“Hello?” Dylan called to what she figured was an empty house. Her parents were never quiet. Thanking God for a moment of peace, she hauled her suitcase up to her bedroom while Milo raced happily up and down the stairs. Collapsing into her attic room, she surveyed the damage. It looked like her mother had been using the room as a storage space for her work. She had clearly taken pieces off the bed, but a few easels still stood with glossy coats, drying. Peeping around the easels, she could see Billie’s attempt at self-expression still written on her bedroom walls, along with the Langston Hughes poetry she had painted on the ceiling.
Casting a sideways glance at the twin bed, Dylan started a Things to Clean checklist. Wincing, she watched Milo settle into the armchair by the picture window and made a note to wash the cushion cover along with her sheets. Her aspirational list making was interrupted by her mother’s alto barreling through the wooden beams of the old house.
“Henry, it won’t stand. I’ll go over and tell them myself.”
“Honey, I don’t think you’re wrong. I just don’t think we need to deal with it while they’re at work. Let the Robinsons come home first.”
“No. This is the last straw. Installing a motion light? It shines right in our window whenever some squirrel runs by.” Bernice spoke at an impressive decibel, unfazed by being indoors.
“Where’s Milo?” her father asked as Dylan quietly padded down the dark-wood staircase. The beauty of a third-floor room was that it gave her plenty of time to prepare herself for her parents.
“I hope he’s digging a hole in their front yard,” Bernice spat.
Dylan took in her mother from the top of the second staircase. Ever sturdy, Bernice was largely unchanged in a pair of hiking pants a few inches too short for her tall frame and a winter fleece. Her graying curls were pulled up in a messy bun held by a purple scrunchie. Small spatters of paint ran down the brown skin on her neck where she’d forgotten to wipe her hands before she scratched an itch.
“I’m sure he’s not doing that. Is Neale at work right now?” Henry answered, completely missing Bernice’s sarcasm.
Taking a deep breath, Dylan descended the stairs and answered his earlier question. “Milo’s with me. Passed out on my chair, to be exact.”
“Dylan! You’re home.” Her father still wore his self-proclaimed uniform—a pair of light-blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and tennis shoes. His dark skin made it difficult for anyone except other Black people to determine his age, a trait that supported the general feeling that he had as much energy and enthusiasm as a twenty-five-year-old. His signature large glasses were perched on his nose, amplifying his eyes in line with the “Coke bottle” tradition. He considered them to be the height of fashion, and nothing could convince him otherwise. After pulling her into an effusive bear hug, her father released her directly into her mother’s stern embrace.
“Hello, sweetheart. It’s good to have you home. Your father and I were just discussing the latest Robinson travesty. Those women—”
“Are you thirsty? Tea? Something stronger?” Her father spoke over her mother’s burgeoning rant.
“It’s ten fifteen a.m.”
“That’s one fifteen p.m. in New York.”
“Still not acceptable for drinking,” her mother shot over her shoulder as she wandered toward the kitchen. “Let me finish. She can deal with them, and then she can have a drink. By then it will be five p.m. or later in all American time zones.”
Dylan started, “Mom, the thing with the neighbors—”
“Not in Hawaii,” her father added.
“Not helpful,” her mother countered.
Dylan felt like her head was on fire. Her parents were already speaking at light speed over one another, and Neale wasn’t even home yet.
“In Guam it’ll be ten a.m.; then we’re back where we started.” Her father was downright giddy over this.
“Are we considering unincorporated US territories?” her mother asked, temporarily distracted. “If so, then it appears there is never a good time to drink.”
“Mom, I’m not going over to the neighbors’. I’m almost—”
“Or it’s always a good time to drink. Glass half-full!”
“Of tea.”
“Or whiskey.”
“How about both?” Dylan asked, her voice ricocheting through their airy butter-yellow kitchen.
“Like a hot toddy. I like where you’re going with this.” Henry beamed at her as if she had solved a pressing family issue.
“Tell me what the Robinsons have done.” Dylan held up her hands, halting her mother’s interjection. “That doesn’t mean I’m going over there. Neale said she put her foot down on this ages ago. I plan to invoke the same right.”
“Neale is a household contributor, so she can do that,” Bernice answered with her usual haughty tone. “You are a visitor.”
“Mom, Neale doesn’t pay rent. She’s technically been visiting for the last six years.”
“Be that as it may, she lives here. You do not.” As usual Bernice’s logic was questionable, but her argument was airtight.
“Just tell me what they’ve done. Then I’ll decide.” Dylan sagged onto a barstool and tried to swat the dog hair and dust off her wool trousers. As far as she could discern, their neighbors across the street had a new motion-sensor light that shone high-powered beams directly into her parents’ bedroom with the movement of every nocturnal critter in the neighborhood. It was Bernice’s singular wish that Dylan communicate a cease-and-desist order to the
