The Last Romantics

by Tara Conklin

  “Why don’t we give one to Joe and Sandrine!” I said. “A wedding present!” This struck me as an inspired idea, but Caroline shook her head.

  “Not Joe,” she said, and paused. Something flickered on her face, not the cat or the house, something deeper and older. “Listen, let’s go outside for a minute.” She kept one eye on the cat as she backed out of the room.

  At the end of the hall, I glimpsed the tower’s rounded interior wall, painted the same lavender as the house exterior. One small window cast a block of sunlight onto the floor. The space looked utterly beguiling, magical, fit for a princess. “Caroline,” I said, “remember our game with the queen mother, from the pond? Remember the spoon? Do you think she ever found her daughter?”

  Caroline looked at me with confusion and shook her head. “Fiona, I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t?” I remembered distinctly the curve of the spoon’s handle, the bubbles trapped within the green glass bottle. All the stories we had once told each other. How could she have forgotten?

  “Fiona, come here, I need to talk to you about something.”

  I sat beside Caroline at the top of the steps.

  “Renee thinks it’s happening again,” she said. “That Joe’s in trouble. The drinking, the drugs, the visions or whatever it is he calls them. We didn’t tell you last time.”

  For a moment I thought Caroline was talking about someone else, a different Joe, not our brother. But there were no other Joes.

  “What? What last time?”

  “When he was in college. When he quit baseball.”

  “You mean his knee,” I said, not as a question. I remembered the day Joe called Noni to tell her about the knee injury. I’d been at the kitchen table eating lunch. Noni had answered the white wall phone with the long curly cord. “Joe!” she said, and then, “What’s the matter?” I watched her face animate, then fall.

  “Fiona, there wasn’t a knee injury,” Caroline said gently. “He was kicked off the team.”

  I shook my head. “But . . . what about the coach’s letter?”

  “Renee wrote it.”

  “And the surgery?”

  “Never happened.”

  “But Joe was on crutches.”

  “He borrowed them. Only for those days when you and Noni were visiting.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  Caroline was watching me. “Renee was worried about this,” she said. “Renee thought you’d be mad.”

  “I’m not mad. I’m—” I stood up and walked away from my sister, down the hall, toward the tower room. Inside, it was smaller than it had seemed from the outside, and draftier, danker. The ceiling did not rise to a point but had been sealed off flat at a height of only seven or eight feet; the plaster was mottled with water stains. It felt confining, not a magical tower at all but a cell. I left the room quickly and stood for a moment in the hall, listening to the mewling kittens.

  How to describe the feeling of suddenly not knowing something that you knew? After that call from Joe, Noni had cried for hours, I remembered. She’d tried to reach the coach, the team doctor. Then she called Renee, and it was Renee who explained everything. The ACL tear, the meniscus, how fragile these ligaments were, how difficult to repair fully. Noni had come away from that call no longer tearful but resigned. Her dream, Joe’s dream, gone with one slide into home.

  But there hadn’t been a slide into home. Or an ACL tear or a surgical repair. I shook my head.

  “You must have gotten it wrong,” I called now to Caroline, who turned to face me. “I don’t see how you could have done it. Joe would have told me. Or Noni would have found out—” I stopped. Suddenly I knew that Caroline was telling the truth. Of course they’d done it. The four of us had kept Noni’s secret for all those years of the Pause. I was the one keeping secrets now, about the blog, how I spent my time away from the office. The Skinners excelled at secrets. Honesty was where we always fell short.

  “I wish you’d told me then,” I said.

  “You were too young.”

  “I was seventeen.”

  “You always idolized Joe. And all his friends. We thought . . .” Caroline paused. “Renee and I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell you. That’s all.”

  “I wouldn’t have told Noni,” I said. “I would have kept the secret.”

  Caroline watched me for a beat. “Joe said that Dad told him to stop playing baseball,” she stated without emotion. “Dad said that Joe’s throwing arm wasn’t what it used to be. Dad told him this.”

