Trompe l'Oeil

by Nancy Reisman

  When Katy arrived, Sara was babysitting near the harbor, Delia watching a MacFarland toddler at the beach. Had they been home, what would they have said? For weeks Katy had been repeating that Cambridge wasn’t all she’d hoped. Cambridge was expensive. She’d been sad, some days, in Cambridge. And she’d looked sad—tearful, unsteady—but Sara could only say, “Sorry.” She found herself repeating, “Sorry, Katy.” Dread accumulated. It was like watching a B-movie plot intensify, a shadow closing in, Sara stuck in place. She was fourteen. She poured Katy another glass of lemonade.

  She did love Katy, didn’t she? Or couldn’t imagine the world without her, which seemed to Sara, in part, what love meant. For years, Katy had watched out for her, cheered at her swim meets, found her babysitting jobs. But when Sara listed the things she loved about Katy—Rollerblading, Frisbee on the beach, movies and ball games with Katy and Tim—they all took place at leisure and outside the house. Inside the house, Katy seemed to breathe more air than everyone else. The quiet rooms rarely stayed quiet. When Katy was unhappy, her unhappiness seeped into every corner. Lately, a strange band of pressure had begun to settle in Sara’s temples and expand across her forehead, then intensify, even to the point of queasiness. The headaches—many—coincided with Katy’s visits. But there were other factors—poor sleep, surging hormones, death dreams, pilfered beer or vodka. “Air” and “unhappiness” were abstractions. The issues Sara pinned down seemed too petty to mention: on a Sunday, Katy would visit and finish all the peanut butter, leaving none for Monday lunch. She’d walk into Sara’s and Delia’s rooms without knocking. One could say, Please knock, okay? though who else needed the reminder? Nora did say, Heard of knocking, doll? But mostly Sara didn’t respond, instead freezing, waiting for the moment to end.

  Now and then Sara escaped, with or without Delia, to the Beverly house. After one headache-free trip, she turned down weekend jobs to spend time with James and Josie. She didn’t want to abandon Nora—was visiting James abandoning Nora? But Nora worked on Saturdays, and Katy’s weekend presence altered the house. These days James seemed quieter and more somber; he was attentive, easy to be with. She helped him cultivate a vegetable patch and beds of flowers ringing the house. When Delia came, they flew kites on the beach; Delia and Josie took late-day runs while Sara and James walked at a preserve. Together they all cooked dinner. They did not talk about money, but they did not go to restaurants, or to the tourist districts or to Boston. As if places they used to frequent had fallen off the map.

  The day Katy approached Nora, Katy did not disparage Cambridge: she only discussed her rent and the wish for a house of her own. Which was what she deserved, she told Nora. She and Tim. But they’d never save enough paying Cambridge rents, would they? And if they moved into the Blue Rock house? Temporarily. Just until they had a down payment. Even with the commute, it would be cheaper, and cheaper for Nora. They’d help cover Nora’s bills: Nora could use help with the bills, couldn’t she? And help with repairs? Tim could do repairs (in truth, he agreed but would endlessly defer). There were details to work out. Other than Nora’s room, Sara’s—once the guest room, once Theo’s—on the street side was the most private. “More appropriate for a couple,” Katy said.

  “The girls need privacy too,” Nora told her.

  Of course. Of course. Of course.

  Nora delivered the news by telling Sara, “Pick a color for Katy’s old room. I’ll paint it for you.”

  “Maybe Katy should paint it,” Sara said. Then, “Oh.”

  Nora, sheepish, told her, “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  It wasn’t so bad, was it? Katy’s old room looked out on the bay, stayed warmer than the corner rooms. Nora considered the furniture: perhaps she could find a good chair for Sara, a better quilt. But in late August, just before the move, Katy disclosed that she was pregnant. Three in one room would never work, not with Tim’s schedule: they’d need a second room for the baby.

  When Nora told the girls, Sara said nothing. Delia rolled her eyes. “Wasn’t she on the pill?” Delia said. “Mom, tell her about the pill. Tell her the sperm-and-egg part.”

