by David Ellis
“Okay.”
I hand him a dish. “I’ll try not to beat you too bad.”
No answer. I tell him I’m kidding. He shrugs.
A call from the other room. Jeannette is done with her masterpiece. I sit down on the family room carpet, eager with anticipation, as she triumphantly lays before me her work, composed on a large, thick piece of construction paper, which I haven’t seen since grade school. To the right, in brown crayon, is her house. A square with a triangle on top. A red chimney with smoke flowing from it. A rectangular door and three square windows, in black crayon, above it. In the top left corner of the paper is an orange sun with yellow beams. Below the sun, next to the house, is a man with a long stick body, stick arms and legs, dots for eyes and nose, and a smile. Above him, with an arrow pointing down, are the words “Uncle Marty.” (Mommy helped with the spelling.)
I am amazed, and I make a point of showing it to Jamie. She is equally impressed. Even Tommy comments on how good it is. Jeannie is positively glowing.
It wasn’t my idea to break out the family scrapbook—it was, in fact, over my vigorous protest. Jeannie sits in her mother’s lap; Jamie supports one side of the large book, the other ending up on my lap. Tommy sits next to me.
The early photos are black-and-white. They are mostly baby pictures of me, before Jamie was born. One of them is the day I was born.
The next picture, three pages in, is the first one featuring my mother. She is holding me as a newborn: “Marty at 3 days.” We are still in the hospital. My mother’s dark hair is longer in that picture, I notice in the brief second that I look at the photo before staring at the dark television set.
“That’s Gramma,” Jeannette announces.
“That’s right, honey,” says Mom. “And do you know who that little baby is?”
I reach to turn the page. Jamie, somehow ready for it, blocks me.
“That’s you, Mommy,” Jeannie guesses.
“Nooooo.”
I reach again, and this time Jamie presses her hand down tightly on the page. “Turn the page,” I say.
“Guess again,” Mom says.
“It’s Uncle Marty,” Tommy shouts.
“Right!”
Jeannie squeals with this revelation. Tommy sort of nudges me in the arm.
“Turn it, Jamie.”
“He doesn’t have any hair!” Jeannie’s stubby finger points at me in the photo.
“Jamie—”
She casts me a look.
“She’s kissing him!”
“That’s right, honey.”
“Jamie—”
“You were fat,” Tommy observes.
“So were you,” I reply with an elbow. “Jamie, turn it.”
With a quiet harrumph and a sour glance at me, because she never understood, Jamie turns the page. She was always troubled by my lack of a relationship with Adrian—that’s our mother, it’s the only way I feel comfortable referring to her—but this anxiety grew as Adrian neared death. She was in a nursing home in her last year, and moved to a hospice the last two months as cancer ravaged her body. That whole year, I never visited, talked to her on the phone a handful of times. I made it to her bedside her last day, when she was all but gone. And after she died—this was four years ago—Jamie took a long time before she would talk to me again. My disdain for Adrian, which was once incomprehensible, was now unforgivable to her. I thought she might never speak to me again, but she did, both because she probably wanted to teach me the lesson that blood is thicker than everything else, and because she has an enormous, forgiving heart that I will never have.
I suggest we forget the scrapbook and turn on that animated video Jeannie talked about during dinner. I don’t get much of a reception to that, but I keep pressing the idea, as Jamie continues to stroll through the book. Finally, Jeannie decides she’s tired of this and warms up to the idea of seeing that video. After even Tommy joins in, Jamie puts away the family album.
So we watch a movie together, some G-rated animation thing featuring a singing mouse. Tommy is restless, but he dutifully watches. Jeannie falls asleep in Jamie’s lap and is put to bed. Tommy follows right after, high-fiving me good night.
