“Don’t be.” He shakes his head. “And you’re in the right place to feel sick, we’ve got all kinds of stomach stuff here. We have prescription stuff, over-the-counter stuff, this horrible herbal crap Laine keeps buying from some natural foods co-op. Name it, I’m sure we’ve got it.”
She shakes her head—no, she’s fine. He pats the cream leather sofa, and she sits next to him.
“Can I ask you something kind of personal?” Connor licks pale lips. She nods. “Are you pregnant?”
Mona says nothing, and blood rushes to Connor’s thin cheeks. “I’m not asking because you look fat or anything,” he says. “You look great, you always look great. It’s just you and Jack are acting kind of weird, and I was wondering if that’s maybe why you’re sick.”
When Mona’s little sister got pregnant, she conference-called the entire family, burst into the conversation by screaming, “Patrick and I have news.” Mona doesn’t want to have to tell Jack’s family this way, sheepish and uncertain, wants her baby to be special, too.
“We have been talking about it.” Mona gives the story she wishes were the truth. “Nothing yet, though, except some wishful thinking.”
“That’s great.”
“Did Laine get sick much with the girls?” Mona asks.
“In the eight years I’ve known Laine, the closest she ever came to sick was a cold sore. She may have actually worked while she was in labor. Pretty awful, huh?” Connor shakes his head. “But she knew all the words to ‘Thunder Road,’ so I married her anyway.”
“That’s funny.” Mona smiles. “I never had you pegged for much of a Springsteen fan.”
“Aww, Mo, I’m crushed.” Connor brings a hand to his chest in mock agony. “All these years, and you don’t know me at all. Ever since I was in junior high, I swore I’d marry the first girl who knew all the words to ‘Thunder Road.’ It happened to be Lainey. When we were in grad school, we’d drive for hours. And she’d lean across the stick of the Sentra and sing in my ear.” Standing, he hands Mona the remote. “TV’s all yours. I’m gonna go to bed before she realizes I’m awake and tries to make me take more ginseng.”
“She loves you,” Mona says, touched by the image of Laine, all five feet eleven inches of her, all two Harvard diplomas, singing a song about blue-collar Jersey kids who’d never heard of soy milk.
“Yeah, she’s just like Jack, though. She’s not good when she’s not in control.”
For fourteen years Mona has tried to figure Jack out, and his brother has done it with one sentence.
“Jack will make a great dad, though.” Connor turns around halfway to the step out of the room. “After our mom died, I had these really horrible nightmares, where I’d wake up screaming. And Jack would come check on me, bring me a glass of water. For a couple weeks, they were like clockwork, and he started anticipating when I’d wake up. They tapered off, but even on nights I was fine, I’d wake up and there’d be water by my bed.” Connor lowers his head, looks away. “I wish my kids knew him like that.”
Maybe the story is true, or maybe Connor knows she’s lying about not being pregnant and tells it to make her feel better, either way she’s grateful. He starts to leave again, but she calls after him, sings quietly. “Screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves. Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays.”
“Don’t tempt me, Mo.” Connor smiles, which makes him look like his brother. “I’m a married man.”
And she’s a married woman, though she didn’t marry Jack because he knew all the words to a certain song, she married Jack because she got a concussion. After living together for six years in Cleveland, they couldn’t set a wedding date, and she realized it was because neither of them wanted to get married. So she took the job in Chicago; it was okay for a few months, she even dated a Channel 4 reporter she met on assignment. But while making coffee in the break room, she whacked her forehead on the cabinets. The paper was on deadline, so one of the copy editors just dropped her at UC’s emergency room. Head in the giant white cylinder of the CAT scan, she started crying. The technician rolled her out, assuring her lots of people got claustrophobic during the test. But that wasn’t it. It was being in a strange city, with no one waiting for her in the next room. She called Jack from a pay phone, and he got to the hospital in four hours flat. In the black Porsche he’d leased since she left, he was Batman. He stayed at her apartment that night, waking her every few hours like the attending ER doc had instructed. Each time he shook her back into consciousness, he told her how much he missed her. She told him how much she missed him, and by eight the next morning, they decided it was dumb for them to go on missing each other. So he sold his parents’ house and got a job at a Chicago law firm. They moved to Oprah’s building and were happier together than apart. But there were annoying hangnails of boredom itching to be chewed. Then that kid fell in the pool and Mona stopped taking birth control.
