Family Pictures

by Sue Miller

  It seemed much later when he heard the children, their thumping and yelling through the house. Lainey was gone. He sensed the cold on her side of the bed—she’d been up for a while. And then he remembered: it was Christmas. Lainey had come home early from the hospital just for this. Everyone had advised against it, including David. Sarah was only three days old, and Lainey was still in a pained daze of postpartum exhaustion and excitement, her body still nearly as swollen as before she’d given birth. He opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. A calcimined patch curled down directly over the bed.

  He’d gone to the hospital to get Lainey the evening before, and they’d driven back slowly through a thick wet snow that had started to fall while they were checking the baby out. The wipers pushed steadily against it, and mushy triangles formed at the corners of the windshield. Lainey had shuffled painfully down the long, slushy path to the house. When she came into the front hallway, he could sense the older children’s fright and alarm at seeing her—hunched as though to protect her insides from the slightest motion, her skin a bleached white, her hair lank and unwashed. They’d sat silent, their faces rapt in the candlelight, as she read the Christmas passage from Luke—a holiday custom. But he felt their attentiveness was born as much of fear as of interest in the story, and it reminded him again of his anger about this last careless pregnancy, his anger at her for what he saw as a kind of reckless, oblivious disregard of all the strains the family was already under.

  He’d said nothing to her, of course. And then they’d each had all the chores of Christmas Eve to occupy and separate them; they’d both collapsed into exhausted sleep at the same time, curled away from each other in their bed. If they could just get through this long day without tears, without recriminations, David thought, tomorrow life would resume. Retta would come and stay for a week or so to help out, he’d go back to work. And he and Lainey would find a way to get by. They always did.

  By the time he had dressed and gone downstairs, she had organized everything for the long ritual day. The dining, room table was set for breakfast. He could smell a sweet baking odor, and coffee and bacon. He went directly to the dark basement to stoke the furnace. The coals still glared white-hot in the middle of the old cast-iron monster that squatted in the heart of the front room, and he took a primitive satisfaction in this: it had been a bitterly cold night. He shoveled for a few minutes, blanketing the glowing coals with black, thinking of himself as feeding a hungry force. He enjoyed everything about this ritual—the heavy lift of the old shovel, its gritty clang on the cement floor, the oily smell of coke, the kiss of heat on his face as he bent toward the open door.

  When he came back up into the kitchen, Lainey was standing with drooped shoulders at the stove, wearing her red wool bathrobe, her socks and slippers. Her body was held awkwardly, her discomfort in it visible, but she looked up at him with a childish, dazzled excitement lighting her face. Her hair was pushed back carelessly, trapped by a bobby pin. “Oh, David!” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas to you,” he answered. In some nearly imperceptible way, she seemed to lift her body toward him, and in response he rested his hand for a moment on her back.

  He poured himself coffee. She had turned quickly back to what she was doing, and for a moment he watched her. “Was it a tough night?” he asked finally, willing his voice to concern.

  “Three feedings,” she said gratefully. “That’s what you get for having such a tiny one. The balance evens up after that easy birth.”

  “I thought I heard you a couple of times,” he answered. The coffee burned his mouth. “What can I do now?”

  “You might check Sarah. I put her in the carriage in the dining room.”

  He started out of the room.

  “And I want everyone sort of spiffed up before breakfast,” she said. “Teeth brushed, bathrobes, slippers.”

  “Will do,” he said, as he rounded the corner into the dining room.

  He leaned over the carriage to look at the new baby. She was lying silent near the tall windows, in a square of dusty sunlight. She was covered with the threadbare quilt that all the children had slept under as infants, made by Lainey’s mother for Liddie years ago. Her mouth was working in her sleep, and she gave a little shuddering sigh as David bent over her. He’d seen her eyes open only once, in the hospital. Most of the time, except for feedings, she was still deep in her infant sleep. Her skin was yellow and wrinkled, and her head was misshapen, with oily-looking spikes of black hair. At supper the night before, when Lainey was out of the room, the children had agreed she was the ugliest baby they’d ever seen. They’d refused to listen to David when he told them they’d all looked the same way, perhaps—in certain cases—worse.

