The Castles at Night

Early June, a Tuesday, maybe, and she sat us down and explained it all, speaking slowly as if it were something we could understand.

“Just for a little while,” she said, running her hands through our hair, her eyes elsewhere. “We’ll stay here until they come and tell us we need to go. It’s like a waiting game, see?”

I didn’t, nor did Charlotte, but we nodded along at her as if we did, eager to please the sadness we could hear in her voice. I was twelve, Charlotte six.

“There’ll … be a man coming,” she continued, “a man from the bank—you remember how you used to go with me, right, Luke? With the big columns out front—well, if someone from there comes when I’m gone, you’ll tell me, okay?”

I imagined the teller who used to be there when we’d come, tall, dark hair like mine, who would take SweeTARTS from a bowl I couldn’t see, pass me pieces while my mother scribbled away on a piece of paper. I nodded to her again, smiling in the way she liked.

“So, we’ll get to come back?” Charlotte asked, and our mother was quiet, looking at Charlotte, her own smile small, eyes unblinking.

“Of course, honey.” She rubbed the side of her face with her hand. “Of course.”

The house was a big house with three floors, wooden stilts on the hillside, a ravine out back that led to the ocean. Too big, even when we were four instead of three, but I never much thought that then. These weren’t things you thought of, the oversights of a child.

Charlotte and I would wake up early, kneel on the couch in front of the window, our hands tight over the back edges of the cushions, and look out on to the road, waiting for the man our mother said would come.  

“Is that him?” my sister would whisper, peeking out at an old man jogging up the hill.

“No,” I’d sigh, “that’s not him,” as if I knew such a thing, as if the vision I had in my head was who the man would be. Others might walk by, too: someone with his dog, or a man talking on the phone, and one of them might remind me of our dad, the gruffness in their voice, the speed in their walk. Though I’d want to, I’d never say as much to Charlotte, never say, “Look, isn’t that just like him?”

Sometimes there’d be a knock, a heavy thud that would rattle the brass knob, unsettle the peeling wood. We would crouch down, giggling and terrified all at once. However, as I parted the curtain and looked through, the other side would often be a postman or the odd solicitor, and we’d lie behind the doorway, waiting to hear their heavy feet scrunch away over the gravel entry.

*     *     *

The mornings grew warmer. Charlotte and I would leave the house while our mother was gone and go out into the backyard, where a narrow cement pathway led down into a canyon, thick with brush. We would slide through the sage, careful not to make any noise, as if the man might hear us, snap us up as if we were children in fairy tales.

From a clearing north of the house, we could see the brief V-shape of the ocean, the distant whitecaps blinking like far-off Christmas lights. Charlotte would sometimes look out and imagine us living in a little boat, way on the horizon, where the water seemed cool and calm.

“But you can’t swim yet, Char,” I’d say, shaking my head, tearing at the branch of a nearby tree. “What if something happened? Mom would kill me.”

She’d twirl her hair, turn her head like a dog, and I’d never know what she was thinking in those moments, if she knew the answers to things before she would ask them.

“Well”—she straightened her shoulders—“you can teach me.”

“Yeah, right.”

I tore off a new leaf from the branch. There was the thought of my grip on her slipping, her tiny body carried off by the strong tide. There was always that then. The fear that things could just slip away, like foam in the current, that if your hands didn’t hold on tightly, you would lose whatever was within them.

But Charlotte would beg, stomp her feet like a kid in the movies, and so I’d ask our mother if we could walk the mile and a half down to the beach, where the coast highway was busy with traffic, the sand dotted with shining torsos, colorful umbrellas. Since our dad had left, she was working at the convenience store at the bottom of the hill, near the water, selling gum and cigarettes to the out-of-towners heading to the beach. She finally agreed that, yes, okay, once a week we could join her.

The walk would begin early, before the morning fog had receded, Charlotte still with sleep in her eyes, my backpack for the day heavy. The streets would be silent, save for the slapping of our sandals against the asphalt. It wasn’t often that I’d see my mother’s face like this, its color the same gray as the morning clouds. 

“You know this isn’t forever, kids, right?” Her eyes would be tired, creases channeling underneath. We’d flank each side of her, our little hands tightening against her own. I remember hers often being cold, my own trying hard to warm them. “Life has a way,” she said, taking a deep sigh, “of turning around.”

