Laura & Emma

by Kate Greathead

  “I have plenty of cash to get us home,” Laura told her parents. “You should get going. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”

  She turned around and strolled back to resume her spot in the faithful vigil around the gaping hole.

  “Mom?” Emma shuffled over on her knees, cupping something in her hands. “Do you have a jar?”

  “A jar,” Laura repeated. “Why yes, I have lots of jars in my pocket. What size would you like?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Emma said. “Long as it has a lid.”

  “I was kidding,” Laura told Emma as she waited expectantly. “What do you think I am, a kitchen cupboard?”

  Laura was rarely sarcastic with Emma and immediately felt guilty. But Emma looked more concerned than hurt. “What am I supposed to do with these worms?” she said with a labored sigh.

  At long last the hearse was spotted in the distance. The driveway was long and winding, and as the vehicle snaked its way toward them, Emma tugged Laura’s sleeve and whispered, “Guess what their names are?”

  Laura drew a finger to her lips. You can tell me later, she mouthed.

  “Pee and poo!” Emma whispered.

  Laura ignored her.

  “Mom, did you hear me?” Emma asked, a little more loudly. “I said their names are pee and poo.”

  Laura leaned down. “That’s very amusing,” she whispered in Emma’s ear. “But we need to be quiet now like you were in church.”

  Emma’s face brightened. “Mom, you think it’s inappropriate, but it’s P as in the letter P, and Pooh as in Winnie-the-Pooh!” She giggled, pleased with her cleverness.

  The hearse parked and the casket was brought out and gently lowered into the cavity of earth. To everyone’s distress it would not go down; the hole wasn’t big enough. The casket was placed on the grass and there was a hushed conference among the pallbearers, who were joined by a graveyard employee, who pulled out his walkie-talkie. Moments later a bulldozer appeared at the top of the hill and barreled down at a speed Laura didn’t know bulldozers were capable of (certainly not one that was legal), weaving between the stones and monuments with the implausible grace of a figure skater.

  The group took a wary step back as the bulldozer advanced in their direction. It stopped with a violent jerk and its claw snapped into action, frantically digging to make the hole bigger and scattering dirt in the process. After a few minutes the bulldozer backed up and the casket was lowered once again. There was a collective sigh of relief as it went in, followed by a sucking in of breath. The box was in but it was not going down—not all the way. The pallbearers attempted to lift it back up so that the bulldozer could expand the hole more, but it was now too tightly lodged in the hole.

  “It’s a cork-in-the-bottle situation,” someone muttered. Ceremonious pretense suspended while they awaited resolution of the logistical dilemma, the funeral-goers began chatting.

  The driver of the bulldozer stepped out, conferred with the pallbearers, and made an authoritative hand gesture signaling everyone should take a step back. The group fell silent and did as instructed, and the bulldozer roared back to life. This time the driver angled the claw so that it was like the back of a hand, palm side up, and made it come down upon the casket. At first gingerly, and then not so gingerly, the claw pushed the casket down into the hole. It was not the visual one thought of in conjunction with the phrase laid to rest.

  Tugging the hem of Laura’s coat, Emma articulated what everyone was thinking. “He’s gonna break it,” she squealed. “Mama, he’s gonna break it.”

  “No, he’s not,” Laura whispered, holding a finger over her mouth.

  Miraculously, he didn’t. When, at last, the coffin was in the ground, there was a tentative smattering of applause, followed by an even more inappropriate hurray, the echo of which rang louder in everyone’s ears as it was immediately followed by chagrined silence.

  Laura’s thoughts drifted to a PBS special she’d once seen about how Eskimos handled the whole business of death. Rather than tending to the comfort of their dying elders, they put them on a chunk of ice and watched as they drifted out to sea.

  Where and when had she seen this? She couldn’t remember now. Perhaps it wasn’t a documentary after all, but an article in National Geographic she’d conjured up in such vivid detail that she recalled it now as footage in a film. Or maybe it was a tall tale she’d heard as a child. Either way, it had made an impression on her. She’d thought it was the strangest thing.

