“Ow!” I say. It hurt more than it should have. “Please don’t do that.” I pull up my shirt—I’m not wearing a bra—and dip my chin, examining myself. There’s a large purple bruise that covers my right breast. My niece’s eyes grow wide with horror, then she starts to cry.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” I say. I slide my shirt down, sit up, and rub her arm. “You didn’t do that. It was like that already.” Before I flew out, I had to have a breast cyst aspirated. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced—the hypnotically thin needle, the oddly cheerful banter, the eerie amber fluid filling the reservoir. Had the doctor given me laughing gas? It felt as though he had, although I couldn’t quite remember. I remember telling him about my brother-in-law.
“One weekend he was skiing with his children, and a month later, he was dead,” I said.
“And they don’t know how he contracted it?”
“No. Doesn’t staph live on our bodies all the time?”
“Yes, but … How’d it get into his blood?”
“Nobody knows,” I said. “Maybe the dentist? Or a puncture wound?” I looked at the needle, then at him, then we both became silent. He used the ultrasound on me when he was finished. Then he gave me an ice pack to stick in my bra and told me to cut down on my caffeine intake.
“Is that what causes cysts?”
“We don’t really know what causes them,” he said. The body and its independent desires. A number of my childless friends had begun developing uterine fibroids in the past couple of years. It was as if our wombs were saying: We don’t need you! We can make things all by ourselves!
• • •
After supper the girls change into their pajamas and brush their teeth, and we all pile into the one big bed that’s actually three twin-size beds squished together. Instead of reading to them from a book, they like it when I make up a story based on an old photograph. They especially like the photos where their mom and I are as young as they are now. I’ve brought a stack with me in my duffel bag.
“Who’s that?” they say.
“That’s me!”
“What’s wrong with your hair?”
“We had something called perms. It was your mommy’s idea. We did them at home, and they smelled bad when we went swimming.”
Coco props her head on one elbow. “How bad?”
“They smelled like rotten fish. Like dead dragons. Like dead dragons who had eaten rotten fish!” I pause, and Coco squints.
“What’s the matter?” she says.
“I thought of a joke, but I don’t know if you’re old enough to hear it.”
“Tell us.”
“I don’t think you’re old enough.”
“Tell us,” they say. “Tell us, tell us!” They don’t say the words, but I hear them anyway: Our father is dead. For God’s sake, tell us your joke.
“Okay. A girl says to her boyfriend: ‘Does my breath smell like tacos?’ And she breathes on his face, like this.” I exhale enthusiastically. “Her boyfriend draws back and says: ‘I don’t know. Do you put cat shit on your tacos?’ ”
Three separate looks of astonishment. No laughter.
“You’re not supposed to use that word,” Saltine Teacup says.
“You guys made me tell you the joke.”
“That’s a naughty word,” says Pepper.
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.” And then I tell them how their mother and I used to scream and yell over the bad words when we listened to the eight-track of Grease while our father drove us to private school in Cambridge.
I tuck the folder of pictures back in my duffel bag and turn out the light. Through the sliding glass doors, we can see the leaves of the tulip tree shiver in the breeze.
“Let’s go outside, to pray,” Coco says.
“I think you’re supposed to be trying to fall asleep now,” I say. Their mother is asleep on a cot in the kitchen, and we’d have to walk through that room in order to get outside.
“Mommy won’t mind,” she says.
“Mommy will mind,” I say, but before I can say anything else, she has tiptoed through the kitchen and is sliding open the glass door.
She gets down on her knees on the concrete and prays to her father. The sky above her is a flock of stars.
“I love you, Tata,” she says. “You will always be the best daddy in the whole world. Always and forever and ever.” I never saw a man more devoted to his kids. When he came home from work, at the sound of his voice, there would be a stampede for the door.
I kneel beside her and take her hands. “Your father loved you very much,” I say.
“I know,” Coco says.
