Shelbourne & Mattingly: Part 5
Part 5: His Home
Part 5 of Shelbourne & Mattingly opens another door into Seth and Erie’s world, where love speaks in many languages—in carefully chosen sweaters, in precisely decorated trees, in the way we hold space for both joy and sorrow at the same family table.
Pour yourself a cup of Maggie’s famous soup (recipe carefully preserved in the Mattingly family cookbook), and settle in as we discover what happens when friendship transforms into something more...
December 21, 1992
PART 5: HIS HOME
The house rose in the winter twilight, a yellow Gothic Revival mansion that looked like something out of a fairy tale. I’d grown up next door, our steadfast white Federal watching over their gingerbread castle like a practical older sister. Walking beside Seth, I let my eyes trace the details I’d known all my life: diamond windowpanes, delicate trefoil trim like white lace against the butter-yellow brick. The tall blue door, arched like a cathedral window, had intimidated me as a child, but I’d passed through it so many times now it felt like home.
Maggie took our coats, hugging me, then Seth, lingering. “You’re frozen solid.”
“Just maintaining my reputation as your most high-maintenance child,” Seth said.
He took off his hat and found his usual spot at the kitchen table, sketchbook in hand, dwarfed by fourteen-foot ceilings and ornate plasterwork. The elegant windows turned the early evening light into geometric shadows across his page.
“Erie, honey.” Maggie placed an onion into my hands. “Let’s make soup.” We’d done this dance since I was small—me dicing vegetables while she cooked.
Maggie melted butter in the pot, adding my chopped onions, celery, and carrots. As the rich aroma filled the kitchen, I saw Seth’s face change. “Excuse me.” He stood quickly, disappeared down the hall.
“He loves this soup,” Maggie said to the steam rising from the pot. Her spoon moved in slow circles.
The sound of retching carried from the bathroom. Maggie hummed a soothing lullaby I remembered from childhood sleepovers.
The bathroom door remained closed. “I need to check on him.”
Maggie nodded, her spoon never stopping its circles.
I hesitated at the bathroom door. The water was running. “You okay in there?”
“Just reviewing a gentleman’s magazine,” he lied. “Learning all kinds of stuff.”
“Need anything?”
“A new body would be nice.” Then softer: “Sorry. I'll be out in a minute.”
The front door burst open, the quiet shattered. Jess and Gabe arrived like a circus act—boys spinning through the hallway, coats flying, voices overlapping. In the chaos of greetings, I watched Seth slip upstairs to his room, unnoticed by everyone else.
Maggie and I put platters of food on the table—our potato soup, plus country ham, cornbread, and her famous bourbon-glazed carrots—as the family settled into their usual places. Gabe and his father spoke in hushed tones about recent layoffs at other distilleries. I caught Maggie’s eye, a silent understanding passing between us: the blend of Shelbourne and Mattingly had weathered every storm so far.
Seth reappeared in a baby blue wool sweater that hung loose on his frame.
“Oh good, you found the sweater!” Maggie brightened.
“Thanks, Mom.” He slid in beside me, nudging my arm. “Though maybe ease up on the sweater acquisition. Scotland’s running out of sheep.”
“Riley,” Jess said. “Would you say grace?”
Riley squeezed his eyes shut, hands clasped. “Dear God, thank you for this food and for Uncle Seth being here and for basketball and—”
“Uncle Seth’s eyes are open!” Macy whispered.
“Just making sure God’s paying attention,” he said. “Sometimes he needs a reminder I’m down here.”
We gathered in the living room after dinner, and I put Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas on the record player. The huge Fraser fir dominated the bay window, its white lights catching the diamond panes. Maggie had arranged her German glass ornaments with surgical precision, but the tree’s real treasures were scattered between them—clay handprints, childhood photos of Gabe and Seth in larval stages, my eighth-grade attempt at a crocheted cardinal that Seth had enthusiastically declared “the best duck I’ve ever seen!”
Throughout were his yearly painted ornaments, each capturing a treasured memory—signed, dated, and hung by Maggie on the highest branches, her son’s concession to “pretty” art.