  Yet Katy herself had seemed nonchalant: she’d shrugged as she announced her pregnancy to Nora, as if it were a spring high tide or a thunderstorm, beyond anyone’s control. In that moment, the calm of corporate dinners and emergency response had washed over Nora. With it, Katy came into sharp focus. Nora nodded and smiled her cocktail party smile. “Can you afford a baby?”

  “Mom,” Katy said. “That’s the first thing you say?”

  “I’m just asking,” Nora said.

  “You’re not even a little happy.”

  “Honey,” Nora said, “when did you find out?”

  There was a thick elastic silence, as if in contradiction to the salt breeze and the calling shorebirds, the faint smoke from a grill a few houses down. The sea had turned a royal blue, gold light tinting the air. On a day like this, Nora had once gone swimming with the Murphy cousins and drunk gin and tonics on the deck. She missed gin and tonics on this deck; she missed the gold light now even as it fell. Maybe a glass of wine with the MacFarlands; or just a glass of wine alone, later.

  She’d paint Katy’s old room yellow, instead of violet. In six months, Sara and Delia would share the bedroom they’d shared as little girls. Katy would, Nora knew, lean on all of them to babysit.

  “I’m thrilled for you, sweetheart,” Nora said.

  PREGNANT

  An exhaustion in February they all felt. No apparent end to winter: it took a leap of faith and the awareness of the increasing light to keep going. Each morning Katy lumbered down the outside stairs—sand and snow blowing, the ice formidable—and clownishly maneuvered herself into the neighbor’s Ford Escort, her ride to the T. Of late, months did not cohere as months; though this was the ninth month, by the calendar. It was difficult to sleep, and now the daily slog downtown from the South Shore was a feat whether she drove or caught an early train.

  The discomfort and her own absurdity astounded her: in the office she squeezed past the file cabinets, a giant beach ball. Outdoors, the snowbanks, the ice, the near tumbles finally defeated her. Ten days before the due date, she stayed in Blue Rock. At breakfast, Delia eyed her from the kitchen doorway. Katy was in her rolled-up XXL sweatpants, rolled-up XXL Patriots sweatshirt, a pink headband Delia had given her.

  “Has it started?” Delia said.

  “No.” Her swollen feet lay in the seat cushion of a second chair, like big, rag-wool sausages. Sad sausages. “Would you mind getting me a piece of toast?”

  “Is it moving?” Delia said.

  Sara appeared in the doorway and nudged Delia. “He,” Sara said, and slipped past Delia to the kettle.

  “He,” Delia said.

  “There’s not a lot of room to move,” Katy said.

  “You’re kidding,” Delia said.

  “You’re huge. How can there be no room?”

  “There just isn’t,” Katy said. Her lips were pressed together as she blinked.

  “Delia,” Sara said.

  “What?”

  “Make some toast.”

  “Well, you look like you’re going to rugby practice,” Delia said.

  She’d never been as slender or lithe as her sisters, both of them small and sandy-blond and fine-featured, like poster girls for high school gymnastics. There was something bitter for Katy about the sweatpants. In another life, she’d worn jeans. Leggings. Running shorts.

  Tim did not let her pout. He sometimes rubbed her swollen feet and sang to them. But now Tim was sleeping; he was still chefing nights, this season at a high-end place in Cohasset. The owners liked him, and the money was better. It seemed he’d forever work nights.

  Here was her toast. “You’ll call when it starts,” Delia said. “Right? Jam?”

  “Mom will call,” Katy said. “Someone will call.”

  Why was it she felt as if she’d been tricked into something? Though she couldn’t say what, or who had tric
ked her. Here was her mother, pouring coffee; Katy could not say that Nora had tricked her, at least not in a way she could name. To the contrary: Nora had always been frank about sex, its consequences. In high school, after Katy’s first dates with Tim, Nora took her to get a diaphragm and gave her condoms. Yet Nora still seemed part of a deception.

  “Not too much longer, love,” Nora said.

  Her father wasn’t off the hook, was he? It seemed the residue from old deceptions stuck to him. He’d never said, “Do this,” his influence less direct. She thought of road closings: you detour and detour again, until you discover a surprise destination, or drive off the map. Yet now that she was pregnant, James called twice a week; now he’d ask, “How was your morning?

  From his own new planet—California—Theo had sent a congratulatory postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge and a baby hat resembling an eggplant.

