by Ani Katz
I’m so happy you’re finally home, my love, she whispered. I missed you so much. My dear boy.
She held me close, her mouth hovering on my ear even after it was clear she had no more to say to me. I held my breath and waited for the moment to pass, and finally she let go.
My mother ushered us through the grand and drafty dining room and into the bright warmth of the kitchen, where there was food still set out on the table: a wilting, slimy salad; a haphazardly constructed cheese plate; half a torn baguette, its crumbs scattered over the soiled tablecloth; the picked-over carcass of a store-bought rotisserie chicken. A sextet of flies buzzed around us. The twins followed, making faces and snickering.
Oh darlings, have you eaten? Deedee gushed.
Please, please, you must have some wine! Kit sang.
Sweethearts, my mother interjected, shooing her daughters away. Don’t worry, my dears. I’ll take care of them.
She thrust tumblers into our hands and set plates in front of us. My sisters stood and stared, slack mouths twitching with mockery. I looked at Miriam, but she was handling the bombardment as well as she could, smiling politely and sipping the seven-dollar zinfandel that would stain her teeth and tongue.
Ma, I said. You don’t have to.
Oh shush, of course I do.
Let the girls help you.
But they’re so tired—it’s past their normal bedtime.
It’s not even ten.
Oh, well I just want them to relax and enjoy their big brother’s company. It’s been so long.
Then why don’t they sit down with us instead of watching us like we’re zoo animals?
My sisters giggled shrilly and pulled up the chairs closest to Miriam, scooching themselves forward so that the chair legs scratched against the floor, their bodies jerking as if they were riding unbroken horses. My mother did another frenzied lap around the kitchen for no discernible purpose before finally sitting down herself to watch us eat.
So.
So?
Tell us everything. When is the wedding?
Ma!
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just excited to see you both.
Thank you so much for having us, Miriam said. We’re so glad we could be here for your birthday.
Oh, I don’t like to make a fuss of it, but it was a good excuse to have you come and visit. I was beginning to think that dear Thomas was keeping you from us, though I can’t imagine why.
Ma.
She ignored me and began to pepper Miriam with questions she already knew the answers to—where she was from, how we had met, how long we’d been together. My sisters couldn’t sit still. They kept getting up and circulating around the room, refilling their glasses with diet soda, bopping their heads, gyrating their hips, and humming along to music no one else could hear. They craned their necks to gape at the television mounted over the double sink, captivated by the lurid, ceaseless progression of bright lights and colors—pop stars pretending to be vampires, half-naked women writhing against sound equipment and palm trees.
And work? my mother asked, turning to me abruptly. Work is all right?
It’s fine, I said. Busy since the promotion.
You never told me you got a promotion.
Yes I did, months ago. They’re having me take the lead on some small campaigns. It’s a lot more responsibility.
Well I’m sure you can manage it. We’ve always been so proud of you, my dear. Always taking care of us.
I felt light-headed. The food tasted strange, as if it had just turned the corner toward spoilage. I was afraid that Miriam would notice the skid marks of dried grease around the rims of the plates, the crusty residue at the bottom of our tumblers. I saw that her fork was dirty and took it from her, but before I could replace it my mother snatched it away from me. She jumped up and went to the sink, ran the tap as hot as it would go, then returned with the newly shining utensil. She tittered under her breath about the dishwasher needing repairs.
It’s because you load too much, Ma, I said, suddenly irritated. And because you don’t rinse things before you put them in.
She laughed painfully. Don’t be ridiculous, she said. I don’t overload it. And you don’t need to rinse things.
Yes you do, I said.
I don’t think so.
It’s fine, said Miriam. I’m finished eating anyway.
But you barely even ate, Deedee observed—the first words out of her mouth since we’d sat down.
Did you not like the food? Kit asked.
Girls, it’s rude to notice what other people eat and don’t eat, my mother said. Now please apologize to Miriam.
Oh, Mommy.
I mean it. Apologize now.
Sorry, Miriam.
Sorry.
It’s all right.
I felt heat rise in my throat, felt an odd prickling in my hands, as if they had fallen asleep.
Well then, my mother said brightly. Let’s show you the rest of the house.
We all went back into the dining room, the floorboards banging beneath us. Miriam stopped to admire the painting over the sideboard—the portrait of a young girl in a sapphire dress, her gaunt face framed by lank curls, her shoulders and collarbone exposed. My mother noticed Miriam looking.
Ah, do you like our consumptive?
Consumptive?
Actually, we’re not sure if she was consumptive, but she did have some kind of rare bone condition. See?
My mother pointed to where the bones of the girl’s shoulders protruded unnaturally, hard lumps where they shouldn’t be.
People usually think it’s an amateurish painting, but that’s actually what she looked like. She had some kind of disease that made her arms grow that way.
She died, like, the day after they finished the painting, Deedee stage-whispered, her eyes glittering as she squatted in an odd, graceless plié.
