by Lauren Fox
Cal shook his head no and said, “Yes,” as if he’d suddenly confused assent with negation. He was troubled, flustered, the opposite of the calm and assured man he’d been the other two times I’d met him. The sands shifted; my perception of him altered in ways I couldn’t figure. I felt my chest click open one tiny notch. And then I offered to come along.
···
My hand is still on his knee in the car, which I realize, too late, was a poorly planned gesture. What will I do, just keep it here until we get to the nursing home? In fact, I have no idea where we’re going. What if it’s forty-five minutes away? What if it’s in Detroit? Maybe I’ll just leave my hand here forever, deadweight, heavy and growing increasingly sweaty, on Cal’s sharp knee. Finally, desperate, I snatch it away, pretend to cough and cover my mouth.
After a few minutes of silence, during which I contemplate what a mistake it is for me to ever leave the house, we finally pull into the parking structure of Lutheran Manor, Assisted Living for Seniors.
“We have arrived at Lyootheran Manor!” I announce in an English accent, and luckily Cal laughs. It’s a beige, defiantly bland rectangle of a building, pocked with tiny windows. If you didn’t know better, the Manor could be a plain old apartment building built in the 1960s, a brick-and-concrete fortress against whimsy.
We drive down into the bowels of the parking structure. “The Manor is very charming, isn’t it?” Cal says, as he pulls into a space next to a pillar.
“Rather.”
Cal walks around the car and opens the door for me, just like nobody ever used to do. “This will be more fun,” he says, “than a colonoscopy.”
···
Chris introduced me to his parents for the first time on his mother’s sixtieth birthday. Chris and I were newly in love, and my heart was wide-open. His parents were hosting a party at their country club. When we arrived, the champagne had been flowing for quite a while.
“Isabel!” Chris’s mother flung her bony arms around me. “Isabel Applebaum! Christopher has told us sooooooo much about you.” As a result of vigilant, military-style maintenance and the diet of a squirrel in February, Ginny Moore is the size of a sapling. Her hug was like being poked by the spokes of a broken umbrella. “Your name sounds like a poem! IZZZZabellll APPLEbaum!” She trilled it. “It’s dactylic!” she whispered, and kissed me on the cheek with an actual mwaaah, then moved on to hug Chris, who looked like he was being asked for directions to Neptune.
Chris’s father, a tall, graceful man with a crinkly Robert Redford grin, handed me a party hat and blew a festive paper horn in my face.
I laughed and looked around the Lakeshore Country Club party room, at the sprays of white roses and lavender irises and the beautiful tables and the slim, bejeweled ladies draped lightly on the arms of their portly men, and I felt weightless, free. These were people who drank champagne and told stories about golfing. Did they carry burdens? Probably. But did those burdens involve the lingering, inherited terror of imminent loss? I felt certain they did not.
Chris had told me that his parents were snobbish and reserved, inaccessible, emotionally hobbled by their devotion to complicated rules of propriety. But none of that restraint was in evidence at Ginny’s party. Chris’s mother touched my arm, and his father brought me a glass of white wine, and I could practically see our loving connection arcing across the divide. That Isabel, they would say to Chris later. She’s one of us! That was the moment I decided that if Chris and I got married, I would take his name. It wasn’t that I thought that changing my last name would erase the murky, old-world echoes of disruption and loss; I wasn’t deluded. It was the sound of it, the way it seemed that Chris’s last name could round out my edges, smooth me down to a polished gem. Isabel Moore. I was through being dactylic.
But Chris was right, of course. That day was just a tipsy aberration. As it turns out, Ginny and Edward Moore might as well be extras from the cast of Ordinary People. They skulk about their well-appointed home in suburban Chicago in brooding silence. You can go a whole weekend with them, and the only sounds you’ll hear are the wingbeats of magazine pages and the clink of ice in their glasses.
In the fifteen years since that party, the most effusive I’ve ever seen Ed and Ginny was when Chris and I told them we were getting married. We were staying with them over Memorial Day weekend and had just finished a very light lunch on their deck. I was fantasizing about bread when Chris broke the news.
