sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
Lane sniffed and smelled smoke. Had someone been
smoking? She sniffed again. It didn’t smell like cigarettes.
“Smells like someone burned toast.” She cracked opened
the window and set to work, with Henry’s help, tearing
off the thick casing. When they were done, she lifted up
the cushion. “A pullout. Like in our apartment.”
“What’s that noise?” Henry asked.
Lane stopped and listened. “Uncle Albie’s TV. He
watches a lot of TV.”
Sylvie walked in, her eyes just visible above the bed-
ding piled in her arms. “Here we go.”
“Uncle Albie’s back,” Henry reported. “We can hear
his TV. Can I watch with him?”
“That’s my TV,” Sylvie said. “Did you know there’s
a channel where Law & Order is on all day? Would you like to watch Law & Order with me?” she asked Henry.
“Mom—that is not appropriate for a six-year-old.”
“Why is the window open? The air-conditioning is
on.” Sylvie closed the window. “Would you like to go
out and play now, dear?”
54
Rules for Moving
Her mother was not making sense. “What is there for
Henry to do outside? It’s hot. The pool is off-limits. Do
you even have a ball for him to kick around?”
“No.” Her mother’s face went flat.
Lane regretted her harsh tone. Why did it always go
like this? “You know what might be fun? A sprinkler.
Would you like to do that, Henry? Run around under
a sprinkler?”
“No sprinkler,” Sylvie said quietly. “Underground
irrigation.” She stopped to think. “I know. You can help
your grandfather. He’s got lots of tools. Hammers and
drills. Would you like to watch him drill?”
“Can I?” Henry asked Lane.
She did not have a good feeling about this but Henry
looked so excited.
“Didn’t you tell me you were going to have to do
some work while you’re here?” Sylvie asked. “You don’t
want to keep your Roxie readers waiting.”
Was that sarcasm? No. It was her father who made
fun of her column. Her mother was a fan. And she was
right; there was no vacation from email. “It’s fine with
me if it’s fine with Grandpa,” Lane told Henry. “But ask
first. Don’t assume.”
“It’s always better to be outside, don’t you think?”
Sylvie asked Henry as she guided him down the stairs.
“Nothing like fresh air.”
“I thought you were taking him to help Dad in the
garage?” Lane called. No answer. She checked her watch
and laughed when she realized she wasn’t checking to see
the time it was; she was checking to see how much time
was left before they could leave.
55
CHAPTER FIVE
Organizing the garage made no sense to Lane. For start-
ers, she couldn’t see the point. Aside from the empty
cartons stacked in the corners and the rusty implements
hanging from the hooks, the garage was empty. Other
than throwing away a rake and a push broom laced with
cobwebs that suggested it hadn’t been disturbed in a while, what was it he needed to organize? Even if what Lane’s
father claimed was true— Just because you can’t see a mess doesn’t mean it isn’t there—why now, this week, the one week she was visiting, to tackle a project he said himself he’d been putting off for years?
“You’ve got to admit it’s a beauty,” Marshall said, tap-
ping the large squat box that sat on the melting macadam.
“Shipped overnight. The things they can do. Maybe I
should have added you two to the order. Could have
saved you a bucket of nickels. You think that would have
been more fun, Henry? Coming by box?” He started to
push the box up the sloping driveway. “Is no one going
to help me?”
“Ridiculous,” Lane muttered, but she helped anyway.
So did her mother, both of them pulling the box from the
front while Marshall and Henry pushed from the back.
It was slow going, but shimmy by shimmy they got the
56
Rules for Moving
dumb box—that’s how she thought of it now—into the
garage.
“Bravo!” Marshall applauded. “Henry, let me see
those muscles.” Henry flexed his imaginary muscles and
his grandfather clapped again. “You are going to be a
strong one. Now watch carefully.” He pulled a box cutter
out of his back pocket. “This is important.” He saw Lane
scowling. “Someone’s got to teach the boy things like this now.” He lined up the cutter with the seam of the box.
“Okay, son, number one rule for all jobs: Choose the Right Tool.” He sliced easily through the tape. “Number two
rule: Give Your Team Specific Directions. Don’t leave it
to chance. Take it from me. Chance doesn’t work.”
Lane and Henry’s specific directions were to hold
the box steady. Sylvie had moved back to stand against
the wall, as if in protest, so she didn’t get any directions.
Marshall put himself in charge of lifting the contents
out of the box. When he was done he admired the pile
of metal on the floor. “This is their premium model.
Extra-large capacity. Extra-strong security.” He picked
up a steel leg. “Talk about heft. Talk about heavy-gauge
construction.”
