World Without You

by Joshua Henkin

  But Lily doesn’t respond. She and Malcolm have a few rallies, each of which ends with Malcolm hitting the shuttlecock into the net. “Goddamn!”

  “Look at that guy,” Lily says. “His sous chef isn’t here, so he gets to yell at me.”

  “Actually, it’s me I get to yell at. What am I? The world’s worst badminton player?”

  “You’re the world’s worst sport, is what you are.”

  As if to prove her right, Malcolm slams the shuttlecock so hard and so high it goes clear across the garden and up onto the roof.

  “Go get it,” says Lily.

  Malcolm climbs onto the beach chair beside Clarissa and Nathaniel, and now, balancing himself on the plastic strips, he steps onto the garden table. Reaching his hand out and extending his foot, he hoists himself onto the window ledge. Then he’s shimmying up the side of the house.

  Lily claps. “Look at that monkey go!”

  He’s at the top of the wall now and over onto the roof. All Lily can see are his sneakers dangling down, and then she can’t see anything.

  “Did you find it?” She takes a step back, and now she can make out Malcolm on top of the roof.

  “There’s a whole lot of junk up here. You should climb up and have a look.”

  “I’d rather not.” There’s already enough junk on the ground. She’s staring at her wet towel and shorts, which lie in a ball at the porch door.

  Now Malcolm is coming down again, clinging valiantly to the side of the house. He needs both hands to lower himself, so he has the shuttlecock in his mouth, and when he reaches the pavement he spits it onto the grass.

  “Disgusting,” Lily says. “No more badminton for me.”

  “Or for me either,” says Malcolm.

  “Or for me,” says Nathaniel, who wasn’t even playing badminton in the first place. “Time to go pack and shower.”

  “Me, too,” Clarissa says, and she follows him inside.

  Soon everyone is showered, their luggage ready, the suitcases deposited at the foot of the stairs. Noelle and her family have a flight to catch; Lily has to get on the road, too. Clarissa and Nathaniel will drive Gretchen to the city; everyone needs to head home.

  Now, though, the sisters are out in the garden, the three of them beside each other on beach chairs, lying in the emerging sun. Noelle is drinking a glass of iced tea, and Lily reaches over to take a sip.

  “It’s from a mix,” Noelle says.

  “That’s okay,” says Lily.

  Clarissa leans over and takes a sip, too.

  “July fifth,” Lily says, “and we’ve finally gotten some good weather.”

  Clarissa rolls over onto her stomach, and then rolls over again. “Maybe we’ll do better next year.”

  “There won’t be a next year,” Lily says.

  “Sure, there will,” says Clarissa. “We can still get together without Mom and Dad.”

  “In that case,” Lily says, “to good weather.” She takes the iced tea from Noelle and raises her glass in a toast.

  “Here’s to hoping,” Noelle says.

  “Look at you,” Lily says. “You’ve gotten a sunburn. You’re starting to peel.”

  On her arms, no less. Because that, Noelle thinks, is the only part exposed. She’s wearing her kerchief and a long cotton skirt, so that really it’s her clothes she’s sunning. “I have the world’s tannest forearms.”

  Lily says, “The arms that used to set the boys’ hearts aflutter.”

  “That was just the beginning of things,” Clarissa says. “Noelle’s arms were the least of it.”

  “Okay,” Noelle says, laughing, “you’re embarrassing me.”

  The sun beats down on them, and now they’re rolling over again, like chickens on a rotisserie.

  “Remember when we got sunburnt,” Lily says, “and we would sit out on the grass and peel each other?”

  “I would slough you two like snakes,” Clarissa says.

  “Ah, for the days before skin cancer,” says Lily.

  “I used to want to get sunburnt,” Noelle says, “just so you would peel me.”

  “It was our favorite summer pastime,” Clarissa says.

  “We were disgusting,” says Lily. She recalls a summer afternoon, lying sprawled in the sun, and afterward in the den watching The Dukes of Hazzard, the three of them still with their bathing suits on, eating s’mores, peeling the dead skin off each other’s backs.