Not quite the day after. But soon after.
She died of a broken heart, Kit added, grinning at Deedee.
Yeah, Deedee agreed, egging her sister on. She was, like, in love with the painter.
No she wasn’t, my mother said.
They were supposed to run away together.
That’s not true. She was only a young girl, like you.
But he never came for her.
No, he came for her, but then he left her there.
And when they found her the next morning she was dead and the bed was covered in blood!
You don’t know that, dears, my mother admonished. And please don’t be so ghastly.
How sad, Miriam said, trying to get us back on track. Who was she?
Some distant relative. We don’t really know.
Dead, dead, dead, the girls chorused. Dead as dead can be.
Stop that now, please.
I had never liked the girl in the painting. She had stared at me all through my childhood like some kind of sick memento mori—a reproach to be good and eat one’s vegetables. My father had called her his Little Mimi, after the tubercular heroine of La Bohème, his favorite opera. He had sometimes spoken directly to the painting when he wished to shame his two eldest children, refilling his glass and asking Little Mimi what she thought about our insolence and ingratitude as she gazed back at him impassively, Puccini thundering gruffly on the record player in the background. Evidently, the twins had their own strange associations with the portrait, though I couldn’t fathom how those fantasies had developed.
We passed through the French doors to the double-height living room with the original fireplace and wrought iron balcony. There was a huge mirror above the mantel, hung just high enough that you couldn’t see yourself in it, no matter where you stood. From there we went out to the screened sunroom, which opened onto the patio with the pool and the overgrown garden beyond, the fence keeping out the rustl
ing of the tall hedges and towering pines. We took breaths of the night air before heading back inside. At some point we had lost the twins—bored by the tour and their own failed attempts to throw it off course, they had wandered away to some other part of the house without a good night or good-bye.
You have such a beautiful home, Miriam said.
My husband’s grandfather built it in nineteen twenty. It was his dream house.
It’s very unique.
You can tell he was a bit of an eccentric—he came from a very old family. Doctors, mostly. Lots and lots of money.
It’s like . . . Miriam paused, choosing her words carefully. Like an old house in a fairy tale.
There wasn’t much around here back then. It was like living in the country. They had ten acres, all the way along the waterfront.
How lovely.
Of course we had to sell all of that later—break it into parcels. Things could be tight sometimes when the children were young. Heating this place in the winter costs an absolute fortune.
Yes, I can imagine.
My parents had worked on and off throughout my childhood. There was money a long time ago—family money—and then it was gone. My mother had entered the marriage harboring the naive belief that she would never have to work, but by the time I was born my father had drained his trust and run his business into the ground, and my mother had purchased sensible heels and began to cycle through brief stints as secretary, administrative assistant, paralegal, and bank teller—anonymous office work that required no particular talent or skill other than the ability to get up each morning and snuff out any lingering spark of self-worth. My father attempted a number of similarly meaningless jobs, all the while raging against the system, his ill fortune, and above all his entrapment by his ungrateful wife and children. He had always been a drinker, and then he drank even more. Then he added pills, but he was always running out of those.
Through it all, my parents managed to hold on to the house, which had an elegance that I had always loved. Now that I was older, I felt real pain seeing it fall to pieces. I hated the peeling wallpaper, the angry scratches where furniture had rubbed, and the rot hidden under the paint. I wished it could look the way it was supposed to.
I noticed Miriam noticing the family photographs. She paused at the group portraits, and I could see her examining the children arranged in each frame—pallid figures faded from years of sunlight. I saw the questions forming, flickering behind her eyes.
Look, we’re exhausted, I said quickly, laying my hand on Miriam’s shoulder. I think we’ll turn in early.
I wanted to pull my mother aside and ask about the ring, but I wouldn’t have the chance that night. I had to get Miriam away, before she could ask about the photographs.
But I haven’t even shown you the upstairs yet! my mother protested.
I’m sorry, I said. We just really need to sleep.
Miriam didn’t question me—she never did. She took my hand and we said our good nights and went up to our room, the stairs grunting underfoot. We passed the second floor with its wide landing, the twins’ room and my mother’s room side by side at the far end of the hall. Then up to the third floor and down the long hallway with the worn, bloodred runner to the spare room, where the door had been painted over so many times it would only shut with a hard pull.
I lay down on the lumpy four-poster canopy bed without taking off my shoes and stared up at the oil painting on the wall, my eyes meeting the terrified golden gaze of a hart chased by a pair of hunting dogs.
They’re sweet, Miriam said. Your family.
I turned over, away from her. The bedding smelled of dust and yeast.
What’s wrong?
I don’t want to talk about it.
I’m here with you, darling. I’m here to support you.
I said I don’t want to talk about it.
She was silent for a while. Then she got up. I closed my eyes and listened to her moving around the room—hanging up her dress, putting things away. I opened my eyes a bit and watched the blurred shadow of her undressing—the rich cloud of her hair, the elegant scrolls of her shoulders.