Why talk about that? Why express love for what
Lane could read on the side of the box was a seventy-
eight-inch-high steel cabinet with lock. What about
expressing love to the boy who’d just lost his father? The boy who, despite his original excitement at the chance to
help his grandfather with his tools, was now struggling
not to cry. There really was no predicting when grief
would hit.
“Fine, I’ll read the manual,” Marshall said, as if some-
one had been haranguing him. He read slowly, first the
57
Nancy Star
cautions, then the contents, then the step-by-step assembly.
“See how simple? Screw. Plug. Tighten. Done.”
Lane turned at the sound of Henry sniffing and saw
a single tear escape from his wide-open eyes. She moved
closer and took his hand. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go
inside.”
As Marshall continued to admire the dumb box
and even dumber cabinet, Sylvie slowly circled the pile
of hinges, legs and posts and asked, “Why do we need
this?”
“Why?” Marshall heaved an exasperated sigh and then
noticed Lane and Henry heading toward the kitchen door.
“Shouldn’t leave a job half-done,” he called to Henry.
“Things slip away if you don’t make an effort.” He turned
to Sylvie. “Storage. Remember? We decided. Storage.”
h h
h h
In the morning when Lane and Henry came down for
breakfast, Marshall was back in the garage.
“Can’t that wait until we leave?” she asked her mother.
“Is it going to be the end of the world if he doesn’t or-
ganize the gar
age this week?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.” Sylvie’s eyes darted to the
clock. “How did it get to be so late? I haven’t made Albie his tray.”
Lane followed her mother’s glance, first to the clock,
then to the stairs. “Is Uncle Albie back?”
“Oh.” Sylvie sat down. “No. I forgot.”
“Are you okay?” Lane asked her.
“I’m fine,” her mother said. And quickly added, “Why
wouldn’t I be?” She looked at Henry. “How are you, dear?
What interesting thing would you like to do today?”
58
Rules for Moving
Unsure of how to respond, Henry looked to his mother
for help.
“First things first,” Lane told him. “You have some
schoolwork to get done.”
After breakfast, Lane helped get Henry settled on the
sofa with a pencil and the math packet his teacher had
given him to work on while he was away; combining
and comparing was the lesson. When she returned to
the kitchen, her mother was gone and her father was in
her place.
“Is Mom okay?” Lane asked him.
“You’re the expert. You tell me.”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Maybe you should write a letter to Roxie and see
what she thinks.” He grumbled the rest. “People asking
strangers for advice. Might as well use a Ouija board.
That’s what you are.”
“I’m a Ouija board?”
“A stranger.”
“Not everyone has someone to ask.”
Her father grunted. “People need to learn how to
make do for themselves. To try hard and if that doesn’t
work, to try harder. You’re not dumb, Turtle, but you
don’t know everything.”
For a brief moment Lane let herself wonder what Roxie
would say if she got a letter about Marshall or Sylvie or
any of it—but Henry walked in, so she let the thought
go. She was grateful for the interruption; nothing good
would come from thinking about that.
In his hand, Henry held a worksheet that had a tear
in the center of the page and a trail of pink eraser crumbs flaking off, like dandruff. He’d been struggling. “Got a
problem there, buddy?”
59
Nancy Star
“If you want advice from your mother,” Marshall said,
“you better get in line.”
Henry looked around the kitchen to see where the
line was.
“That was a joke,” Lane explained. “Which was hard
to tell, because it wasn’t funny. May I see?” Henry handed over his paper and Lane read the instructions aloud. “Ring the right answer.”
“Are they still telling children to do that?” Sylvie
asked as she came into the kitchen. “Why on earth
they don’t just say circle the right answer I’ll never know.
Generations of children have been scurrying about look-
ing for a bell to ring and for—” She stopped. “Did you
hear that? Is that the van?” She looked at the clock and
then at her husband. “It’s much too soon for Albie to be
back, isn’t it?” Marshall threw up his hands as if in sur-
render and left the room. “Your father gets so ornery,”
she told Lane. “It’s because he’s alone too much,” she
explained to Henry and then asked, “Would you like to
help him again, dear? You did a wonderful job of cheer-
ing him up yesterday.”
Henry looked at his mother, who said, “Only if you
want to.”
“Why wouldn’t he want to?” Sylvie asked. “Come,
Henry. Let’s go see what he’s up to now.” She put out
a hand and Henry took it and followed her to the door
that led from the kitchen to the garage.
“You don’t have to,” Lane called after him, but he
kept walking.
“He wants to,” her mother insisted. “Go do your work.
Lunch is at noon.”
h h
h h
60
Rules for Moving
At noon, Lane came down from the guest room where
she’d been working and found her father at the coffeepot
pouring a refill and her mother staring into a glass bowl
on the counter. There was a mound of chopped celery at
the bottom of the bowl and a bag of frozen corn on the
counter. Lunch preparation—if that was what it was—
seemed to have come to a halt.