I wondered if she believed that, the triteness of it, or if it was just something you said to a little boy and a little girl on your right, on your left.

When she’d say goodbye and go into the store, Charlotte and I would walk to the sand across the street, and I never knew what to tell her, to explain why our mother looked the way she did, said the things she said. I would steer her questions away in those moments, daring her to dip her toes into the icy water or count the sand crabs skittering from under our feet. As we’d inch further into the sea, past the sand line, I would hold her back in the surf, just like I said I would, teaching her to float as the waves crashed in front of us.

“How far could you swim, Luke?” she asked me one afternoon. “To that island, you think?”

I looked over, my eyes squinting at Catalina on the horizon.

“I’d say so.”

It was twenty-two miles, far outside the realm of possibility, but to a boy, these things are possible.

“Could you take us there one day?”

I stared down at her, her eyes nearly closed, as if she were making a wish.

“What about mom?” I asked. “And dad?”

“They’d be there, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!” she shouted, laughing, and she splashed the water behind us with her feet.

*     *     *

Mid-July, a particularly foggy afternoon. Saturday, the three of us watching television.

We could hear his car over the cartoons, a loud, throaty sound, then his heavy steps along the gravel, disturbing the otherwise quiet of the street. My sister knew the sound, and she ran to the front door, jumping up and down, waiting for him to pick her up, spin her in the air like he used to. But he slid past her, pushing my mother and me off the couch, turning over the cushions, ripping open drawers.

“Where is it, Maria? Where the fuck is it?”

His eyes were bloodshot, and he smelled the way our cousins did when they came back from the bars downtown, long past midnight. I wasn’t used to seeing him without a suit on, with his hair greasy and uncombed, and there was a certain mania to his movements that made me question if what I saw was true.

Mom moved quickly, hustling the two of us upstairs and into her bedroom, putting us under the covers, locking the door. I remember the way his shouts became muffled beneath the sheet, like she had a remote and she could turn down the sound, just for us. He knew every room well, and he tore through them with an equal fury, a rabid animal searching for something lost. I noticed the way her body and breath shook in unison, and I worried that he might find it, too, whatever it was—money, files, some hidden treasure, some thing only they knew.

Then there was just the sound of our chests moving. The air growing warm, stale under the covers. Charlotte fidgeting. Thirty minutes before his pace slowed down.

He trudged up the stairs, the wood creaking, and he sat on the hardwood outside the bedroom, leaning his back against the door. “I’m sorry, I just—how about letting me see the kids, huh?” His voice was slow, kind. “Luke? Charlotte? You in there?”

Mom put her index finger to her mouth, holding my sister by the elbow.

“Can’t we go?” Charlotte whispered to us, straining against our grip. I held her, too, and the three of us sat like this for nearly an hour, arms connected in an odd arrangement of resistance, until we heard our dad's heavy footsteps begin again, the engine of his car start and fade down the road.

“Listen to me.” Our mother’s voice was hoarse, tired. “Okay? Listen to me.”

We always did.

“We don’t need anyone else, you hear me, you understand?”

We nodded, our little eyes on hers, and I want to say we understood then, that we believed this, and nothing more. But I think that the both of us still wished we could sit in his passenger seat again, feel the wind against our faces as he sped down the highway, the sun bright ahead.

*     *     *

She was more careful after that, and the next day, a locksmith came to change the locks on the doors. Mom rarely let strangers into the home, but I think she liked the idea of someone who could be trusted with people’s keys. He was a nice man, her age, with a face of stubble and long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Charlotte and I stood near the couch, watching him open his toolbox against the floor.

“Nice home you kids have here. What does your father do?”

“Business,” my sister said shyly, peeping from behind my waist.

The man laughed, turning a screw in the door handle. “Ah, of course. I’m glad to see some are still doing well. Maybe I should be in business, huh?” He winked at us, and I could smell the sweat from his work shirt, the navy cotton turned dark under the arms. The hair on his wrist was thick, like an animal’s fur, and I imagined him holding me, the warmth of his elbow crease tight against my neck, feelings I hadn’t yet quite known the meaning of.

“I like your job,” my sister said, and he laughed again, looking behind us. His eyes were brown like mine.

“Nice kids you have, miss.”

