Work Text:
“Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up—Mom!” Cody shouted in his phone.
“Cody, is everything ok?!” Tricia Elwood spoke hurriedly. It wasn’t like Cody to sound this panicked—excited, sure, but not panicked.
“Yes! No! Uh, well yes but also no—,” Cody babbled into the phone. “Immis, no—!”
The young man tried to grab the leash of the fluffy dog that zoomed passed him from the kitchen to the living room to bark some more at the pride of peacocks parading in the backyard.
“Cody, honey, what is going on? I thought you were just supposed to be watching Emmy this weekend?” Tricia asked concernedly.
“I am! But I’m also watching Deirdre and Phil’s puppy, Immis. He’s not used to the peacocks’ new route going behind the townhouse—“
A new, warbling howl joined Immis’ barks. Emmy, Deirdre and Phil’s two-year-old, was howling. Cody sighed. Deirdre had warned him that her toddler was in her “dog phase.” He’d spent the whole long weekend trying to keep her out of the puppy’s food dish and water bowl.
“Why don’t you give them a snack to calm them down?” Tricia suggested, cringing away from the raucous noise coming from her phone.
“Ok,” Cody conceded, frazzled and exhausted. He shook the treat bag vigorously and Immis ran into the kitchen, slipping and sliding on the hardwood floors in his excitement. Emmy followed behind, tottering and still howling.
Cody half-heartedly gave Immis the command to sit, but the dog rolled over instead. Emmy, however, finally stopped howling and plopped onto the floor patiently.
He sighed and gave the dog a treat and the toddler a bowl of dry Cheerios after placing her in her high chair.
He tiredly sat at a chair near Emmy and watched her break up the Cheerios into crumbs and fine dust. Immis sat patiently close by, eyes zeroed in on the cereal that fell to the floor.
“Ok…at least they’re quiet now,” he told his mom, rubbing his face.
Tricia gently prodded her son, who still sounded worried, “Is everything else ok?”
“Yes…and no—we’re all fine.”
“That’s good!”
“But the toilet’s not.”
“Oh? I see…”
“No, it’s just that, somehow Emmy managed to lodge one of Deirdre’s cassette tapes in the toilet and now it’s making a weird noise when you flush it. I took my eyes off her for two seconds! I was just trying to get the leash off Immis’ new harness.” Cody moaned, burying his face in his hands.
Tricia sighed. Cody had babysat Emmy before, but never for a whole long weekend. She’d warned him that toddlers were fast and could get into untold amounts of trouble or messes in mere seconds when you weren’t watching them. But Cody had insisted. Emmy was like the little sister he’d never had—and Deirdre and Phil had become like family to Cody over the years.
“Ok, try calling this plumber. My friend just told me about him; she had trouble with her pipes last winter and he came immediately to help.”
Cody wrote down the number his mother gave him—Fellow’s Plumbing. A weird name, he thought. He ended up texting the plumber because he kept getting their voicemail. The plumber texted back immediately and promised he would be there as soon as possible, but that it might be a while. Apparently, the nature center’s new facilities were going haywire.
After thanking his mom profusely and hanging up, Cody poured himself a glass of cold water. It was summer and the humidity was rising.
After giving Emmy some pots and pans to “make music” on and letting Immis escape into the backyard, Cody slid noise-cancelling headphones on his ears and picked up an old photo album.
Thumbing through it slowly, he smiled softly at the photos of young Deirdre and Emma in the album, giving himself a moment to feel Emma’s loss. She had died a year after Park had sold Deirdre the club for sixteen dollars.
Although Deirdre and Renata had tried to gently prepare him, Cody had still taken Emma’s death hard—and it was a shock to his system as a young boy. It was his first real experience with losing someone he’d come to care for deeply.
That profound loss, coupled with trying to find his place as he entered middle school, had shut him down. Cody almost didn’t go to Emma’s funeral—until Tricia called Phil. Phil had come over and hadn’t said a word; he just sat down outside Cody’s closed bedroom door and began playing “Ghost Deer.”
