Scott passes around the box of fire-starters, and we each take one. I grab one for Hayden, too, and put it into his hand for him. I overheard the grown-ups having a talk about this, about whether it was safe to let Charlotte and Hayden use one of these, especially Hayden since he doesn’t really understand what’s going on most of the time. Janelle wanted to skip it, and maybe give him something else to throw in the fire, but Scott convinced her that it was important for all the kids to be treated equally. He said, “We’ll practice with him before dinner, we’ll make sure he knows what he’s supposed to do. How do you know whether he can rise to the occasion if you don’t give him a chance?” And Janelle shook her head and was quiet for a minute but finally said okay.
“Here we go, guys,” says Scott. He has a big long lighter, like the kind you use to light a barbecue grill, and he moves down the line of us, touching the flame to the tips of our pinecones.
I watch mine for a second after he lights it; I’m interested in the way that the fire starts just at the top tip and works its way downward along the rows of scales as if it were a living thing. For a second, everyone’s quiet and the air smells like Christmas, and we just stand there, holding the glow in our hands.
Then, really quick, I feel heat on my fingers and I toss the pinecone onto the firewood. Mine hits first, and then there are others flying through the air to land on the pile, and everything crackles as all the little fires join into one.
“Scott,” someone yells. It’s Janelle. “Scott, get it from him.”
I look over at Hayden, who’s still holding his pinecone in his hand, eyes wide and dark as he watches the flame travel down toward his hands. Then Scott pushes past me, knocking me and Tilly over into the dirt. He lunges at Hayden, and I don’t see what happens, but then Hayden starts yelling big angry noises, and Scott’s howling because his hand is on fire. The pinecone sails through the air in the wrong direction, flying over my head and into the trees. All the adults are around Scott, pouring bottles of water and yelling, and I’m the only one who thinks to follow the pinecone into the woods to stomp the fire out. I’m the only one who thinks to put my arms around Hayden and give him a hug as he cries and yells for the bright, pretty thing that Scott gave him and then took away.
chapter 17
Alexandra
December 2010: New York
You’re sitting at a table at a banquet facility in Poughkeepsie, New York: the wedding of one of Josh’s cousins. It’s a sit-down meal, and your table has been waiting for salad for a while. The girls are getting fidgety.
“I spy . . .” you say. You’ve just got to keep them going till you can get some food in them. You’re thinking you’ll say D, for Daddy; you can see Josh across the room, making conversation with an uncle.
“No, wait, I’ve got one,” Tilly cuts in. “I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with the letter F.”
“Flowers,” Iris says.
“No, but close.”
You have a bad feeling. “Is it flower girl?” you ask, giving her a look.
“Yep.” Tilly laughs; Iris makes a frustrated noise in her throat and punches her sister in the arm. She turns and stomps away toward her dad. The flower girl—five-year-old niece of the groom, currently twirling adorably on the dance floor—is a touchy subject. Iris is nine now, beyond standard flower-girl age, and not close enough to the couple to have been considered. But she’s never been a flower girl, and she always wanted to be one, so she’s been grumpy for the whole trip. And Tilly’s more than happy to needle her about it. “Not really necessary, Till,” you say.
“No, but fun,” she says, taking another roll from the basket on the table. She looks pretty tonight; she’s wearing a purple silk dress and low heels, though you weren’t able to talk her into panty hose. Relatives who haven’t seen her for a while have been commenting on how much darker her hair has gotten in the last couple of years; you’re with her every day, yet you can’t quite say when it changed from dark blond to light brown. Iris’s hair still has that baby-gold sheen, but you can really only see it in sunlight. So easy to miss your children changing before your eyes.
It’s been almost two months since you went to Scott Bean’s seminar, and you think maybe you can say that things are getting a little better. Not that there’s a direct correlation, necessarily—you’ve also been working with Tilly’s doctor to fine-tune her medication, and it’s hard to say what’s causing what. But you think the Scott Bean stuff is helping. You ended up ordering his set of CDs, and you’ve been listening to them in the car. None of it is particularly revolutionary—limits and consequences, rewarding and redirecting, staying calm and encouraging responsibility. But there’s something comforting about his voice, in the air, surrounding you. He sounds sympathetic. He sounds like he believes you can do it. It’s probably a better use of your driving time than beating yourself up.
“I need to pee,” says Tilly suddenly, jumping up.
You catch her arm before she goes, tug her closer so you can lower your voice. “Need any help?”
She groans and rolls her eyes, like any tween girl, like every picture of a daughter you ever imagined. “No, Mother,” she says and walks away, leaving you smiling.
She has her period, first time ever. It arrived this past Tuesday, while she was at school. She didn’t notice it right away; she doesn’t like the school restrooms and tries to avoid using them if she can help it. The school nurse called you to come pick her up at lunchtime, because the blood had soaked through her pants.