  “So this is it,” Clarissa says. “Ready for takeoff.”

  “Till next time,” Lily says. “Many happy returns.”

  The sun is hiding behind the trees, which mottle them in shadow. Presently it comes out again, lighting them up as if they’re onstage.

  “I want to apologize,” Noelle says.

  “For what?” says Lily.

  “What I said at breakfast. I’ve already apologized to Thisbe, and I wanted to apologize to you too. I made quite a scene.”

  “It’s okay, Noelle,” Lily says. The fact is, she’s already forgotten about it. Noelle has made so many scenes over the years she’s become inured to them.

  Noelle says, “There’s still more apologizing to do.”

  “To Amram?” Clarissa says.

  “To Amram and from Amram. I suspect there will be a lot more apologizing when we get home.”

  Her sisters flip over and Noelle does, too. Clarissa is lying on her stomach, and Noelle reaches out to touch her. “I’m glad you’re trying to have a baby.”

  “Oh, Noelle.”

  “Seriously,” she says. “I think you’ll make a wonderful mother.”

  Still lying on her stomach, her face pressed against the slats of the beach chair, Clarissa says, “I’m not even sure it’s going to happen.”

  “Of course it will happen,” Noelle says.

  “I don’t know. I got some more tests back, and it looks like I’m going to have trouble. I mean, I’m already having trouble, obviously, but now we’ll have to intervene, and even with intervention it might not work.”

  “But that’s what you’re going to do, right?” Lily says. “Intervene?”

  “I don’t know,” Clarissa says. “Now Nathaniel is saying he doesn’t want to go through with it. It seems we’re at an impasse.” Maybe, she thinks, it’s not such a bad thing. It’s been an awful year. It’s probably not the best time to be making big decisions. It’s better to wait and let cooler heads prevail.

  “So you’re okay if it doesn’t happen?” Lily says.

  Clarissa shrugs. For a long time she thought she didn’t want children, and then she decided she did. All that changing your mind does things to a person. It would be hard to go back to feeling how she did. “I suspect Nathaniel may still come around.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Lily says.

  “Then I guess I’ll have to adjust to that, too.”

  “And there I was,” Noelle says, “about to ask you to become the guardian for my children.”

  “The what?” Clarissa says.

  “You know, in case something happens to me and Amram? I figured since you were trying to have children yourself …”

  “I could use four more?”

  “I could understand why that wouldn’t sound appealing. I just figured there’s no substitute for family.”

  Clarissa can already see it. Noelle and Amram will get themselves killed on the West Bank, and their kids will be on the next plane to the States. Unable to conceive, she’ll be given Noelle’s children as consolation. “Let me think it over,” she says. “I’ll need to talk to Nathaniel.”

  “I’ve been thinking about something else,” Noelle says. “I want to come back here for a while.”

  Clarissa and Lily sit up. They’re poised beside each other in their tank tops and shorts, their flip-flops falling off their feet and landing softly on the grass. “What do you mean?” Lily says.

  “I was thinking the boys and I could spend the summer in Lenox.”

  “What about Amram?” Clarissa says.

&nbs
p; “He could come, too, if he wants. Though I don’t know if he’ll be able to once he finds a job. He probably won’t get much vacation.”

  “I thought you hated the States,” Lily says.

  “I do,” Noelle says. “At least I thought I did. I don’t know.…” She takes another sip of iced tea. “It would be good to spend some time here. This house has history. It’s where we grew up.”

  “But Mom and Dad are selling the house,” Lily says.

  “It will take time,” says Noelle. “It’s hard to find a buyer in this market.”

  The sun passes behind a tree, and now it’s shining on their mother’s azaleas. In the shadows the leaves are darkening, deepening into an inky hue. “Don’t you care about our relationship?” Noelle says.

  “What do you mean?” says Lily.

  Clarissa says, “Is that why you want to come back here?”

  “We could try to work things out.”

