Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

  “Why are you doing this?” Gram asks, her searching eyes turned on Gracie. “Are you in love?”

  The room is quiet, but still I am sure that I am the only one who hears another vehicle pull to a stop out front. I edge around the group, hoping to escape without my mother’s notice, without anyone’s notice. I hear my sister, caught by Gram the same way I was earlier, choose to lie as well. “Yes,” she says. “Well . . . why else would we be getting married?”

  “You don’t have to do this. I told you I would take care of everything.” Gram’s voice sounds weak and is lost beneath the noise of my aunts, who have finally found their tongues.

  “You were such a quiet girl growing up,” Meggy says. “Who knew you would provide this family with such excitement. A baby and a wedding to someone other than the baby’s father, all in one year. Well done.”

  Theresa nods, seeming to agree in all seriousness with Meggy’s sarcastic comments.

  “Oh Gracie, you should let your husband be your birth coach.” There are tears in Angel’s eyes. I wonder if they are from sadness, because she has now lost any chance of raising this baby. “That would be such a perfect opportunity for him to bond with the newborn.”

  My mother gives Meggy a look. “A wedding should put all of your ridiculousness to rest.” She is as high as a kite, envisioning endings that make sense to her, that she can work with. “Maybe you should have a proper wedding, Gracie, in a church? Why have a rushed ceremony at the courthouse? We could plan a wonderful wedding.”

  This is the last thing I hear as I make it undetected out of the room, down the front hall, and out the door just in time to stop Weber from ringing the bell.

  HE IS standing on the front step with his hand raised. He takes a step backward when I appear, and makes room for me on the top step.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Hi.” We are standing very close together and I can smell him. He always smells like a sandy beach, like salt water and waves. He is wearing a sports coat and a tie. I have only seen him in jeans and one of his many T-shirts, or his fireman’s uniform. Today he looks like a boy dressed up as a man. Even his crew cut appears neatly combed. He has a wrapped present under his arm.

  “I’ve never been to a baby shower before,” he says. “I didn’t know what to wear.”

  I am pleased that my voice sounds fairly normal. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  “I thought it would be bad karma to turn down an invitation from your grandmother.”

  “Oh.” It occurs to me that maybe I should have worried about bad karma when I asked him to come here with a lie. The least I can do at this point is be honest. I have nothing to lose. Weber can’t even bear to look at me. He is here because of my grandmother. Never underestimate the power of Gram.

  “I sent the invitation,” I say. “I put my grandmother’s return address on it because I didn’t think you’d come if you knew it was from me. Are you dating anyone?” The last question slips out, a surprise that makes my face burn.

  “No.” Weber looks at me now. He seems to be blushing as well. “Why did you want me here, Lila?”

  “So we could talk.” I think, Be more specific. “So I could apologize.”

  “You could have called. I thought you might, a few weeks ago.”

  This stops me. I should have called him. Of course. I’m an idiot. He was waiting for me to call.

  The only response I can think to make is: “I dropped out of medical school because of you.”

  Weber stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “You did what? Why would you do that?”

  “It wasn’t all because of you . . . it’s just that you made me realize . . .” I stop. I can’t put into words the emotions that led me from seeing his face at the fire to making things official at the registrar’s office. I have no idea where to even start.

  “Lila, you said that you didn’t care about me.” Sweat appears on Weber’s forehead almost as soon as he finishes wiping it away. I have the crazy urge to lean in closer and lick the beads of salty water away with my tongue. I want to taste him, to have that taste inside me while we talk.

  “I meant it at the time,” I say. “I wish you’d kept ignoring me.”

  “I ignored you at first because I thought you were putting on an act. I could tell you were scared. And I believed we’d been drawn together so that I could show you how good it could be.” Weber gives me a sharp look. “See, you can’t stand my talking like that, saying that we were drawn together, even now!”

  “That’s not true,” I say, trying to keep my face perfectly composed. “I might agree with you, you might have been right.”