After a solid hour spent trying to ignore the chairs, feet, and paws scraping the hardwood floors and the voices and barks below, Mona touches Jack’s shoulder.
“You awake?” she asks.
“Of course, there’s a fucking carnival downstairs.” He reaches for his watch on the nightstand. “Six thirty. When he was in high school, my brother slept until three or four in the afternoon on Saturday. I’d go to the office, come back, and wake him up to see if he wanted to get dinner.”
“They’ve got two kids,” Mona says deliberately, waits for Jack’s reaction, any reaction. He says nothing, stretches his legs under the covers and rubs his feet together. She starts to sit up, but he holds her wrist.
“Let’s sleep for an hour.” He smiles, eyes arching into half-moons—it was the first thing she noticed about him when they met, when she couldn’t believe someone with a smile like that would smile at her. “If we pull the blanket over our heads, we might drown out Family Circus.”
They shift into familiar grooves of each other, her head in the dent between his collarbone and arm.
“What was it like when your mother died?” she asks, thinking about Connor’s story.
“Why?”
“I don’t know much about that part of your life at all.”
“It was sixteen years ago,” he says, lips on the crown of her head, close enough she can feel air come out of his nose. “I thought you wanted to sleep.”
Below them something crashes.
“We should get up,” she says.
“We should have stayed in a hotel. That’s what we should have done. I hate staying here.”
“He wanted to see you.” There’s a concrete edge in her voice. “Do you really think he needed you to do money stuff this minute? You haven’t drawn a will since law school. It was an excuse to get you here.”
“I know.” Jack balls onto his side, eyes and nose bunching together as though he might cry. “But he’s going to be fine.”
“Of course he is.” She inches back down, grazes his forehead with her fingertips. “We should be helping; he wants you to spend more time with the girls.”
The phrase hangs between them.
“What do you think we could do with them, Mo?” Jack’s black eyes are soft. “My brother’s kids don’t like us.”
Everything in the kitchen is from the future—chrome and stainless steel, black lacquer, a flat-range oven, copper pots dangling from racks in the ceiling. Laine washes fat pumpkins in the sink, and Connor spreads pages of The Globe over the table. From a television built into the wall, the Today Show anchors give the mornings’ top news stories dressed as Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler.
“Feeling better, Mo?” Connor asks, and Jack looks at Mona—part guilt that he didn’t ask, part terror she told his brother she’s pregnant. “Can I get you some breakfast? We’ve still got pancake batter and Egg Beaters, and there’s bagels and cereal and stuff.”
Mona had a family like this, where everyone sat down to dinner at six thirty with Tom Brokaw and NBC Nightly News, where meals were served on
plates with vegetables and rolls. She wonders if it’s what she wants, and then wonders why she chose Jack, who never wanted anything like this.
“Bagels and cereal.” Keelie puts her chubby hands in her mouth.
Hunched over a piece of orange construction paper, pencil in hand, Jorie doesn’t acknowledge them at all. Connor scoops Keelie into his lap, guides her hands as they draw triangle eyes on the best side of a pumpkin.
“Coffee’d be great,” Jack says.
“That pot should still be pretty fresh.” Laine points to the machine at the end of the counter, tells Jack where to find mugs.
“Daddy.” Jorie pokes her father in the shoulder. “He’s using the cup I gave you.”
In his hand, Jack has a ceramic mug proclaiming “World’s Greatest Dad” in a font that’s supposed to look like a child’s crayon.
“Let’s let Uncle Jack be the world’s greatest dad for a while.” Connor looks directly at Mona, and she’s sure he knows she lied last night. He holds out his own mug to Jack. “Can you top me off?”
“Conn.” Laine, toasting a bagel, using the rice voice. “If your stomach’s bothering you, don’t drink more coffee.”
“Stop it, Laine.” Connor nods at Jack, who stopped pouring. “You’re being loony tunes.”
“Like Bugs Bunny?” Jorie looks up, sets aside her paper, picks up a Sharpie and draws ornate, impossible-to-carve lips on her pumpkin.
