by Nicole Baart
Janice had forgotten me. She was holding the child in her eyes with a look so tender and loving that I knew exactly what his next word would be.
“Mommy, are you almost done? I’m hungry.”
I didn’t even blink.
Undone
HE WAS A LITTLE slip of a thing with cowlicks at the temples and glasses that were too big for his face. His skin was a creamy shade of milk chocolate, and his big brown eyes were nothing like my father’s or grandmother’s—they were exotic, lined with charcoal, densely lashed. At first I thought I had made a mistake. He was not my half brother. But then Janice gripped him under the arms and lifted him lightly to the ground. She pulled him beside her and wrapped herself around him so that only his furrowed brow peeked above her puffy coat. “I’d like you to meet my son,” she said, her voice a curious mixture of reticence and pride.
“Mom, I can’t breathe!” the boy yelled, pushing her arms off and jumping a pace away.
I can’t either, I thought.
Grandma swallowed hard beside me. I reached for her blindly, hoping that facing him together would be easier than facing him alone. If he was my half brother, was he her half grandson? It changed the shape of the entire world. She was only a few feet away from me, but when I should have brushed up against her side, Grandma was gone. She had already taken a step toward the boy. I nearly stumbled over my own feet because I realized what she was doing. I had seen her do it a thousand times before.
Maybe it was because she had been a child immigrant—a little girl who spoke only Dutch in an English-speaking school, in a community that hadn’t seen a family fresh off the boat for over a generation. Maybe it was because she had lived most of her hard life on the unpredictable prairie. Or maybe it was because she had lost much in her seventy-seven years. Whatever the reason, Grandma was an unequaled pro in the art of maintenance. When a situation threatened to tip off its axis and spin wildly out of control, Grandma laid aside her own feelings and best interests and simply preserved. She doled out great measures of peacekeeping control. She cooked or cleaned or talked, pushing through the crisis as if it were nothing out of the ordinary—nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a mug of steaming coffee or a slice of freshly baked pie.
She would have that set look in her eye now. That determined, commanding, resolute look.
It hit me suddenly that she was going to ask them to come inside. She saw a child with a need and she could meet that need, even if there was nothing else she could do to fix the situation. Even if Janice was the woman she had to allow into her house to do it.
I took a quick, panicked stride after her and grasped at her sweater, clutching only displaced air as she started heavily down the steps. It looked painful for her to walk, but her back was straight and even, her stride steady.
Ignoring Janice entirely, she approached the child and said, “Are you hungry, honey?”
There is nothing like the gentle sound of a grandmother’s voice, and he nodded at her with eyes so great and thankful that it was impossible not to be taken in. He was responding to her as though they were old friends. Warmly, he started, “I had pancakes at the café this morning for breakfast, but then—”
“Simon,” Janice interrupted, “please, they don’t need a play-by-play.”
Grandma fixed her daughter-in-law with a brief, impervious stare. She turned back to the boy. “Simon?” she asked kindly.
He nodded almost shyly, peeking at her from beneath the sliding silver rims as though he knew she was someone with whom he wanted to be close.
Grandma’s face melted when she smiled at him. “Simon, would you like to have supper with us?”
He glanced at his mom but looked away before he could see her shake her head. “Yes, thank you,” he said politely, and without a moment’s hesitation, he followed Grandma up the stairs. “Hey,” he added guilelessly, as though he had just noticed, “what happened to your foot?”
“I broke my ankle,” Grandma said conspiratorially. “I’ll tell you all about it inside.”
I didn’t dare to stop her, or even to touch her, but when she was close enough, I whispered, “Grandma.” My voice conveyed far more than that one word, and I didn’t doubt that she heard my every fear and worry loud and clear. There was no way she could mistake the torment in my tone.
But she didn’t look at me. “It can’t be undone” was all she whispered back, though her words were thick and uncharacteristically gruff.
I watched her go, dumbstruck, and couldn’t help but wonder if she even wanted it undone.
