by Holly LeCraw
“No,” she said. “I’m a junior. I am here for four years—for all of university.” He nodded, carefully keeping his face impassive. But his rush of relief and the sudden, unfamiliar sense of vulnerability were completely unexpected. She smiled at him, again with that questioning, almost beseeching look in her eyes. Thank you for bringing me. And he smiled back.
Anthony was not given to rash decisions. He had known immediately, however, that he wanted Marcella, and no one else. His family was caught off guard; when he had first told his mother about Marcella she said, Exotic was not what I had in mind. But he dismissed this friction. Surely his mother knew how neatly tribal expectation and his own desires had always dovetailed. He was sometimes proud of this fact, but every now and then he thought he had nothing to be proud of at all. At some point that he did not even remember, he had received the family marching orders, but he had never had to bend his will or discipline away any errant proclivities or aspirations in order to follow them. He felt no sense of rebellion. Neither, however, did he feel he had to make any excuses for one unusual choice. It was an act that would, he knew, burnish the rest of his straightforward, unadorned life.
They were married, after graduation, at his parents’ house in Chestnut Hill. Marcella surely would have been surprised to know it, but one of the main things he remembered about that day was the long row of peonies just outside the reception tent. It had been a breezy day, and the big white blooms had been tossing at the end of their long bending stems, almost dancing, the white petals blowing like confetti. He had plucked them from her long dark hair. Marcella thought he didn’t see details like that, certainly that he cared nothing for flowers. But he remembered those peonies because when he had seen them he had thought the life he was about to enter with her was going to be like that—heedless and abundant.
She had stuck close to his side. Although it was June, she had been shivering in her short-sleeved gown, and he had rubbed her arms to keep them warm. Touched her, claimed her. When they had still been in school she had sometimes seemed elusive, her thoughts far away, unreadable; Anthony, however, was not the sort of person who asked people what they were thinking, and he didn’t ask her. But now things would be different. Neither of them would hold themselves away from the other. As if to confirm this change, she leaned up to him and whispered, “I can’t believe you are mine, caro. I’m not sure it is true.”
He smiled at her. Picked out another white petal from her hair. “You still look cold,” he murmured back. “Do you want my jacket?”
“Of course not,” she said. “You look too handsome. I don’t want to spoil it.” He remembered that too. He remembered how much he had wanted her. Right then, always. How he had wanted the damn reception to be over.
He had felt a nagging worry that she had so few guests of her own at the wedding—or rather, was conscious of his mother’s vexation. She continued to be suspicious of the girl with no relations, even though Anthony had told her that her mother was dead and her grandmother too old (and massive, as Marcella said) to travel. “So she’s completely alone,” his mother had said, sitting ramrod straight at her desk, going over the guest list.
“No,” Anthony had answered. “She has me.” And his mother had raised one eyebrow.
Now his parents were over near the towering white cake, his mother’s hand extended to a guest, Anthony knew, like a cold, slim board. Of course now Anthony’s friends were Marcella’s. And then his brother Charles appeared, and was kissing Marcella on the cheek. “My lovely sister-in-law,” he said, not to her exactly, but to the group at large. “Lucky! Ant is lucky to land you.” He gave Marcella a quick once-over that was supposed to be a joke. “Not sure how he did it,” Charles said. Even today, Anthony was quite sure that Charles meant what he said, that it was dumb luck. He and his siblings had grown up competing most fiercely with one another. Even today, Charles wasn’t going to let him think he had won.
“Aren’t you ever going to let go of her?” his other brother, Amory, said.
“She’s cold,” Anthony had said, resisting the temptation to raise his voice and say that she was his wife, damnit. His wife! Marcella leaned into him, agreeing.
“You’re supposed to say never!” Amory had shouted, and there was more laughter. Anthony felt himself going stiff as he always did, stiff as his mother’s outstretched hand. He pulled Marcella to him even more tightly, until she was almost off balance, and he knew it must look ridiculous—but then he glanced down at her and her gaze back at him was adoring, almost amazed. She was his. He was sure, then, for just a moment, that he had won, after all.