“Exactly like Bugs.”
“Bugs Bunny.” Keelie, still in her father’s lap, claps her hands.
“Ask Mommy, ‘What’s up, Doc?’ ” Connor says.
“What’s up, Doc?” Keelie gurgles.
“That’s just great, Conn.” Laine presses pouty lips together, puts Mona’s bagel on a plate. “Cream cheese, butter, or jelly?”
Sliding the sports section out from under a pumpkin, Jack sits next to his brother and disappears behind the quarterback’s thoughts on Sunday’s game and a photo of the Bruins loss. Mona takes a seat by Jorie and looks at her paper.
“Is this a poem you wrote?” Mona asks.
“It’s a haiku.” Jorie doesn’t look at her, instead finishes eyelashes on her jack-o’-lantern. “This one is about Halloween.”
“What’s a haiku?”
“A Japanese poem with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five in the third,” Jorie says as if Mona were an idiot. “They’re very hard to write, but the one I did yesterday was the best in class and Mr. Marcus put it on the bulletin board. It was about Mouse.”
Hearing his name, the dog under the table picks up his head, barks once. Laine takes a long knife from a chopping block and stabs into the circle around the stem of Jorie’s pumpkin. Threads of pumpkin guts coat the blade, but the top won’t budge when she tries to rock it off. She saws in again, jerking the knife back and fourth. The rotten, squishy smell hits Mona, and she sets down her bagel. Sweat dots pop onto Connor’s forehead, and his shoulders bunch. He swallows slow and exaggerated, like he’s a bad actor trying to indicate swallowing. Having thrown up for the past five days, Mona knows the signs and isn’t surprised when Connor hands Keelie to Jack, who sets down the paper and holds his niece at arm’s length.
“Take her for a minute,” Connor says, and jogs to the bathroom.
Laine’s gray eyes follow him, not the knife still lodged in the pumpkin. Even before it happens, Mona knows it will. The jack-o’-lantern top finally flips out, and the blade slices deep in the meat of Laine’s palm.
“Fuck.” Laine hops from foot to foot, grabs her injured hand with the other one, knocking the pumpkin off the table. It hits the hardwood with the dead thud of a corpse. “Fuck.”
A blood ribbon unfurls down her arm, red drops rolling off her elbow onto the black and white newsprint. Eyes wide as gumdrops, Jorie opens her mouth like she’s going to cry, but no sound comes out. When she finds her voice, it’s primal, horrible and magnificent, truly one of the loudest sounds Mona has ever heard. Between a squat and a stand, Jack looks from Jorie to Laine to Keelie, still in his arms. Jorie sprints from the kitchen, screams floating behind her like a parachute. Nails clacking on the floor, Mouse chases her. In the bathroom, Connor is still puking.
Mona grabs a wad of paper towels from the dispenser. As she hands them to Laine, Mona sees the ragged edge of the cut. There’s so much blood, plus something white and important looking. Her own shoulders bunch, her own exaggerated swallow.
“I’m sorry.” Mona starts toward the bathroom, hand over her mouth.
“Wait, Conn’s still in there.” Jack grabs her arm below the elbow and reaches for the flip-top waste can. “Here.”
His hand on the small of her back, Jack leads Mona to one of the futuristic chairs. Any question of whether or not she’s going to throw up is answered by the funky smell of something in the can. Jack pats Mona’s hair, and asks Laine about her hand.
“What’s going on?” Back from the bathroom, Connor does look sick: dark hollows eat the spaces under his cheekbones and temples. He’s bluish and pale, lips white.
“I cut my hand,” Laine says matter-of-factly, as if blood weren’t soaking through layers of quilted paper towel, weren’t coating her arms and dripping on the floor. “Mona got sick, and the girls freaked out.”
“Lemme see.” Connor reaches for Laine’s wrist, but she brings it to her heart.
“You’ll get sick again.”
“I’m fine; let me look at your hand.”
“No.” Laine’s lower lip quivers.
“I’ve gotten more stitches than anyone. I just want to see how bad it is.”
“It’s really bad, all right?” Her voice trails off into a question, and her face crumbles. With the back of her sleeve, she wipes her eyes.