Suddenly her mother is standing over us. “That’s enough now,” she says. “It’s time for bed.”
After Coco is asleep, I hover awkwardly in the kitchen. “Can I make you some hot chocolate, or anything?”
“No, thanks,” my sister says. “I’m not really hungry. I just want to try to get back to sleep.” And a moment later, she’s in her cot on the other side of the room.
I don’t want to admit that our grieving has not brought us closer together. If anything, it seems to have accentuated our differences. I believe in God; my sister does not. She lets me talk to her kids about God, and even wants them to take religious education classes, and receive their First Communion, but I know it’s a strain for her. The strain has been added to of late. A couple cornered her at the funeral and said: “If you don’t believe in Jesus, you’ll never see your husband again.” I was flabbergasted when she told me; all I could do was shake my head and apologize. I assume these people mean well, but I suspect statements like that only drive my sister farther away.
The next morning, we’re back at the House of Pancakes. Same booth, same sweet waiter. After he takes our order, he tells me I have beautiful children. This is a misperception I not only allow, but encourage. I never correct the girls when they call me Mommy. They only do so when we’re out in public—at home, they have a legit Mommy—and I get a secret thrill every time they do. When has motherhood ever come so cheap? None of the diapers, all of the fun. For years, I’ve kept a list of places I want to take them when they’re older: the British Museum Reading Room; the garden at the Musée Rodin in Paris; Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè in Rome; the Main Hall at Union Station in Washington, D.C., where the original sculptures caused a stir, so now the sentries hold modesty shields in front of their private parts. I’ve even planned out things I want to say. At Luray Caverns, in Virginia, there’s an organ that plays through the stalactites and stalagmites. I’ve imagined taking the girls there, pointing at the earthen instrument, and saying: “Do you know what that means? That means someone once looked at those piles of mud and heard music.”
Driving home from the House of Pancakes, we listen to a CD of the songs that played during the video portion of their father’s memorial. The girls don’t know that’s what it is; they think it’s a CD I’ve made. “Just Breathe” by Eddie Vedder. “Live Forever” by Billy Joe Shaver. “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty. They know the words by now, and for a few verses, we all sing:
“You belong among the wildflowers,
You belong in a boat out at sea.
Sail away, kill off the hours.
You belong somewhere you feel free.”
When we walk in the door, the phone starts to ring. “Maybe that’s Daddy, calling from heaven!” Coco says. I try to give my sister an expression that says I never suggested there were phones in heaven, but I don’t know if it tracks. She looks as if someone has just torn out her heart and handed her a box of ashes, which is exactly what someone has done. Her purse is over her shoulder, and she lets the machine take the call.
“I have to meet with my lawyer,” she says. “Can you watch the girls for a couple of hours?”
“Sure,” I say, nodding. “Of course.”
It’s started to rain, so I plant the kids in front of the TV. First they watch a show called The Wiggles. Then they want to watch The Sound
of Music for the one hundred and seventieth time. “ ‘Edelweiss,’ ” I’ll tell them someday, “was my parents’ wedding song.” While they sit in a row on the bed with their eyes glued to the screen, I lie on the floor and lean my head against my duffel bag. Before I do, I remove the folder of pictures. I begin to flip through them. Here is my sister wearing pink plastic sunglasses with lenses in the shape of hearts. There she is with her hair twisted in buns on the sides of her head like Princess Leia. Here she is holding a plate of cookies and carrots while I display a letter we’ve just written to Santa. Now she’s cradling a Siamese kitten like a baby. A line from a Richard Powers story I read recently comes to me: “He’s amazed that this fate has been lying in wait his entire life.”
Saltine Teacup climbs off the bed and comes over to lie down beside me. She may be quiet, but she sees. She sees everything.
“Why are you crying?” she says. I open my eyes, and on the screen, two teenagers in a gazebo are about to kiss.
“It’s a sad movie,” I say.