  Now he turned to the living room, to where they were gathered around the presents, noisy and still oblivious of him. Randall cruised the edges of the room, moving fast, humming and swinging his head as though he wanted to dizzy himself, to cut himself off from the noise of the others. The light in the room was dusky because the tree blocked the big front window, but someone had plugged the Christmas tree cord in, and the bubblers and bright ornaments sparkled.

  “Merry Christmas to the cherubim and seraphim,” David announced; and then suddenly he was surrounded by them. They bumped against each other, they all talked at once. Joking, efficient, David took charge. He sent the older children up to get their bathrobes, to brush their teeth, to bring slippers back for everyone.

  As he led Randall to the first-floor lavatory, Mary on his hip, David could hear water running in the kitchen, could hear Lainey singing, slightly off key, “Arise, shine, for thy light is come.”

  In her carriage, the baby began to cry.

  “Now, this is the way we should begin every day,” David said, crumbling his coffee cake. “A grand gathering in the dining room, en famille, the good china, the three-course breakfast, everyone groomed to the gills… .”

  “What’s anfaneel?” Mack asked.

  “En famille. It’s French. ‘In the family.’ Means everyone all together.”

  Lainey smiled benignly and drew on her cigarette. “Très amusant,” she said. “Maybe when the kitchen staff return.” She wasn’t eating. Even on Christmas she couldn’t eat until she’d made herself jittery with five or six cups of coffee.

  “I can’t stand it when adults talk French,” Liddie said. “It’s so unfair.”

  “Mmm. It is a little … almost sneaky, isn’t it?” Lainey said. “Well, we won’t do it again.”

  “Maybe, just maybe, I got the chemistry set,” Mack said. “There’s one box that looks just about the right size, and it kind of sounded like it.”

  Liddie heaved herself dramatically back in her chair, revulsed. “That is so disgusting, that poking around.”

  “Lydia?” David touched her arm while Mack babbled on cheerfully to Lainey. “Just for today, let’s let it go. Let sleeping dogs lie. Let the barbarian hordes descend, good manners be damned.” He had tried for a light tone, but her face showed him he’d failed.

  “More,” Mary announced.

  Wounded, Liddie pulled her arm away from David’s hand. She turned quickly to Mary. “More what?” she asked loudly, almost in falsetto.

  “More what?” Nina echoed.

  The children began picking things up, holding them out to Mary. Delighted by the attention, she smiled, showing her tiny grayish scalloped teeth, and shook her head no to everything.

  “Say it. Say what you want, baby,” Liddie cried. “You can talk, you can. Sticky bun? Want sticky bun?” Liddie held up her roll and took an exaggerated bite. “Mmm. Yum, yum.” She rubbed her stomach.

  David leaned toward Mack. “Did you by any chance’ check my packages too?” he asked.

  Mack paused a moment to gauge the tone of this remark. Then he smiled, delighted, and shook his head.

  “Drat. Then I won’t know until I open them if they’re what I wanted.”

  “What did you want, Dad?” Mack
asked. Sugar crumbs sat in the corners of his mouth.

  “Too late now,” Lainey said. “Should’ve asked him weeks ago.” The baby crowed suddenly, and she reached over to the handle of the carriage, began to jiggle it gently. There was a rusty snicker, then silence.

  Mary frowned down at the carriage from her high chair. “More bacon,” she said tragically and clearly. Lainey put another piece of bacon on her plate. Mary picked it up and began to chew with her mouth open, making a sucking sound with each tight swivel of her jaw.

  “Michael Rosenberg got one for his birthday,” Mack was saying. “And he mixed certain stuff together—it says all how in the directions—and he made this stink. This stink like peee-uuuu.” He held his nose, grinning.

  Randall pushed back from the table, crooning under his breath. He got up and moved toward the living room, calmed by food and slower now than earlier. Lainey turned for a moment to watch him.

  David raised his cup. This china had been Lainey’s mother’s, shipped to them by her father a few months after her death. David liked the way it felt, its lightness, the touch of the thin rim against his lip. There were no such treasures coming down from his family.

