Trompe l'Oeil

by Nancy Reisman

  Within days, Theo’s room seemed to her a guest room, and soon her schoolbooks appeared on Theo’s desk, her calendar on the wall, though she referred to the room as ours. The house ours, meaning Nora’s and Katy’s and the girls’. Katy slipped into an us that referred to herself and Nora, and was bound to the girls’ safekeeping—another consequence of losing hold. The girls, then, ours. Say that Sara and Delia were another chance: Did it matter that, before or after, Katy had never wished for a sister? She did not allow herself to think it. She loved them. Sisters appeared: you could not avoid displacement by small girls. You cared for them or failed.

  And, too, Katy claimed Sara and Delia in a way she believed that their father had not. She took them to visit James in Cambridge, and because he’d lost track of who they were in time—buying toys and books too simple or too advanced—she translated, bridged the gap. Demonstrating, perhaps, that they were firstly hers. On the best days, Sara and Delia followed her, vied for her attention. On the best days, she made them laugh.

  A year after Theo left for college, Nora painted the guest room a pastel blue: it became Sara’s room. Then Katy would visit regardless, as if it were still ours. She finished her homework while Sara paged through library books, watched the swans while Sara strung beads. In that room, in Sara’s company, she felt content.

  For a time, to Katy, household proportions appeared correct.

  KATY IN LOVE

  Say that her father had become a telephone. Some days a telephone, some days a receding car, some days an idea. Occasionally a man. If Katy had been able to say directly that she missed him, would he have assumed the form of a father? But she could not acknowledge that she missed him. She wondered if, had he been able to deny paternity, he’d be any kind of presence. For her? To Sara and Delia, he could be sweet. A sweet telephone.

  The times she shyly told him about a track win, or hardwon math grades, he spoke heartily for a few minutes. Then the interest wore off, and his phone voice became perfunctory again and once more she felt like an idiot. Tim—now there was Tim, a breathtaking runner, a breathtaking boy—Tim did not think she was an idiot. Neither, for that matter, did Nora. But once she felt like an idiot, something else might go awry. She might say things. She might refuse a visit but despair when her sisters met James without her. She might hang up and hide in her room, fall into a pinching trance.

  For months she did not tell her father about Tim, though Tim often visited the house. Summer mornings while Nora worked, he’d join Katy and the girls on the beach. The girls took to him, as did Nora: he was good-natured, easygoing. Most afternoons, he headed into work at the Blue Rock Inn, and Katy bicycled to the Harbor Café. After their shifts, he racked her bike on his car and drove to the house, and they lounged on the beach and drank beer and fooled around. On days off, he took her sailing; rainy days they watched videos.

  Tim and James seemed to exist in separate worlds, or perhaps the split resided in Katy—one Katy with Tim, another with her father? She talked to James about her teammate Amanda, Tim’s younger sister. She talked about biking with friends. James knew of him from Sara and Delia, perhaps also from Nora, but Nora spoke to James reluctantly. He did not ask Katy about romance (though why, she thought, didn’t he ask?).

  Finally, on the phone, she said Tim’s name. She used the word boyfriend. She told James, “He’s tall. He’s worked on boats.”

  “Does he have a boat?” James said.

  “His dad has a Sunfish.”

  “Oh?”

  “Theo knows him,” she said, although invoking Theo was backpedaling. Theo and Tim had played high school soccer, but the point was not Theo; Theo was a faraway cloud.

  And Tim was the door to that parallel world in which she was beautiful. Tim’s love for her (love, really, no matter what her father might say) had nothing to do with Theo, or her pixie-ish little sisters, or the tragic dead one.

  “He’s calm,” Katy said. “Funny.”

  “So he’s older,” James said.

  “Amanda’s brother.”

  “How old?”

  “Graduating,” Katy said.

  Which was, he said, a nonresponsive answer.

  “You wanted a new start,” she said. “Tim’s my new start.”

  “Okay. Tell me about Tim’s plans,” he said. “After graduation.” And James talked, as he often did, about “going places.” Was Tim going places? Did Tim care about going places?

