by Ani Katz
Finally I saw the exit for the beach we used to visit when we were children. Most cars were leaving for the day, a halting herd moving back onto the parkway, their windshields blinding pentagons in the lowering light. I eased into the parking lot and found a spot close to the rail, where we could see the grassy-haired mounds of the dunes, the sandy spread of the beach, and the blue of the water beyond. I cut the engine, rested my hand on the back of the passenger seat, and turned to regard the girls.
Listen. I’m sorry about how I behaved just now.
They looked at me wordlessly, their eyes vacant. I took a breath.
I’m not going to make excuses, I said. I just get frustrated sometimes because I just—I just want the best for you.
They were listening carefully now, leaning toward me, not a trace of boredom or mockery on their faces. They knew that what I had to say was important. Smart girls, they had always been smart girls, even if they were a little strange. I felt sure they would understand what I had to say next.
I want to talk about a plan, I said.
Now they looked at me blankly. The moment went on a long time, until Kit finally broke the silence.
What plan?
You know, I said.
Uh, no, we don’t know.
Just—a plan! I said, exasperated all over again. A plan for your lives!
Oh, that, Deedee sighed.
Yeah, that, I said. Have you thought about school?
Kit scoffed, as if she were choking.
Moving out? I tried. Getting your own place together?
Really, Thomas?
What?
You really have no idea.
What do you mean? Don’t you want something else out of your lives?
They had slumped away from me again, their arms crossed protectively over their chests.
It doesn’t matter what we want, Deedee said. It’s just not going to happen. It’s impossible. There’s no way we can leave that house.
You can still apply to college. It’s not too late for that. If I could do it, so can you.
But you could only do it because Mommy let you.
We didn’t even finish high school.
Finish high school, then, at least. You can take classes online.
Mommy doesn’t want us to.
She doesn’t own you.
But she takes care of us.
You’re old enough to take care of yourselves.
No we’re not.
You are.
Mommy says we’re not.
She doesn’t want to lose us. Like she lost Evie.
We were silent. Our sister’s name hung between us as the light in the car grew more and more golden, immolating our faces.
What if I talked to her? I said finally, shielding my eyes from the sun’s glare. To Ma.
Good luck with that.
I’m serious, I said. I’ll talk to her. But only if you really want me to.
It’s not going to make a difference, Kit sighed. Trust me.
And then I knew that they didn’t want it enough. They were satisfied to stay as they were, to stay in that house as our mother’s little girls, safe and secure in their enclosures.
We didn’t talk for a while. We looked out at the beach, watching slow waves roll in to shore, watching the small dark silhouettes of families packing up to go home. The girls hadn’t even asked if we could get out of the car. I put it in reverse and joined the departing herd.
I like Miri, Deedee said suddenly.
Yeah, Kit said. I do too.
Miriam, I said, bristling at the overfamiliarity of the nickname. Her name is Miriam.
She said we could call her Miri.
When did she say that?
I guess you weren’t there, Deedee said.
We were silent for a few moments. Then Kit took a breath. Are you in love? she asked, pulling herself forward, her hands on my headrest, her voice soft with reverence.
Yeah, Deedee chimed in, hopeful, trying to catch my eye. Are you going to marry her?
For once they weren’t making a disgusting joke out of love—for once, they weren’t trying to turn it into something foul. I swallowed my annoyance at their effrontery and allowed myself to grin at them in the rearview mirror.
Maybe, I said, winking. I just might.
Good.
They settled back into their seats, seemingly satisfied, closed their eyes, and let the breeze run its fingers over their faces as I drove us home.
When we got back Miriam and my mother were sitting together in the sunroom, tea gone cold in their cups. They fell quiet when they saw me approach, looked up with sly grins, as if they’d been caught misbehaving.
How was the shopping?
Fine.
Your mother and I have had such a nice time chatting.
So she hadn’t rested, like I had suggested. Instead, she’d been subjected to hours of my mother’s prattle. I had no idea what they might have talked about. I couldn’t even begin to guess.
Miriam and my sisters went upstairs to change for dinner. I lowered myself into a wicker rocking chair and looked at my mother, who had stretched out on the loveseat, her bare legs mottled and mapped with veins. She had picked up a worn paperback copy of Ordeal by Innocence and was paging through it, pretending to read. I cleared my throat.
Did you have a nice afternoon?
Mm-hmm, she said distractedly. Lovely afternoon. Miriam is lovely.
What did you two talk about?
She turned a few more pages of her book, as if she hadn’t heard me, as if I weren’t even there. I felt a familiar dizzy panic rising in me, the feeling that things were not under control. She could have told Miriam anything. I forced the words out again.
What did you talk about?
Oh, nothing really, she said. Nothing important.
I sighed, gathering myself.
What’s happening here? I asked.
My mother looked up finally, confused and hurt, as if I’d insulted her.
What do you mean?