Come here, I said.
I can’t remember the exact details, but I’m sure we made love that night. We did most nights, sometimes more than once.
We probably played some game of Miriam’s invention. She probably made up some story, slipping us into a fiction so that I wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. Suddenly I would find myself in a different situation, with a different person, and I’d have to play along. But the basic outlines were always the same. She was wild, and I was wild for her. She was untamed, and I tamed her.
Maybe she mounted me, her hands on my shoulders. Maybe she told me about other men, her voice like slow honey. Maybe, as she moved against me, as she talked of others who’d had their way with her, she began to touch herself, her fingers tucked inside her, moving in ways I couldn’t see.
Maybe I grabbed her by her wrists. Maybe I rolled on top of her. Maybe I tapped my palm against her cheek, and maybe she spurred me on. Maybe I drew back and hit her face. Maybe she let out a hoarse bark that may have been a laugh. And maybe she placed my hands on her neck, tightening her fingers against my knuckles.
That’s how it usually was. I’m sure that’s how it went.
I do remember that later in the night, watching the dark blooms on her chest fade away, the blood draining back into the secret parts of her body, I turned out the light and she moved toward me, wedging herself under my arm. She whispered at my throat.
Thomas?
I was silent.
The other girl in the photos—is that your sister?
I pretended to be asleep.
* * *
■ ■ ■
Who was the other girl in the photos?
She was a diapered toddler on a beach. She was a lanky kid sitting on a rose-patterned sofa with two blond babies balanced in her lap, their heads like bright moons against her black velvet dress. She was a teen pirouetting on the front porch, her long hair a tattered banner behind her. She was a girl dozing in the grass with her younger brother, their arms arced carelessly over their heads, their upturned hands almost touching.
This was Eve. Our Evie. The photographs did not tell the story of who she was. They held no secrets or revelations; they were the same kinds of photographs that anyone would have. Even if they were saturated with the stink of tragedy, it was only in retrospect.
I’d told Miriam that I had an older sister, and that she had died. That was it.
This had been her bedroom. I pretended to be asleep because I didn’t want to tell the rest of that story yet.
I still don’t want to.
* * *
■ ■ ■
I must have fought someone in my dreams because I woke up with a start, sweaty sheets wrapped around me like a toga. It was still early, gray light pushing weakly against the dirty lace curtains. Miriam lay on the other side of the bed, her mole-speckled back turned to me.
But then I realized it wasn’t a fight in a dream that had woken me. My throat ached and my eyes watered with the smell of something burning.
Downstairs, my sisters were peering into the oven. The kitchen was hazy with smoke—it hung on the shafts of morning light, made them solid.
The girls straightened when they noticed me, met me with startled, gray-toothed smiles. They both needed to see a dentist, badly. I pushed past them and turned off the oven.
What the hell are you doing?
We’re baking something. For Mommy.
Since when do you bake?
Deedee shrugged. I looked up a recipe, she said.
We even followed it.
Mostly.
Well, whatever it was, you’ve ruined it, I said. I could smell it burning from upstairs. You’ll have to throw it o
ut.
Let us see it!
I opened the oven to show them the charred black lump inside.
You could have burned the house down, I said.
Kit crossed the room and roosted on the nest of newspapers that had accumulated on the window seat. She began to pick at a disturbingly large scab on her inner thigh, digging at the dark crust with her fingernail until it came loose and began to bleed.
Deedee said we should do something nice for Mommy, she muttered under her breath.
Don’t sit like that, I said. Keep your legs closed and stop picking at yourself.
Make me.
Don’t be a child. I have everything planned out. You don’t need to do anything to help.
But we wanted to.
I had wanted to keep things simple. Bagels for breakfast, a nice dinner. If you kept things simple they were harder to ruin. Simple could be perfect.
Besides, it was just us, just the family—what was left of us. I had always hated how my mother poured her energy into elaborate productions for guests who never came. It was always disappointing. And now my sisters were acting out their own version of the same pathology.
If you want to do something nice then help me clean the kitchen, I said. This place is disgusting.
We just cleaned last week, Deedee said.
Two weeks ago, Kit clarified.
Well, look around! It’s a fucking mess!
Don’t yell at us, Thomas.
Doesn’t it bother you to live in filth like this?
Suddenly I felt arms around my waist, warmth at my back, Miriam’s soft body pressing into my spine.
Oh my, she laughed. What happened here?
The girls stared at us for a moment, leering at Miriam’s hands clasped over my navel, as if they’d never seen a healthy display of affection between two adults.
We tried to bake a cake, Kit said finally, chin raised in defiance. But we burned it.
And now Thomas is mad at us, Deedee added, smirking at me.
I’m not mad, I said quickly. I was just—
We can make another cake, Miriam said. Are there any eggs left?
I think so.