Laura & Emma

by Kate Greathead

  “It’s okay, Stephanie,” Laura said. “I want to hear the rest.”

  “It was discovered that eliminating said employee’s position to outsource the work to a professional wedding planning service would more than double the museum’s annual profits.”

  “Because they could do it so much better than me?”

  “Because they could handle one wedding a weekend as opposed to two a month, plus summers.”

  “Are you trying to tell me I’m about to lose my job?”

  “No, to the contrary, your job’s not going anywhere and it never will—don’t worry about that,” Nicholas said with a sarcastic grin. “The proposal was shot down by the trustees, who acknowledged the director’s concerns about unfair advantages enjoyed by that particular employee, and said they were aware of more profitable alternatives, but that it was not within her jurisdiction to do anything about it.” He folded his napkin neatly, placed it on the table, and patted it. “That particular employee’s job security was a priority.”

  * * *

  LAURA WAS ADMIRING THE CAKE for Emma’s surprise party when she heard the front door open and, in her frenzied panic, put the cake in the freezer and slammed the door with such force that a few of the magnets slipped off and a flurry of papers fluttered to the floor. Among these was the mysterious stick-figure picture that had arrived in the mail years earlier. When it fell, it unfolded; it wasn’t glued together after all, but must have gotten stuck to itself in transit.

  It was a handmade card, and the interior featured a shakily scrawled heart containing Emma’s initials. A Post-it note read:

  I thought you might want to have this sweet drawing by your daughter. Tim spoke very fondly of you.

  —Tina Brown Fuchs

  There was a newspaper clipping tucked inside the fold.

  As Laura saw what it was, the sounds of traffic continued, but everything else seemed to stop.

  She waited until Emma had sequestered herself in her bedroom before picking up the phone.

  “I’m looking for a number for Tina Brown Fuchs,” she told the operator. “I’m not sure what state, but you might start with Ohio.”

  TIMOTHY BROWN, M.D., 1950–1991.

  DR. BROWN HAD NOT GOTTEN infected with AIDS, his sister, Tina, told Laura over the phone, but fear of the disease had prevented any of his patients from following him to Downtown Pediatrics. He had similar troubles in San Francisco, where he had moved with Chris, who had gotten infected though apparently he was still living. The two had split up, and Dr. Brown had returned to Ohio to take care of their mother, who was suffering from dementia. Following her death, he had taken his own life.

  * * *

  LAURA HADN’T FELT RIGHT TELLING Emma all the details she’d just learned, but Emma, who remembered Dr. Brown well, had coaxed them out of her.

  “That’s all I know, darling,” she said when Emma wanted more information. “That’s all the information his sister volunteered, and I didn’t want to pry.”

  “Do you think he had depression?” Emma asked. “Like a chemical thing in his brain?”

  “I don’t know,” Laura said, still too stunned to feel anything. “Life is complicated. You never really know what it’s like to be someone else.”

  The two of them sat at the kitchen table in silence. From the street below came the jingle of an ice cream truck. Soon it would be time to leave for Emma’s surprise goodbye party, Laura realized.

  “I thought we’d go out for dinner tonight,” she told Emma. “I made us a reservation at Serafina.”

  “I can’t even think about food right now,” Emma said with a sigh.

  “Me neither,” Laura agreed. “But it’s important to eat.”

  * * *

  THE PARTY WAS IN A small private room in the back of the restaurant. Seated around the table were Emma’s grandfather, Charlotte and Margaret and Trip, her mother’s friends Edith and Janet, Nicholas and Stephanie and Nick Jr., Emma’s second cousin Holly, and Holly’s mom, Ginny.

  “Surprise!” they said in unison as Emma entered.

  Her cheeks were chapped from dried tears, she was sure her eyes were still red, her face still felt puffy and swollen, but if any of the guests noticed she’d been crying, their smiles didn’t betray it.

  “Thank you!” Emma said, doing her best to affect excitement and gratitude.