“Ah, well done,” Ed said quietly, and popped out of his seat to get a bottle of champagne, while Ginny raised her wineglass and said, “Hear, hear!” Later that day I overheard Ginny stage-whisper to Chris, “It’s just that we always pictured you with someone more…athletic.”
All of this slides through me now, a decade and a half of ambivalent connection to Chris’s family, the pinpricks and knife wounds that eventually became, through some benevolent, gravitational pull, hilarious: How Ed wandered away in the middle of toasting us at our wedding. That they sent Hannah a fruit basket for her fifth birthday. How Ginny insists on things about me that aren’t true: You don’t like the theater! You’re allergic to mascara! You never eat cheese at night! These stories, repeated, were threads that wove Chris and me together.
The thought of having to accumulate a new history with someone makes me feel uneven, as if my legs are two different lengths. I take a deep breath of stale air and steady myself for a second against a Honda Civic. Just when I think I’ve dug down as far as I can go, a new layer appears, silty sediment underneath the rock.
“I should tell you something about my mother,” Cal says, pressing the elevator button in the parking garage. “She’s…opinionated.”
I picture a frail old lady in a magenta tracksuit, ranting about the Democrats. “Noted,” I say. “I promise not to start a kerfuffle with her.”
Cal doesn’t bounce anything back to me. He just nods, and I feel foolish and a little chastised. How is it that, at forty-three, I still can’t read the room? We’re inside the overheated building now, walking down a carpeted hallway that smells like macaroni and disinfectant. It’s long and wide, with rubber bumpers on the sides, like a bowling alley at a child’s birthday party. I have the urge to stop in my tracks and pivot, to head straight back down the hall and out the broad, pneumatic door through which we entered.
But Cal reaches for my hand instead. “ ‘Opinionated’ may be the wrong word, actually. She’s…she can be kind of hateful. I probably should have warned you earlier, but honestly, I didn’t think you’d need to know quite so soon.”
We pass the dining room, empty; the TV room, where seven or eight people sit in wheelchairs in front of a game show; and the recreation lounge, which is decorated to the hilt with blue and green streamers and balloons and a huge banner strung across the wall, HAPPY 95TH BIRTHDAY, BETTY! The lounge, like the dining room, is completely empty, a ghost ship.
We take the elevator up to the fourth floor, where, Cal explains, the more independent residents live in small apartments until they’re unable to live on their own. It’s like the day-care center Hannah went to when she was two: children progressed from classroom to classroom as they got older, from the Bunny Room to the Dolphin Room to the Penguin Room. This is just like that, except not at all.
Cal drops my hand in front of apartment 447 and knocks, more of an alert than a question, since he has his key in the lock before his mother has a chance to say Come in or Don’t. He turns to me, raises his eyebrows, and smiles in a way that reminds me of the look on Hannah’s face at last year’s spelling bee, right before she started to spell “psychology” with a c.
Vivian Abbott is sitting in her small, warm living room in a blue armchair, her back to us, staring out the window, as if she had been sent from central casting: Old Woman, Waiting. There is an intermittent clicking noise that I at first attribute to the heating system. As it turns out, she’s staring not at the scenery but at her computer screen, typing.
“Goddammit,” she says, turning to us. “I wa
s in the middle of a sentence.” She holds up a hand and waves to us. “Cal, what are you doing here?”
“Hi, Mom.” He walks over to her, leans down, and kisses her on the cheek. “You sounded a little funny when we spoke this morning. I wanted to come check on you.”
“You’re a good boy,” she says. “And you always have been.” She sets her computer down on the table next to the chair, then stands and pulls her lavender cardigan around herself. Even here, aged and frail in the independent-living unit of Lutheran Manor, Vivian Abbott is a beauty. Her eyes are bright blue and clearly appraising as she looks me up and down. Her skin is pale and delicately lined, softening her fine, sharp features. I wouldn’t have guessed how old she is. She looks slightly younger than Cal.
“Hello, darling,” she says to me. Then, to Cal, “Is she Michael’s friend?”
“No,” Cal says. “Isabel is my friend.”