Grandma yanked open the screen door with a little too much force and pushed the storm door with her hip. Standing back to hold the screen open for Simon, she bowed her head and motioned him inside, every inch the obsequious porter with a smile that was a close approximation of genuine.
He tripped happily through the door, oblivious to the angles of emotion surrounding him. I watched him pull his stocking cap off with relish and remembered that Janice’s car had not been on. He was probably half-frozen.
When I looked away, Grandma was waving me inside with such intent that it would have been distinctly unwise for me to do anything but comply. The house was almost stiflingly warm after braving the bitterness of the porch, and Simon had already stripped off his coat and was working on his shoes. The laces were in a wide double knot, and seeing his small fingers struggle with the graying cloth made me somehow dizzy. I froze on the threshold, paralyzed by the knowledge of who he was and my own inability to understand or even try to hold that truth in my mind. I struggled for air, turned back to the door, and found Janice framed darkly in the rectangle of windswept night.
“Come on, Janice,” Grandma said. She waited as the woman stepped toward the house.
I fell past Simon into the kitchen, beyond feeling, mercifully numb. The smell of nasi goreng made me nearly reel with nausea, but I dutifully moved in the direction of the cupboards to set the table for two extra mouths. It was something that had not been done much in this house for more years than I cared to remember, and though I should have been happy to include guests around our table, I was anything but.
“I can help,” Simon said unexpectedly. There was a ring of childish self-importance in his voice when he added, “I’m a good helper.”
“Mm-hmm …,” I mumbled, averting my eyes from his sweet face. I heard rather than saw him approach me, and I glanced his way only when I felt him tug the plates from my white-knuckled hands.
“What’s your name?” he asked, pulling the dishes to his chest.
I stole a glance at his arms and saw stout little fingers peeking around the blue delft rim of Grandma’s ancient dinnerware. “Julia,” I muttered absently, unable to tear myself away from the eight digits curled upward in some sort of accidental supplication. I was close enough to touch him. I could have reached out a finger and stroked the smooth, brown skin of his hands. His fingernails were half-moons, marred only by ragged white edges—evidence that he bit them. Something we had in common.
“That’s a very nice name,” he said and the hands disappeared. I looked up to watch the back of his head as he drew away from me. He nodded curtly and laid a plate on the table with an air of satisfaction. “A nice name,” he repeated, as though my name required his approval.
For a moment, I almost grinned at him because I was filled with the certainty that there was no way under heaven he was Janice’s child. She had to have kidnapped him, stolen him from some sitcom family that functioned according to the textbook and said things like “I love you” every single day. But even as the thought tried to take root, it wilted. He was hers and I knew it. It almost killed me.
“Thank you,” I managed after a moment. “I like your name, too.”
“Simon Eli Wentwood,” he said proudly, situating the last dinner plate in front of an empty chair so it was perfectly centered. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he bore Janice’s maiden name. He continued, “I’m named after my dad and my grandpa, but I don�
��t know my dad—he died when I was little. Grandpa, though—he sends me cards sometimes!”
“What are you talking about, Simon?” Janice’s voice crept into the kitchen followed immediately by the rest of her. The only thing whiter than her face was the gallon of milk I was bringing to the table.
“Nothin’ much,” Simon confessed. “Hey, did you know her name is Julia?” He smiled between the two of us and began to make introductions. “Julia, this is my mom. Her name is Janice.”
Oh, dear Lord, my soul exhaled. He has no idea.
Grandma’s face was flint when she swept into the kitchen. She commanded the room, quashing our conversation and moving to the stove so she could stir the simmering pot of rice. Lifting the lid with a bit more than her usual flourish, she let a cloud of fragrant steam into the kitchen and muttered appreciatively as though everything was exactly as planned. “Do you like Chinese food?” she asked cheerfully, directing the question at Simon.
He wrinkled his nose, slipping into a chair. He had to perch on the very edge to rest his tiptoes on the linoleum floor. “Only fried rice,” he stated. “Once I tried some orange chicken, and it almost made me throw up.”