11
SO I WAIT ALONE IN THE LIVING ROOM AS JAMIE readies the kids for bed, watching the flames of the fireplace dance, eventually allowing my eyes to wander to the mantel above, to the Kalish family pictures. My parents and Jamie and me at some amusement park by a fountain. Jamie and my mother at a ballerina recital, after Jamie had performed. A posed family shot when I was ten, Jamie six. I’m wearing a starched white shirt with black bow tie, Jamie is in a dress that resembles a sailor’s outfit. Dad is wearing a sport coat and his typical contented smile. Mother dearest looks as glamorous as ever. The four of us at Jamie’s graduation from high school. The four of us at my graduation from college. And finally, side by side, individual black-and-white photos of my parents. My dad’s head is turned awkwardly a little too far back at the camera, but he wears that same expression, content, wise, gentle, ignorant. She looks as glamorous as ever.
I look back into my father’s eyes in that picture, and for a moment we are looking at each other and having one of our countless conversations in the living room. My dad, in his thoughtful, patient manner, refusing to judge me, laying out the moral map and helping me find my way. I could use his compass right now.
My father was what you would call a sophisticated thinker. Peter Kalish graduated from college with a philosophy degree and headed straight to law school to explore the higher ideals underlying the framework of our society. He was a conservative in an increasingly liberal atmosphere, and my father found this to be the most intellectually stimulating time of his life (as he once told me while explaining the virtues of law school). He was active in several student advocacy organizations in law school, even founded one or two, and dreamed of getting an LLM and returning as a law professor.
That’s when he met her.
Peter Kalish met Adrian Vivriano in his third year of law school, and he was immediately taken by her (I supposed if this bio were free from editorialization, I would say he was taken with her). She was three years younger, fresh out of college and ready to start her career in social work. Adrian Vivriano was not someone you would expect to find going from one run-down housing project to another checking on the safety and welfare of children in fragmented or abusive homes. She had exotic Italian features, a long but shapely build, and she carried herself with the grace and mannerisms of a woman accustomed to the finer things. It never made sense to me—still doesn’t—that she took a job that not only paid so little but that carried with it so little prestige, an absolutely thankless job that must have left her tremendously bruised and sad at the end of each day.
But this was the vocation she chose, and these were the circumstances under which my parents first met: my dad a third-year law student flirting with the idea of sinking into more debt to get another degree, Adrian already a year into her social work.
Funny, I don’t know how they met. For some reason, it just never came up. Maybe he stepped into one of those jungle traps where the circular rope suddenly closes around your ankle, and she pounced while he was strung upside down. However it happened, to hear my dad tell it, he flipped over her the moment they met. That was what you did with Adrian, I guess—you flipped over her. There was my lovestruck father, already in debt from law school loans and ready to propose after six months. So instead of continuing his schooling, he took a job with one of the big corporate law firms in the city. My dad was a sacrificing sort, someone with incredible inner calm who could be happy in pretty much any situation. He was the peacekeeper in the family, one of the least confrontational people I have ever known when it came to family politics. (This was his failing, I suppose, in her eyes. Or one of them.) So when joining a law firm became the most practical move economically, especially in the opinion of his fiancée, my dad took the path of least resistance. (Dad would always tell me later that this w
as his choice, that she didn’t care what he did or how much money he made. I tend to believe otherwise.)
So my parents got married and lived downtown. She got to continue in the career she wanted, he didn’t. To state it mildly, working in a downtown law firm gave my father none of the things that he wanted when he went to law school. It was, as he put it, just another form of business, and he had spent his entire academic career trying to avoid the business sector.
But if my father was not taken with drafting contracts and researching the niceties of antitrust law, he was, as I said, taken with her, and he appreciated the hefty paycheck because she did. So along they went for three years, my dad hating his job but loving his wife, his wife loving her job but hating—well, I suppose that’s not fair.
