Sam should have done that. Was that her mistake? Not to have stood by a cake and joined hands, held with her beloved a broad sterling knife, kissed over a tall cake. Would that have been enough?
She’d been wrong earlier. She wasn’t done with crying. She bent her head to her hands and wept.
This was how Lee found her.
He came up behind her, wrapped her in his arms.
She let him hold her, felt the comfort of his embrace, felt his thighs against hers, his muscles as strong as pilings beneath a dock.
His touched his lips to her head. “I think it’s time you told me,” he said into her hair.
“Told you?”
He rocked her. “About your sister. About your ‘falling-out.’ ”
She closed her eyes, leaned back against him. “I don’t know where to start.”
“At the beginning.” He lifted her hair back from her face, kissed her temple. “Just take your time. Start at the beginning.”
What was the beginning? This was the problem. Sam wasn’t even sure exactly when or how it began. She was only sure of the betrayal of the end.
Libby
It was such a betrayal, this failing of her body. No one could understand how such treason felt.
Across from her, Richard was engrossed in his menu. Libby’s lay unopened. She looked around the dining room. At linen-covered tables, people were sipping drinks, talking, partaking of their meals. One laughing quartet was drinking champagne. Overhead, chandeliers sparkled, their light reflecting off the crystal glassware that graced each table. Richard had insisted they come here, not as a celebration, certainly not that, but as a way in which to pass the evening, to take their minds off what waited in the morning, as if that were in any way possible, as if she could forget for an instant. Dialysis. The word haunted her constantly. At the next table, a man dug into a chocolate concoction heaped with a soft mound of whipped cream. Real, not from some aerosol can. Even from a distance she could tell that. His wife, clad in a cream-colored dress, one Libby had seen the week before in the window of Talbots, picked at a slice of lemon pie. Watching the woman—the hockey stick—nibble at the yellow filling, she was reminded of a story from the Talmud, something about an old Jew being called before the Almighty and held to account for all the pleasures he hadn’t enjoyed. (Where had she heard this tale? She and Richard had no Jewish friends.) She thought of all the sweets she had denied herself. Pastries and all manner of confections. Custards and crullers and cakes. Chocolate bars with almonds. For God’s sake, she wanted to scream at the woman, just eat the fucking dessert. Eat it all. Lick the plate. Order another.
She picked up her menu and scanned the offerings. French Onion Soup with Gruyère. Pan-Seared Foie Gras with Fall Garnish. Gemelli Pasta with Roast Duck and a Port Wine Sauce. Grilled Filet of Beef with a Cognac Veal Sauce. Black-Sesame-Seed-Encrusted Tuna with Balsamic Reduction and Chive Oil. The things we take for granted, she thought. The things we accept as our just due, until they are taken from us. Simple things like a night out, a meal. Complex things like the miracle of a functioning body. Except for her. She no longer took things for granted. She had been stripped of that right. Now she had to watch everything. Food was no longer about pleasure or nourishment, celebration or diversion, or even denial. Now it was about chemistry. A precise monitoring of sodium and potassium, of phosphorus and protein.
She set the menu down. It had been a mistake to come.
As if reading her mind, Richard looked up. “Is there anything you can have?”
Mentally, Libby ran through the booklet the nutritionist had given her, “The Healthy Food Guide: A National Renal Diet,” pages that had become her new bible. “I’m sure there’s something,” she said, forcing a smile. Potatoes were out, of course. Too much potassium, as was anything with tomatoes. The roast chicken would be all right, but not the cherry veal sauce. She would have to ask that they skip that. And there was always a tossed salad, undressed. The kitchen here was accommodating. They would provide something, but for what it was going to cost she and Richard might as well have stayed home.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
“We could leave.”
“For God’s sake,” she said, her voice sharp. “I said it’s all right.”
He looked down, chastened.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. My fault. I’m sorry.”
“The chicken looks good.” It was not his fault. Not his fault. She kept reminding herself of this.