What’s going on with the girls?
She rose and began to move around the room, her hands fluttering awkwardly as she tidied up.
They’re fine, she murmured to herself. They’re completely fine.
Fine? Are you crazy?
What do you mean?
Just look at them, Ma. Do they seem fine to you?
Look, Thomas, we hardly ever see you, she said, turning to face me. You can’t just come here when the spirit moves you and then get angry when things aren’t up to your standards.
It’s not about my standards! It’s about the girls.
They’re perfectly happy.
What about school? Or jobs?
She made a vague gesture, as if she were shooing something away.
Ma, they have to do something.
They will, she said. They’re still so young. I’m letting them focus on their art.
Jesus, Ma. That’s not going to get them anywhere.
Not everyone needs to get somewhere. You’ve always been in such a rush, and it’s never helped you.
Ma, don’t.
You wanted to do everything right away, even though everyone told you it was more important to do well than to do it quickly.
This isn’t about me.
You took on too much that first semester, two labs and your job and everything. I knew if you had just—
This isn’t about me!
* * *
■ ■ ■
Dinner at last. A fist-sized hole had rusted through the bottom of the grill, so I seared the chops on the stove, then carried them out to the glass-topped table on the patio. Miriam had already set out the snacks I’d brought from the city—olives like emerald birds’ eggs, truffled go
at cheese wrapped in brown paper, pink sausages dotted with fennel seeds—and my sisters had descended on the spread, ravenous. They ate the skin of the sausage, the part you were supposed to peel away, and hooked their fingers into the cheese, licking its thick cream off their cuticles and wiping their hands on the once-white mildewed petticoat slips they’d decided to wear as party dresses. My mother splashed wine into huge, smudged crystal goblets, her bony wrist arched ostentatiously. We cut into our lamb and it was an impeccable medium rare.
The pool lights had been turned on, the water like a phosphorescent lake beside us, punctured by the dark circle of an inner tube. The sun had set, the lower edge of the sky pale blue against the black fur of the softly breathing hedges. My mother leaned back in her chair, let her gaze swoop up to the last blush-colored streaks high above us.
Perfect, she said. Everything is perfect.
She looked at Miriam across the table.
When I was a girl I never imagined I would live in a house like this, one day.
Miriam nodded in encouragement, her eyes locked on my mother’s. She loved to hear other people talk about their lives.
I didn’t grow up poor, exactly, my mother continued. We always had everything we needed—enough to eat, new shoes every year and all that. But I was definitely used to a more humble sort of life.
She wasn’t being completely honest. My mother’s family had been quite poor—her father had died young, and her mother had raised five children on her own. She had often been hungry, and always had to work.
I was seventeen when I met Thomas’s father, she continued. He had just graduated from college. Amherst. His family belonged to the yacht club, and one day he wrote his phone number on the little slip for their charge account and handed it to me as I was clearing their lunch dishes.
Another lie. After my father died and before I went away to college, my mother called me to her room one night and made me lie down in bed beside her and told me the real story of how they had met. At the yacht club, yes, but after midnight at the annual Fourth of July party, when my father stole into the kitchen to slip a hand up my mother’s skirt and fold her like a dish towel over the industrial sink where she’d been washing wineglasses, telling her over and over again that he knew she had wanted it like this for a long time. She had mistaken his aggression for passion, and after that had allowed him to do what he liked, whenever he liked. She began to seek him out, longing for the intensity of his attentions. No one had ever bothered to notice her like that before.
We had such a ball that summer, my mother told Miriam. He had his own car, and we’d drive around and go to the movies and the beach and do other things like that. One time we took the ferry over to Fire Island—he had some friends in Saltaire who let us stay over. And of course he paid for everything. Dinners, little gifts. All the time.
Everyone likes to say that nineteen sixty-three was the last summer of innocence for people like us—you know, white and middle class—but I think that’s being too generous, she said. It was even worse than what people say. I had no idea what was happening in the rest of the country—you couldn’t have paid me to read a newspaper. I cared about my hair, and what I wore. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but it’s true. We were in our own little bubble, and we stayed in that bubble for a long time, even when the rest of the world began to change.
All right, I murmured, not liking where this was going. It’s all right, Ma.
We got married that winter, my mother continued. We had said we would wait until I finished high school, but we had a courthouse ceremony around Christmas. People thought I was pregnant, but I wasn’t! We were just tired of not being together.
She wouldn’t say it, but the truth was that he had been jealous. He was afraid of losing her to someone else—filled with rage at the thought that some other man would take what was his. And so he insisted that they get married, before my mother could change her mind.
He promised that our marriage would be different from other people’s, she said. He promised we wouldn’t settle into the same old awful routine of brisket and briefcase. He told me it would be a great adventure. And for a while it really was! We traveled all over, went to the opera all the time. I never had to do my own laundry. Everything was perfect.