  But what about the scene that was unfolding right now? She was very much one of them, but this didn’t stop Laura from recognizing that her people, they were weird.

  * * *

  LAURA’S MOTHER WANTED TO INVITE Dr. Brown to join them for Thanksgiving.

  “Let me think about it,” Laura said.

  “I’m not asking for your permission,” Bibs told her. “I’m asking for his phone number.”

  Laura sighed. “Dinner is one thing, a family holiday is another. I just don’t know if it’s appropriate.”

  “If you won’t give me his number, the operator will,” Bibs said and hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later she called back. “Guess who’s coming to Thanksgiving!” her triumphant voice chimed through the receiver. “He’s very excited! He asked what he should bring and I told him nothing, and he said he didn’t like the idea of me in the kitchen doing everything, and I said I didn’t either—that’s why we get it catered.”

  An hour later the phone rang again, and this time it was Dr. Brown.

  “Your mother invited me to Thanksgiving,” he said.

  “I know. I’m sorry. She can be very persistent. I hope she didn’t bully you into saying yes.”

  Dr. Brown laughed. “You’re making it sound like she asked me to donate a kidney!”

  “It’s not too late to back out.”

  “Laura, will you relax? I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t want to.”

  Laura was silent. The way he’d said her name, the demand to relax, made her smile. He’d completely shed the veneer of their professional relationship. This had been happening in degrees for some time, but now it was really gone. He was very fond of her, and she of him, and here they were on the phone together talking about Thanksgiving. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, Laura noticed she was blushing and twirling the phone cord in her finger, and she blushed even harder imagining him watching her do this right now.

  “I want to come and I’m coming,” Dr. Brown said. “My question for you is, do you think it would be okay if I brought my partner?”

  “Dr. Wendell?” Laura was confused.

  “No,” Dr. Brown said. “Not that partner.”

  * * *

  BIBS, WHO APPRECIATED ALL-MALE COMPANY, especially the tall and handsome kind, couldn’t have looked more excited when Dr. Brown introduced her to Chris. Sherry was served, ginger ale for Emma, and they all took a seat in the living room. Douglas began to ask Chris about his work, but before their conversation could go anywhere, Bibs interrupted to ask the guests if they believed in ghosts. Neither had a chance to answer; Bibs launched into a story about a friend of hers whose first husband, long dead, had visited her in a dream to tell her the new husband was a philanderer, and the very next day the cleaning lady found a brassiere tucked beneath the cushions of his study—could they believe it? Wasn’t that the most absolutely bizarre thing they’d ever heard? Chris made an effort to match Bibs’s animated incredulity, indulging her with questions.

  He was not what Laura had expected. His Hollywood good looks surprised her, as did the fact that he worked on Wall Street. She would have thought Dr. Brown would have chosen someone in a more ethical profession, someone more soft-spoken and bashfully reserved like himself. Emma, too, seemed taken aback by this man. Uncharacteristically quiet, she retreated to a corner of the room with her coloring book, periodically looking up to cast an appraising glance in his direction.

  Soon it was time to eat and they filed into the dini
ng room. As Sandra circulated the table with platters of food, Bibs regaled her guests with one colorful anecdote after the next, all grossly exaggerated for comic effect. Laura winced each time Chris’s baritone laughter shook the room, wishing her father would speak up, as he sometimes did in these situations, warning guests that this was like putting a quarter in her, she’d keep going—they better have another fifteen minutes.

  “I adore homosexuals and they adore me,” Bibs said with a smug grin after the couple left.

  “What’s a homosexual?” Emma asked on their way home.

  Laura considered her answer before deciding Emma was too young. “I don’t know,” she said. “Must be one of Bibs’s made-up words.”

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK LAURA WAS on the phone with her mother when Bibs casually mentioned having made plans with Dr. Brown to go see a play that night. Laura was surprised her mother hadn’t thought to include her.

  “But, darling, you hate the theater. Last time I took you, you fell asleep.”

  “I was eight months pregnant,” Laura reminded her.