“Yes,” he said, openly relieved she had found something.
“How was your day?” She’d pretend everything was normal. Really it was the best way.
“Busy. We had the department meeting.”
“And your lesson with the James girl? That was today?”
“Yes,” he said, his face lighting up. Usually the truly talented musicians went east. Juilliard. Curtis in Philly. Berklee or the Conservatory in Boston. When someone like Sarah James landed in his care, he behaved as though he had been awarded a Nobel.
She was relieved and sensed he was, too, when the waiter came for their order. The chicken and salad for her. The veal chop with mushroom-and-white-vermouth sauce for Richard. And a glass of cabernet. “Do you mind?” he asked, his face all apologies about the wine.
“Of course not,” she lied. She minded that everyone in the place was eating and drinking whatever they desired. She railed against the unfairness of it. For days she’d had this craving for hot dogs. The worst possible thing. She didn’t even like them and hadn’t eaten one in years. God knows what they put in those things. Everyone had heard the horror stories. Pig intestines. Rats. Still, the craving persisted.
The food restrictions were bad enough, but limiting fluids was really a bitch. Four cups a day, no more; everything counted. Gravy, ice cream, ice cubes. Even the liquid in string beans. She had learned to suck on ice chips and chew gum to moisten a dry mouth, to take her pills with applesauce, saving water for the times when she was desperately thirsty.
Richard’s wine came and he raised his glass. For a moment she thought he was going to offer a toast—to what, she could only imagine, certainly not to what lay ahead. She escaped before he could speak. “I’ll be right back,” she said, rising.
The restrooms were on the basement level, along with a martiniand -cigar bar, and as she made her way down the steps, the aroma of tobacco enveloped her. Unlike most people, she liked the smell of cigars. It triggered memories of her father. His favorite chair, a brown leather wingback, was currently at home in her den and occasionally, even now, she would bury her face in the crease where one of the sides met the back, and inhale. The aroma was still there, deep in the pores of the leather, the cells of the stuffing. The faint, very faint, scent of him. Of cigars.
There were four men sitting in the lounge, smoking and drinking amber liquid from short glasses. They looked up when she entered, then returned to their whiskeys and conversation, dismissing her. There had been a time when she was not invisible to men, when they would have smiled, nodded, their eyes lingering, acknowledging her looks. Well, men. She had read recently about a survey where ballplayers were asked at what age women were at their absolute peak. Thirty-five, she had thought they’d say. Or maybe twenty-eight. The majority of men had said seventeen. Seventeen. She was a long way from that. Now she might as well be a clothes hanger, a construct of sexual insignificance.
She skirted their table and wandered over to the glass cases that lined the walls, shelves filled with space memorabilia. The owner of the restaurant had once been an astronaut, a part of the Apollo 13 mission. Or was an astronaut, she corrected herself. Once you did something like that, she supposed, it was part of you forever. Wherever you went, it was a component of your identity. You were a Man Who Had Been in Space. She scanned the exhibit. There were letters from presidents (Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson) and celebrities (Princess Grace, Tom Hanks). She looked at the exhibits and read the bold
banner headlines of newspapers, each trumpeting words of man’s conquest of space. A cover photo from Time showed the astronauts after splashdown. Praying. So they had been religious. Was that important? Could you do something like that and remain an atheist? How did it feel to them to orbit the moon, to look down on their planet? These men—this fraternity of the moon-bound brothers (of course, it had been all men back then)—had they caught a glimpse of some great organizing principle, had they seen a part of some divine harmony? Or had it been only ideals and science and a sense of adventure that had lured them and given them the courage to be locked in a capsule and hurled from the earth. She looked again at the photo of the praying astronauts. Whatever it had been, she could use some. All she felt was fear.
Feeling sorry for yourself, are you? Her father’s voice stopped her. It had been months and months since he had come to her, but now she heard him clearly; he’d been summoned perhaps by the aura of cigar smoke that had kindled her memory of him. She swallowed against the sweetness of it. Behind her, one of the men laughed. The others joined in. She shut her ears to them, focused on hearing her father. She longed for him, his strength, his advice, his comfort. What could he tell her now? How could he console her?
