by Julia Fine
11
With Ben back at home, things fell into an easier pattern. I could shower in the mornings, while he sat by Clara’s play mat, and in the evenings he could hold her while I ate. When I woke to her hunger mewls at two a.m., I still felt dredged from the warm deep, it still felt like a Sisyphean task to yank my boob out of my nursing shirt and get Clara to latch, but there was a current of tenderness toward her that had previously been missing. I was better about remembering to keep protein bars by Ben’s pillow—after the first night he’d moved back onto the futon so that I could watch TV without waking him up while I nursed. Several times I climbed the stairs to go ask Margaret about the night she’d been with Clara, to ask her about what to do with Michael. Each time I did, the turquoise door was locked.
Clara was gaining weight, filling out her onesies in a way that made her look more like a human baby than an alien creature. Her cradle cap was disappearing, and her umbilical stump had finally fallen off. She seemed to enjoy classic ’80s arena rock: we listened to “We Built This City” and “Can’t Fight This Feeling” on repeat, and she’d perk up at the swell of a syncopated chorus. I paid $5.99 a month for a music app on my phone that would let me stream practically anything. Once whatever song I selected was done, it was supposed to recommend similar music—from Foreigner to Whitesnake, from Natalie Merchant to Norah Jones. But sometimes midway through a Pat Benatar hit the music would stop, and Bing Crosby or Rudy Vallée would come on.
Sometimes the overhead lights would turn off, and a side lamp would turn on in their stead. Sometimes the curtains would fill with hot air and bellow out, although the vents were all above them and the windows were closed. Sometimes I felt that I wasn’t the only adult in the room.
I knew this must be Michael, asserting herself. She didn’t want to be forgotten. But none of it seemed threatening. None of it felt especially malicious. I didn’t feel unsafe.
OUR HALF SISTER Kelsey had been spending lots of time with Annie while our stepmother was visiting her sister in Switzerland. It was Kelsey’s junior year of high school, and she could no longer justifiably miss school for an extended pre-Thanksgiving vacation, so while her older brother Sam went skiing, she was stuck at home with Dad. She hadn’t come to see Clara yet—our relationship was too caught up in my father for her to come over without him, and he’d only popped by for a minute one evening on his way home from work. Clara was sleeping, so he’d ducked in and quickly out, not accepting Ben’s offered beer, not even taking off his coat. A nonevent; Dad in our home for less than ten minutes.
I felt the lack of relationship with Kelsey was my fault, since I was older. Annie tried hard, but I hadn’t made the effort. It would be good for Clara to start fresh, to know her family, and I brought this up with Annie over the phone when she mentioned that Kelsey was at her apartment.
“If I bring her over, will you act normal?” Annie asked. I’d promised her I was seeing a therapist, that I’d discussed all my issues with Ben. I wasn’t, and I hadn’t.
“I don’t know what you mean, ‘act normal,’” I said. “I have a three-week-old baby attached to my tit and I’m covered in puke.”
“Yes, you do,” said Annie. “Don’t be mean to her. Don’t talk to her about that weird babysitter, or new neighbors, or how often you have to pee.”
“She’s practically an adult, I don’t know why you have to baby her,” I said.
“Don’t be mean to her,” Annie repeated. “She’s just a kid.”
“I haven’t been mean to anybody since Ben got home,” I said. This was true. I’d somehow found reserves of patience for the neighbor who’d blocked our car into the garage, for the shrieking teenagers in the alley. I even had patience for Michael, who, three days into her tenure, had taken to playing with the gas valves on the stove. Earlier that day I’d caught a whiff of nitrogen and turned to watch the front left burner sputter, then enflame. The others followed, sparking on and off in a code I couldn’t decipher. I turned each knob firmly off and stood in front of the stove, wearing the same look of disappointment that I’d use when Solly misbehaved.
“That’s inappropriate,” I said. “We’ve been kind enough to share this space with you, now please do me the favor of being a good houseguest.”
The tension melting from my shoulders as if someone was massaging them, I took to be contrition.