  Lily nods, not knowing if she wants to, not even sure what it would mean to work things out with Noelle. She could try to be nicer to her. She will try to be nicer to her. But being nice to Noelle won’t make them close, and Lily doesn’t see how they can ever be close no matter how nice they are to each other.

  Noelle looks at them sitting beside her. “Wasn’t Leo’s death supposed to bring us together?”

  That’s what Lily thought, too. Her brother died, and they would all become closer, even Noelle. But they’re like dogs at mealtime, everyone with her bowl, alone. It feels as if even Clarissa is moving slowly out of her orbit. (As girls, Lily recalls, they used to walk on the beach with twine tied between their wrists because they didn’t want to be separated.) Is it simply because she’s been trying to get pregnant? Because she never told Lily, when for years she told Lily everything? Lily can’t be surprised that Clarissa wants a baby. But Clarissa never mentioned it, and in her silence Lily allowed herself to believe that Clarissa was like her, happy to be an aunt to five far-away nephews, boys they could send birthday cards to and then get on with their lives. She thinks of her parents’ old next-door neighbors, two sisters who were sixty, sixty-five years old, living together as they always had. Was that what she’d been hoping for? She and Clarissa living together like those sisters did, the Frankel sisters growing old together, no men to take their place, no Nathaniel, no Malcolm, no Amram; no children, certainly; no deaths, no divorces, nothing at all?

  “Remember when Leo was born?” Clarissa says. “Those weeks and weeks at the NICU and we wondered if he was going to make it?”

  Lily and Noelle nod.

  “And even once Mom and Dad brought him home, I was always going over to his crib to make sure he was still breathing.”

  “I was scared, too,” Noelle says. “How old was I? Four? I didn’t really understand what was happening.”

  “We all just knew to be afraid,” Lily says.

  “But I had this idea,” Noelle says, “that the three of us were in this together. Our brother had been born premature, and it was our job to take care of him. It was something no one else could understand.”

  Lily nods: she felt the same way.

  “And then he got bigger,” Noelle says, “and you wouldn’t have known anything had ever been wrong.”

  “But it stayed with me,” Lily says. “For years I still thought of him as he’d been those first few months.”

  “When he was only weeks old,” Clarissa says, “I took pictures of him with my Polaroid camera. I wanted to have them in case he died.”

  “And once he was fine,” Noelle says, “I started to think, what if he had died. Because if that had happened, we’d have forever been known as the tragic family. I had this idea that it would cement us, because how could you not be close when something had happened like that?”

  “It would have changed everything,” Clarissa agrees.

  “And then he did die,” Noelle says, “and, sure, we were older and we had our own lives, but I believed it was going to make a difference. And now Mom and Dad are splitting up, and even that, I can tell, isn’t going to make us close.”

  “We can try,” Clarissa says. “I’m not against that.”

  “Our brother died,” Noelle says, “and if it’s not going to make us close, what good was it?”

  “It wasn’t good,” Lily says. “It was just bad. All of it.”

  “Leo would have wanted us to be closer,” Noelle says.

  Maybe, Lily thinks, but she’s not so sure. She suspects Leo would have been fine if they’d been close, and that he’d have been equally fine if they hadn’t been close. His mind, his heart, was on other things.

  “Your speech at the memorial?” Noelle tells Lily. “You were right. Leo was the most conflict-averse person I’ve ever known.”

  “Yet he died in Iraq,” Clarissa says. “He spent his whole life seeking out conflict.” Though she thinks at bottom that Noelle is right.

  “So what I want to know,” Noelle says, “is if I return to the States with the boys, if we decide to pitch tent in Lenox for a while, will you at least come visit for an occasional weekend?”

  Clarissa and Lily nod.

  “Will you give things another shot?”

  “We can try,” Clarissa says, though she, too, doesn’t know what trying would mean, and her words come out faltering.

  Now the porch door has opened. Amram is holding a suitcase in each hand, and he puts one down long enough to look at his watch. The boys are holding bags, too, even Ari, who has a small suitcase on wheels, which he’s pushing back and forth beside his father.