“My goodness,” Vivian says.
I walk over to her, and she takes my hand in hers. Her palm is dry and papery. With her left hand, she pats my upper arm. I want to hug her. How can Cal say she’s hateful? I guess we just cling to our old misunderstandings, those early injuries.
“You have very unusual features,” Vivian says, squeezing my hand. “Such thick hair and dark eyes. Are you a Turk?”
“Mom. Isabel is not a Turk.”
“Are you sure?” she asks me. “I’m sorry, but I don’t trust Turks. I had a cleaning lady who was Turkish. I don’t need to tell you what happened there. Well, I don’t trust Spaniards, either, for that matter, so I can’t be a bigot, even though Cal says I am.” She smiles sweetly. “I’m just happy to hear you’re not a Turk.”
“Oh, Mom,” Cal says. “And I’m just happy you’re feeling okay.”
“I certainly am.” She winks at me, and I wink back. “You are darling. I can see why Michael likes you.”
“We brought you some cookies,” Cal says, handing her a bag I hadn’t noticed he’d been carrying.
“Pecan Sandies. My favorite! How is Michael?” she asks me.
“He’s fine, Mom. He’s in San Francisco, remember?”
“Of course I remember! He’s out there working for that Internet security company. We Skyped last week. He looked so handsome. I’m just wondering if you’ve spoken to him since then.” She waves her hand dismissively at Cal and clucks her tongue. “Elizabeth,” she says to me, “my son brought you all the way out here just to show you that I’m not in full possession of my faculties. Well, I am.”
“Mom,” Cal says. “That’s not why…”
She waves him away again and will now make eye contact only with me. “We’ll enjoy these cookies. Pecan Sandies, my favorite. Would you be so kind as to go into the kitchen and get me my sterling-silver serving platter? It’s in the cupboard over the sink. I would do it myself, but I might get lost on my way back from the kitchen.” She puts her hands on her hips and juts out her chin imperiously, like a much-younger woman, then, exhausted by all the effort, eases herself back down into her armchair.
In the cupboard over the sink there are three plastic cups, a butter knife, and a bottle of antacid. I’m searching the rest of the spotless kitchen, quietly, for the serving plate, when I overhear Mrs. Abbott say, “If not a Turk, then what? Sicilian?”
“No, Mom, she’s Irish,” Cal says loudly, for my benefit. “Black Irish.”
This is the weirdest situation I’ve ever been in, including the time a squirrel tried to climb up my leg in the park.
“Oh, I know black Irish,” Vivian says, “and she’s not that. She’s has lovely skin, though.”
I feel a little puff of pride. I do have lovely skin! This is why you go on a date with a man who is almost twenty years older than you are: so that his elderly mother will compliment you behind your back.
“She’s a little heavy in the hips, though. Pretty enough, but not too pretty,” she continues. “That’s important. Catherine, you’ll forgive me for saying, was too pretty. Too pretty for you, too pretty for her own good.”
“Mom, please, shush.”
“What? A plain Jane will treat you better!” She’s practically shouting now. “It’s common knowledge, Calvin.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a Pecan Sandy before,” I announce, carrying out a large green plastic plate shaped like a Christmas tree. “This was all I could find. Sorry.” In fact, I did find the silver platter she was looking for. But it was too pretty! Ha!
Cal looks at me like we’re both disappointed fans of the losing team. I wink at him.
I sit down and bite into a cookie. “They are well named.”
“Is it the taste, or the grainy texture?” Cal says.
I make a face at him, try to make it look like I’m eating sand and also that I forgive him.
“Well, as long as you’re here, I’ll tell you,” Vivian says with a sigh as she reaches for a Sandy. “Marie over in four fifteen had a stroke, and they moved her down to the first floor. She’s a young one, too. Seventy-nine.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Is she a friend of yours?”
“That’s not the point, is it?” Vivian snaps. “And no.”
It goes on like this for a while; hours, possibly, although according to the clock only twenty-three minutes. Addie Warner in 445 took a fall the other day and did not report it to the nurses, can you imagine? Was it really a Mennonite holiday last week, or were Mr. and Mrs. Messerschmitt across the hall angling for special treatment from the staff?