Enter yours truly. She quit her job like pregnant women were supposed to do back then. My dad was in his fourth year of toiling in the firm, and he’d pretty much hit his limit when news of my impending arrival hit. Not surprisingly, this is when the problems started. They lost her income at precisely the time when expenses were about to go up, and my dad decided he couldn’t take the firm life anymore. He had kept in contact with a conservative advocacy organization that left him an open offer to join, and he told Adrian that he wanted to take it. She was opposed, my dad once admitted to me after one too many scotches, but his thought was that he didn’t want his child to grow up thinking that you had to choose a job based on money. What kind of an example would that set for the child? He wanted me to see that what mattered was having a fulfilling career.
Guess who won the argument? So my dad remained miserable for another two years, during which time they saved up all the money they could, and then my dad joined the conservative organization (a couple years later settling in as a law professor at a downtown school). Even then, I think she resented him for it. Maybe that’s what did it. Maybe she never forgave him.
That eight-by-ten of my father is so appropriate. The quiet dignity, the scrupulous, good-natured, self-assured man. He only wanted the three of us to be happy. He avoided tension and confrontation like the plague. He approached the typical family squabbles that would arise from time to time with a reasoned, disarming calm. It was only when he talked about the law that a spirit ignited in him, and he spoke with a ferocity and directness that made him virtually unrecognizable from the man who would back down at the slightest hint of tension over the dinner table. Even during those miserable years in the law firm, Peter Kalish continued to be active in legal foundations and published extensively in law reviews, often working well into the early morning on his pieces. If the law is a jealous mistress, she was a mistress who was satiated more often than not. Maybe that’s what did it to Adrian. I don’t really know what it was, and I’ve given up trying to guess. And I don’t really care. I don’t.
I remember touching her hand that last day, four years ago. Not caressing it, just placing my fingers lightly on top. My mother lay askew on the hospital bed nearly comatose, tubes in her nose, arm, and abdomen, eyes open in immovable slits, her shiny hair spilled over the pillow after a fresh shampooing from Jamie and a nurse.
I’m here, I told her. It’s all I said to her, as if by announcing my arrival I was offering some concession. The other words came but never surfaced, as I sat with her. I wonder if she was waiting for them. I wonder if she wanted to say something to me, if she was filled with regret that now, when she wanted to speak, she couldn’t.
I hear Jamie in the kitchen now. She walks into the family room with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She notes with approval that I’m looking at the family pictures, but I walk away from them and take the bottle from her hand, lest we start a conversation about our parents.
“The kids are great, Jamie,” I say. We sit next to each other on the couch.
She smiles, then sighs. “They really are, aren’t they?” She holds out her glass, I pour. “I suppose it could have been a lot worse. When Billy left, Jeannie was barely three. She couldn’t understand. She still doesn’t, really, but she’s accepted it.”
“Does Billy see them often?”
“About once every two months.” Billy lives out of state now. He didn’t contest custody at the divorce. In fact, from what I recall, Jamie was willing to give him more visitation rights than he wanted. “I wish he’d come more often,” she says. “He’s seeing someone now, it’s been about nine months. The more serious it gets, it seems, the less time he has for his children.” With the kids in bed and out of earshot, Jamie’s words have a decided tension.
So on to something better? “What about you?” I ask. “Anyone in the picture?”
“Oh.” She waves a hand dismissively. “Not really. I mean, there’s this guy from the office.” She is a secretary at a mortgage brokerage firm. “A nice guy. He seems interested. But think about the package he’s getting.”
“A gorgeous redhead and two dynamite kids. Not a bad package in my book.”
She rolls her eyes. “Red-and-gray-head,” she corrects, holding up a strand of her hair. “And not his kids, Marty. Men want their own, not some other guy’s.”
“Why can’t he have both?” It’s more of a rhetorical question. I know what she means. Hell, I don’t even want kids of my own. The only time I even remotely entertain the notion of children is when I’m with Jeannie and Tommy. Kids are great, after all, when you don’t have to do any of the dirty work. That’s why grandparents love the role so much.
She sighs again. “Well, I admit, it would be nice. Tommy could use a father right now. And the extra income, for their college.”