Tilly seems to be taking the whole thing in stride; mostly she’s annoyed by it. She doesn’t like the imprecision, the fact that she doesn’t know for sure when it’s coming or how long it will last. She’s freaked out by the way she inevitably gets blood on her hands, and she’s horrified (almost morally outraged, it seems) by the existence of menstrual cramps. She’s made a few awkward jokes about sexual activity and pregnancy. Fairly average stuff, really; probably not so different from the responses of her neurotypical peers. You’ve been dreading this moment for a while, but it’s not nearly as bad as you’d feared. You underestimate her sometimes, you think.
Big family events, like this wedding, can be hard for you. You’re seeing other kids Tilly’s age and comparing; you’re wondering how she appears to people who don’t know her very well. On the car ride from the church to the reception, you listened to your girls pick apart the ceremony, enumerating which aspects they would or would not like to include in their own weddings. And you tried to believe in a future so easy and bright.
You see Josh’s mother, Irene, winding toward you through the scattered circles of guests. You smile, nudge the chair next to you into a more welcoming position. You’ve always felt like you lucked out in this area. Josh’s dad died before the two of you met, but his mom is warm and kind, noninterfering, relatively drama-free.
She sits down next to you, sets her glass of wine on the table. “You finally get a moment to yourself,” she says, “and here I come to ruin it.”
“No,” you say. “I’m glad to have some adult conversation.”
She squeezes your shoulder. “It’s so nice of you guys to come. I know it’s a long trip.”
Seven and a half hours, factoring in traffic, meals, and bathroom stops. But you shrug. “We’re happy to be here,” you say.
“Tilly seems good,” she says. It’s not a question, exactly, but she’s providing a blank space, drawing a box in the air where your answer should go.
“Yeah,” you say, your tone upbeat. “I mean, it’s a work in progress.” It’s hard to explain to anyone who isn’t right there in the middle of it. You could say that there are good days and there are bad days, and that makes it sound like her struggles aren’t any different from anyone else’s. But you know the difference, even if you don’t know how to convey it to anyone else: on the good days, she’s still telling her father she wants to fuck
him. On the good days, she’s still hitting her little sister if you can’t manage to put yourself between them in time.
Tonight, though. Tonight, everyone is nicely dressed, and no one’s yelled even once. Tonight, you are filled with good wishes, and you’re going to dance with your husband, whether he likes it or not. You glance around until you spot your girls: Iris is across the room with Josh, saying something that’s making all the grown-ups around her laugh, and Tilly’s coming through the doorway, on her way back from the bathroom. All of your life here, in front of you. I spy, with my hopeful eye . . .
• • •
After dinner, there are toasts, and then the newlyweds cut the wedding cake, which turns out to be a wedding pie, causing nearly uniform disappointment at your table. Pie seems more sophisticated than cake, you think, perhaps more of an adult choice. But that doesn’t mean you have to prefer it.
This is one area, though, where you and your husband disagree. “Mmm,” he says. “That looks amazing. Why didn’t we think of doing that at our wedding?”
You stare at him. “It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.” Your girls laugh, the sound bright, like little birds.
“Aw, come on,” he says. “Pie is great.”
“I don’t know,” you say. “Maybe pie is more of a guy thing.”
You’ve lost them. “Mom, that’s sexist,” says Tilly.
“Yeah,” says Iris. “It’s offensive.”
You shake your head at them, these monsters you’ve created, and you walk away to join the line for dessert.
And when the DJ interrupts the pouring of coffee to ask that all of the married couples report to the dance floor, you stand up and take Josh’s hand to pull him along with you. As you walk away from the table, you hear Tilly say to her grandmother, “Grammy, did you know I can get pregnant now?” but when you turn back to see if you’re going to be needed, your mother-in-law smiles and shoos you away. The song is “The Way You Look Tonight,” bland and lovely. It’s timeless and generic in all the best ways; it smooths away the specifics and turns this wedding into everywedding. The DJ keeps his microphone in his hand, ready to winnow the dancing couples down until only the oldest remains.
You put your arms around Josh’s neck and rest your head on his shoulder. You’re forty-two, and you’ve known him since you were nineteen. Impossibly lucky, you think sometimes, to love someone so thoroughly and so long.
“Okay,” says the DJ, midway through the first verse. “Anyone who’s been married for five years or less, please leave the floor.”
Four or five couples, the newlyweds among them, step away and join the crowd of onlookers. Look at them, the bride and groom, the way they stand close and continue to hold each other’s hands, happy to be young and flushed, happy to be the first ones to leave. You don’t mind, you realize, being left behind in this middle place, alongside the old folks. At least you get to dance for a while longer.
Your own wedding was lovely, but looking back now you’re mostly amazed at how young you were. You said the words, and you meant them, but really you had no idea how it would feel to stick together through the bad times. You tighten your arms around Josh, as he drops a kiss onto the top of your head. This is it now: your sickness, your poorer. “Someday,” one of Tilly’s doctors once said to you, “you’ll look back on this and wonder how you ever got through it.”
“Okay,” says the DJ. “Only couples who have been married ten years or more.”