  “What’s the point of that?” Liddie asked.

  “Of what?”

  “Of making a stink? Why doesn’t he make something useful?”

  “Dummy, that’s not what chemistry sets are for. They’re for learning about what happens when you mix certain things.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why don’t you just mix dinner, then? You’d learn the same stuff. And that would be useful.”

  “Not everything has to be useful,” Mack said, after a long silence.

  “Right, Lid,” David said. He set down his cup. “What would you do about, let’s say, painting. Art. Or your lovely music. Some things aren’t meant to be useful. They’re meant to give pleasure.”

  Lydia looked offended. “Pleasure can be useful too, you know.” She had finished her cake and was licking her fingers carefully.

  “Ah. An interesting thought,” David said.

  “Pleasure is useful,” Lainey said. She held her cigarette in her mouth as she spread butter on Nina’s coffee cake. “I absolutely agree with Liddie. Like grace notes in music. Unexpected, wonderful things like that. They make life possible, and what could be more useful than that?”

  The sun lay over the table, and Mary leaned back now in her high chair to stare at the flash of yellow light reflected off Lainey’s knife, dancing on the ceiling.

  “But if pleasure is useful,” David said, “then Mack’s stink must be useful too. It pleases him, no?”

  “Yeah!” Mack yelled.

  Liddie’s face pinched. Betrayed. She turned to her brother. “Well, if all you’re going to do is make a stink, I, for one, hope you don’t get it.”

  He jutted his jaw forward at her. “Then I hope you don’t get what you want.”

  “Macklin.” Lainey spoke wearily.

  “Well, she said the same thing to me. You heard her.”

  “I don’t want either of you—either of you—starting this business this morning.” Her voice sounded suddenly teary. “Please. It’s Christmas. Let’s just have a lovely day. As Daddy says, en famille.”

  “Ugh!” said Liddie.

  There was a light tinkling pock from the living room. Lainey spun around in her chair. “What was that?”

  Randall moved out from beside the tree. He was shuffling across the mountain of presents, oblivious.

  “I think an or-na-ment,” Nina answered carefully, proud to pronounce such a long word.

  “Oh, heavenly days,” Lainey said. The baby creaked. Lainey looked at David, then quickly away, down the table at her children. “Let’s see. Mack, darling. Are you done? Can you go in there and just”—her voice rose with a frantic edge—“just keep him away from that stuff till we get there?”

  “Why do I always have to?”

  “Liddie will help clear.”

  “And me,” Nina said. “I can help.”

  “And Nina.” Lainey smiled abruptly at the little girl. “That’s so nice of you, Nina. Thank you, sweetie.”

  Mack got up from the table. “Well, if I’m in there, I’m going to have to feel the presents.” He was grinning diabolically.

  “Mack,” Liddie said. She looked around at both parents, counting on them to be responsible at last.

  “How can I not?” Mack called back.

  “It’s all right, Lid,” David said.

  Lainey poured herself another cup of coffee. “Would you like some more, David?” She held up the pot.

  “I’ll come get it.” He headed around the table, holding his cup.

  “Should I start now?” Liddie asked. Only Nina and Mary were still eating, soberly and methodically.

  “Give us another lovely moment or two of peace, darling,” Lainey said, and lifted her china cup.

  It was while they were at their busiest—Lainey nursing Sarah, David making a new pot of coffee, helping Liddie and Nina to clear and load the dishes—that Mack, who was barefoot, who hadn’t been able to find his slippers anywhere, stepped on a piece of the broken ornament and sliced his foot open.

  “Oh, good Lord!” Lainey cried when he held it up to her. Her nipple pulled out of the baby’s mouth. Mack stared at it, the long pink glistening thing, and took a step backward. “No, no. Don’t move! Don’t move!” She didn’t seem to know what to do. The baby began to cry, and she held it out as though to give it to Mack, then realized what she was doing and gave him instead the clean diaper she had draped over her shoulder.