  She deserved to have a baby—she and Tim—yes, that’s what she’d said, that’s what she’d told Tim. Her baby: she felt him press into her side, talked to him and hummed to him. Another world spun inside her while she buttered the toast. But something else had blurred, and in odd attenuated moments it was unclear why she was pregnant and Nora was not; why Nora moved as easily around the house as the girls did, and Katy did not. As if this part, too, Nora should have shared, the palpable wave carried over from before, from the girls as babies, and before that. They were in something together—she did not think Rome, but there was a sensation, a strand of thought that trailed back to Rome, to the moment of Nora and Katy and Molly instantly shifting to Nora and Katy, the space that had been Molly a thick seal between them. Katy had protected Sara and Delia, hadn’t she? Then and now. She and Nora had collaborated. Yet now all of this heaviness in Katy. This loneliness. She knew, apparently, nothing.

  She wanted, she deserved.

  “Sweet pea,” Tim had said, “of course you do.” September then: they’d come down from Cambridge with a truck.

  “I get that’s what you want,” Nora had said.

  “You should,” Katy said.

  A warm late summer day, the sea almost cobalt. Nora tilted her head and turned toward the window, as if speaking to the bay. “You’ll be a beautiful mother.”

  “Beautiful,” Tim said. “Fantastic.”

  REPRODUCTION

  Magdalen Reading

  Follower of Piero di Cosimo (1500–20)

  COURTAULD GALLERY, LONDON

  Her face is a kind of moon, a thin copper halo above, hair blond, partly braided, threaded with pearls. She’s seated, facing the viewer, her attention riveted to the book she holds. Here is the clean edge of a table, here peripheral views of the surrounding garden, the scene—the garden, her dress—painted with brilliant color: violet, aqua, gold, emerald green. The chair frame’s red seeps into the dark rose cloak draped over her arm.

  In the book: bold and less bold script, columns of text echoed by the chair’s rectangular back and the rectangular panels of garden flanking her. Look twice at the garden, the single huge purple iris on the left panel, a smaller, apparently distant tree marking the edge of a bluff on the right; the composition suggests windows where none exist. A small white jar sits on the table, its curves echoing the woman’s face and white neck. Her large eyes—with moonlike lids—remain trained on the book, but her mouth is tightly set: if she is aware of the viewer, this is the only clue.

  Here you’ll find overt love of geometry—even her jawline’s squared—and a decorative tilt absent from di Cosimo’s graceful original. The color is what draws you in—the rich green, the dark rose—before you observe her face. It’s a close-up, unlike the Van der Weyden Magdalen, who appears as if on a stage set, unaware of the open fourth wall. Proportions have shifted: this garden Magdalen is much larger than the iris, the iris larger than the tree. She’s a giant against the bluff, the distant sky. Nothing obscures her from view. Yet the close-up reveals emotional distance—her fixed concentration, that set mouth? Might she prefer to be alone? She is what we have of the moment: an unknown woman painted by an unknown painter. All the violet, the green, the gold. A color dream. But step back.

  INTERIOR WITH CHEERIOS

  Luckily he was a sweet boy, Connor. He had Tim’s disposition, and the Murphy dimples; he was happy to be held, cooed at the girls. And they were sweet with him, relaxed, often doting: they’d been babysitting for years. But for all the playing and soothing, feeding and diapering, all the households to which they’d come and gone, neither Sara nor Delia had realized how much space a baby could claim. Now here was Connor, toys strewn across the living room, his extra changing space displacing the alcove drawing table; baskets of baby laundry in the kitchen, on the stairs, onesies fresh from the dryer dumped onto the sofa. The upstairs bathroom was overrun with ducks and blue boats (cute ducks, cute boats), baby wash, baby towels. Had Sara and Delia taken up as much space? (Yes and no.) Connor’s cries carried through the house, even when they weren’t babysitting: how could this be a surprise? They’d neglected to consider the hours during which they’d study or talk on the phone, the usual television times, the nights before meets or exams, when performance depended on rest; or that Connor’s moods would be tied to Katy’s. Together Connor and Katy were content; together they were miserable.