“Sweet-and-sour chicken,” Janice clarified quietly. She glanced at me awkwardly and sank into the nearest chair as if she had been reprimanded.
Grandma struck the wooden spoon on the edge of the pot with a few hard cracks. “Good,” she said firmly. “You’ll like this, then, Simon, because it is nothing like sweet-and-sour chicken and quite a bit like fried rice. There are eggs in it and everything.”
“If I don’t like it, do you have PB and J?” Simon gave up on trying to be the big boy and slid onto his chair so that his feet dangled. He absently kicked his heels against the beveled legs. “I like PB and J, and most people have it.”
“PB and J?” Grandma asked.
“Simon!” Janice chided.
“Peanut butter and jelly,” I explained.
Both women blushed. “Well,” Grandma said noncommittally, “you have to try this first.”
I finished setting the table as Grandma approached with the pot of steaming rice. Avoiding her gaze, I placed a trivet for her and backed away. My chair was directly across from Janice, and I was excruciatingly aware of her proximity as I took my seat. I blinked in her direction and was unsettled to find her looking at me.
She mouthed, I’m sorry. It could have meant anything. She could have been apologizing for horning in on our supper for two. Or maybe she wanted forgiveness for something more. I looked away.
“It smells okay,” Simon commented, sniffing the air. He took his dish and reached for the ladle, ready to scoop his plate full. So he wasn’t perfect after all.
“Hang on,” Grandma alerted him, reaching across the table and putting her hand over his. “We pray before we eat in my house.”
“Oh,” Simon replied innocently. “Okay.” He dropped the spoon.
I was thankful then that we had never been the kind of family to hold hands when we prayed. The Walkers were hand holders, and at every meal—even an impromptu lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese—we reached beside ourselves to grasp the hands of our neighbors, no matter who they were. When I was young and in love with Thomas, nothing made my heart beat harder than finding myself next to him at a meal, my clammy hand held tight in his. But most of the time, it just felt strange to me. I never knew if my hand was supposed to be on the top or the bottom or how I should respond if someone gave me a little squeeze at the end of the prayer. It was unnecessarily intimate. I thought about Simon’s small hands and chewed fingernails and was grateful that I could clasp my fingers tight in my own lap. I dropped my head so I didn’t have to watch them fumble around uncomfortably.
There was silence for a moment, a little shuffling, and then Grandma began softly. “We thank You, Lord, for this day. For its blessings, its trials, and Your hand in it all. We pray now that You will bless this food to our bodies. Bless us in this night, in all … in all we … in …” She stopped. “Amen.”
I echoed her in an inaudible whisper. At first we didn’t talk about much—at least, nothing of importance. Although I half expected it all to come out in a torrent of things unsaid and feelings unearthed, we all kept our heads and spoke in placid tones about everyday things. We were polite strangers excelling in the art of small talk as though we had nothing more significant to say to one another.
Simon regaled us with stories of his exploits on the soccer field, though I doubted he often made contact with the ball much less took part in epic battles between the teams in the peewee league of the small town he said they were from. He breezed over the name of the town, and when I asked him to repeat it, Janice cut in and explained that it was a very tiny place near Chicago—we would surely have never heard of it. I just shrugged and let it go. We were, after all, being civilized.
Simon liked Grandma’s Dutch-Indonesian, but he ate around the pickles and left a neat little pile of green on the table beside his plate. I watched him periodically make sure Janice wasn’t looking and then slowly ease a piece of diced pickle over the edge, under the rim, and out of sight. All he had to do was offer to clear the dishes and slide the pickles into his hand for deposit in the garbage on his way to the sink. A foolproof plan. It was hard not to smile wryly; I clearly remembered doing the exact same thing.