Our mother smiled from across the foyer, something I hadn’t seen since our father left. They talked long after the door was fixed, and I liked the idea of her happy, the way I remember her before Charlotte was born, when the three of us would walk along the beach, and Dad would throw seaweed over his shoulders, pretending to be a monster chasing us through the sand.

“Aren’t you my big strong man?” he would say to me, catching me, lifting me into the air. I’d be laughing in his arms. “Hey, look, you’re not scared of monsters, huh?”

No, I’d scream, no!, and he’d pull me further into his chest, the comfort of his skin, the sound of his heart beating.

As the locksmith drove away that day, Charlotte and I ran after him, the ground hot on our feet, playing a game we knew we couldn’t win. Through the back window we saw his arm rise up as the truck faded, a gentle waving motion, like someone saying both good-bye and hello.

*     *     *

Another morning, late July. Our mother quietly slipped in through the front door, then shouted our names from the entryway. She looked mischievous, the way a child might who’s done something they’re not supposed to. She led us out onto the driveway, where a wiry-haired thing, the color of rusted iron, the size of a Thermos, was tied to a small palm tree.

“One of the gals at work, her dog had a whole litter.” She looked at us expectantly, waiting for a reaction. “Can you believe it?”

Charlotte ran to the puppy, squeezing it so tight I worried its bones might snap. I stared back at it, unsmiling. I was making our breakfast, lunches, my mom now picking up extra shifts at the convenience store. I knew she could not take care of him, that Charlotte was too young, that the responsibility would fall on me to clean his water bowl, replace his food, take him out each morning while the grass was still wet with dew.

But seeing the two of them, as they fawned over the little creature, I thawed, if just a little. That night, I remember how we stayed up long past our regular bedtime, the late-night fog blanketing the windows, and we dreamed up names for him.

“Penny!” my sister shouted.

“That’s a girl’s name,” I said.

“So?”

“What about Alfred? Look at his curly mustache,” I said, Charlotte groaning in reply.

My mother was silent, her gaze lost in the comforter as she twirled my hair on the bed. “Anchor,” she suddenly said, definitively. “We’ll call him Anchor. He’ll be the little thing that keeps us together. Grounded.” She winked at us with the last word and grabbed our shoulders, pulling us inward until we fell asleep there in her room.

We brought him to the park nearly every day, careful not to let his feet touch the grass, Mom warning us about disease. I liked that, the way she could care about something so small. We took turns walking with him along the greenery, nestled in our arms like an infant.

“This is nice, baby boy,” my mom said to me, as we watched Charlotte run along the cement pathway encircling the park.

“Yeah,” I said, my eyes toward the clouds. She let out a huge sigh and leaned back, spread her toes against the grass, arms behind her head, looking up at the sun.

“We deserve this, you know?” she said. “To be happy. Like we are now.”

I smiled, mimicking her movements, my head falling against her, lungs filling wide with air. I wanted to believe her then, to think such things were possible. And it seemed, lying there, our faces warm, that they were. I closed my eyes, hearing Anchor barking at the sky, the feel of her chest against my head.

*     *     *

The locksmith returned more regularly, no longer in his work uniform, but shorts and flip-flops. At night, he and our mother would go out to the bars near the shore, leaving us with the odd cereal box or dried fruit snack found in the cabinet. I would put Charlotte to bed, lying with her until she fell asleep, listening to the ceiling fan, counting the blots of stucco on the wall.

Sometime after, I’d wake to the sound of laughter in the entryway, my mom shushing the voice of a man. The wooden floors of the house would creak from the door to her bedroom, and their voices would turn into muffled shouts through the wall. I wondered what he looked like, moaning in the dark.

He cooked for us in the morning, the smell of bacon and burning toast filling the kitchen. His scrambled eggs often came out rubbery, and I thought of the way our father would slip a little milk into the pan, as if it were his own little secret.

“How’s summer, kids?”

My sister recounted the trivialities of her day—learning to swim, running through the canyon, walking Anchor up and down the shore. The man smiled at every word, as if Charlotte were the most interesting girl in the world.

“You guys like the beach, huh?” He looked at both of us then, scanning across the kitchen with a half-grin, one hand under his chin, another pointing his fork in each of our directions. Of course he knew the answer: Our skin was as bronze as copper pipe; grains of sand were inside every floorboard and stretch of the carpet. “How about this? Every weekend I’ll come, and the four of us will go down there. To the beach. How does that sound?”