“What’s going on?” Lane asked.
“Here she comes,” Marshall said. “Ready to make a
big megillah out of nothing.”
“Where’s Henry?” Lane asked.
Marshall glanced around. “I don’t know.”
“I thought he was with you. Henry?” Lane called.
“Henry?”
When Henry didn’t answer, Marshall went out to see
if he was in the garage and Lane raced upstairs to check
the bedrooms.
“Not in the garage or the lanai,” her father reported
when they met up in the foyer.
Lane felt a wave of dread. “The pool.”
“Door’s locked,” Marshall said. “Pool’s covered.”
“He must have gone outside is all,” Sylvie said. “To
play.”
Lane ran out to the backyard but Henry wasn’t there.
And why would he be there? The yard was nothing more
worms had abandoned it. “Henry?” she called anyway.
“Henry?”
She was standing on the sidewalk in front of the house,
on the edge of panic, when she saw a garbage truck up the
street parked at a strange angle. The motor was on and
rumbling loud. The running lights stared like a pair of
oversize eyes. The front grill was set in what looked like 61
Nancy Star
a toothy smirk. The driver was slowly heading toward
her. His limp was what she noticed first. That he was car-
rying something was what she noticed next. Henry. He
was carrying Henry. Henry’s arms were wrapped tight
around his neck. The man said something to Henry and
then stopped and put him down.
Henry ran fast and when he got to her, she scooped
him up and asked, “What happened?” He hugged her
tight but wouldn’t say.
The garbage man made his way, slow and steady,
toward them. “He’s fine,” he told Lane and then quickly
explained what happened: how he’d picked up the giant
box in front of her parents’ house and hoisted it into his truck, how he’d had no idea a boy was inside the box,
sleeping, until he heard a noise and stopped the truck and climbed into the back to check.
At some point Lane dropped to her knees and grabbed
Henry in hug so fierce there was no air between them.
“It’s okay,” she said and kept repeating it, to him and to herself. “It’s going to be okay.”
At first she didn’t notice that a crowd had gathered.
Like lint to fleece, by texts and calls, news had rippled up and down the block. People pressed in, voices rising in a
jumble of words. “It’s all right now.” “The boy’s okay.”
Someone took out their phone and then others followed.
Soon all f
aces were obscured. It was as if by silent and
unanimous decision, and without any clear reason, that
they all began to film the encounter.
Snippets of conversation reached her. “Look how
upset—” “He can’t even imagine—” A chant started. “Hug.
Hug. Hug.” And then, “Hug it out. Hug it out. Hug it out.”
In the end, Lane did hug the driver, an awkward,
self-conscious hug in which her body stayed rigid, as far
62
Rules for Moving
away from his as possible. To her it felt as if they’d been cajoled into putting on a show, egged on by a crowd
that, once they got what they wanted—a tidy and happy
resolution to a near tragedy—applauded and retreated to
their respective homes.
Finally it was just them, Lane, Henry, the driver and
Marshall, who had come outside to see what all the fuss
was about and now stood awkwardly, unsure of what to
do next. The driver—Lane read the metal name tag af-
fixed to his shirt pocket—Reggie, made the first move:
he walked over to Henry and, with a grimace, kneeled
down on his bum knee so he could see him eye to eye.
He extended his hand.
Henry, ashen faced and silent, remained perfectly still.
As far as Lane could tell, he hadn’t blinked since the driver set him down. Shock, she realized. All of them were in
shock. She gave Henry a nudge. He stretched out his arm
and his small hand disappeared into Reggie’s fleshy palm.
“Tell him thank you,” Lane whispered, but Henry
wouldn’t so she said it instead. “Say goodbye,” she prompt-ed, but Henry wouldn’t say that either. “Do you want to
come in for a minute?” she asked the driver.
“No.” It was Marshall who answered. He stood behind
her, his body stiff as a plank, tipped back.
She swung around to face him. “No?”
“Your mother isn’t feeling very—”
“Come inside,” she told Reggie, ignoring her father.
“Have a glass of water. Catch your breath.”
Her father objected again. “I really don’t think that’s—”
“Dad,” Lane cut him off.
“It’s okay,” Reggie said. “No need to be cross. Your
dad’s just shook up. Right, Grandpa? Who wouldn’t be
shook up?” He looked at Henry. “You’re shook up too.
63
Nancy Star
I can see that. Look, son, I’ve got six grandkids and they do all kinds of things when they get bored. Comes with
the territory. You think you’re the first boy who ever
climbed into a box and fell asleep? I can tell you, you