Page 19 of Off the Mark
She’d been back home on the block for two years, was now Dean’s wife, but my grandmother still insisted on treating her like a special guest. Mostly because she mistakenly believed that Tabitha was a highly sought-after internet celebrity.
She wasn’t. She was just a videographer with an active social media presence, but Tabitha was happy to avoid dish duty. And my grandmother loved putting me and Dean to work—a habit she’d developed when we were rowdy kids with way too much energy.
I stepped over by the refrigerator to fill the cabinets too tall for my grandmother to reach, passing the pencil marks in the doorway left over from her measuring Dean and me. Until ninth grade when we both shot up like giants and she made us mark our own heights.
Alice O’Callaghan had moved to South Philly from Ireland with my great-grandparents when she was young. They’d made a home for themselves in this neighborhood like so many other Irish immigrants, along with folks newly arrived from Italy and Poland at the time. My grandmother still carried the strong, musical lilt of her Irish accent. Still lived in the row home she’d grown up in, then I’d grown up in after she took me in.
My own row home was a measly three blocks north of here, but I spent at least half the week with her. Everyone on 10th Street knew that if I was away for more than forty-eight hours, my phone would blow up with her all-caps text messages: IT’S BEEN WEEKS SINCE YOU CAME BY. WHY HAVE YOU ABANDONED ME?
Tabitha’s delighted laughter rang out from the front room, turning Dean’s head. “What embarrassing early childhood memory is your grandmother sharing in there anyway?”
I peeked around the doorway and confirmed my suspicions. “Shit. It’s the photo albums with our school pictures.”
“Dean,” Tabitha called out, “I’m sorry but you were so cute in kindergarten I literally cannot stand it.Cannot. Stand. It.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “Goddammit.”
“Don’t Midge and Maria show her this stuff constantly? No offense to both your mothers, but they are legit obsessed with you.”
He lifted one giant shoulder. “She’s seen some, but I try to carefully monitor the activity over there for this exact reason. Besides, I think Alice has more pictures of me than my parents do.”
“She loves you big time,” I said.
“Dean, for the love of god, why are you wearing a bow tie in first grade?” Tabitha yelled.
He pretended to be mad, but his expression was too affectionate. He ducked his head into the other room, dishrag over his shoulder.
“Alice,” he said, with mock sternness, “you promised you’d keep the pictures of me and Rowan as babies to a minimum tonight.”
My grandmother sniffed indignantly. “I promised no such thing. Please don’t repeat malicious lies in my kitchen. This is a holy, God-fearing household.”
I laughed. “No fucking way any part of this house is holy.”
Dean and I went back to our positions at the now-fixed sink, me washing, him drying. A common chore we’d done together more times than I could count.
“Thanks for peeking under the hood down there,” I said, cocking my head at the old pipes. “I feel bad always having you fix shit.”
“Fixing shit is a thing I know how to do.” He handed me a dirty glass. “You could have had me deal with the kitchen flooding issue at the center, you know. I don’t mind doing it.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not anymore. You’re the coordinator for one of the largest food programs for seniors in this whole-ass city. Asking you to also fix everything in that ramshackle building feels like too much.”
“It’s not though.”
“It is,” I said simply. “And the person you brought in did great. Long as we don’t have chairs floating like sailboats in there, I’m happy.”
He was quiet. We could hear the soft murmur of Tabitha and my grandmother in the front room. The low chatter of neighbors on the small concrete patios next to us. Some music, a hint of fragrant smoke from whoever was barbecuing down the block.
“So…uh, were you gonna tell me that Charlie Maddox is in town? Or why I saw her leaving your office looking upset?” Dean asked suddenly.
I paused, mid-scrub, my heart rate speeding up. It’d been two days since that blond badass from my past stood in my office, asking for a favor I had to decline.
She’d dominated my every waking thought ever since.
“Nowthatwas a weird day. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.” Yeah, because I simplyforgot. “They’re holding the women’s moto championships here in the city, so she was swinging by to say hey.”
He leaned back against the oven and crossed his arms. “She randomly stopped by at a neighborhood rec center, deep in South Philly?”
I dried my hands, then propped myself up on the barstool by the back door. “I was pretty surprised too. But I wanna know how in the hell you remembered Charlie. That wasway backin my pre-major league days.”