His conviction held, for a while. The rest of his life was smooth and uneventful, as he had always thought it should, would, be, and Marcella was its jewel. Three years after they married, she became pregnant. He had assumed this stage, too, would come, but he had not anticipated that he would want her more than ever; he didn’t think that was possible. But the sight of her round with their child made him nearly frantic with desire. He had not anticipated, either, that pregnancy would make her so happy. That finally the changes he had dreamed of, without wanting to name them, would begin—that she would soothe him with only her presence, that she would not seem as if she were still waiting for something, that she would no longer retreat into herself and make him feel he was lacking.
He loved her so much then that he thought he could never love anyone more.
In the hospital, his concern was only for Marcella. He had never been moved by babies, and although this baby would be his child and his heir and all the rest of it, she was going to be Marcella’s concern, really, not his; it was the way things developed, progressed. They would have this child and then another and another and he would be in the background, the paterfamilias, writing the checks. The world was not going to stop.
Then a nurse handed him the impossibly light bundle, and he looked down into the new face, the skin that had just begun to touch air. Milky bewildered eyes looked back at him. This person had not existed. And then, suddenly, she had.
He stood there with the ridiculous blue booties on his feet, his feet planted on the gleaming white hospital floor, astonished. But wasn’t this the result, in so many ways, of that hectic yearning he had felt for Marcella? Of course it was going to burst its bounds and make this new, exultant love. He almost laughed but then he didn’t, because he didn’t want to frighten her. His daughter. “Darling,” Marcella said, from her bed.
He looked up at her and it seemed that any lingering doubts he had ever had about her as a wife, as his, were ridiculous, light as chaff, now blowing away.
“Come here, amore mio. Come here, bambina.”
He went and sat on the bed, next to Marcella, the three of them close. He settled the baby into Marcella’s arms but kept his own around her too. He did not know how to say any of the things he had just thought. “I suppose she needs a name,” he said softly.
They had already settled on Marion Giulia for a girl, after their mothers, and after considerable pressure from Anthony, who felt that names should be as legible as a newspaper in declaring one’s heritage, one’s identity. Marcella had had more romantic ideas, typical for her; she had come up with names that no Atkinson or di Pavarese had ever held before, and he hadn’t seen the logic in that. But now he would tell her she had been right. Why had he ever thought they should look to the past? Their child needed her own name, only hers—
“I think we should name her Antonia,” Marcella said. She beamed at him.
He looked back at his wife with wonder. “What a gift,” he whispered. He meant the name, of course. Marcella herself. Their daughter, their life.
But there was also a moment, half a moment, a thought he immediately discounted but never forgot, when he felt that Toni was his, only his. That she was the gift, that Marcella, under some spell, had rashly given her away, and he had snatched her up, claimed her, with a shameful greed.
Much later, when he realized that he had lost Marcella, it se
emed all the more fitting that he kept Toni. He supposed it was part of his essential deficiency that he could adore only one person at a time. When they divorced, he insisted Toni begin boarding school, because the old Atkinson customs seemed safest for his daughter and himself. He did know this move further devastated Marcella, and he was not entirely sorry. He let himself feel that small bit of revenge. But he didn’t tell her that actually revenge had nothing to do with it, that, instead, he’d sent Toni away to shield her from himself. He still wondered if that had been the right solution. Did he protect his child with his presence or his absence? His own flaws had proved to be bottomless. So how could he trust the world?
V
Jed had felt a tension in the air since morning. It was Thursday. He was trying not to think tomorrow, tomorrow, trying not to have the scent of his lust rise from him like a cloud, but it didn’t work because when they were alone making lunch Callie finally said, “Are you leaving this weekend?”
“That was my plan.”