  The grief that had gripped her on the walk over abruptly subsided. A cold, quiet anger took its place as Emma realized she’d been duped. It’s important to eat. How typical of her mother, to insist on carrying through with a party in the wake of what they’d just learned.

  Emma pulled out a chair next to Nick Jr., but Laura pointed to an empty place at the other end of the table.

  “I put you over there,” she said. “Between Charlotte and Holly.”

  Emma saw that Laura had made place cards with everyone’s name handwritten.

  She was relieved to discover that Holly and Charlotte had already seemed to strike up a rapport with each other, as she had very little to say to either of them. She and Holly didn’t have much in common outside of Ashaunt, and Emma and Charlotte had barely been on speaking terms for over a year now.

  “Were you surprised?” Holly asked as Emma sat down.

  “You looked really surprised,” Charlotte said.

  “I was,” Emma admitted. “I had no idea. It’s not the kind of thing my mom does—throw surprise parties.”

  “We were just talking about how cute your mom is,” said Charlotte.

  “We love her cowboy boots,” Holly added. “So retro.”

  Emma reached for her water as she tried to think of something to say. Making small talk with anyone was taxing, but it was less painful with a stranger. With both Charlotte and Holly there was the unspoken intimacy of having grown up together, in knowing each other first and foremost as children. To carry on as they were now felt like a betrayal of their most authentic, primal selves, further degrading the integrity of their childhood bond.

  “I’m so happy it’s finally warm out,” Charlotte said.

  “Me, too,” Holly agreed. “I’m so excited for it to be, like, hot.”

  Emma recalled an interesting fact she had once learned: “The murder rate rises when it’s hot.”

  “Okaaay,” Holly responded, raising her eyebrows.

  Charlotte mirrored her expression. “That’s random.”

  At the other end of the table, Stephanie scolded Nick Jr. for blowing bubbles into his chocolate milk. “One more time and I take the straw away from you,” she warned him.

  “Emma!” Janet hollered from a few seats away. “Your new school sounds absolutely fantastic!”

  “Thank you,” Emma responded.

  “Are you so excited?”

  Emma mustered a smile and nodded, but Janet’s face remained fixed on hers, as if she weren’t convinced, and so Emma smiled harder and added, “I’m really, really excited.”

  She was, though being asked to exuberantly express this—to match the caliber of Janet’s enthusiasm—felt perfunctory and made the sentiment ring false. One of the more exhausting aspects of getting older was having to act like an adult. Pretending to like people you couldn’t stand, speaking for the sake of filling a silence, smiling when you felt like crying.

  “I can’t wait to hear all about it!” Janet grinned, and turned her attention to the waiter, who was taking orders.

  Throughout the meal, Emma found her mother pursuing eye contact with her from across the table. Once their gazes met, Laura would smile, forcing Emma to smile back. It was as though she were willing her to suppress any feelings about Dr. Brown. Just as it was important to eat, it was important to maintain composure in the company of others. Buck up. Fake it till you feel it. The show must go on.

  This was the way they did things—these people in the world she’d grown up in.

  Emma looked around the table at everyone laughing and chatting as if they didn’t have a care in the world. She knew this wasn’
t the case, but it seemed to be the impression they strived to make. I’m great. Isn’t life fabulous?! How wonderful!

  Deep down, they all knew this was a lie, which was why it was so important that everyone make an effort to pretend everything was hunky-dory—to keep up the collective charade. Which was why individuals who refused to do this were labeled depressed or mentally ill, when really they were just honest—the brave ones who refused to be fake.

  She thought of her grandmother.

  Douglas had another party to go to and left before dessert. A polite hush fell over the table as he apologized for his early departure, and then announced he had a present for Emma. He reached into the pocket of his blazer and pulled out a book.

  “Years ago someone broke into the house and stole a handful of items that we eventually got back, and this was one of them, so either the thief had good literary taste, or this is quite valuable.” He held up a book.

  “A signed first edition of Catcher in the Rye,” Douglas said, prompting a chorus of oohs and “That’s my favorite book!”—a claim that baffled Emma, who felt the book had been written specifically for her, at the expense of present company.