  Going places, Katy thought, meant leaving other places. That’s what James did. Once the family had gone places together; once they’d gone to Rome. “Like Europe?” she said.

  There was a kind of détente. A making-of-efforts. Even her mother said, Make an effort. Yet too often it seemed that James was provoking her. Wasn’t he? Or at least he didn’t know how not to. In the fall, a few months after she’d told him about Tim, she began to notice small changes at her father’s condo—specialty jam in the refrigerator, English teas, a grocery list in a flowery script—each one emitting a tiny nasty shock. Another kind of provocation, wasn’t it? A violation of something.

  As if the jam and tea bags occupied entire rooms, cutting the space left for Katy. Long after James left Blue Rock, it seemed to her that he was walking out again, following the trail of flowery script. Again there was no recourse. Leave him back? She had tried. Had he noticed?

  She could admit: at times, her making-of-efforts inverted. Say the day she arrived early to her father’s Boston office and found him outside the building, inches from a woman he introduced as Charlene—younger, and pretty in a skinny blond way, nervous in her tight black suit and fur-trimmed coat. “Hi there, Katy,” Charlene said. And Katy—in that moment another, bolder Katy—found herself touching the fur trim and asking if it was real. “My little sisters love animals,” she said. “Better rethink that, Charlene.” James insisted, then, “That’s enough.”

  Yet even when she pretended otherwise, Katy missed him. Wondered if, had she been Molly, or a different Katy, he would have stayed. Found herself imagining him appearing at the sidelines of her field hockey games, in the scruffy crowd of parents huddled over coffee cups yelling encouragement. Sometimes when he phoned, he called her “sweetheart.” Today he said it.

  He said, “Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”

  “Fine. Good,” she said, almost ready to say more. There was more to say (a B+ on a pop quiz, a bike ride along the shore).

  “I was hoping to talk to your mother.”

  For a time on her bike, the breeze was so light you could coast past the second jetty, the sky so clear the water stayed more royal than navy for a time before the wind kicked up bringing the wide white clouds and darkening the sea, before the cold set in. She had not yet started to tell him, but he was already on to Nora. How quickly she could hope; how quickly hope sank. No scruffy crowd of parents, no depth to sweetheart. He couldn’t stop to listen: he’d become the retreating car. Stay in the middle ground, Nora would say—but never exactly how.

  “Oh.”

  “Is she there?”

  There and not there, both, often. Now at the mall with the girls. Still there in a way James wasn’t. “Busy,” Katy said, failing, yes, to mention the mall. But why should he—especially now with his secrets and specialty jam—why should he know Nora’s comings and goings, or Katy’s comings and goings? Had he taken a minute more, she would have offered her news. Steer him back? Unlikely. When he said, “But she’s there?” Katy answered, “No. Out,” then blurted, “Taking care of your kids.”

  James cleared his throat. “I see. Perfect, Katy. That’s just great.”

  She did not take it back, and he said, “Okay then,” and “See you next week.” Said good-bye, Katy without love.

  FIFTH BIRTHDAY

  Sara and Delia were distinctly themselves. Nora would say this, believing it—yet still they remained not-Molly. Sara because she slipped first into the space Molly left, Delia because she so resembled Molly. As if she’d been Molly’s twin. The similari
ty continued through Delia’s toddler years, less eerily exact: the mouth slightly fuller, the face rounder, the eyes gray-blue and long-lashed and a bit more widely set. And yes, Delia’s exuberance was not unlike Molly’s, but absent the aggression, absent the pinching and petty theft. Delia seemed without guile. For Nora there had been occasional breathless instants—the sped-up sensation of losing and regaining balance—when, from the beach blanket, she would glance up at Delia, close by, sculpting sand with a red plastic shovel and yellow bucket, and instead see Molly. As if years had evaporated, leaving Nora again and always with the beach blanket and her youngest girl, the fleeting nearness of a morning at the beach with Molly, the fleeting glimpse of herself untouched by the impending calamity. Then Nora would stand and walk over to Delia: “What are you building, sweetie?” and Delia would gaze up, clearly now Delia, pleased by Nora’s attention, and pat Nora’s arm, and announce, “This fort!” or “Our house!” And Nora would offer to lug sand or arrange a miniature stone path, until the tasks of construction and design settled her back into the present.