We didn’t say anything at first, but our widening smiles betrayed us, my own heart beating in a particular way, and we both looked to our mother for approval. She played the role of reluctant parent, but I could see she wanted this.

 Our legs swung freely as we’d skip down the hill, his arms heavy with the weight of the cooler and umbrella. He was skinnier than our father, though I found they walked just the same, tall and striding, head always up. Anchor ran just a few feet ahead, his face turning back to us every so often, as if he were afraid, too, that any one of us might just disappear.

For those few weeks, we would march toward the same patch of sand, a sanctuary nestled somewhere between the jutting cliffside and lifeguard tower. Lying on the blanket, we looked just like any other family along the shore, happy to be in the company of the others, where the only worry was whether one had enough sunscreen or whether the tide might inch too quickly and soak the edges of the towel, ruin the cities we built in the sand. The locksmith would take turns spinning each of us into the sea, and with each rotation the world seemed different, lighter.

As the sun would set and we began our march back up the hill, I’d turn back to see the sandcastles that Charlotte and I made, still standing tall on the edges of the shore.

“What happens?” she asked me one morning.

“To what?”

“The castles. At night. Where do they go?”

I looked at her, brushing the stray strands of hair from her eyes, and I remember smiling, for it seemed like a childish question to me then, as if at twelve, I already had the wisdom of the world. But she stared at me long, the green of her eyes soft like our dad’s, and I realized, without much thinking about it, I didn’t have the answer.

*     *     *

Late August. We all began our usual walk down the hill when we heard the familiar sound of his engine encroaching upward. The three of us stopped, but the locksmith lumbered ahead. He looked so happy in that walk, the walk of a man who didn’t worry about his destination.

There was some shouting from the driver’s side window, a squeak from the parking brake. I didn’t scream when Dad hit him, hand on bone, the cooler crashing onto the street, the various soda cans rolling down the hill. I grabbed Charlotte as my mother ran in between them, her arms outspread against both men, something out of a painting. He came over to us, and he took Charlotte and me by the wrists, wrestling our limp bodies into his backseat, the faint smell of rubber pouring in through the open window as he drove down the hill.

The inside of the car was warm, and he asked us if we had enough air, the cadence of a taxi driver. It was a short drive up the canyon, the sun struggling to break through the canopy, and I was both scared and happy, for here was my father, here was my dad, in front of me now. The three of us together again, the smell of his old cologne, french fry wrappers crinkling under our feet. I leaned forward, waiting to see if he would notice me, sitting there in between, but his eyes stayed on the road, like someone unsure where they were going.

His apartment was dark, and when we walked in, I saw a patch of fruit flies hovering over the sink. We sat on his couch, the backs of our knees sticking to the fake leather, and Charlotte fidgeted, my wrist sore. There was that feeling again, that questioning of what was real, the uncanniness of the place I was in, the man that I saw.

He sat across from us in a plastic fold-up chair, the type our mother used to bring out to the backyard when we had guests. He looked different here, like a dog that had caught its tail, uncertain what to do, what to say. I had never seen him unshaven before, his face a shadow, blond with flecks of gray. One of his knees was bouncing, and he stared at each of us, his body hunched over and fingers interlaced.

“You guys hungry?”

Charlotte and I looked at each other. She seemed as if she wanted to speak, her eyes big, the embers of his words still warm, but neither of us could answer.

“What about you, big man? You getting hungry?” And he leaned forward, jabbed at my arm. I winced. “Hey, that didn’t hurt,” he said. “Did it?”

I shook my head, lying. He then stood up as quickly as he had sat down, walking the few steps to the kitchen, opening cupboards he likely knew were empty, turning the utensils in the drawer.

“Okay, let’s see, how about some sandwiches? I’ve got—well, there’s some peanut butter here, and—” He crouched down, looking at the shelves near the sink, his voice muffled before he rose back up. “Well, I guess peanut butter it is, then.”