  “Might have? That’s wishy-washy language.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “I’m trying to tell you why it doesn’t matter. Because that day at Dairy Queen I knew that you were talking to me. I mean, you were talking through that girl to me. You were telling me, in a different way, that you really didn’t want anyone around you. And I believed you. You were so furious that I had to believe you.”

  I can feel my brain rushing around, grabbing bits of ideas. “So, you’re saying that you were wrong all along? We weren’t meant to be together? Your karma and destiny and all that lied to you? You can’t believe that.”

  He seems unbelievably calm. “People have to work to meet their destiny, Lila. I think one of us just didn’t work hard enough, that’s all.”

  “But I dropped out of school!”

  “So? That has nothing to do with me.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “How?”

  I shake my head. How can he expect me to answer these kinds of questions? These kinds of questions are impossible. I say, “You should see the women inside, my mother and my sister and my cousin and my aunts. You think I’m crazy, but they’re the crazy ones. I’m sane in comparison to them.”

  Weber looks everywhere but at me. He looks at the sky and he looks at his shoes and he looks at the present in his hands. His voice sounds as if it’s coming from far away. “Maybe we should go in. I can say hello to your grandmother and then I can leave. I know Gracie doesn’t want me there. I just remind her of Joel.”

  I don’t want him to go in the house until I’ve said the right thing. I have to keep trying until I figure out what that is. I say, “I wasn’t trying to say anything to you through Belinda. I was just being a bitch. I can be a bitch sometimes.”

  “I didn’t know what kind of gift to bring,” he says, his eyes on the wrapped box. “I never bought a present for a baby before.”

  I stop trying then because he has stopped me. He tells me without saying a word that there is nothing else to say in this moment on the front steps of my parents’ house. I have exhausted the opportunity. So I step aside and let Weber walk into the blast of air conditioning. Then I follow, the skirt of my sundress in my hands because I need something to hold on to. But as I walk into the cool air toward the women in my family, I feel a strange, surprising hope beat against my ribs. I have the sense that I am walking toward my strength, toward my saving grace. The feeling is inexplicable, but still it feels like the most real thing I have come across in weeks.

  I hope, I wish, I think, that somehow these women—my grandmother, my mother, my sister, my cousin, my aunts—will be able to say to this boy what I have not. Will be able to fix what I have broken. Will make clear everything I have convoluted with my memory and my coldness. I hope, wish, think—with no logical reason for doing so, with no precedent to rely on—that they will help me make everything all right.

  NOREEN BALLEN

  Shortly after Lila and a young man with a crew cut walk into the room, I tap Mrs. McLaughlin on the shoulder to let her know I am going to step outside. It is still a few minutes before I expect my kids, but I am uncomfortable in this close room with the McLaughlin family. In their paleness and their freckles and their fair eyes I see my own family, but these people behave differently than mine ever did. The conversation is stilted, and
there are long silences, and everyone looks either upset or worried. I do not belong here; I do not understand the sharp way they speak to one another, and they deserve their privacy.

  To draw less attention to myself, I leave through the kitchen. I loop my purse over my shoulder and look over the plastic catering trays balanced on the kitchen counters. There are tight balls of cellophane scattered about. There is the smell of prepared food and the zap of the microwave in the air-conditioned air. When I swing open the back door, I am hit by the heat of the day. It is August in New Jersey, which means hot, sticky weather that makes walking even a few steps a chore. “This air is like molasses,” my mother used to say during the Augusts while I was growing up, when there were too many children and not enough space and no air conditioning.

  I take off my cardigan as I walk around to the front of the house. I stop under the dogwood blossom tree and breathe in the pink perfumed scent. I don’t turn my attention to the street yet, as I have never known Betty Larchmont to be early. I hate to have my neighbor watch the children on a Saturday, as the few hours after camp each day are more than enough, but I felt I had to accompany Mrs. McLaughlin to this party. I was concerned by how excited she had been all week. Her excitement was high-pitched like a child’s. She worked feverishly to finish the blanket for the baby, and each afternoon called her daughters to make sure they were coming to the shower. I think she’s become aware that there are a limited number of family gatherings left to her.

