Frost

 “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate . . . your appreciation.” Really?  That’s the best you could do?

Now he looked at me and smiled. “And I appreciate your appreciation of my appreciation.”

“That’s so sweet.” I put a hand on my heart. “I appreciate your appreciation of my appreciation of your appreciation.”

We laughed—holding eyes. As I stared, something moved behind him. I looked just in time to see the photo he’d hung fall right off the wall, onto the bed. It landed with a clatter as the Plexiglas jostled in the frame.

David turned. “Oops,” he said.

Because we’d smoothed over the tension between us, I allowed myself a little dig. “I think, maybe, it’s better if you leave the home-improvement projects to me.”

After David left, I couldn’t settle down to homework quite yet—the conversation had been too intense and now I had too much on my mind. I decided to see if there was anything I could do to fix Celeste’s closet door. She kept having trouble opening it, and I didn’t know if it was a problem with the knob, or if the wood was swelling.

I tried the handle and the door opened smoothly. I turned the knob back and forth, looked at the movement of the latch. It seemed fine. I shut the door and opened it again, seeing if the wood stuck. It didn’t. I couldn’t tell what the problem was. I leaned my back against the doorframe, shut my eyes, and breathed in. My skin tingled. Then the emotion—that sense of contentment, safety—penetrated my cells. It’s weird, how scents can be so powerful. My mother once told me that smells are key to selling a house. Freshly baked bread, cinnamon, and coffee are best, she’d said.

 The day I came home from school in eighth grade and our own house smelled of baking bread, I wanted to vomit. Instead, I ran upstairs, to the one place the smell couldn’t reach.

Wait a minute.

I breathed in again.

 The attic.

That was it, wasn’t it? My attic fort in our house in Cambridge. That’s what the closet smell reminded me of. I slid down to the floor and folded my legs into my body. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to make the connection.

 Our house was a fixer-upper; my parents had always planned on turning the spacious attic into a living space. But, in the meantime, it had been a curious kid’s heaven—full of my parents’ and even my grandparents’ histories in junk and paper: love letters, old school report cards, yearbooks, clothing, toys. . . .

 If the whole attic was my kingdom, my fort was my castle. It was hidden behind a rusty file cabinet and a coatrack where someone’s ancient furs hung in plastic bags, just a simple pine frame, covered by an old sheet, with pillows and a few stuffed animals inside. An older cousin had helped me build it, and I’d sworn her to secrecy. What was the point in having somewhere to disappear to if other people knew where I went?

I squeezed my knees closer to my chest now, remembering the day the Dumpster had arrived, the week we’d moved out. “Okay if I trash the wood from your old playhouse, Bean?” my dad had said. Turned out, my parents had known about it the whole time. One of the many things I’d become disillusioned about.

“We’ve grown apart,” my mother said when she’d told me they were splitting up. “All we have in common are you and the house, Leenie.”

Well, yes. Wasn’t that their life?

We were a trio, after all. A unit. Whenever we played the “what building would you be?” game, I’d tell them that Mom was the downstairs floor of our house, I was the middle floor, and Dad was the top, not separate buildings at all. They let me believe I was right.

It was obvious why I’d thought that. I’d lived in that house from the time I was born, and fixing it up was my parents’ passion. Why had they bothered if they knew we were just going to sell it to strangers?

After the divorce, they both moved to condos: my mother to an all-glass, modern monstrosity in LA, where she was originally from, and my dad to a supposedly “luxury” one-bedroom on the outskirts of Cambridge with hear-through walls and hollow doors. I was reading Catcher in the Rye the first time I saw my dad’s place. I decided his condo was the architectural equivalent of Holden’s phonies. I couldn’t believe my dad, of all people, was living there. He said it was temporary; that was three years ago.

Now, I ran my hand lightly across Celeste’s clothes. Was David trying to bring his sister back to a less messy time, by being so protective of her? Maybe they’d had an idyllic childhood, with a father who wasn’t sick yet. Maybe David’s vigilance was an attempt at keeping Celeste safe from the ugliness of reality.

 Maybe he was trying to build her a fort.