  “Well, I’m sorry, I only got three tickets. Next time I’ll get four.”

  “Three tickets? But Daddy’s the one who really hates the theater.”

  “Don’t be a dummy.” Her mother laughed. “Of course I’m not bringing that old philistine boor! The third ticket is for Bruno.”

  “Bruno? Who’s Bruno?” Laura asked.

  “Dr. Brown’s lover.”

  “The term is partner, not lover. And that’s not even his name—it’s Chris.”

  “I know, but he’s such a Bruno, isn’t he?” Bibs said.

  LAURA WASN’T ABLE TO TAKE off work for Stephanie’s baby shower, but she and Emma paid her a visit the following weekend to hand-deliver their present.

  “Hopefully no one got this for you already,” Laura said, presenting Stephanie with the book. “It’s called The Little House. Have you heard of it?”

  Stephanie shook her head and smiled.

  “It’s a classic, been around since my childhood,” Laura said. “Do you remember Marge used to read it to us, Nicholas?”

  Stephanie held the book up for him to see. Nicholas looked up, squinted, shook his head, and returned to his Wall Street Journal.

  “Anyway,” Laura continued, “it’s about this little house in the country that gets sad when the beautiful meadows that surround it are gradually destroyed by developers who erect high-rises and turn the countryside into a city.”

  “Never too early for kids to learn about urban sprawl,” Nicholas said dryly.

  “Don’t worry,” Laura told Stephanie. “Eventually the house gets bought and the new owners have it lifted off its foundation and relocated to the country.”

  Stephanie nodded but looked puzzled.

  “So the book has a happy ending,” Laura clarified.

  “Oh,” Stephanie said. “Well, I see it won an award,” she added, fingering a gold sticker on the cover.

  * * *

  IT WASN’T A CUSTOM IN their family to name sons after their fathers, but Stephanie was adamant, and in March she gave birth to Nicholas Jr.

  Emma was so excited she convinced Laura to let her take the morning off from school so they could visit the baby in the hospital.

  “I hope we aren’t bothering you,” Laura said, holding Emma’s hand as they peered into Stephanie’s room. “We’ll only stay for a few minutes.”

  Infant asleep in her arms, Stephanie looked up, a dazed smile on her face. Emma tugged Laura forward to get a closer look.

  “Baby Nicholas,” Laura said, taking a seat in the chair beside Stephanie’s bed.

  “We can’t tell who he looks like yet,” Stephanie said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

  Stray wisps had come loose, and as these caught the light they formed an ethereal halo around her face, which Laura had never seen without makeup. She had the porcelain complexion of a redhead—though she was more strawberry blonde—and her cheeks bore a youthful dusting of freckles. Stephanie’s eyelashes were also strawberry blond, Laura observed for the first time, as they were typically caked with mascara.

  As sisters-in-law, it was inevitable they would get closer over the years. Laura looked forward to the day she could tell Stephanie what a mistake she’d been making, that to wear makeup was to mar her natural, delicate beauty and she looked a hundred times better without it. Then she would bring Stephanie to Sufrina to get her lashes done.

  Stephanie asked if Laura wanted to hold the baby and Laura said she would, but not now, as he looked so peaceful and she didn’t want to disturb him.

  “Don’t worry,” Stephanie said, passing the swaddled bundle of him over.

  It had been a while since she’d held an infant; Laura adjusted her position so that the baby’s head rested in the crook of her arm. At one point his face scrunched up in an expression of discomfort, but this quickly passed, and once he’d settled back into a tranquil slumber, Laura’s guilt and anxiety for having taken him away from his mother subsided. She allowed herself to enjoy the cozy tingling where the warmth of his little body rested against hers.

  “Look at him,” Laura said in a whisper.

  Emma leaned over the arm of the chair, scrutinizing his face. “He looks Chinese,” she remarked.

  “Those lashes,” Laura said, almost wistfully.

  “He hardly has any hair,” Emma observed.

  “Actually, he has quite a bit of hair for a newborn,” Laura said.

  “As much as I did?”