Finally Cal stands up. “Mom, thanks for the visit, and I’m glad you’re okay,” he says. “I will see you on Saturday. I have to go now.” For an awful moment I think he’s leaving me here. Then, for the second time today, he reaches for my hand, pulls me up. “Isabel and I have something arranged for this afternoon.”
Mrs. Abbott looks up at her son. Her face is as open and vulnerable as a baby’s, her pale lips slightly open, her eyes bereft. Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. She might as well be saying it out loud; her gaze is so naked and pleading that I have to look away. All I want right now is to leave this too-warm apartment, this old woman who has nothing to do with me, her sour, calcified, aching need. My hand is in Cal’s as if it belongs there. I am the opposite magnet pulling him away, going, going.
“I’ll be back on Saturday,” Cal says again.
Vivian Abbott’s expression hardens. Still sitting in her blue armchair, she runs a bony hand down her pants, swooshes off cookie crumbs, pats down her hair. “Well. Fine. Knock before you come in,” she says. “And next time wait for an answer.”
I didn’t think of them as babies. They weren’t. They were pieces of me, though: secrets, sweet hazy dreams, the thrumming anticipation of surprises. I guarded them tenderly, selfishly, and so when they were gone I grieved them like amputations, silent deaths, down, down, deep at the center of me.
After two of them, we got Hannah, warm and fat and loud, throbbing with life, oblivious to its alternative, but then, a couple years later, another one lost, and then another one almost two years ago, and by the end of it, for sure, a part of me was broken, just shattered, gone.
When I called my mother after the last one, she said, “I always hoped that maybe, after everything that happened, we would be spared.”
“Ridiculous,” I said, sobbing. “Say something useful. Make me feel better.”
“I wish I could,” she said.
Chris held me and said, “We can try again…if you want to,” and that was sort of helpful, but I felt almost as sorry for him as I did for myself, at least partly because procreational sex with an anxious, grieving woman is a pretty dismal affair. There are frequently, for example, tears, and I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think you can mistake those little half-suppressed sobs for moans of pleasure no matter how badly you want to.
Mark said, “Oh, man. Oh, wow. I’m so sorry, Iz. I’m really sorry.” There was a long pause, and then, “Here, let me go get Josie. Here, here she is. Here’s Jose.” And that w
as helpful, because he got Josie.
Josie said, “I’ll get you drunk,” and that was the most helpful of all.
We met at Heinrich von Raaschke’s. It was Oktoberfest. For some reason we thought this would be a good idea. It was unseasonably warm, and you could sit outside in the Bierhaus’s biergarten, which was cozy and strung with lights and smelled like apple cider.
“I love the way everything’s a garten in German,” I said, pulling my chair out and sitting down. “Biergarten, kindergarten.”
“I think the two should be combined,” Josie said, “into a kindergarten where beer is served.”
“Or a beer garden where children are served.”
“You mean like children are served alcohol,” Josie said, “or children are served as food?”
“Food.”
“Yes.” She unfolded her napkin and glanced around for the waitress. “Everyone knows five-year-olds make the tenderest cuts of meat.”
“Their little thighs and their butts,” I said, thinking of Hannah, who was already in fifth grade. And then, without warning, I started to tear up.
“Oh,” Josie said. “Oh, Izzy.”
I squared my shoulders and waved away her sympathy. “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m just crying because when you eat a five-year-old, the portions are so small.”
Josie nodded. “And it’s like, do you order two, or do you just order one ten-year-old?”
I blew my nose in my napkin. Noises rose up from the people around us—boisterous laughter, glasses clinking, silverware scraping. “I’m so sad,” I said.
“I know.”
This was the thing about Josie and me, how we understood each other: goofy jokes skating on the surface and the truth of what lay underneath, the complicated architecture of it all. It was how we loved each other.
“Goddamn,” she said. “Where is Katie?” She was our favorite waitress. And we had been coming here for so long that we not only knew the servers, we knew which sections of the restaurant they worked. When the biergarten was open, Katie had the back half, Leni the front.