  Nor had Sara and Delia anticipated all Katy’s ways of taking command—habits picked up, Sara guessed, from attorneys. Too often, her sentences began, Sara/Delia, I need you to _______. At first, Connor’s fragile newborn state seemed to justify peremptory demands. But they did not stop, and Katy’s tunnel vision did not broaden. She might hand the baby to Sara the moment Sara walked in from her swim meet. Just before the girls’ last visit to Beverly, Katy had called, “Delia, I need you to feed Connor,” even as Delia buttoned her coat to leave.

  “We’re going to see Dad and Josie,” Delia said. “Get Tim.”

  “Tim’s sleeping,” Katy said. She trudged upstairs to retrieve Connor herself, and from the stairs called, “When will you be back?” as if Tim was in fact awake.

  Thoughtless but not angry, not Katy’s worst: her yelling could be stippled with rage, which Sara could not bear. Out of proportion, or in response to issues Sara failed to see. In those moments, Nora might speak sternly to Katy, then ignore her, or Delia might snap back; as usual, Sara would freeze until the tirade ended, or involuntarily flee. She found Katy’s melancholy less frightening, if as involving. You couldn’t get away from Katy’s discomfort: she needed, it seemed, to share every bit, as if her body were a country she couldn’t stand to live in alone.

  When they were not watching Connor, the girls retreated to their now-shared room, often with homework. This was no guarantee: Katy might walk in and sit on Sara’s bed and begin with I need; or she might stretch out, exhausted, as if hiding out with them. Schoolwork was the best defense. Sara and Delia would leave textbooks open on their pillows, just in case.

  This is my study time, Sara would say, it’s chemistry or it’s history or it’s math, and Katy would leave her.

  Away in the shared bedroom, though hardly away. The girls listened to headphones connected to Walkmen. They were in a pink phase, Delia in particular: pink lip glosses, pink nail polish, pink stickers on the headphones. A pink-and-white bedspread (Sara’s plain white). They wore jeans; their hamper filled with pink and gray running clothes. Swim goggles hung on the doorknobs, blue varsity jackets, pink swim caps, pink sweatshirts. The pink and the goggles lent them the look of candied Martians. They took to keeping Cheerios and other snacks in their room, so they could hide longer when Katy’s moods filled the house, or when they needed to dodge unscheduled child care.

  About Katy’s encroachments, they said nothing to Nora, who could see it all well enough for herself and had been up several nights with Connor. She smoked off-brand cigarettes on the deck, bought discount Cheerios again. No-Cheerios, Delia called them. Now and then Tim brought leftovers home from the restaurant, which counterbalanced the weirder foods their mother picked up: of
f-brand peas, dried kidney beans, canned mackerel, generic mac and cheese. She’d gone to a pantry somewhere. Once in a while they’d run out of milk, and a thinnish papery-tasting stuff appeared in a jug in the refrigerator. It turned the tea gray. At least, when Katy found it, she’d shop for two-percent.

  Consulting, James repeated. For support he sent token amounts, or brief notes to Nora instead. No one talked about the college funds: Sara and Delia had snooped around in Beverly, they’d seen some of the bills. At least at James and Josie’s, they could relax; at least they always ate well. The girls did not ask for money or food, but late at night, while the others slept, Sara would raid the Beverly kitchen, just as Katy once did, slipping granola and maple syrup and sometimes cans of beer into her book bag. Did James notice? Josie said nothing. Here was one more kind of silence; most weekends, Sara found new jars of crunchy peanut butter, fresh boxes of granola, more Cheerios, and Delia’s favorite jam shelved in front.

  PARTY NIGHT

  It happened on a Saturday, a long late night. A party at which a friend of Delia’s became terribly drunk. Got into trouble—too drunk around drunk boys. One of the boys tried to take her somewhere, another room, though she was stumbling, and not speaking clearly. In the house on the bluff, Delia was looking for the friend, and found her in a bedroom, and stomped and yelled, “Get away from her, fuckhead.” Yelled, “I called the police.” A naked boy covered himself, and Delia pulled her friend from the room. From the kitchen of the party house, Delia called Sara, who was just home from babysitting, their mother asleep. Katy had stretched out on the sofa: the TV poured blue light on the carpet.

  “Something’s wrong,” Sara said, “with Delia’s friend.”

  “What.” Katy said it flatly, as if to deter interruption.