  “You had a little more,” Laura conceded.

  “How much more?”

  Laura held up her free hand and created a modest space between pointer finger and thumb.

  “That smell,” Laura said, inhaling his scalp.

  “I know.” Stephanie smiled. “Isn’t it the best?”

  “There’s nothing like it,” Laura agreed.

  Emma leaned in for a sniff. “Smells like yogurt,” she said, plugging her nose.

  The baby yawned, and Laura’s heart did a little cartwheel. Her previous trips to the maternity ward to visit friends had not been like this; she’d had to pretend to have the reaction she was having right now.

  “Yo-Yo Ma.” Emma poked Laura’s shoulder. “Would you please take me to school before I get in trouble for missing gymnastics?”

  “Okay,” Laura said. “But give me a few more minutes with this baby.”

  “What the heck is that for?” Emma asked, pointing to a medical contraption on the wall.

  Laura looked up with a frown and shook her head; Stephanie put on a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and shrugged. Emma let out a dispirited sigh and wandered over to the window. Pressing her face against the glass she took a deep breath, wrote her initials in the cloud of condensation, and drew a heart around them.

  On their way out they bumped into Nicholas, who’d been on a Zabar’s run, and Laura felt moved to convey her feelings about his baby—how the affection she had felt was much deeper than anything she’d felt for her friends’ infants, that it was particular to this one.

  She’d expected his face to light up with paternal pride, but instead he looked mildly annoyed.

  “Well, he’s not a friend’s baby,” he said, pressing the elevator button. “He’s your nephew.”

  * * *

  NICHOLAS AND STEPHANIE’S APARTMENT WAS only a few blocks from the Library, and recalling how isolating that first year of motherhood could be, Laura made a habit of dropping by when Stephanie was alone there during the day. With the hope of cultivating a more casual, more familial relationship with her sister-in-law, Laura wouldn’t call beforehand; she’d just show up. Occasionally she brought food, but most of the time she arrived empty-handed. Due to the frequency of these impromptu visits, the doormen came to recognize Laura and would send her straight up without buzzing to let Stephanie know she had a guest.

  Stephanie, however, clung to a certain sense of protocol and was often flustered wh
en she opened the door, apologizing for her appearance, for not having anything for Laura to eat, for the state of the apartment.

  Laura was never hungry and would insist that the apartment, and Stephanie, looked fine. In the beginning Stephanie appeared sweetly disheveled, and the apartment, once so immaculately kempt it felt sterile, now had an air of homey disarray. But as the weeks went by Laura began to notice things that left her troubled. Dirty dishes haphazardly perched in odd places, mounds of unfolded laundry tucked behind oversize couch cushions, a stack of starchy Christmas cocktail napkins on the back of the toilet in lieu of toilet paper. They’d received a lot of flowers after arriving home from the hospital, and as they began to expire they released a vaguely fecal odor.

  More than anything, Laura wanted to go through the apartment and restore order, but she suspected that even offering to do so would stoke Stephanie’s shame over the condition of things, and so she resisted the urge. The visits usually only lasted about fifteen minutes, and Laura did most of the talking.

  One afternoon she was waiting in the checkout line of Associated Value when she noticed Princess Diana on the cover of a tabloid newspaper; the headline suggested the royal couple was headed for a divorce. She was shocked and wondered if Stephanie knew. It would be fertile conversational fodder and she studied the questions beneath the headline so that she could put them to Stephanie: What would happen to Charles? Could he still be king? Would he ever marry again? What would Di do? Where would she live? Would she ever be allowed to see her kids?

  Later that evening, in the middle of putting Emma to bed, the phone rang; it was Nicholas calling to say Stephanie was feeling overwhelmed.

  “Of course she is,” Laura said, touched that he was confiding in her. She told Nicholas that she had a meeting scheduled the next morning and an appointment in the afternoon but she would be more than happy to cancel one or both of them to come over and help out. She could bring groceries, run errands, watch the baby so Stephanie could go out and get a haircut—whatever she could do to make life easier for Stephanie.