  “Dad?” All at once I remembered that long-gone afternoon from the Pause when Joe took me to the yellow house and we stood in our parents’ old bedroom and waited for our father. I had never told anyone about that day, and I did not tell Caroline now. The memory felt like a small, terrible bomb I was holding in my hands.

  * * *

  For weeks Caroline did not tell our mother that she’d quit school.

  “You should tell Noni,” Nathan would say over breakfast or as they got ready for bed. He would always touch her in some way as he said it—take hold of her hand, stroke her forearm—but it made no difference.

  “I can’t,” Caroline always answered. “She’ll be so disappointed.”

  “Maybe. But you should still tell her.”

  Through the years Nathan had finally won Noni over and now had an easier relationship with her than Caroline did. But he didn’t know Noni as Caroline knew her. He didn’t understand the peculiar combination of history both small and large that animated Noni’s parenting. Caroline remembered all the discussions of feminism at the dinner table, the college-fund jam jar on the windowsill that bristled with dollar bills. Nathan’s success was not symbolic; it was merely success.

  One month after withdrawing from college, Caroline was settled in the braided hammock strung between two sturdy aspens in the backyard when Nathan brought her the phone.

  “Call your mother,” he directed. “I can’t keep lying to her.”

  Caroline accepted the phone but did not dial. She lay back and watched a white butterfly flounce from one droopy daisy to the next.

  Perhaps, Caroline thought, Noni would remember her own pregnancies. The backaches, the troubled sleep, the brain that flitted and flew from one subject to the next while beneath it all droned the urgent soundtrack of one small heartbeat. How could Caroline concentrate? How could she possibly fit in among a bunch of adolescents who partied all weekend and believed a seventeenth-century bee worthy of discussion? People who thought only of themselves? Caroline was beyond all that; already she existed beyond herself. Caroline’s thoughts and ambitions extended wider, broader, further into a peopled future, the branching limbs of family expanding above and beyond, with herself at the center, the powerful, nurturing trunk.

  The butterfly flapped out of sight, and Caroline picked up the phone and dialed her mother.

  “Oh, Caroline,” Noni said after Caroline had explained. “You are not a tree! You are twenty-one years old.”

  “But I know what I want. I don’t need a degree to do it.”

  “But what you want might change. That’s all I’m saying. Prepare for the future.” Noni paused. “Have you talked to Renee about this?”

  “No.” Caroline felt the familiar prickling of resentment. “I don’t need to talk to Renee. It’s one semester, Noni. I can always go back.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “How do you know that?” Caroline asked.

  “I know,” Noni answered. “I just know you won’t do it.”

  And Caroline, who considered herself to be good-natured and easygoing, an optimist with a sunny disposition, became enraged. Without another word she hung up the heavy, cordless phone and threw it down to the ground. Caroline was breathing heavily, hotly. She placed a hand on her chest and leaned back into the hammock. It was unseasonably humid, even for Kentucky, and today Caroline wore only a pair of Nathan’s boxer shorts and an old bikini top that allowed a cle
ar view of her bare belly. As her breath raced, she felt beads of sweat accumulate on her upper lip, at her temples, and across the taut skin of her stomach.

  “Baby,” she said to her belly, “sometimes your Noni is rude and mean. Sometimes she’s a bitch. But she loves us. Really she does. She loves us the same as the others.”

  Caroline closed her eyes and drifted into a strange half sleep where she dreamed that she was hitting a tree over and over again with her fists. The tree of course did not respond; the tree simply stood there impassive, resolute as any tree, which only spurred Caroline to punch harder, kick and scream, anything to provoke a response, but all she managed were fists and feet that were sore and bloody.

  Then she woke up. The phone was ringing, ringing, ringing. Renee’s number appeared on the screen. For one long minute, Caroline opened and closed her hands, thinking of the dream and her sore knuckles. She was still angry at Noni, who had always demanded so much of her children, so much, and yet refused to recognize Caroline’s genuine efforts. Noni believed so fervently in the lessons of her own experience that she could not envision a scenario where they might fail to apply. Had Noni ever loved her husband the way she, Caroline, loved Nathan Duffy? Doubtful. Had Noni ever chosen her life the way Caroline has chosen hers? Absolutely not. Noni’s life had been poured over her head like a bucket of milk.