She just wanted attention; they all wanted attention. I guess I’d wanted attention too, but now I had it and so I was magnanimous and gentle, putting in my earplugs when the teenagers yelled and feeling above it all. Maybe it was because Ben was taking the early-morning feed. Maybe it was because I was more comfortable with Clara.
I’D NEVER BEEN mean to Kelsey in the way that Annie thought I had. I just didn’t think of her as my sister—she was sixteen years younger than I was, and we didn’t have any shared history. My father was a different man by the time he was her father, and I’d gone east to college before she’d even turned three.
The last time I’d seen Kelsey was just after Ben and I moved back to Chicago. She showed up with Jeanie and my father. We had drinks on the roof—Kelsey had lemonade, and my beer was nonalcoholic—and Dad complimented the clear view of downtown. They’d parked in a metered spot, and when the timer on Jeanie’s phone went off we all smiled with relief. After they left, I let myself have half a glass of good red wine.
Now here Kelsey was, on my couch next to Annie, wearing a Ninja Turtles T-shirt and a Cubs hat. The knickknack holder on the back of her phone read “Hufflepuff.” It all felt very branded, very messy, especially considering her impeccably applied dark-purple lipstick and the glasses that I wasn’t sure she needed. The general sartorial oeuvre was one I found severely wanting.
I wasn’t sure what to say to her, so I did what I’d seen lots of mothers do and talked to my infant instead.
“Are you hungry? Are you so happy that Aunt Annie and Kelsey are here? Did you have another poop?”
Act normal. I could feel Annie’s eyes on me, the pressure of the four of us together in the room. Clara wasn’t hungry. She hadn’t pooped. She seemed indifferent to our visitors.
I turned to Kelsey. “That’s a neat shirt,” I offered. Neat. Shirt. Translation: Please leave so I can keep watching HGTV, so I can take a nap, so I can wash spit cloths.
“You know that sleep deprivation is a form of torture,” she said then, apropos of nothing. Annie looked at Kelsey in the way she’d lately been looking at me. “The CIA use it at Guantanamo,” she continued. “They keep the prisoners awake so long that they get loopy, and then let them have like forty minutes, and instead of feeling refreshed they just get loopier.”
“Who’s teaching you this?” said Annie. “Are you learning this in school?”
“Wikipedia,” said Kelsey.
The whole conversation felt very of-a-moment. Very here-and-now, in the same way that the room behind the turquoise door felt very 1940s. And now I was warming to the whole thing, this capsule of late 2017—my mainstream counterculture half sister who’d criticize decades-old torture techniques but was so inured to the sitting president’s theatrics that they weren’t worth mentioning. Who was wearing a T-shirt of a TV show that was on its way out even when I was a kid, who’d been able to read all the Harry Potter books over a single summer.
It was snowing outside—nearly invisible flakes that would soon turn to mist or to rain—and the afternoon dark was approaching. Our across-the-alley neighbor had already put up her Christmas lights, and soon she’d plug them into the outlet on her patio; hard-candy colors would blur into the living room. There would never be another of this moment. Nor this one. Nor this.
The room smelled like gas.
“You left the stove on,” said Kelsey, standing up to see the kitchen. “Did you mean to?” I shook my head, and she went around the island, bending down to turn it off. “My mother would kill me if I just forgot the burner like that,” she muttered.
Annie looked at me. She widened her ey
es and wrinkled her forehead, but I wasn’t in the mood so I just said, “What?”
“We’ll talk about it later.” But she couldn’t control herself, and before Kelsey came back to us, Annie whispered, “You aren’t lying to me, are you? About the help?”
“No.”
I wasn’t sure why she suspected I was lying. Of course I was lying, but I’d never lied to Annie before—not when I snuck out of the house in high school, or when I hated her boyfriend, or when I’d been out of work right after college but told Mom that I was fine. I knew I wasn’t a bad liar, either. Ben always believed me, and I lied to him all the time.