“That’s three weeks in a row.”
“I guess so.”
“You should bring her here sometime. Or no—wait—you’re probably fucking madly all weekend long, you’d rather not.”
“Cal, please.”
“Aren’t you?” Callie said, and he hesitated. He couldn’t help it. He had to figure out why what they did could not be described as fucking wildly all weekend. “See? And for God’s sake, don’t say”—she simpered—“it’s not like that.”
Callie had never sounded jealous about his girls before. He should have acted surprised but he didn’t. “I don’t know,” he said. “Cal—it’s really confusing.”
He might have told her everything then. It was a moment when things were poised to abruptly become different. It would have been a huge relief. But he truly did not know which would be kinder, to tell her or not. He searched her face for a sign; there was none. He could feel the brief clarity of his resolve dissipating. There was a long moment and he wondered what she was deciding, and then she looked at him and gave him the same smile she gave Grace, bright and blank, and he returned it, and said nothing.
Meanwhile Callie thought, It’s not working. She already hated this Marcie, despised her as a mortal enemy, but though she had begun this conversation ready to do battle she had already forgotten what it was she wanted to win. She couldn’t keep him here, she couldn’t keep anyone. Everyone was leaving, the house was empty. “Never mind,” she said, “I’m sorry,” but she said it so softly he didn’t hear her. Sorry sorry sorry, she thought. Sorry sorry sorry.
THE WEEKS WERE LONG. When Jed called her, Marcella wanted to take his low voice and cradle it to her like a tangible thing, a child, and when they had hung up she wanted to call him back but she knew she had nothing to say. Neither of them did; between them it was all physical, actual, skin to touch and warmth to feel. If they could have sung each other wordless songs, perhaps. Hummed sweet endless tunes. That was what the calls amounted to, as much of each other’s presence as they could suck out of their voices.
The blue salvia she had planted grew slowly, as it always did. But it was green and she knew it would get as tall as her knees, that when the indigo spikes finally lengthened and bloomed they would last until frost. A long time from now. She knew he would not be with her by then, and wondered, sadly, how it would happen.
It was strange and awful, but after the phone calls she sometimes thought of Cecil. She was parsing him, them, in her mind. Oddly, it felt safer now. She refused to consider why. She refused to think that Cecil’s own son could cushion her from grief. But, for the first time in a long while, she was able to think of Cecil’s face without pain. She was able to step back from his image in her mind and scrutinize it, like a painting in a gallery. A painting, almost, of a stranger.
THE SUMMER THAT TONI WAS TEN, Marcella had her fourth miscarriage. It was early August, just at the beginning of the wane of the short Cape Cod summer. The night before had been cool, and the next morning, as Marcella stood in the kitchen doorway feeling the crispness, looking out at the low mist covering the ground, sipping a cup of weak tea—see, she had already been taking care, oh, how she had tried to take care!—she felt a small yet reverberating snap, as though the line of time had broken. Later that day, she began to bleed.
She had not learned to distance herself. She never would. She had believed another baby was finally coming to her, to them, a completion of her family, a confirmation and blessing. She had felt its weight in her arms. She had believed that this time would be different.
It had been a Friday, and Anthony was coming down from Boston that night. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she pined for him to arrive. She knew even as she pictured him coming through the door, herself falling into his arms, that she was foolish, but she clung to this image for those first few hours. She had to save this grief for someone if she was going to keep it from Toni. And although Marcella knew that Toni was savvy and hyperobservant, she could not bear, on this day especially, to think of her daughter as anything other than a child who needed to be protected.
She was making dinner when she heard Anthony’s car grinding up the pebbled driveway. As she heard his door slam she felt herself tensing, everything ready to burst through. From long experience, though, she was able to wait.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said. “How was the drive?”