He wouldn’t condone self-pity, she knew. You deal with the cards that were handed you, he would say. Play the hand and hope for better next time.
Hope. The word tasted ashy in her mouth. Maybe that was what people lived on, what led them forward. Hope. Not faith.
“Libby?”
Richard’s brow was creased with concern. He took her hand. “I was worried. Are you all right?”
She was conscious of the men, of their curious stares. They had stopped talking.
“I’m fine.”
“They’ve brought our dinner.”
“I was just coming.”
He moved his hand to her elbow. She allowed him to guide her from the room as if she were a child, permitted him to lead her up the stairs, to their table. She sat, allowed the waiter to grind pepper over her chicken, pretended everything was perfectly all right, pretended tomorrow would be like any other day. Pretended there would be no dialysis.
Then she heard her father again, telling her what she had known all along she must do. Call Sam.
She wanted to. She looked around at the other diners, at her husband, busy carving a bite-size piece of meat, and what she wanted above all was Sam, wanted this with a hunger that shocked her. She wanted everything to be the way it once had been between them, before she destroyed everything.
Call Sam, her father whispered.
I can’t, she said to his ghost. No one understood. It had taken all her nerve to phone once. She couldn’t try again. Long ago, she had lost the right to ask anything of Sam.
Sam
They had returned to Sam’s bed. Sam was wrapped in Lee’s arms. His hand stroked the length of her back. His fingers and palms were just rough enough to feel good against her skin. Her head rested on his chest and his chest hairs tickled her nose, but she didn’t move. She wanted to stay like that forever. Hidden and safe.
Lee spoke first. “What’s her name?”
Sam drew a long, shuddering breath. She was torn between the need to hide the scabbed and shameful wounds of her past and the desire to give him that same secret history, as if it were a gift. “Libby,” she said. “Short for Elizabeth. Elizabeth Faye.”
“Libby,” he said.
At the sound of her sister’s name on his lips, in his mouth, she felt the tickle of panic in her stomach. She willed it away. This was Lee. Her Lee. A man she could trust, a man who salvaged boats, rescued cats. A man who knew celestial navigation.
He drew his finger along her cheek, lifted back a strand of hair.
“Is she older or younger?
“Older. By two years.”
“And how long has it been since you’ve talked?”
How could she make him understand? His older brother Jim was an organic farmer out on the far end of Long Island, and when they got together it was easy to picture them as boys, playing basketball together, horsing around. She could never envision Lee and his brother lashed together playing Siamese twins. Each of them stood alone. There was affection and brotherly love between them, but none of the passion she had shared with Libby. Was that kind of passion—the kind that could change into hate—possible only between sisters?
“Six years.”
A look of puzzlement passed over his face, and something else, too, something she couldn’t identify—disappointment?—just a flash, but she felt a thrill of panic, as she had when he spoke her sister’s name.
“You’re kidding,” he said. “You haven’t spoken to your sister for six years? What the hell happened? A fight?”
She wasn’t ready to talk about the fight. Nor was she prepared to talk about the recent past, the woman Libby had somehow turned into—the wife, the mother of twins, living in a home of false abundance, in a wealthy midwestern suburb, capable of deceit. If she was going to tell him anything about Libby, she would have to go back to a less emotional time, back before everything went wrong, back when Libby was the bold and rebellious one, the rule breaker, afraid of nothing, when Libby was her idol. She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. He laid his hand on her stomach.
“When we were teenagers,” she began, “Lib used to drive my mother mad.”
“How?”
“You name it, they fought about it. There was always a running battle between them, a contest of wills. Makeup and music, curfews and clothes, the fact that Libby refused to wear a bra. The truth is, I think what my mother saw as caring, Libby saw as control.”
“And you?”