  The phone continued to ring, but Caroline still did not answer. She knew already the purpose of Renee’s call: Noni had asked Renee to persuade Caroline to stay in school, to hew her life more closely to the marvel that was Renee’s. Caroline and Renee could have this particular discussion next week or next month or next Christmas, or they could have it now. Caroline picked up the phone.

  “Caro,” said Renee. She was crying.

  “I’ve decided,” Caroline said in a rush. “You can’t talk me out of it.”

  “What?” Renee paused. “No—it’s Joe.”

  “Joe?” Caroline sat up, and the sudden movement of her ungainly weight upset the hammock. For a moment she teetered, and then she tilted out, landing heavily on all fours, her stomach grazing the grass. She grabbed for the phone. “What’s the matter with Joe?”

  As Renee explained, Caroline moved herself slowly to a sitting position. She’d scraped her knee, but she did not wipe away the blood that ran down her leg.

  Joe, Renee told her, was in trouble. There had been a fraternity party at Alden College with an overabundance of vodka punch, various illegal drugs, and some three hundred undergraduates. Two dozen people were taken to the ER. One girl had nearly died. Joe was one of the party organizers, Renee told Caroline, and so the dean was coming down hard on him. He was off the baseball team. He might even be expelled.

  “Noni can’t know about this,” said Renee, and there was an old desperation in her voice that Caroline hadn’t heard in many years. “I’m supposed to meet with some people at the college later today, but I’ve got exams. I’m supposed to be studying for the boards.”

  “Oh, Renee, I’ll help,” Caroline said, and she remembered her dream about beating the tree. She’d assumed the tree was Noni, but perhaps instead it was Joe. No matter the disruptions that swirled around him, he remained the same: imperturbable, stubborn, oblivious to the sky and earth and rain that nurtured him every day.

  Caroline and Renee talked for nearly an hour, circling what they knew and what they could reasonably keep from Noni. They made a rough plan: Renee would attend the meeting, gauge how serious the college was about expelling Joe, and try her best to talk them out of it. Then together she and Caroline would devise a story. Why was Joe off the team? An injury seemed the most plausible explanation; he’d sprained an ankle late last year, and Coach Marty had always been concerned about that left knee. They would protect Noni. Isn’t this what they’d always done?

  Caroline clicked off the phone. Still sitting on the grass, she realized that her lower back ached, her legs hurt. She tried to stand but stopped herself. She felt . . . what exactly? An internal stirring, a glancing discomfort. She became aware of an insect hum in the air and the swirling pollen that floated lazily across her vision and that peculiar fecund fullness to the trees and grass, even the clouds overhead, that seemed to Caroline uniquely southern. Bexley would never see a rosebush like that rosebush. Ripe. Bursting.

  Again Caroline tried to stand, and again the discomfort was enough to make her pull back. She wondered if Nathan was within earshot. No. He was inside with the frogs. It was time, Caroline believed, for their supper.

  And then she noticed a dark wetness on the grass and on her legs. More than a scraped knee.

  Using the hammock as a shaky support, she pushed herself to standing and immediately felt a rush of liquid between her legs and a tight, twisting pain. No, she thought. No. She was thirty-four weeks pregnant. It was too early.

  “Nathan!” Caroline called, and folded into herself.

  * * *

  “So the day Louis was born was the day they kicked Joe off the baseball team,” Caroline told me. “Renee came up with the knee-injury story. Renee dealt with the college.”

  We were sitting at the top of the stairs. I had been running a fingernail over a groove in the molding, marking a line in the thick white paint, and now I stopped.

  “And how is all this happening again?” I asked.

  “Well, Joe’s drinking too much. Cocaine, other drugs, too, probably. He had some kind of heart episode recently. Renee is worried he’s putting himself at risk, but he denies it, of course. She thinks Joe needs an intervention. And she wants the three of us to do it together.” Caroline paused. “I think he just needs to grow up. He needs his own doctor for starters. Why does Renee keep doing this?”

