. You do the same thing on the
phone.”
“You’re right.” She placed the pillow on the bed. “This
is the conversation I was talking about. The one we need
to have. You must know what it is that everyone’s avoid-
ing.” She studied Lane’s face. “You don’t know.” She sat
down next to her. “Do you remember what it was like
in the house, after Ivy’s accident?”
“Yes. Mom and Dad fought all the time. When they
weren’t fighting, either Mom or Uncle Albie was crying.”
“It was everything at once,” Shelley said. “Mom and
Dad would be yelling and Mom and Uncle Albie would
be sobbing. Remember what you did?” Lane shook her
head. She had no idea. “You stopped talking. You marched
into the living room one night and announced, ‘I’m never
going to speak again until you stop.’ It was like you went on strike. You wouldn’t even talk to me. It lasted about
a week. You were totally silent. Mealtime. Bedtime. At
school. And it worked. Mom and Dad pulled themselves
together and they shut everything down. There were no
more fights. There was no more crying. Dad must have
we sat down for dinner, you said something, ‘Please pass
the chicken’ or ‘Can I have some salt?’ and that was that.
We were back to normal. Meckler normal. You don’t
remember?”
Lane didn’t remember, but she knew what Shelley
said was right. She could feel the truth of it. And more
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truth: from that day till now her family had withdrawn
from her.
A thought occurred to her. If Henry did something
by accident, something awful, she would never with-
draw from him. She would hold him tight and love him
harder. Because he was only a child. She’d been only a
child. “How could they blame a child for an accident?”
“Oh, Lanie. No one blamed you. It wasn’t your fault.”
Shelley lay down on the bed and patted the pillow next
to her so Lane would lie down too. “Remember when
I came to Florida, when Henry was a wee little thing?”
Lane nodded. “Didn’t you wonder why?” Lane told her
she did. “I came because it was eating at me, what you
thought. I wanted to talk to you about it. But Dad kept
following me around the house like an old dog. I think
he knew. He knew what I wanted to say and he didn’t
want me to say it.”
“What did you want to say?”
Shelley took a breath and stared at the ceiling. “It was
hate at first sight with you and Ivy. But that doesn’t mean what happened was your fault.”
“I was so jealous. I didn’t even know what jealous was
then, but I felt it. I couldn’t bear for you to go out on the roof with her. I got so mad. So I—”
“No. You’ve got it wrong. You remember it wrong.
I didn’t go out on the roof. The roof had a skin of ice; I wasn’t stupid. But Ivy didn’t care about the ice. She was
pushing me to go out. She was getting on my nerves.”
They lay in silence for a moment and then Shelley turned
to Lane. “I wasn’t there when it happened. After I told
Ivy I wasn’t going to go out and she asked you to go, I
left. I ran downstairs and asked Mom if it was okay for
Ivy to go out on the roof. I knew what Mom would do.
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And she did it. She raced upstairs and—” She stopped.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Lane closed her eyes. What was she missing? Her
memory was clear to a point and then it stopped. “You
just said you weren’t there. You don’t know.”
“I know because you told me. Before you went on
strike. Right after it happened. Right after Uncle Albie
started wailing about how he couldn’t call Aunt Beadie and Mom said, okay, she’d make the call. And Dad walked in
with his suitcase, from a business trip. Talk about timing.”
Lane remembered that. “Then the ambulance came.
And they went to the hospital.”
“And we stayed home. And I went to the basement to
find something to do. And I came back with Operation.
I guess I thought that was a good idea. That it would
make us feel like we were at the hospital with them if
we played Operation. Only you were no good at it. You
were shaking too much. You couldn’t remove a single
organ without the buzzer going off.”
Lane could hear it. The buzzer going off again and
again. “And then they came back and told us Ivy didn’t
make it. I don’t remember who told us.”
Shelley did. “It was Dad. And then Uncle Albie made
that sound.”
Their mother’s voice cut through their reverie. “Turtle?
Shelley? The taxi’s going to be here in a minute.”
Shelley went downstairs, but Lane didn’t move. She
was hearing it now, as if Uncle Albie were there with
her, keening in despair. “What happened?” she asked the
empty room.
She closed her eyes as images flickered by. Ivy climb-
ing up onto the sill. The roof glistening with its sheen of 418
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ice. Ivy asking Lane to get her pinhole box so they could
watch the eclipse without going blind.
It was Shelley who noticed there was no hole in the
box. “It won’t work,” she told Lane. “You made a no-hole
pinhole box. It doesn’t matter. We’re not going out there.”
Then Lane said she could fix it. And Ivy asked if she
would come out on the roof with her. And Lane nod-
ded. And Ivy said, “See. Lane’s not a scaredy-cat.” And
Shelley ran downstairs.
Lane remembered how that felt, everything switch-
ing, Ivy suddenly deciding Lane was who she wanted
to be with. Ivy urging her to hurry. Lane grabbing a
thumbtack from her bulletin board. The box resisted. It
was too thick.
“It’s happening,” Ivy called to her. “The eclipse is
happening. Hurry. Give me the box.”
Lane could see it, Ivy with one hand on the win-
dowsill, lowering herself out so that she was half in, half out, waiting, impatiently, for Lane to make the hole in
the box. She could feel it, how the pushpin resisted and
then all of a sudden, went through. She stood up and
took a step toward Ivy but before she could give her the
box there were hands on her back, her mother’s hands,
pushing her out of the way so she could get to where Ivy
was and pull her back inside.