  I wanted to be on hand today to keep her from overtiring herself. She argued with me at first. She said she wasn’t interested in paying me for a Saturday and that she didn’t want to show up at Kelly’s house with a nurse. She said she didn’t need the help. But I have found that the best way to deal with her is to not argue back, but to just go ahead and do what I need to do. That was why I forced my way into the bathroom with her upon her return from the hospital, so I could help her wash herself. That is how I get her, at least once in a while, to stop faking sleep. I talk to her softly and ask her questions about her children and her husband and her past until her eyes open and she responds.

  And today, that is how I got here, on the front lawn of Kelly and Louis’s large house, looking for my neighbor’s car and my children’s faces. Tonight is my daughter’s first sleepover, so I asked Betty to stop here on the way to Jessie’s friend’s house. A few months ago I would have told Jessie there was no way she could go to the sleepover, and particularly not if I wasn’t home to help her pack and drive her there myself. But I am trying to be more open now. I am trying to let go of some of my need for control. I’m doing this not for myself—it is too painful for that—but for my children. Shortly after Mrs. McLaughlin told me about her dream of my brothers and sisters and the massive oak tree in our backyard, Eddie Jr. came home from camp and asked me if he could invite a boy he’d met over to play. It wasn’t the request that struck me, but the look on Eddie’s little face while he asked. He seemed afraid of me, and of what my response might be. I remember staring back at him in disbelief. Had I caused this? Had I said no every time my children wanted to leave our house or bring someone into it?

  The truth was, I had, ever since my husband died.

  I hadn’t been aware that I was limiting Jessie’s and Eddie’s lives by keeping them close to me. I just knew that I needed them in my sight. I needed to know where they were at all times. I needed to call their names and see their faces turn toward me. I chose not to go to the hospital staff picnic this year for the same reason. I did not want to lose my children in a cluster of six- and nine-year-olds in a potato-sack race. I did not want to sit on a blanket and compare notes with other mothers. I wanted my children with me inside the walls of the house my husband had renovated over the course of countless weekends. I wanted Jessie and Eddie Jr. seated at the kitchen table where their father had drunk his black coffee every morning. I wanted them tucked into their twin beds in the small, neat bedrooms across the hall from each other. I wanted to be able to hear them breathe from where I lay down the hall on my half of the big bed. If either of my children had a bad dream in the middle of the night, I was at their side in an instant.

  But the look on my son’s face was a shock. It made me realize that I had gone too far. So now I am trying to do things differently. I am trying to make changes, and, as Jessie says, loosen up. But it is hard, and as I stand in the center of the lawn, my eyes on the road, I have to remind myself not to cry when my daughter bounds out of the car full of excitement because she gets to sleep across town from her mother and little brother for one night. And sure enough, this little girl whom I know so well, who has her father’s quick, face-lighting grin, jumps out of the station wagon as soon as Betty pulls to the curb.

  “Mommy, I almost forgot to pack my pajamas! Can you believe it?” she says, headed for me. Then she stops, distracted by the house in the background. “Wow, this place is huge.”

  “Which pajamas did you pack?” I say.

  Jessie purses her lips, thinking. I can see in her face the teenager she will too soon become. “The blue ones with the pink seam.”

  “You don’t look like you’re working,” Eddie Jr. says from behind his sister. He is unhappy because he wants to go to a sleepover, too. Or, at the very least, he does not want to be left all alone with Mrs. Larchmont on a Saturday.

  “Mrs. McLaughlin, the woman I take care of, is inside,” I say. “I just came out here for a few minutes to see you two. But I won’t be late, Mr. Bean. You and I will have dinner together, just you and me. It’ll be our date night.”