“Lainey.” Connor pulls Laine against his chest, kisses her forehead. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” Her words are muffled by his crimson sweatshirt. “I meant to be so much better. I’m so sorry.”
Connor makes soft sounds into Laine’s hair. Mona takes Jack’s hand, and he squeezes back so hard the diamond of her engagement ring cuts into her index finger. But when she tries to meet his gaze, he shakes his head, fixates on the floor. Except for puddles of pumpkin insides and blood, the honey-colored wood is immaculate and Mona wonders how Laine can keep the floors so clean with two kids and a dog. Mona has Jack and a cleaning lady, but her floors never look like that.
“Can you wiggle your fingers?” Connor asks Laine. “That’s good, you’re gonna be groovy sweet like a peppermint stick. We’ll just take you to the emergency room, get you sewn up. No big deal.”
Things feel loose and melodramatic, like Mona wandered into one of the soaps she watched in college, everything fuzzy because it’s shot on video instead of film. Somewhere in the big, old/new house, Jorie screams and Mouse barks.
“I’m sorry,” Laine says again. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, everything’s going to be okay.” Connor holds her, and she cries. Blood seeps through the balled paper towels onto her shirt and onto his. It’s on their arms and on Connor’s face, which she keeps reaching for. “I’ll just get my shoes, and we’ll go.”
“You’re sick,” Jack says. “I can take her.”
“I can do it,” Connor says. “Will you watch the kids?”
Mona nods.
“Let me go tell them.” Laine sniffles.
“We need to clean you up a little before you see the kids.” Connor looks at Jack. “Can you go find them?”
“I’ll take Laine to the hospital,” Jack says.
“Jack, she’s my wife, she’s upset. I’m going to go with her. It won’t kill you to spend an hour with my kids.”
Jack opens his mouth, closes it, and looks at Mona who nods. “Okay.”
Keelie is easy enough for Jack and Mona to find. In the den she’s drawing on Mouse’s side with one of the permanent markers, her own hands and arms already tattooed with black scribble. Mona pick
s her up, balancing Keelie’s warm body on her hip. Trusting and docile, the girl loops her arms around Mona’s neck and leans her head on Mona’s shoulder. Having finally stopped screaming, Jorie proves more difficult to locate.
“This is what you want?” Jack asks. In Connor and Laine’s bedroom he opens the closet, revealing rows of folded sweaters and hanging shirts but no Jorie.
On the nightstand there’s a picture of Connor, Laine, and the girls that must have been taken last Halloween, everyone in costumes from The Wizard of Oz—baby Keelie in furry lion jammies; Jorie as Dorothy in a checkered dress and ruby slippers; Connor, face painted silver, in a boxy Tin Man’s outfit; and Laine as Scarecrow. Beautiful children, beautiful parents. Mona hadn’t realized just how idyllic they look, easy and perfect in a photo.
“That’s not fair,” Mona says.
“No, what you did wasn’t fair,” Jack says. “And not just to me. Have you thought about it at all? Are you going to quit your job? We moved to Chicago for your job.”
“I’ll figure something out,” Mona says, but the truth is, she has only considered those things in the abstract, thinking of the pregnancy as the first obstacle, the step that would put all other steps into motion, the one allowing them to plan new and different things. “People do this every day—” Mona starts, but Keelie reaches up and puts her fingers over Mona’s lips, laughs when Mona stops talking.
“Yeah, they do, and a lot of times they screw it up. My father’s been dead twenty years, and Connor still hates—” Jack stops mid-sentence. A rustling in the bathroom.
Pale and placid, Jorie is in the shower stall, fully clothed. Opening the glass door, Jack takes her hand and leads her out.
“Your mom is going to be fine.” Mona tries to sound light, but Jorie remains a haunted doll.
“Jesus,” Jack says, under his breath, and Mona follows his eyes to the mirrored medicine cabinet open above the sink.
In neat little rows, there are a dozen amber vials with names like all those galaxies in Star Trek—prednisone, procarbazine, Procrit, Anzemet, and Neupogin. Jack shakes his head, and Mona wants to hold him, but Keelie is heavy in her arms, they haven’t talked, and Laine is bleeding downstairs.
Family and Other Accidents Page 15