  “Put this on it, wrap this on it tight. Oh Lord. David!” she shouted. She got up, one breast hanging out of her bathrobe, dribbling milk down her front. She shuffled awkwardly a few steps toward the kitchen, then suddenly spun and began to shriek, “What are you doing in your bare feet?” She swatted at Mack’s head, but he had crouched over his foot and she missed him. Her face was blotched with quick anger. “Where are your slippers?” she wailed. “Didn’t I tell you to put some slippers on?”

  When David came around the corner, he couldn’t for a moment understand why he’d been called, what he was supposed to see. He thought Mack had done something to the wailing baby, that that was why Lainey was standing over him, holding Sarah awkwardly and yelling. But then he saw the staining diaper Mack was wrapping around his foot, he saw his son’s face, white and frightened; and he bent down to find out what had to be done.

  In the car, David had Mack rest his foot on the dashboard and push down hard on one of the clean diapers they’d brought with them. It was bitterly cold, more like a deep January day than December, and the wet snow that had been falling the night before when David drove Lainey home had frozen into a hard, glittery crust on everything. The thin flannel pajamas slid up Mack’s skinny, bluish calves, and David winced for his son’s bare flesh. He hadn’t thought to bring a coat for him. Their breath in the car plumed and frosted the windshield with jungle shapes.

  “Is it going to hurt?” Mack asked after a few minutes.

  “They usually give you a little local anesthesia. The stitching does feel odd. It pulls, and it’s uncomfortable. But it’s not what you’re afraid of, no.”

  “Will you stay with me?”

  David looked at Mack. He looked much younger in his fright. Younger, even, than Randall. “Yes.”

  The streets were empty of life, all the stores and restaurants on Fifty-seventh Street shuttered and closed, the sidewalks unshoveled, pristine. The sky was an unflinching blue, though, and the sun bounced off the endless snow with a cold, wide beauty that David was suddenly aware of taking pleasure in, even now. He felt liberated, released from the long, stuffy day at home with the new baby, from the endless Christmas celebration Lainey insisted on. He realized, abruptly, that part of the reason he’d been angry at Lainey for coming home early was that he’d been looking forward to a Christmas without her, without her rigid insistence on certain ordered ways of doing things. And no
w he had escaped, he and Mack. He looked over at the frightened boy. He wanted to comfort him somehow, to share a little of his own sense of release. He inhaled deeply and began to sing: “Let every good fellow now join in a song: Vive le compagnie!”

  The emergency room lot was nearly empty. David parked close to the door and carried Mack across the little shoveled path. The boy was heavy, but his tensed muscles and the corded wiriness everywhere in his body made him easy to carry. How different from Randall, David thought. He frequently had to carry Randall, but his younger son’s flesh was flaccid and dense, even though he was as slender as Mack. David took a satisfaction, a pride, in the way Mack felt in his arms, as though he were half carrying himself.

  The admitting nurse was on the phone. She seemed to understand with a cursory glance that this was nothing serious. Carelessly she shoved some forms across at David. He sat in the waiting room with Mack’s foot elevated on his lap and filled them out. They were the only people in the ugly room, and the plastic-covered chrome chairs, the empty gleaming ashtray stands, were pushed neatly back against the walls, as though waiting for a party to begin. Someone had looped a glittery paper chain around two of the walls at eye level, and it added to the air of failed festivity. The nurse finally emerged from her station and led them down the hall to a tiny cubicle, glaringly lighted. David set Mack on the gurney and unwrapped his foot for her.

  She bent over and squinted. “Oh, not too bad,” she said. “That’s a real relief. I’ll set you up here. Do you think you can keep the bleeding slowed?” David nodded. “We’ll get to you ASAP.” She turned to the stainless-steel counter and reached under it for gauze and a bottle of something. “We’re on skeleton staff today, though, and we’ve just had an accident come in. Two of them, actually. So it might be a while.” Her speech was slow. She sounded just slightly southern. Downstate, maybe. Or Kentucky. She flipped the bottle over once, twice. Then she turned and began to clean Mack’s foot with a wet gauze pad. “Okay?” She smiled at Mack down the length of his body. She was middle-aged, with pouchy flesh. A redhead. The frames of her glasses were red too, crusted with jewels.