  “Thank you, Doug-Doug,” Emma said.

  “Remember to have fun at school, kiddo,” he added before taking off.

  After dinner there was a cake from the fancy bakery where her mother ordered wedding cakes. It was decorated with edible flowers and the top was inscribed with the words Good luck, Emma! written in icing, next to the image of a bird taking flight.

  “Why is there a pigeon on the cake?” asked Nick Jr.

  “It’s a sparrow,” Laura corrected.

  “How sweet,” Stephanie said. To Nick Jr. she added, “It’s like Emma is a bird who’s flying off to a new nest.”

  “When Emma was little, she used to get overstimulated before bed,” Laura explained. “Sometimes the only way to get her to settle down was to let her wear herself out. So we played this game where she was a sparrow, and I’d chase her as she flew around the apartment. I’d say, ‘I’m going to catch that little sparrow and eat her for dinner!’ ”

  “How fun!” Edith squealed.

  Laura looked across the table and smiled. It was a different kind of smile from what she’d been doing all night. A private, fragile smile, fondly wistful, gently probing.

  Emma nodded. Of course she remembered.

  Her mother in a rare display of silliness, pretending to be a bird catcher, dashing through the rooms, periodically pausing to catch her breath and give Emma a chance to reverse course. Emma, the sparrow, mere inches from her mother’s clutch; the heart-thumping, hilarity-inducing suspense of wondering when she’d make her final, swooping move, of not knowing whether you were going to escape once more, or if that was it.

  * * *

  THE SCHOOL FOR THE ETHICAL Individual was a five-hour drive from Manhattan and, as Laura had predicted, there was no traffic, and thus it had been unnecessary to set their alarms for six a.m. on Sunday—as Emma had insisted they do.

  “Mom, you’re driving between the lanes.”

  “I know,” Laura said. “There were no other cars on the highway and I always wanted to see what it’s like.” She put on her blinker and coasted back into the right lane.

  “You didn’t have to stop,” Emma said. “I was just wondering if you knew you were doing it.”

  “I did, I was doing it on purpose.”

  “I know. You said that already.

  “Do it again,” Emma requested a moment later. “It was sort of fun.”

  Laura glanced in the rearview and drifted back toward the middle—then changed her mind and got back in the right. “I oughtn’t,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Oughtn’t,” Emma repeated with disdain; then, in the silly English accent she adopted when ridiculing Laura: “I oughtn’t break the law.

  “Is oughtn’t even a word?” Emma asked a minute later.

  “It’s a conjunction,” Laura said. “Ought not.”

  “I know that, Mom. I mean is a word still a word if nobody uses it anymore?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I use it all the time.”

  “Well, nobody else does.”

  “Nor do they use most of the words in the dictionary,” Laura reflected.

  “Nor!” Emma scoffed. She put her seat back and rested her feet on the dashboard.

  Laura glanced at Emma’s legs. At her most recent checkup, Dr. Marks had expressed concern that her BMI percentile had gone down from the previous year, and it would be hard to monitor her eating and exercise habits now that she would be away.

  “I wish you’d just say shouldn’t,” Emma continued. “Every time you say oughtn’t, I don’t know why, but it makes me think of that Beatles song ‘Eleanor Rigby’—it makes me sad for you.”

  “ ‘Eleanor Rigby’?” Laura laughed. “That song is about a tragic old woman who lives in a delusional world, and a priest . . . I don’t know what it has to do with my vocabulary choices.”

  They passed a billboard for a personal injury lawyer named Gary (GARY’S YOUR GUY). A mile later one for Vince (HE’S IN-VINCE-IBLE IN COURT!), then for Wayne (IN PAIN? CALL WAYNE!).

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Laura said.

  “What wasn’t?” Emma asked.

  “The ‘Eleanor Rigby’ comment. I don’t know what you meant by it, but it wasn’t a very nice thing to say.”

  “Sorry,” Emma said. “I didn’t mean it.

  “I really didn’t,” she reiterated a moment later. “I just had that song stuck in my head for some reason.”