• • •
My sister walks through the door, holding a stack of mail, rain and tears streaking her face. Sometimes she lets herself cry in front of the girls—she wants them to know it’s all right to be sad—but it’s clear this is not one of those times. Her keys thunk in a heap on the counter, and she turns in a circle. I can tell she wants to hide, or maybe throw up, but there’s nowhere to go. I usher the girls into the bedroom and give them my makeup kit to play with.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, and wonder if I have ever in my life asked a more idiotic question. She hands me the stack of mail. On top is a doctor’s postcard, addressed in her husband’s handwriting, a reminder for his yearly pilot physical. For a second, I’m vulnerable to the doorbell fantasy myself. Could he secretly be alive somewhere, and sending himself postcards? Could he show up at the front door any minute?
“I don’t want this,” she says quietly. Her eyes are filled with desolation and restraint and fear. “I don’t want this life without him in it.” She succumbs, and weeps silently, standing in the center of the kitchen, her body trembling. All around us, the windows stream with rain. I stare beyond her at the refrigerator, not knowing what to do. It seems impossible that this has happened. There’s a magnet on the fridge that says: INSTANT HUMAN. JUST ADD COFFEE.
After she has cried for a bit, a subtle formality enters her body. She straightens and says: “While I was at the lawyer’s dealing with the insurance, he suggested I redo my will.” She wipes her eyes, tucks her hair behind her ears. The tip of her nose is red, and once more, she reminds me of a version of herself I recognize from thirty years ago. “I need to know if you’d be willing to take the girls if anything ever happened to me.”
“Me?”
“Who else?” She sighs. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. You just have to say so.”
My body is frozen in place: feet on the tile floor, hands pressed against the counter. “I don’t know,” I say. “I’d have to think about that.”
My sister says nothing. I realize I’m inventing things, but the words I impute to her expression are: Well—think. The room we’re standing in begins to feel very, very small. I reach for the keys. “Is it all right if I use the car?”
“Sure,” she says. “The girls have ballet at five. Where are you going?”
“I was thinking of going to church.” Coco’s head pops out of the doorway. Her face is painted like a harlequin doll’s.
“I want to come to church,” she says. Going to church is one of our favorite things to do together. “Can I, Mommy?”
“You can’t go looking like that,” my sister says.
“Sure she can,” I say. A priest once told me a story about a homeless man who wandered into a cathedral and was stopped as he made his way down the aisle. “You can’t be in here without a shirt and shoes,” said the monsignor. The homeless man looked up at the figure on the cross. “He doesn’t have any,” he said.
On our way into town, I play with various phrases in my head. They all contain the word but. “I love you, and I love my nieces more than anything, but …” But I’m not sure I can accept such an important responsibility.… But I’m not sure I’m qualified for such a responsibility.… But I would be lying to you if I said I wanted to be a mother.
The church is nearly empty. Coco and I slide into a pew up front, near the banks of candles. She crosses herself twice before taking a seat, and I know it’s because she gets confused at the end about whether it goes up-downright-left or up-down-left-right, so she does both. I notice a glass case behind the altar and it reminds me there’s something I need to tell my sister about her husband, but I have no idea how to do it.
I glance around and am stunned that I’ve never before registered how maternal all the imagery is. Everywhere you look, there’s a mother holding a baby. At five o’clock, these pews will fill with a dozen or so parishioners, usually older people; there have been times when the girls and I were the only ones without white hair. But for now, it’s just us, and a lone woman over by the shrine to the Sacred Heart. For a second, she reminds me of a solitary, parallel-universe version of myself, and I think: Is that it, then? Is this the day I’ll look back on as the one on which the path of my life changed? I prop my hands against my forehead like a visor, and pray my favorite one-word prayer: Help.
Coco wants to light a candle for her father. She does, and then we light one for my father, and then we light one for those who have no one to pray for them. When the initial flare of the flames excites her, I briefly wonder if you’re not supposed to teach six-year-olds to play with matches. Then we bless ourselves with holy water and step out into the rain.