  “Joe doesn’t do coke,” I said.

  “He’s done it for years,” replied Caroline. “You never noticed?”

  I shook my head. But maybe. What had I seen? Joe’s repeated trips to the bathroom, a joke about too much coffee, his runny nose and bloodshot eyes. A jumpiness, an elation. In college there had been plenty of pot, that musty-sweet smell in his hair and on his clothes. Last Christmas at Noni’s house, Joe always with a gin and tonic in hand, sodden lime slices on every table, every countertop.

  “Ace gets him the drugs,” Caroline said. “That’s what Renee says.”

  In the past few years, Joe and Ace had become friends once again. During college they’d drifted, but now both lived in New York, both worked long hours inside towering office buildings. Joe had described Ace to me as a different person since our summers at the pond. No longer aggressive and lost, no longer trying to impress with bravado and risk taking. I had believed my brother.

  In the space of this past hour with Caroline, a gaping hole had opened. Joe and Renee and Caroline stood on one side, me on the other, the youngest, the baby, alone.

  A surge of feline whimpers came from the bedroom, and Caroline and I looked toward the door.

  “We need to deal with the cat,” said Caroline.

  “Okay, I’ll wait out here,” I replied, not looking at her.

  Caroline sighed and closed her eyes and then immediately opened them again. “I know! I’ve got some oxy,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Chronic back pain,” Caroline said. “You try carrying two babies in your uterus for thirty-nine weeks. Let’s go find some tuna.”

  Caroline and I left the house and drove to the Hamden main street in search of cat food. In the cramped, dusty aisles of a corner grocer, we found two tins of tuna fish. Caroline also bought a pack of Marlboros.

  Inside the parked car, Caroline lit up.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

  “In high school,” Caroline replied. “I still think about it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. Just don’t tell Nathan. He’d probably divorce me. Too unwifely.” Caroline inhaled deeply and exhaled out the window in a long, forceful column of smoke. “Oh,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  With her eyes closed, h
ead back, my sister looked different. Surrendered, I thought. Abandoned, adrift, lost. She’d given in to the pull of the nicotine, the problem of the cats, the stress of the new house. Caroline was always so cheerful and in control, secure in the way of life’s major acquisitions—love, children, home—that her good mood seemed to me a given. What reason could Caroline possibly have to doubt anything, to spend even one night staring at a dark ceiling? But of course she had her breaking point. We all did.

  I considered Joe’s job at Morgan Capital: his dazzling office, the boat parties and bonuses. And Sandrine. A yearlong courtship capped with that engagement ring, an acorn-size solitaire that sat high on her finger and seemed to suck all the light from any room. Next week Joe’s boss, Kyle Morgan, was hosting the engagement party. One hundred guests had been invited, a jazz quartet hired, caterers and waiters, bartenders and florists, and a color scheme of green, pink, and white. It was an event almost as grand as the wedding itself. That’s what Sandrine had wanted. Sandrine and her ponytail, her pale pink nails. At that brunch last month, she’d absently pushed the diamond in circles around her finger. With each pass I’d wondered what it felt like to play with a ring that beautiful, to understand its promise and possess it so completely.

  “We don’t need to worry about Joe,” I said now to Caroline. “I’m not Sandrine’s biggest fan, but he loves her. He’s getting married! His job is demanding, but it’s what he does. And he’s got tons of friends. Renee is overreacting. Maybe he smokes some pot or drinks too much on the weekends, but give him a break. He works a lot of hours. He’s an adult. We all have our vices.”

  Caroline sat up, raised the cigarette with a wry twist of her mouth.

  “See?” I said.

  “But Renee thinks he’s spending too much money.”

  “He’s got so much money.”

  “He bought a car and a parking space. Did he tell you? And they’re looking at four-bed apartments on the Upper West Side. Central Park West. Do you have any idea what those cost?”

  “He works in banking. It’s a different world. Renee spends all her time around sick people. Of course she’ll think he’s sick. Joe is not sick.”