  Delia always the more exuberant, Sara more pensive, the two a tight pair. In moments when Nora might be housekeeping or cooking, letting her whirring mind momentarily float while her body sliced apples or sorted laundry, the breeze might stir, or the quiet might accumulate into a question, and Nora would glance up, as if waking, to find Sara steadily watching her. Then Nora would summon herself, step forward into her body, find her voice: she’d offer Sara and Delia apple slices, or toss a sock to Sara and say her name, or join the girls at the table with their crayons.

  Sara elicited a different kind of breathlessness in Nora. If both girls were playing on the beach, the present did not collapse into the time before Rome. With Sara there, Delia did not become Molly, but on rare days Nora’s vertigo recurred. The fact of Sara and Delia playing in the sand seemed to be the most fragile of realities, one kept aloft by hypervigilance and counted breaths. Any undetected random force might intervene and sweep them away. Nora remained still, waiting for the atmospheric charge to dissipate. And again someone would speak: Nora herself, or one of the girls, and the moment would flip, the day settling into a benign fair-weather day. Here was a bucket of water to splash; here was a neighbor’s dog; here the stack of shells with which to ornament a castle. A few minutes later Nora might laugh, or make the girls laugh, the world again known. Now and then they would ask about Molly—where was she now? Why not here? Nora found herself scrambling, lamely answering “In heaven” and “I don’t know.” Sara asked if Molly might come back. “No, love,” Nora said, and flatly changed the subject.

  The night of Delia’s fifth birthday, it was not the sensation of vertigo she felt, but something just beyond; what seemed to be the stunning relief of vertigo allayed, a surer balance. Because Delia was five. This relief had not arrived on Sara’s fifth birthday—hope, yes, but not balance—only Delia’s, because Delia was the youngest, and yes, because of the resemblance to Molly, the perennially four Molly. And even balance, Nora understood, was provisional, but that night balance nonetheless. She thought of James, and in that moment not the James who had divorced her, the James of legal squabbles and late support payments, but the James who had returned without Molly to the hotel in Rome. It was the Rome James she wanted to find. On such a day—in its way transcendent—the desire alone felt potent enough to summon that James, and by telephone, from the house in Blue Rock.

  While Delia and Sara slept and Katy finished her homework, Nora dialed from her bedroom, and he answered.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Nora. What is it?”

  “Delia’s birthday.”

  “Well, I know,” James said. “She got the little bike, right? Katy put her on the phone with me this afternoon.”

  At “bike” she knew that she had called the wrong year, the wrong man. Self-flagellation and a cigarette would soon follow.

  “Yes,” Nora said. “She’s five.”

  “Nora?”

  “She’s five, James. Everybody’s five. That’s all.”

  “Okay. Everybody’s five.”

  James sighed, perhaps in plain exasperation. Or—too late—spliced with comprehension? Did he think or not-think of Molly? Maybe in fact he could keep the past in place, Nora thought; or maybe steady avoidance had cratered his mind.

  “The girls will see you next weekend,” Nora said. “I’m going now.”

  Here again the recurring paradox; irrefutable, dramatic evidence proved James—the present-day James—was not the James she remembered or imagined, yet she could still lose track. How could she forget? It seemed a form of stupidity. And now the conversation seemed a rebuke she’d provoked. She left the room to check on the little girls, who were both asleep; downstairs at the kitchen table, Katy drew angles on graph paper. At the sink, Nora lit a cigarette and smoked as she waited for the kettle to boil, and the salt wind and the sounds of the waves swept into the room when she opened the window. On the counter, half a chocolate cake sat beneath a domed glass cover. If she could refocus on the house, the chores, the girls, perhaps the sting and self-abasement would fade.