“Awful. Idiots everywhere. The idiots come out on Friday nights.” He kissed her cheek, and then went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of tonic. “You’re not dressed.” They had been invited to the Martins’ that night, for cocktails.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Well, why not?” He took an ice tray out of the freezer, and even though she was watching him do it, when he twisted the ice out the sudden report made her jump. She felt her ready tears, terrible but also so warm and alive. She waited for him to put the tray back and to close the door, and then she told him.
He met her gaze as she spoke but his expression was flat, his eyes flat, seemingly nothing in them at all, as though she had not even spoken. He looked down into his highball glass and poked the ice cubes with one finger. Then he put the glass down and leaned over the counter. He looked as if he were trying to push the whole thing off its foundation. She watched, waiting for him to come to her, waiting that was painful. She felt her tears, her self that had been ready to rush to him, begin to shrink and dry.
All at once he brought his hand down flat onto the counter with a crack. The ice in his glass jumped and the stack of silverware Marcella had set out for the table crashed over, and she felt a noise come out of her, a yelp of fear and sorrow. He looked at her and she saw it, the split second of contempt, before he banished it and came to her and held her. “Chella, Chella,” he said, “I’m sorry.” She could feel his cheek on the top of her head. He kissed her hair. His hand was stroking her face. “I’m sorry.” For what? she thought. For scaring her? For her? him? them? She stood there wooden, her pain entirely her own.
She went to bed before dinner and stayed there all the next day. She heard Toni and Anthony laughing downstairs and felt bleaker than ever, convinced they didn’t need her. In the late afternoon, Anthony came up and asked if the doctor had told her to stay in bed. “No,” she said.
“Maybe you’d feel better if you got up for a while.” She heard, Don’t lie around moping.
“Did you want the baby?” she whispered. The golden sun was pouring in through her western window. She hated it. She wanted it to be rainy, dark, winter; she wanted to be alone. “Did you?”
“Of course I did! Of course.” He sighed and she heard him struggling, adjusting. Making a good effort. Trying to talk to her, his wife. “I tried not to think about it much, Chella. It was too early.” He sighed again and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m not like you.”
“What am I like?”
He ignored her question. “I look at what we’ve got. I look at what’s here.” She hear
d his voice breaking. “I look at all the goddamn reality around me. I don’t dream it away.”
She curled up in a ball facing away from the window, from him.
“Toni and I are going to play doubles.” He waited. She waited. She waited until he had shut the door and his footsteps died away down the narrow back stairs. She heard the barn door creak outside and the light spatter of gravel as they wheeled their bikes down the driveway. She waited until the noises had faded away and then she closed her eyes and let herself fall into sleep that was like an addiction, where she held a warm faceless bundle in her arms and was perfectly at peace.
THE DOCTOR HAD SAID she didn’t need to do anything unusual unless the bleeding got worse, but it tapered to a trickle, another loss. They were invited to the McClatcheys’ for Sunday afternoon and Marcella made herself go, mainly because Toni had come into bed with her that morning and said, Are you getting up today, Mommy? with that uniquely ten-year-old combination of concern and judgment, and Marcella felt a sudden, urgent stab of possessiveness. She would not leave Toni alone with Anthony, charming her, winning her over, for another whole day. And it was so rare for Toni to say “Mommy” anymore.
While Marcella was getting dressed, Toni came upstairs to her room again. She was wearing a new pink shorts set Marcella had recently bought for her, and around her neck Marcella saw the string ties of her new, and only, bikini. Toni took in what Marcella was wearing and said, “It’s a pool party, Mom.”
Marcella had put on slacks and a collared shirt, with a sweater tied around her shoulders. The hint of fall had receded and summer had returned in force, but she wanted to be swaddled, hidden. She would have wrapped herself in a blanket and gone dressed like that if she could. She said, “I don’t know if the adults will swim, darling.”
“It’s hot. They will.” Toni’s determined tone was nothing new, but Marcella had the distinct feeling that she cared more than usual, that she wanted her mother to display some phantom lightheartedness. Just like Anthony.