Except when her mother pushed her out of the way,
Lane’s body went limp at her touch and her limp body flew
forward and the box she was handing to Ivy flew forward
and Ivy, on the other side of the box, flew forward, and
out and down, sliding down the roof. The incline was
gentle, but primed with ice it was angled enough to act
like a giant slick slide.
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“Turtle. Lane.” Her mother stood in the threshold of
the guest room of the pond house. She met Lane’s eyes.
“It was not your fault. It was my fault. All of it. Lanie, I’m sorry.”
She flew into her mother’s arms and they held each
other tight, tears commingling.
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PART FOUR
HOME
Summer 2018
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
From Global Guild International, this is Problem Child with Lane Meckler.
Phone call recording, Cody: My name is Cody. I’m ten years old and I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My mom
took me to hear your talk when you came to my school.
Lane Meckler: It happens more than you’d think. I’m only able to do a few school events a year but when I do
them, there are always kids with questions, waiting at the end. At some point the facilitator moves to shut things
down, so I tell the kids, the Problem Child podcast is for grown-ups but if you have a question and your parents
give permission, you’re welcome to call in to the show.
Phone call recording, Cody: My parents don’t live together anymore. I live in my mom’s house for one part of the
week, and in my dad’s house for the other part. Which
is okay most of the time. But sometimes I want to switch
houses, because my friends in the neighborhood where
I’m not are doing something fun. My babysitter doesn’t
drive. Last time it happened, I asked my mom if I could
switch houses for a day and she cried and said, Ask your dad. When I asked my dad, he didn’t answer because he was busy being mad that my mom cried. That night I got
a stomachache and forgot to do my homework. The next
day, when my teacher walked around the room to collect
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homework, I told her I didn’t do it and I told her why.
She said I should ask my mom if I could tell my problem
to Lane Meckler. Which is what I’m doing. What do you
think I should do?
Lane Meckler: The first person I spoke to when I got the call was my son. He just turned seven. Here’s what
he had to say about Cody’s problem.
Lane Meckler’s son: I think Cody should ask his mom and dad if they could both move closer. Maybe on the
same block or around the block. That way Cody could be
with his friends any day he wants and his mom’s feelings
wouldn’t get hurt and his dad wouldn’t get mad about it.
Living in two places sounds hard. Also, I think Cody’s dad should try not to care when Cody’s mom cries. Sometimes
people have to cry so they don’t get their feelings stopped up. Maybe his dad could do something to help him be
less mad. Maybe take a walk. Also the babysitter should
learn to drive.
Lane Meckler: There you have it. The wisdom of kids.
Today on Problem Child, we’re going to talk about the difficulty of coparenting after divorce with a woman
who’s spent her career listening to kids. Mary Arthur,
student assistant counselor at the Lanapi School, welcome
to Problem Child.
Mary Arthur: Thank you, Lane. It’s great to talk to you again.
h h
h h
Lane told Henry he could pick anything he wanted to
celebrate their move back into the pond house. They’d
both enjoyed their winter rental house in Vineyard Haven.
They liked being able to walk to the bookstore and the
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library, and to sit by the sea and watch the ferries come
and go. But they visited the pond house often, sometimes
several times in a week after Henry got out of school.
The crew putting in the new heating system—the
old one was fine for a summer place but was not made
for winter use—had adopted Henry. When they stopped
by the house, there was always a special snack waiting—
peanut-butter fudge from Murdick’s, or a couple of apple
fritters from Back Door Donuts—and they always invited
him to help, either by passing them tools or holding a
flashlight to shine on hard-to-see spaces.
Nathan was usually there, too, busy outfitting the
spare bedroom with the recording studio equipment
he’d brought over from his New Jersey house
for Lane to
use for the podcast. Sam had been quick to approve the
idea of Lane doing the podcast remotely, probably, Lane
thought, because he was not only relieved she agreed
to do a podcast, but happy that she’d come up with an
idea that was simultaneously on-brand for her and also
something new.
Summer took the news that she was not going to be
Lane’s cohost surprisingly well. While the gossip Hugo
had shared was correct—Summer was directed by Bert to
pass along a purloined letter to Lane—she’d never followed through. And Alyssa wasn’t the only one she told. Upon
Sam’s return, Summer shared the details of everything
Bert had been up to. She was very young—twenty-two,
as Lane learned—but her sense of justice was as strong as
her positive attitude.
It was Sam’s idea to put Summer’s positive attitude to
use in the new Guild position of chief happiness officer.
Summer’s first project was already underway. A Wall of
Win was now up in the reception area. On it were framed
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Guild and Guild-Plus reader emails that praised employ-
ees who’d been especially helpful, along with variety of
framed awards in categories Summer had created for staff
members to earn.
Lane suspected that Hugo was going to be happily
surprised when he saw the wall, upon his return from his
leave of absence. It was just a summer leave, which he’d
arranged immediately after learning that his play—the one
he’d been writing on his phone, a musical about an abu-
sive boss—had won first prize in a first-time playwright’s contest. The prize, which included a small monetary
award, meant that his play would be workshopped at the
Williamstown Theater in Massachusetts.
Bert would not have liked the Wall of Win. There was
not a single place to click on it. But Bert was no longer at the Guild. Last Lane heard, he was now CFO of a new
digital addiction center in Arizona.
As for the Problem Child, Lane assumed the appetite for podcasts would go away, just as everything else did,
replaced by something no one had thought of yet. But in
the meantime, she was relieved to have stumbled upon
the idea for it. The best part was that she had filed away enough Roxie letters from children over the years, letters tucked away in the Never folder since Roxie never
answered letters from children, that she was able to get a quick start. And to her great surprise, doing the Problem Child podcast turned out to be a joy.