  He smiles, a slower version of his sister’s.

  “We have to go now, Mom,” Jessie says. “I don’t want to be late.”

  “You’re not going to be late, I promise. I just want another minute or two of your time. Can you spare that, please?”

  Jessie is bouncing on her toes now. “Mother, why? Are you trying to torture me?”

  “Hey!” Eddie points behind me.

  “Please don’t do that, it’s rude.” Eddie is forever pointing at something, no matter how many times I scold him. His arm seems to shoot up from his side without his noticing. His favorite things to point at are large machines like bulldozers, eighteen-wheelers, and fire trucks. I don’t let him roll the car windows down when I’m driving because I’m afraid his arm will shoot out and be hit by the passing eighteen-wheeler that has caught his excitement.

  “But it’s the man that almost hurt my lizard. Remember, when I told you about that?”

  I turn around now and Jessie does, too. I see Louis standing at the base of the front steps, looking confused to see all of us standing on his lawn.

  I wave to Louis and say in a low voice, “Eddie, that’s someone from Mrs. McLaughlin’s family. You’ve never met him. Don’t point.”

  “No, Mom, that is the guy,” Jessie says. “He was on our front lawn the day camp ended early because of the lice.” She automatically touches her long black hair, which she has insisted I check nightly since the outbreak at camp. Contracting lice and then having to cut off her hair is her worst fear. “You never believe us.”

  But suddenly I do believe her. I watch Louis walk toward us. I hear Jessie say, “That is the guy.” Something I have known for a while is rising to the surface.

  He has almost reached us now, an awkward smile on his face. His hands are in his pockets. “Hello there,” he says.

  “Hello,” I say, in a polite voice a little harder than my own.

  Louis flicks his gaze from the ground to my face. He looks to Eddie. “We had a little run-in with a lizard, didn’t we?”

  Eddie giggles behind his hand.

  Of course it was Louis. I realize now that I knew it all along. The facts come at me in a rush. He is the one who arranged for the lawn to be cut. For my car to be serviced. The gutters to be cleaned. He arranged for me to have the cushy job with his mother-in-law.

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood that afternoon, and wanted to see if you needed
any work done on your house.” Louis’s face brightens slightly. “I’d like to check inside and make sure your wiring is all right. Would you be comfortable with that?”

  I hadn’t looked closely enough to see the truth because I hadn’t wanted to. I’d let myself be distracted. I grew attached to Mrs. McLaughlin, I believed in her stories and dreams. I even called information and gathered the phone numbers of a few of my brothers and sisters. The numbers are written on a piece of pink construction paper and taped to my refrigerator.

  “That won’t be necessary,” I say. “Jessie, you don’t want to be late for your sleepover. Betty,” I call to the woman standing at the curb, “will you please take the children?”

  “Don’t yell at him, Mom,” Jessie says, with her best imitation of teenaged weariness. “He was nice. He didn’t do anything.”

  “I’m not going to yell at anyone,” I say. “Eddie, I will see you soon. Jessie, call me later tonight please.”

  She looks horrified. “In front of all my friends? Please Mom, no, I can’t.”

  “Then I will call you. Go on now.”

  Eddie kisses me and gives me one of his neck-strangling hugs that I love so much. Jessie presses her lips to my cheek so quickly, we barely make contact. Betty loads the children into the car and drives away.

  I am left alone with Louis Leary. All I can think when I look at him is that he was the one who was with my husband when he died. I feel surprisingly calm. “Did you fix the railing on the front steps too?” I ask. “Is that why it doesn’t wriggle anymore?”

  “Um, yes,” he says. “I didn’t want you or the kids to fall. And I would like the chance to check the wiring inside the house. If you’ll just let me know when it’s convenient for me to stop by . . .”

  “I don’t want you to stop by.”

  “Oh.” Louis looks uncomfortable. He glances at my face. “You’re not going to quit, are you? Catharine needs you.”