You’re still safe; it’s fifteen years since you stood where that girl in the white dress is standing. Here’s what you have in common with the couples still moving around you: you know, all of you, what these newlyweds are in for, these starry-eyed fledglings who think this is the moment where everything good begins. You’re dancing alongside veterans of wars and miscarriages and a thousand day-to-day disappointments. You cling to your husband, happy in his arms, until it’s time to move to the side, to make way for couples who have lived through even more.
chapter 18
Iris
June 10, 2012: New Hampshire
My dad’s the one who drove Scott to the ER after he got hurt last night, so I already know most of the details before we get to breakfast on Sunday: he has a second-degree burn on the palm of his right hand, and he’ll have to wear a bandage for a while and do some rehab (which I thought only meant that thing about getting over a drug addiction, but I guess not), but other than that, he’ll be okay. And Tilly asked a bunch of gross questions, like how much skin was hanging off and what color it was, so I also know the answers to those things, even though I’d rather not.
When we get to the dining hall, Scott’s there, and he seems pretty normal. His hand’s all wrapped up in a giant ball of white gauze, and he looks like he hasn’t slept or taken a shower or anything. But in a strange way, he seems happier than usual. He’s grinning all over the place and practically bouncing off the walls with excitement.
“Big day,” he keeps saying to people when he runs into them at the buffet table or on their way to the kitchen. “Big day.”
And with all the stuff about Scott getting hurt, I’d forgotten that today’s the day the first GCs are getting here. I have a weird feeling about it, like when your parents are having people over for dinner that you don’t know, or when your friend is trying to convince you that a movie’s good, but you still don’t want to watch it. Not dread, exactly, but . . . the idea of a bunch of strangers coming and staying at our camp just doesn’t sound fun.
Scott comes and sits down at our table, carrying his plate of pancakes with his left hand.
“Good morning,” my mom says. “Were you able to get any sleep?”
He grins. “Sleep is for the weak.”
“So I heard you didn’t have to get anything amputated,” says Tilly. I see my mom close her eyes for a second and shake her head, the way she does when she can’t quite believe something Tilly’s just said.
“Nope,” says Scott. “Everything’s still attached.”
“That’s good,” says Tilly. “I read this thing online once about this guy who had to . . .”
And then she just stops talking. Which is weird for Tilly, weird enough that we all turn to look and see if she’s like having a stroke or choking on her breakfast or something. But she’s just sitting there, looking surprised.
“You okay there, Till?” asks my dad.
It takes her a minute to answer. “Yeah,” she says slowly. “I was going to say something inappropriate, but I stopped myself. Because I didn’t want to get AD Block.” She’s smiling and she looks really proud of herself.
Then all the adults are falling all over themselves to congratulate her and tell her what a great decision that was, and my mom reaches across the table to give her arm a little squeeze.
“Yeah,” says Tilly. “That was kind of weird. I was totally going to start talking about this guy I read about who had to have his penis amputated because he had cancer . . .”
And of course, being Tilly, she doesn’t even understand what she just did. While my mom and dad are pointing out the flaw in her reasoning, I notice that Scott is having a hard time trying to cut up his pancakes with his fork, using only one hand, so I say, “I can do that for you.”
Scott looks up at me and smiles. He has really nice eyes. I don’t mean that like I have a crush on him or anything, it’s just hard not to notice when he’s looking right at you so closely.
“Thank you, Iris,” he says, passing his plate to me. “You can be my right-hand girl.”
After breakfast, Scott talks for a little while about the Guest Campers, and tells us all the things he was planning to say last night at the Saturday Campfire, before he got hurt: that he’s proud of us, and we’ve learned so much in the past few days, and now we have the chance to help other families. And we should just be friendly and be ourselves and whatever.
Tilly ra
ises her hand to talk. “Here’s what I don’t understand about the GCs,” she says. “Why are they coming here?”
Scott laughs, and so do some of the other grown-ups. “Good question, Tilly,” Scott says. “Let’s see if one of the other kids can answer that for you. Candy? Iris? Ryan?”
Ryan’s not even paying attention, as usual, and I’m trying to decide if I want to answer, but Candy gets her hand up first.
“So, okay,” she says. “The reason that any of us are here is because our parents think that living a little bit separate from some of the parts of the modern world will be good for us. Right? Like getting away from computers and texting, and growing our own food so that it doesn’t have any mutant additives or whatever.”
“‘Mutant additives,’” says Tilly. “LOL.”
“Go on,” says Scott.
“So that’s the same reason that the GCs want to come. Except they’re only coming for a week, instead of moving here forever. It’s like at a Renaissance fair where there are some people who are just there because it sounds like fun, and there are some people who are super into pretending it’s the Renaissance, and they have all the right clothes and call people wenches and squires and won’t sell you a smoothie unless you call it ‘grog.’”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” says Scott. “So you’re saying that we’re the . . . what, the freakish true believers, while everyone else is just dabbling in our lifestyle?”
“Maybe we’re the Amish,” Tilly says. “That would kind of make sense.”
“Yeah, that works,” says Candy. “We’re the Amish and the GCs are the tourists who want to take a ride in our horse and buggy.”
“That sounds dirty for some reason,” Tilly says. “Like if ‘horse and buggy’ were a euphemism for . . . never mind. I’m not going to say it.”
Harmony Page 12