  “Okay,” Noelle says. “My guys are waiting for me.” She leans over her sisters still lying on their beach chairs and kisses them goodbye.

  “You’re leaving so soon?” David says.

  “The holiday’s over,” Thisbe says. “Everyone has a plane to catch.”

  They’re out behind the house, where David’s telescope is mounted. He’s peering into it now.

  “Are you taking that back to the city with you?”

  “If they don’t stop me at the border. Marilyn used to say I was transporting heavy machinery across state lines.”

  “Is that not allowed?”

  “She claimed telescopes weren’t permitted in New York City apartments. Who was she kidding? People keep zoo animals in New York City apartments. Last year, a lion cub got loose on the Upper East Side.”

  “Where will you set it up?”

  “On the balcony, I imagine.”

  “And you’ll stand out there and peer into it?”

  “I’ll point it toward New Jersey. I hear they have some good constellations there.” It’s a hot morning, and David’s hair forms curlicues, growing out to the sides. The better to attract mosquitoes, Leo used to say.

  “How are you, David?”

  “I’m okay, I guess.”

  Thisbe’s glad she has found him alone. Even when Leo was alive, she always felt more comfortable with him than with Marilyn. He has the gentler personality. Or maybe it’s that she prefers men to women; her closest friends have always been guys. She’s not sure why, and it shames her in a way, but women make her anxious, most of them, at least. She has a few close female friends, but the stakes feel higher with them, as if there’s something precarious in the relationship, a slight waiting to happen that she won’t be able to repair, a loss she’s always trying to preempt. “Men are simpler,” Leo said to her once, but he was probably just trying to keep her off some scent, and she, in any case, didn’t agree. “So Marilyn will be moving into a new apartment.”

  David nods. “In a couple of weeks the trucks will come.” He does his best to make light of it. “Calder will have two vacation homes. And he’ll have to do double-time back east. Neither of us will want to get short shrift.” He presses an eye to the telescope, covering the other eye with his hand. He’s wearing blue jeans and a white gingham shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he’s humming an old Frankie Valli tune. Thisbe hears Leo’s voice. No, Dad, please stop! Th
eir first summer together, she and Leo would turn on the car radio, and they would always know when David had been the last one in the car.

  “Where’s Calder?” he asks.

  “Inside,” she says. “Playing with his cousins.”

  It’s as if the boys have heard her, because now they all come running out. Calder is crying, and he’s trailed by Yoni and Ari, each of whom is claiming he didn’t do anything wrong. Those little Israelis, Thisbe thinks. Six and three, and they’ve already been trained to interrogate and be interrogated. Though Calder is no different. Whenever anyone near him starts to cry, he’s the first to proclaim his innocence. Just last week, he accidentally hit Wyeth with a paper airplane, and when Thisbe said, “Calder, what do you say?” he immediately responded, “Thank you.” Thank you, please, you’re welcome, excuse me. It’s the social code she’s drummed into him and that he spits out at her command. It surprises her how much parenting feels like domestication. It’s no different from raising a dog, or a cow; it just takes more time. What a long period of maturing humans go through, so dependent are they on their parents. Calder will be four next February. If he were a dog, he’d be an adult already. He’d be in graduate school now; he’d have left her. “Come here, you. Say goodbye to your cousins.”

  “Goodbye!” Calder says. “Goodbye, goodbye!”

  “Tell them you hope to see them soon.”

  Dutifully, he mimics her.

  “When does your flight leave?” David asks now.

  “Not for a few hours. But it will take us a while to get to the airport.”

  “I could drive you there.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “I have the rental car.” She pictures her flight home, the screen in front of her mapping out the route, letting her know the barometric pressure and the temperature change. The higher you go, the colder it gets; eject her from an airplane at thirty-five thousand feet and, among other problems, she’d freeze to death. Why, she doesn’t know: she always thought hot air rises. There’s probably an easy answer to this, something she learned in earth science. But earth science was years ago, and she, the aspiring professor, has her head in the proverbial clouds; the real clouds, on the other hand, she knows nothing about.