“I don’t hear anything about you in there, little sister.” She is just like our dad, subordinating her interests to everyone else’s. I certainly did not inherit that trait.
“Sure, it would be nice for me, too.” She drifts off for a moment, briefly allowing the thought of another man in her life, a notion that at one time probably would dominate her thoughts, quicken her pulse, but now is nothing more than a piece of a puzzle that must fit perfectly alongside her children. “For the time being, I just want to see how the kids come through this.”
“It’s been over a year, Jame. The kids are fine. Think about yourself a little.”
She considers this momentarily. “By the way, Mr. Single-with-no-kids.”
“Oh, yeah, little sister. A real lady-killer, your brother is.”
“You’re not going to tell me that there are no women interested in a charming, handsome, sensitive man with a six-figure income.”
Well, maybe one. But she’s married. Or at least she was, until I buried her husband. That thought drifts in and out without much pain; it’s probably the change in surroundings that muffles it. Or am I getting over it? Have I put it behind me this quickly? “Tell me about Tommy.”
She gets that vacant look again. “Tom is doing much better. He’s not fighting anymore. He’s in a basketball league, and he’s good. He spends hours out on the driveway shooting. It’s an escape for him.” Her hands cup her glass in her lap, her fingers drumming the sides. “He’s doing much better,” she repeats.
“He seems al—”
“He needs a father, Marty.” Her voice cracks as she says this. She brings her legs up on the couch, so she’s sitting Indian style. She brings the glass to her lips but then puts it back down. “I mean, with Jeannette, it’s different. She has her mom, and she was so young when he left, she probably won’t remember. But Tommy—”
“Has more than most kids could dream of, Jame. He has a mother who adores him, and who’s always there.”
Jamie tightens her shoulders and releases. “I guess. It would be different if he never had a father, but he’s out there, you know? And he doesn’t care.” She pauses. “The truth is, Billy hasn’t been here for eight months. Can you imagine what that does to a little boy?”
Now my sister turns to me, and I touch her hair. The same hair that, when Jamie was six, she colored with black magic marker because she wanted to be a brunette. I touch th
e scar near her ear, where she burned it the first time she used a curling iron, in sixth grade.
Those years are behind Jamie now, and even for someone who has kept her figure, it shows. Lines have formed by her eyes. The gray in her hair, like she said. What really shows through, though, is not something visible. It’s the way she carries herself, a complete absence of vanity, her lack of energy for anything unrelated to her kids. It’s her spirit, her vibrance, that is gone. She’s a divorced secretary trying to hold together a home with two young kids. She no longer dreams of great things for herself. With those bright green eyes, she sees the world only through her children now. I wonder if that’s what happens to all women who become mommies. Actually, I can think of one mother who didn’t share that trait.
Jamie keeps pace as we down the first bottle. I press her about this guy she reluctantly told me about. His name is Robert, he’s a computer consultant teacher. I ask about the possibilities, but she waves me off.
“I don’t know. I have to be careful, Marty, you know? I don’t want men coming in and out of their lives. I mean, he seems like a stable guy. He has a good sense of humor. I don’t know.” She takes another sip. She looks over at me. “Now, don’t give me that wrinkled brow,” she warns. “I’m fine, Marty. Like you said, I have two wonderful kids.”
I watch her take another sip, and I reach over and mess her hair. My only sister. My only family. “Did you ever think of moving out by me?” I blurt out unexpectedly, even to myself.
Her response is even more surprising. “You know, I have. I really have. It’s not like there’s a lot keeping us here. I could find the same job there that I have here. And I’d like Tommy to be closer to you, Marty. Billy is drifting farther and farther away from us. I’d like . . . well, I’d like him to be closer to you.” This revelation catches me by complete surprise, and I’m sure my facial expression makes that clear. I’ve only seen Tommy twice in the past two years, and we really haven’t formed much of a bond. But it’s obvious that Jamie has been considering this for some time.