He didn’t even realize he’d started singing and crying until he’d opened the door; there sat Phil, smiling sadly with similarly reddened eyes and tissues in hand.
A few weeks after, they—Cody, Phil, Deirdre—and sometimes even Renata and Park—began practicing weekly. A few months later, they resumed their podcast and dedicated the first new song—“Hark!”—to Emma’s memory.
There were a bunch of other photos too. And memories, that had Cody laughing, as well as sniffling. A snapshot of Deirdre at the ribbon cutting ceremony, right in the middle of her big speech, as she was cut off by the peacocks’ sudden ‘singing.’ Phil must have taken the photo—Deirdre’s mouth was a perfect surprised ‘O’ and there was Cody, doubled over in laughter. The members of the Friends of Rosemary Hill group were also stifling their laughter behind clasped hands in the background.
Emmy eventually wandered over, and Cody set her on his knee. He pointed out Deirdre and Phil’s wedding photo.
“Mama, Dada!” She clapped happily pointing at the picture of her parents smiling and cutting their wedding cake. Cody had been Deirdre’s best man.
“Do you want to see more photos?” Cody asked.
“More!!” Emmy screeched, trying to turn the slippery pages of the photo album.
Cody described what was happening in each photo, although he doubted Emmy understood everything. Still, she sat in rapt attention, babbling ‘mama’ or ‘dads’ or ‘Dody’ when she spotted Cody in certain photos. Snapshots of her parents’ honeymoon to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Cody and Renata welcomed them back with a slow version of ‘Scandinavia’ at the airport.
He could see himself growing up in these photos, too. His 16th birthday party with a 90s theme. His first drum solo. Helping out building the nature center. Dinners with the
‘Friends of Rosemary Hills’ group. The dusty photos of him helping the archaeologists uncover the woodland people’s artifacts. His high school graduation party, where Phil played a full song for Cody in front of a huge crowd of people. That had been his last performance in the wolf man mask.
Phil had given Cody the wolf man mask when he went away to college last year.
“Bring it back for our next jam session on the podcast, yeah?” Phil had smiled as Deirdre helped Tricia straighten out the last of Cody’s things in his dorm room.
“You mean…we can still do the podcast?” Cody had asked excitedly, barely believing it.
As Cody became more involved with applying for colleges and busy with his part time job as a nature guide at the center, It Makes a Sound had happened less and less. Deirdre and Phil had become busier, too. Deirdre was busy with her job running the center and volunteering at the nursing home. Phil’s new job as a music teacher at the high school ate up a lot of his time, too. And when they’d had Emmy, their jam sessions slowed to a nearly full stop. The music was still there, but more in the background.
Phil played their cassette tapes when he dropped Cody off at work. Deirdre and Renata hummed ‘Ghost Deer’ as they made Thanksgiving dinner and Park hesitantly played peekaboo with an enthusiastic Emmy. Cody sang the ABCs, “Mary had a Little Lamb,” and numerous other nursery rhymes to keep Emmy distracted from her teething pain.
“Pickpock! Pickpock!” Emmy clapped excitedly, pointing to a photo of herself from last Halloween. “Pickpock” was Emmy’s word for “peacock.”
Park had gifted Emmy and Phil an oddly expensive peacock costume for the toddler. Much to Park’s delight, Emmy refused to put away the costume even after Halloween had passed. She wore it often when playing with Immis and “sang” like the peacocks in her backyard did.
Cody was snapped out of his nostalgic reverie by the doorbell sounding. Looking quickly at his phone he realized it must be the plumber. Deirdre and Phil weren’t supposed to get in until later that night.
With Emmy on his hip, Cody opened the door.
The plumber stepped through, as he and Cody exchanged pleasantries and the latter described the plumbing issue. As the man walked into the bathroom, Cody called out his thanks and sat Emmy down for lunch.
“Oh, thank you…I’m sorry sir, what is your name?”
The plumber paused, oddly hesitant, and answered with a small smile. “My name is Will, Will Fellows.”