  Katy was quietly watching her now; at least today, Katy had been easygoing, sweet with Delia and Sara. She’d made a fuss over Delia, frosted the cake, read Delia’s new books aloud after dinner. There had been, in fact, no brooding or thudding or outbursts over minutiae. Nora stubbed out her cigarette and brought her tea to the table and offered Katy more cake. It was Katy—as she pushed aside her angles and proofs and reached for a plate and fork, Katy who said, “Mom. Delia’s five. You know?” and cut herself a slice.

  COLD

  Even in the flush, promising years of the marriage, when bonuses topped James’s estimable salary and investments mushroomed, Nora was cautious with money. They saved—for college, for retirement—and they lived in comfort; they did not stint, but Nora budgeted, shopped for the fairest deals, conserved. After James left, she did what she could to protect joint savings, the girls’ savings, her own. The joint-account balances dropped the week James left. She had not thought—and why not?—to save more in her own name. She kept the house. James agreed to alimony for the time being; child support, of course. Enough for school clothes and medical bills, the basic running of the household, enough to keep up with repairs. Nothing extravagant.

  Yet by Theo’s second winter away, money dwindled unpredictably. Late support checks, occasional missed ones, the alimony separate and sporadic. It was simply a matter of cash flow, James told Nora. A few more obligations. James hadn’t planned for Theo’s bills; Theo’s grades had been uneven—high in favorite classes, low in ones he disliked—and he’d lost a scholarship. Static fizzed through the phone line. They’d saved for Theo’s college, hadn’t they? “How high,” Nora asked, “were those bills?”

  “I’ve taken care of it,” James said.

  “Good,” Nora said. “How about the girls?”

  “I saw the girls last weekend,” James said.

  And what did that mean? They could eat mac and cheese, pea soup, dinner omelettes, but in the heart of winter she could barely pay utilities. The house leached heat; she’d made new window quilts, but sea wind permeated the walls. On school days, she dropped the heat to fifty-five, sixty-four when the girls were home.

  “What would you like them to live on?” she said.

  “Okay,” James said. “Enough.” And then he promised, “Tomorrow.”

  That winter, Nora wrote letters she copied to her lawyer, informal notes she did not. Meg bought her a tank of heating oil. It was the beginning of the house as another kind of house, a house of cold girls. In the evenings, Nora would bake. The girls stayed in the kitchen, and dressed in extra sweaters, and drank peppermint tea, hot chocolate, hot milk. Major repairs would wait, one season and then another; house maintenance would wait. The trick was to distract the girls until spring; the trick was to hold on.

  MISSIVES FROM NORA

  Handwritten on dime-s
tore paper, shoved into the nearest envelope at hand (sometimes used, x-ed out addresses like abandoned flags, gray spots thinned by erasure): in those years, her notes piled up on his glass coffee table, and by the telephone, and in his briefcase. Tangible objects trumpeting financial woes. Maybe, James thought, this was the nineteenth-century side of Nora, maybe her retro form of aggression. Admittedly she’d always used whatever was at hand: when they’d courted, she’d written him notes on scraps, half sheets taken from brown paper bags. She’d drawn comic animals and caricatured his professors. But since the divorce, she’d avoided leaving the short erasable phone messages so common during their marriage. Sometimes she’d send a letter with the girls: here was today’s, delivered by Katy, on the broad-lined tablet paper the girls used to practice their alphabets. So it was Nora-as-Nora, sending him the notes, her hurried script: Remember school clothes? I need the checks. The last is three weeks overdue, the next due by Friday. The lawyer will call. P.S. The girls weary of spaghetti.

  If only it were merely Nora-as-words, the past and therefore inessential Nora rattling around. But school clothes were school clothes, and today at lunch, Delia surprised him with news of a bad roof. Katy shushed her as Delia described wet feet on a rainy night, a plastic bucket she circumnavigated en route to the toilet.

  “Has your mother called a roofer?” he said.

  Sara, silent, traced and retraced her plate rim with her index finger. Delia shrugged, meaning I don’t know, possibly meaning What’s a roofer?