“I didn’t draw my mother’s wrath the way Libby did. Partly because I wasn’t rebellious by nature and partly because I was invisible in Lib’s shadow.”
“Hard to imagine you invisible.” He stroked her belly.
“You didn’t know Lib back then. She was the kind of person that made a roomful of people pay attention when she walked in. But she didn’t care about that. She never cared what people thought. That’s what made her so powerful. And it’s what made my mother so afraid of her. People in town were always going on about something or other that she’d done.”
“Like what?”
Sam thought back over the Libby stories. What she most remembered about those years was the tension between her mother and Libby. She had felt like a sponge wedged between them, absorbing and deflecting anger, lying low and listening to them battle.
“Well, there was the time she pretended she was a mannequin,” she said. His body shifted, she felt his interest—his interest in Libby—but there was no way out now. And so she began.
It is August, the steamy part of summer when, beyond the sweeping arc of the sprinklers, brittle patches of brown spread across the yard like disease. The first thrill of vacation freedom has long worn off and the shadow of school looms ahead. It is 1979, the year Libby turns sixteen. In September she will be a junior and already the conversation at meals centers on which colleges they will be visiting in the fall, on the PSATs and the need for a tutor. It is this conversation that is going on now.
“No tutor,” Libby says. “Forget it.”
“You think you can get by on the verbal part,” their mother says. (This is true. Libby is straight A in English, a subject Sam struggles to get Cs in.) “But math counts, too. Sue Drummond’s mother gave me the name of an excellent math tutor. I’m calling him today and that’s all there is to it.”
“Who died and made you God?” Libby says, pushing away from the table. She escapes before their mother can ground her for being mouthy. Sam is astounded by her sister’s audacity. She risks a glance at their mother, who beneath her anger seems tired and sad. Sam finishes her breakfast and clears the table, conscious of being good to make up for Libby. She takes the morning paper out to the porch and settles in on a wicker rocker. Every morning, she reads the front page so at dinner she can t
alk with her father. In Detroit, Chrysler has laid o f forty-six hundred workers. In Alabama, Klansmen are beginning a fifty-mile “white rights” march from Selma to Montgomery. Sam looks at the accompanying photo of men concealed in white hoods and robes, and shivers. They seem spooky. Evil. She knows bigotry is one of the few things that make her father absolutely incensed.
The paper is suddenly snatched from her hands. Libby grins down at her.
“Cut it out,” Sam says, grabbing at the paper.
“I’m sure you’ve read enough to impress Dad with your knowledge.”
“Unlike some people I might name,” Sam says tightly, “I find the news interesting.” Her cheeks redden. As usual, Libby has seen right through her.
Libby looks down at the page she holds. “What,” she says, “is so interesting about people getting the axe in Michigan? What di ference does it make?”
Sam turns away, refusing to answer. She wants to stay mad at Libby, but when her sister mentions heading downtown and getting a Dairy Queen, she can’t resist. Just like everyone else in the world, she thinks. She can never resist Libby.
After the DQ, they decide to visit Libby’s best friend, Jeannie. Jeannie’s mother owns a dress shop on Main Street, a store that carries shapeless dresses with buttons down the bodice and Orlon pants suits, clothes designed for middle-aged women who want to conceal their bodies, clothes Libby says she’d rather eat a rat than be caught wearing. If getting old means having to wear a pants suit, Libby says, she would rather die.
In a week, on August 24, Libby will turn sixteen. (The birthday is the cause of another quarrel. Their mother wants to give Libby a Sweet Sixteen party. She has it all planned, a dinner party complete with china and crystal and the good silver service. Libby hates the idea. There is nothing sweet about sixteen, she shouts. She tells Sam she can just picture the party. Their mother will probably use the lace cloth and set out finger bowls and napkin rings. She says this with disdain, but to tell the truth this doesn’t sound so awful to Sam.) Libby can’t wait to be eighteen. Can’t wait to be legal. Out from under their mother’s thumb.
The Law of Bound Hearts Page 6