THINGS WITH BEN were as good as they had ever been, as good as I could imagine them. He wasn’t on a specific client project, so he only had to work out of the office a few days a week. On the days he could work from home he’d tried to set up at the kitchen table, but got distracted by Clara—not her crying but the magnetic pull of her lying on her play mat, blinking up at us, learning the movement of her limbs. He couldn’t focus, and with him watching her, I felt I should also be watching as she jerked her hand a little to the left, or turned her head toward the sour sunlight streaming through the window. Apparently I was missing something vital, some innate parental pride, but if I followed Ben’s lead, I thought that maybe I’d unearth it. Clara was just lying there. I told myself to do better.
Once he realized he wasn’t getting anything done mooning around the condo, Ben started posting up at a nearby coffee shop. If it wasn’t too cold, I could walk Clara to come see him. At five thirty exactly he’d sign out and come home to either make or order dinner, and he’d sit while I marathon-nursed and watch crappy TV with me until we were both ready to fall asleep.
While he was home, nothing happened.
Nothing notable happened.
Which is to say, he didn’t notice anything.
June 1942
Michael notices everything. The sharp edge of a stone poking out of the wet sand, the evening habits of the gulls, a slant rhyme that doesn’t quite fit. Margaret has given her the draft, and now she sits on a divan, a pencil hanging from the side of her mouth, the afternoon light skimming off the water, lacing through the slats of the porch railing. Every so often Michael’s hand clenches when the words she reads move her; the sun has turned her forearm’s dark hairs gold, even her ankles are bronzing. Margaret pretends to read Whitman, but can’t help but look up at each murmur of approval or disdain. Finally Michael sets down the article, sighs, and holds her hand to her forehead to gaze out toward the Sound.
“It’s good,” she says. “Though it isn’t literature.”
“But it’s for grown-ups,” says Margaret.
“Yes, it is. And I can see it in a place like Vogue or Harper’s, but you have to somehow reference the war.” The war feels very far away, both physically and in its relevance to Margaret. To mention the war here, while the tide laps the edges of the long wooden dock and the rum cherry stretches over the swimming pool; where everywhere one turns, the world is quiet, blue-green, glorious—
“I’m not interested in politics,” says Margaret.
“Yes, my dear, that is one of your flaws.” Michael stands. She makes her way to the stone path that leads down to the seawall, rolling her shoulders back and unbuttoning her shirt.
Margaret trips after her, barefoot.
“It’s fine to propose that New York is ‘a melting pot of wonderful cuisine,’” says Michael, “and the maps truly are darling. But the timing isn’t right. We can’t be celebrating unity when Europe’s in such turmoil. I don’t see anybody running this piece now.”
“Still—” Margaret grins. “It is for grown-ups.”
“Indeed.”
A small wave slaps the dock, startling a piping plover. The dogs take off, and Michael laughs. She sheds her button-down and leaves it on the rock wall. Margaret watches her slip out of her shorts—her thighs luscious and freckled, her stomach loose after three children. She doesn’t remove her drop pearl earrings; the risk excites Margaret.
No experiment in living has ever proven so fruitful. No man has such depths, can push Margaret so far.
So much of life is solitude—so much misunderstood. But with Michael, language is more capable, focus more attainable. Joy more deliberate. Margaret is stripped and seen and orbiting. She curls her toes in the sand and feels her soul swimming with Michael, slapping each stroke even before she’s left the beach.
ALONE AT THE rented house on Long Island Sound, they are free from the demands of Michael’s lecture tours and vast social engagements. But their solitude has an expiration—for here is Harry’s behemoth of a Lincoln crunching up the gravel drive, announcing the weekend arrival of himself and his guests. Margaret and Michael freshly bathed, but Harry recognizing the briny musk of intercourse as soon as they greet him. Michael designates rooms, and Harry glares at Margaret, taking Michael’s elbow as they go upstairs to dress for dinner.
Supper is glazed vegetables and a ham the size of a small child. Harry carves at the head of the table, stuttering over the bone. Next to him, Michael tells a district judge about the house she plans to purchase in Connecticut.