Seth settled into a leather recliner, sketchbook in hand, and the kids followed. Macy curled into his left side while Riley wedged himself under Seth’s right arm, their small bodies careful.
“Draw a map, Uncle Seth!” Macy begged.
Seth had been drawing magical maps since fifth grade, when he became obsessed with Tolkien and Middle Earth. “Alright, my Kentucky princes.” He pulled his colored pencils from the side table. “Let’s map the Kingdom of Rockland Springs.” He sketched familiar places, connecting them with golden paths. “Here’s where Brother Elias and his Merry Monks make their famous fudge. Here’s where your grandads guard their secret recipes in those mysterious warehouses. Here’s where your Great-Aunt Leo tries to convince me that pickled grasshopper tea will change my life.”
He kept adding features with his sure strokes: the museum, Saint Agnes, Sacred Heart, the playground.
“Don't forget Meckler’s!” Riley insisted. “That's where we get our LEGOs.”
“Ah yes, the Temple of Toys.” Seth sketched two little figures with spiky hair and wide grins, leaning against the store’s door.
“Where are you, Uncle Seth?” Macy asked.
“Sometimes I’m in this old purple palace, making art that confuses and disturbs the masses.” He sketched the three-story Victorian. “But right now, you’ll find me atop this yellow chateau, spreading joy to my adoring public.” He drew himself perched on the green roof of the Gothic, hair wild, legs dangling over the edge. Then he added a figure beside him, copper hair swirling, each strand drawn with careful attention.
“Aunt Erie!” Riley exclaimed.
“That’s right.” He drew rainbow stripes on my coat. “Extraordinary Erie Shelbourne, my right-hand woman.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Hmm.” He looked up and smiled at me. “I’d say she’s either saving me from falling off the edge, or daring me to climb up to the weathervane.”
I watched them—Seth’s dark head bent close to Macy’s blond one, Riley’s fingers absently playing with a loose thread on his sweater. The three of them made such a perfect picture that for a moment I couldn’t breathe. When I finally looked away, I found Maggie watching too, her hand pressed against her mouth.
After Gabe and Jess left with the kids, as Maggie scraped Seth’s untouched dinner into the garbage disposal, she made a clucking sound.
Like he was a mischievous kid instead of a man with cancer.
While I was helping Maggie clean up, Seth padded into the kitchen in his baby blue sweater and flannel pajamas, feet bare against the hardwood. His eyes were brighter. His oncologist had warned us about these false springs.
“Where are your socks?” Maggie fussed. “You’ll catch your death.”
“Already working on that.”
“Seth Matthew Mattingly!”
“Mom, you and Dad really dropped the ball on that one. Seth Matthew Mattingly? Did you not say it out loud before you wrote it on the birth certificate? You could have gone with Xavier. Or Alexander. Literally anything but Matthew.” He lifted himself onto the counter, peered at a covered dish. “Ooh. Is that your blackberry cobbler?”
Maggie’s face lit up. She practically sprinted to get him a bowl. We watched him eat two whole servings—with ice cream. Maggie hovered, nearly crying from happiness.
Suddenly: “Mom, can you call Erie’s parents? We’re having a sleepover,” he announced, scraping his bowl. “Though I assume Brother Elias has already called to report our scandalous tea house conversation about unprotected sex.”
Maggie’s dishtowel hit the floor. In twenty-two years of friendship, Seth had never once suggested anything more intimate than sharing his colored pencils or drinking from the same bourbon flask. His predictability had gone out the window.
“Seth!” But Maggie was fighting a smile.
“Anyway, I’m not bitter that you and Harriet stopped letting me and Erie have sleepovers when we hit puberty. Maybe you were right to worry.”
She picked up her dishtowel and swatted him gently. “Go put on some socks, you heathen.”
He jumped down, kissed her cheek. “Yes ma’am.” Then to me, with a look that stopped time: “Coming, Erie?”
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 6: THE BED
Need to catch up?
I love your wit, bubbling through the pain.
You are carrying my grieving heart along, Suzanne. This comment is in reference to the feedback I just offered in our writing collective on what seems to be another section of chapter 5. Thank you for your beautiful, meaningful writing.