Driving home, we stop at a convenience store. We hurry through the doors, holding hands. “Mommy, may I please have a pack of rainbow-stripe gum?”
I let go of her hand. “Don’t call me that,” I say.
“But you love it when we call you Mommy.”
“Just—don’t call me that today.”
The man behind the counter eyes us with concern, no doubt skimming his memory banks for missing-children posters. I buy a stack of celebrity and fashion magazines to distract my sister, and he rings me up.
“Could I have a pack of American Spirits?” I say at the end. I can’t believe these words are coming out of my mouth. I haven’t smoked a cigarette in twelve years. “The yellow ones,” I say.
In the car, I crack the windows and turn the air-conditioning on high. We idle in the parking lot while nicotine hits all the dormant receptors in my brain.
“Don’t tell,” I say, exhaling. “And don’t ever smoke. It’s really bad for you.”
Coco starts to cough, and I think: Right. This right here is why you have to say no.
“Can we listen to the music?” she says. She pushes the power button, and Bob Dylan starts to sing a melancholy song about heaven.
“What’s it like, where Daddy is?” she says.
“I don’t know, honey. Please—don’t ask me questions like that.” The only thing that comes to mind is a clever advertisement I saw recently: Beyond your wildest imagination. Exactly what you’d think. “All I can tell you is I’m betting it’s not all harps and clouds.” The irony is that there have been days, other days, when I’ve sat in a car filled with music I loved with bright sun all around and a feeling of light flooding my veins, and thought: This is the closest I’ll come to heaven on Earth. Now I’m sitting in the rain in a car I know has all my sister’s husband’s suits, belts, and shoes in the trunk. “I couldn’t decide which would be less painful,” she confessed. “To keep them, or to give them away.”
I lean my forehead against the steering wheel, and Coco rubs my back. She doesn’t ask what’s the matter; she must be getting accustomed to adults behaving oddly.
“You have to follow your own path in life,” I say. “Even if it feels guilty or selfish or wrong. It’s the only way to live.”
When we get home, Saltine Teacup runs
to greet me. She wraps her arms around my waist and hides her face in my belly. I place my hand against her head, which is exactly where it would be if I were pregnant.
“Why didn’t you take me with you?” she says. “I wanted to come to church, too.”
My sister and I lock eyes above her, and the words just come out. “I’ll do it,” I say.
After dinner, after the girls are asleep, I hear my sister in the old empty house, keening. I have ears for her voice, and in spite of the distance, the night air soars with pain. It is a sound both fresh and ancient; my sister has joined a lineage of women she never wished to be a part of. Someday, I think, I’ll tell her. Then I realize that someday is today.
She’s lying on the floor of the master bedroom, in the dark. She must have heard me enter the house, because she’s stopped crying. I halt in the doorway.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure,” she whispers. I walk over and lie down beside her. From the ceiling, electrical cords and metal tubes coil out of the Sheetrock like snakes.
“There’s something I wanted to tell you,” I say. With no furniture in the room, my voice makes an unexpected echo. “I did something, in the hospital, at the end.” I hesitate. “I probably should have asked your permission first.” My sister doesn’t say anything, so I keep talking. I tell her how on one of the days in between when the stroke damaged his brain stem and the day he died, I anointed her husband. I gave him unction. I have some holy oil that was blessed by the bishop who performed my Confirmation, and I brought it with me on the plane, in a plastic container that used to hold Neutrogena lip gloss. I describe how I dipped my fingers in the oil, and laid them on her husband’s wrists, and on his feet, and on his side. I tell her how I made the sign of the cross on his forehead, and blessed him. And how, at the end, I held my hand for a long time over his heart, his beautiful heart. I don’t tell her how unworthy I felt to the task, or how I remembered some lines of Annie Dillard’s, and uttered them before I began: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us.… There never has been.”
I Knew You'd Be Lovely Page 17