“I’ll have a bedroom overlooking the ocean,” she says. “And a space in which to write. I won’t be far from my son, Robin—he’ll be the only person I’ll see on any regular basis. The solitude will be good for me. I’m quite ready to be alone.” Harry’s bad ear faces Michael, and though she will not look at him, her voice rises so that he’s sure to hear. He simply smiles and offers the serving platter around the table. When he gets to Margaret, he does not offer, instead overpiles her plate.
“Wine, I see.” Harry squints at her glass. “I suppose you wouldn’t have the stomach for scotch. Or the taste.”
“Kiddie books and kiddie drinks, I’m afraid,” says Margaret, swallowing contempt with her expensive cabernet. Still kiddie books, but grown-up literature soon.
After eating, Harry goes immediately to bed, while Michael ushers their guests to the porch. The temperature has dropped, any residual warmth hiding in pockets, with a breeze that forecasts rain ruffling the post oak. Margaret laughs when the storm finally comes, stays out longer than the others, tries to smell the lightning.
“How could you?” hisses Michael once the last of the party have gone to their rooms. “You know I’m afraid of storms. I don’t understand how you can be so insensitive.” Margaret reaches for Michael’s hand, but she snaps it away.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” says Margaret. “If I had you worried—”
“You didn’t ‘have me worried.’ What does that even mean? No wonder you’ll never write anything but nonsense.”
Michael sniffs. Margaret again offers a hand. She cannot stay the night in Michael’s bedroom, not with the house full of guests, but Michael might come now to Margaret’s room, slip out to the beach at first light. They need not change everything because of Harry. Michael brushes past Margaret, stomping up the stairs. From where she stands on the landing, Margaret watches Michael open Harry’s door.
12
Michael Strange had barely factored into my dissertation, which meant I was even less equipped to handle her than I was Margaret. So far it felt innocuous—this houseguest, this haunting—but I supposed that things could easily turn toxic. I’d read enough about Margaret to know how difficult her lover could be—Michael’s anger could reignite at any moment, hotter than before. To further arm myself, I ordered her autobiography from interlibrary loan. I read what little there was about her online.
She’d been the spoiled youngest daughter of a rich Rhode Island family, connected to European royalty, a Gilded Age elite. I’d thought at first that in choosing the name Michael, she was asserting her gender identity, but the more I read, the more it seemed to me she just enjoyed the glamour of the Michael Strange mystique. It did seem that when she was married to John Barrymore, they’d played with gender roles—she feminizing men’s suit cuts, he lowering his necklines
—but so much of that relationship was performance art: two large personalities fighting for air. By the time she settled in with her third husband, Harrison Tweed—by the time she met Margaret—Michael had turned her energies elsewhere.
She wasn’t a very talented poet, but she was an early suffragette. That was one good thing about her. That was something I could respect.
She was often in the society columns, and she liked it. Though always wealthy, she was never as famous or respected as she felt she should be. Michael was charming; she was difficult. In photographs she seemed coy, stylish, self-possessed. It made sense that she would show up for an afterlife, that she’d plan for a resurgence. I just had to figure out why that resurgence was through me.
Ben was excited to see me so excited, proud that I seemed to have a goal. And this research was a welcome distraction, as Annie kept calling and texting, kept wanting to talk about how I was feeling, kept asking me about the stove. “I’m in the middle of a project,” I replied.
BEN WAS ALSO working. He held court at the coffee shop, with two laptops that he set up at a communal worktable, a headset, a large water bottle, an extra-large black coffee, a plate with some sort of muffin or its crumbs, a yellow legal pad, a Bluetooth keyboard, a mouse and a mouse pad. I noticed a younger woman side-eyeing his makeshift office as soon as I got to the door, and while I’d probably have done the same if I were her, I was resentful. She didn’t know him. He was trying to provide for his family. He was sweet. But he was oblivious in the way that straight, white men are oblivious; comfortable in the way only men can be comfortable. He had on a button-down and a Patagonia vest.