I saw him put the two ingredients on the counter, and the knife scratched loudly against the stale bread. Charlotte’s nails dug into my arm, her gaze cast down on the carpet. It was still the morning. I thought of the elaborate breakfasts he used to make, splotches of pancake batter across the countertops, the chocolate chips spilling over. I used to grab little pieces from the bag, my hands barely able to reach, and he would pretend not to see, his elbow prodding the treats further toward me as Mom shook her head, laughing.

“It didn’t have to be like this, you know that, right?” He was nearly shouting, his voice coming through the hole in the kitchenette, the bread wrapper crackling. “Your mother, she … she thinks she can just …” He trailed off, the knife spreading faster. He sniffed, and we looked over to see if he was crying, but he was laughing, quietly, at nothing in particular, staring at the countertop.

He carried over the two sandwiches on paper plates, placing them on the table in front of us. We stared at the crusts while he hovered. The white of the bread seemed gray in the dim light, the peanut butter thin between each slice. “What? You’re not gonna eat?”

We looked up at him, and he laughed again, shaking his head. It was a laugh I didn’t know.

He threw the butter knife across the room, hitting the kitchen wall. Charlotte’s grip on me tightened, and I suddenly understood that I wanted to go home. It was cold, as if a window had opened and all the air from here to the ocean had come blowing in. He drew both hands to his face, rubbing them up and down, up and down, and his silhouette grew darker, a body without a head. I told myself that he was someone else, that this was someone else, of course it was, and as if he heard me, he slowly turned away, disappearing into the narrow hallway, the room again quiet.

An hour. Maybe two. Something like that before our mother finally found us, the minutes still unclear to me—just the sound of her tapping on the window, stirring us from the couch. I slowly unlatched the deadbolt and turned the knob, let Charlotte go out first. I turned to look back, one last time, to see if he was there, to shout at her even, or to hold us again, but there was just the dull glow of the fluorescents, the hallway to his room empty.

*     *     *

The locksmith did not come by much after that. The summer was fading, and he mentioned something about a new job further inland, about being someone always in search of the heat. There were vague promises made to me and my sister, about visits and postcards, but none ever came. The thought of him lingered in the home long after, the smell of his work shirt at the doorway, the sound of his steps along the wood. I would lie in bed and imagine him there, and I wasn’t sure why until years later, recognizing a type of emptiness that only another man could bring. Our mother would feel that the most, would go to their same nightly spots, though now she returned either alone or with someone entirely strange.

I would not see our dad again for two years, Charlotte longer, but there were nights—and I was certain of this, now as much as then—that he came into my room, his suit freshly ironed, hair slicked back, the smell of pine aftershave fresh on his neck. He would be standing at the foot of the door, smiling, leaning against the frame, and my eyes would be open in the darkness of the room. He would stand there until I fell asleep, and I’d always hope in the morning he’d still be there, sitting down maybe, sleeping against the wall, the comfort that comes from just knowing someone’s there. But in the brightness of the day it would just be me and the light, and I would wonder if it had been real, if it were really him at all. Until the next night, and I’d see him standing there again.

When the man from the bank finally did come, I had almost forgotten; I had almost forgotten what my mother had told us, that the house was no longer ours, that we had to give it back.

I watched her at the kitchen table, nodding to him at the other end, his coffee cold. She looked up at us, and the corners of her eyes were a smudge of black, a face that said, “Hey, I told you, right? Didn’t I tell you?” and he looked at us now, too, nodding along as if he could hear her. He placed some papers down on the table, patted my sister’s shoulder, and saw his way out. I read them, pretending like I understood, but they were just words, and I held Charlotte’s hand.

We crawled into the back of the car that evening, suitcases and boxes filling the trunk, Anchor rustling around our feet. Charlotte twisted against the seatbelt, her back now toward the windshield, staring past the tail lights. The house slowly grew dim in the distance, and as she turned back around, she carefully tugged at my arm, leaning into my ear.

“We’re finally going, aren’t we?” she whispered.

“Where?” I said, looking down at her. I was angry then, as I would be for some years, my arms crossed, head still.

“The island!” she squealed, and the crook of her neck slid into my chest, like what else could the answer be, she was saying, if not that? I looked at Catalina, far off on the horizon, and I held her, the wheels of the car bearing heavily down the hillside.

MATTHEW LEMAS

Matthew Lemas is a writer living in Southern California. He earned his MFA from Chapman University, where he also teaches first-year composition.