She left out the other features of their marriage, the other routines that developed almost immediately: the confrontations over phone calls from unknown women (her tearful entreaties, his denials and counteraccusations), the fights over spending money that quickly turned into perverse games of slaps, the nights he came home and slept belly-up in the foyer because he was too wasted to climb the stairs, the nights he failed to come home at all.
It sounds like a very happy time, Miriam said.
Oh, it was, my mother said. She hesitated, but only for a moment.
Things changed after a few years, she went on. They changed for everyone in the world, of course. But for us too.
Ma, I said, a warning in my voice. She ignored me.
We were in San Juan. The water was so blue. We were staying in the most charming hotel in the old part of town. Everything should have been wonderful. But my husband was upset that week. He could be very moody sometimes—without any warning, usually. He’d had a very easy life for the most part, and when anything went wrong he just couldn’t roll with the punches, you know?
One night we were having dinner on the beach and he told me that he had regrets. He was scared of the future—he’d gone into business with a friend, and it wasn’t going well—and he wasn’t sure if he was meant to be married or have a family. He thought he didn’t deserve that kind of happiness. Which isn’t true, of course. Everyone deserves to be happy. But he could be very sad sometimes.
Mercifully, she let the story end there. She didn’t tell Miriam what that night had really been like, or what had actually happened—how totally obliterated my father had been, how he had screamed at my mother for ruining his life and struck her across the face in front of everyone in the restaurant, how he had stalked off and slept alone on the beach that night.
And she didn’t explain that the only reason he didn’t leave her was that, after years of trying and four miscarriages, she was finally pregnant.
It was a good life, though, my mother said. When the children were little we used to camp out here some nights. There were so many stars—he taught them the names of all the constellations, told them all the stories behind them.
She trailed off and looked away, and I followed her gaze, watching the fleeting green throbs of fireflies pulse brightly before fading back into the dark shadows of the garden.
But why am I saying all this? my mother asked, remembering herself. Don’t listen to me, I’m just rambling about things that no one cares about.
That’s not true! Miriam protested. I care. I’m very interested.
Oh, you’re very kind, my mother said. But really it’s all very boring. The kids have heard these stories millions of times and they don’t want to hear it all again.
Deedee and Kit nodded vigorously.
We want to know more about you, Miri.
Miriam laughed softly, the lens of everyone’s attention focusing on her. She welcomed their gaze—she must have sensed that I desperately wanted to change the subject.
What do you want to know?
Everything.
Why did you leave Paris?
She shrugged. I wanted to see more of the world. And then I met your brother.
She touched my hand, applied a companionable pressure.
But aside from all that, it’s not the best place to be a Jewish girl who looks like an Arab.
Really? Why not?
People can be nasty about it.
How?
They call you names. Sometimes they follow you on the street. Things like that.
My mother put down her fork, blinking and then widening
her eyes to emphasize that she was listening closely.
Did anything bad ever happen to you?
Not really. Well, actually, there was the one thing. When I was a little girl.
What happened?
Tell us!
I was abducted.
She said it so casually, as if she had told the story many times, even though I had never heard it before. My sisters leaned forward with open mouths.
Oh my god.
That’s crazy.
Don’t be so panicked, Miriam laughed, waving her hand like a bored dauphine. It was only for a night. I didn’t even realize at the time that I had been abducted.
You have to tell us the whole story, said Kit, clutching her paper napkin.
All right, all right, Miriam said, sitting up slightly, laying her palms on the cloudy pebbled glass of the tabletop. I think I was six, maybe seven. I was walking home from school, and the woman who lived down our street was out in front of her house. I remember she was wearing a long skirt that was sewn together from all these colorful patches, like something a gypsy would wear. She called to me, and when I approached her she told me that my mother had asked her to take care of me for the afternoon. She told me I had better come in for my goûter.
I don’t know what that is, Deedee said.
Oh, a goûter—it’s a snack. All French children have it after school. Anyway, no one had warned me about going into strangers’ houses, especially if it was a woman who invited you in—I thought all women were mothers, and that meant they were safe. I trusted this woman instinctively, because I had no reason not to, so I followed her inside.
Oh dear, my mother said.
How stupid of me, eh? But I didn’t think twice. The woman served me chocolate and bread, and then she let me watch television, which I never got to do at home. There was a cartoon about a spoiled princess courted by a dozen different princes, and a movie about a unicorn transformed into a white-haired maiden, and of course Babar. I must have watched for hours, because eventually it got dark, and the woman said I was supposed to stay over for the night, and that my parents knew I was safe with her. For dinner we ate pasta. It was all very nice.
After dinner the woman sat me back down in the living room and told me that I was the prettiest little girl she’d ever seen. She asked me if I’d like to eat chocolate and pasta and watch television every day, and I said that sounded very nice, but I wondered if my parents would be all right with it. The woman told me not to worry, that my parents knew all about it, but that there was one thing they didn’t know.