  “Thank you,” Laura said. She glanced at the odometer and realized she was going well below the speed limit. “I want to apologize to you for something, too,” she said, speeding up. “Something that’s been weighing on me recently. Something I didn’t tell the truth about.”

  Emma retracted her feet and hugged her knees to her chest.

  Laura checked her mirrors, thinking she’d heard a police siren, but it was nothing.

  “I didn’t tell the truth about how I had you,” she said. “I didn’t think it was anyone’s business how I came to be pregnant and I had no qualms giving them a different story, but you . . . I never felt right about it.”

  Emma opened the window a crack. This created an air-pressure situation that hurt Laura’s ears. To stabilize the current she opened her own window an inch.

  “You weren’t conceived with a sperm donor,” she continued. “It was a one-night stand.”

  Laura took a deep breath. The air felt like helium in her lungs. If she didn’t have her seat belt on she’d float up out of her seat, get sucked out the window, and slither up into the atmosphere.

  “Well.” Laura’s eyes briefly left the road to glance over at Emma. “I imagine you have questions.”

  Emma was silent.

  “It’s not an easy conversation,” Laura proceeded, “but I guess we should just get the whole thing over with. It was August. The part of the summer when everyone’s out of town—”

  Now Emma spoke. Her voice was muffled but it sounded like Stop. When Laura turned to look at her she’d pushed her seat as far back as it would go and had draped her sweatshirt over her face.

  Laura’s sense of gravity returned; she felt very much rooted in the car. “Maybe now wasn’t the right time to tell you.” She reached out to pat Emma’s knee but Emma brushed her fingers away.

  “Please, Mom,” she said, putting her seat back up. “Just take me to school. That’s all I ask of you.”

  “Of course, darling. I’m sorry. I completely understand.” She felt bad for having burdened Emma with this now, but also relieved. The information had been delivered; the conversation she’d been dreading wasn’t one Emma was interested in having. The matter was over and dealt with.

  Twenty minutes passed.

  “What color hair did he have?” Emma asked.

  “To be honest,” Laura said after a pause, “I can’t remember.
I would say it was brown. I mean it definitely wasn’t red, and I don’t think it was black, and I think I would remember it if it was blond. There aren’t that many adult men with blond hair out there.

  “Do you want to hear the story?” Laura asked a minute later.

  “No,” Emma said emphatically.

  Ten minutes later: “I just have a couple other questions.”

  “You can ask me anything.”

  Emma paused. “What did he look like?”

  “To be honest, I don’t really remember,” Laura said.

  “Was he tall?”

  “Yes, I think so. He must have been, since you’re so much taller than I am.”

  “Was he skinny or fat?”

  “He was neither,” Laura answered. “He was healthy.”

  “What was his personality?” Emma asked next. “Was he serious, was he funny?”

  Laura thought about this for a moment. “He was quite amusing,” she answered. “Spirited.”

  “Spirited?” Emma repeated.

  “He had a fun, silly side.”

  They were quiet. The road made a recurring bumping sound beneath the car.

  “No more,” Emma said.

  “No more what?”

  “I don’t want to know anything more.”

  “I understand,” Laura told her.

  “Ever,” Emma said.

  “I won’t bring it up again,” Laura promised.

  * * *

  “I DON’T LIKE THIS.” LAURA frowned.

  “Your tea?” Emma asked.

  “No—I don’t like saying goodbye to you in a coffee shop.”

  “It was your idea,” Emma reminded her, taking a sip of her water.

  Laura looked out the window. Emma’s school was through the trees down the road. They’d already been there, checked in, met the roommate, and unpacked. Laura had been about to leave when she’d had a thought: it would be easier to say goodbye in a public place, to keep herself in check in case she got emotional. Now the two of them were seated at a rickety iron table in a coffee shop, their emotions very much in check, and it was terrible.

  “Well, I guess this is it,” Laura said as they stepped outside. Emma crossed her arms and looked at the ground. Laura realized she was doing the same.

  “Can I please drive you back to campus?”