Grandma studied Simon as he ate and looked very little at Janice or me. I could see the strain in her profile and the plastic smile that was beginning to get brittle. More than once, I touched her foot lightly under the table and tapped it comfortingly—a reminder that it would all be over soon and an olive branch to let her know that I wasn’t about to hold a grudge. She had done the only thing she knew to do; who was I to blame her? Besides, the meal was almost over and then Janice could disappear from our lives for another decade. Maybe more. We could go back to forgetting. We could pretend there was no Simon.
Toward the end of the meal, it was Simon who mentioned his dad in a voice filled with the naive pride of someone who had not been told the entire truth. He clearly adored his allegedly deceased father, and he sat up straighter in his seat as though he was entreating us to ask him more.
Janice looked uncomfortable as her son beamed unreservedly. She obviously did not want her former lover to be a part of our conversation.
“My dad was a …” Simon looked confused for a moment and then quickly turned to his mother. “What’s that word again? What did Dad do?”
Janice smiled a narrow, placating smile. “Nothing, honey; they don’t want to hear about your dad right now.”
“Yes, they do!” he insisted, and because I was gripped with a sort of morbid curiosity, I was glad he did. He ignored his mother and turned back to Grandma and me. “He built big buildings,” Simon bragged, sweeping his arms up over his head. “Really big ones—like the giant ones in Chicago. But he didn’t work on them. He thought of them. He...” Simon struggled for the right word. “He …drawed them.” The little boy grinned, triumphant.
“He was an architect?” I suggested.
“Yes!” Frowning at Janice, he added, “See, I told you they were interested.”
She dragged her fork across her plate, displacing more rice as though she could hide the fact that she had barely eaten a bite.
“That’s very interesting,” I told Simon, to fill the silence. He positively glowed. Then, though I hadn’t planned on saying it—and as the words were escaping my mouth, I found them outrageously rude—I asked, “Was your dad from Chicago, Simon?”
Grandma’s heel bounced off the bridge of my foot in shock and warning. I tried not to cringe.
But Simon didn’t realize anything was amiss. “No, he was from Casablanca.” He said the word slowly, carefully, as though he had practiced it with loving concentration many times before.
“Simon is half-Spanish,” Janice interjected tiredly.
I couldn’t help gawking at her. “Janice,” I said evenly, “Casablanca is in Morocco. Y
ou know, the country in northern Africa? He’s half-Moroccan.”
Her face flushed an unbecoming pink from the apples of her cheeks to the very tips of her ears, but she didn’t say a word.
All Simon said was, “Cool, Morocco.” He seemed to like the way it rolled off his tongue. But there was a hint of a lisp left over from toddler years in his young voice, and it came out sounding slightly like Mowocco. He practiced it again.
I was about to ask more when Janice saw fit to change the conversation before it became far too personal. “We really lead a very boring life,” she admitted. “Not much to tell.”
Grandma and I both nodded in sync, effectively blocked from pursuing that particular vein. I focused on my plate and tried to phrase the questions I was longing to ask. Why are you here? What are you doing in Mason? Why did you show up on our doorstep? When are you leaving? Each variation burned in my throat and refused to pass my lips.
But Janice had been practicing her own careful inquiry, and she cautiously threw out a showstopper. “What are you up to these days, Julia?”
It was my turn to blush. Obviously I worked at Value Foods, but the question implied much more. She knew I was out of high school; she wanted to know if I was in college, if I had a significant other, if my life was advancing through the official and approved stages of young adulthood.
“I work at Value Foods right now,” I answered with what I hoped was dignity. “I plan to go back to school in the fall. Or maybe next year.” The last part was a lie. I hadn’t given school a second thought since I drove away from Brighton over three months ago. It was hard to think about anything beyond the baby right now, and though I hated to admit it, I couldn’t be sure that once I was a mother I would have the time or money to ever return. It was a sobering thought. I felt Grandma staring at me, thinking the same things I was. Maybe she was mourning for me.
“Julia went to Brighton for a semester and took engineering,” Grandma offered, asserting my intelligence and trying to bolster my self-worth a little. I immediately wished that she had said nothing at all.