“Lord, yes,” said Pru. “Nothing strawberry, please.”
“HERE WE GO, ANNALI!” CRIED JACOB. THEY WERE standing at the edge of the water, but she was refusing to get so much as a toe wet. He was doing sort of a loopy Dick Van Dyke routine, gesturing with his arms toward the ocean, saying, “Into the water, now! Into the water! Here we go!” While he splashed, knees high, into the surf, Annali turned and walked in the opposite direction. Pru and Patsy burst out laughing.
Late afternoon at the beach hadn’t changed in all these years, either. There were never many people on the strip of beach in front of the house, closed off from either side by two rock formations, and even fewer at this time of day. The beach ran to the left and to the right of the house, undisturbed, undeveloped, as it always had been. The houses were the same, too, two- or three-bedroom clapboard sea shanty-type houses. The hotels hadn’t invaded this far down the beach yet. Pru wondered how long that could last. She tried to come up with anything else in life as unchanging as that beach. Her mother’s house, perhaps—the tiny, dark one-story home where she and Patsy had always shared a bedroom. The only changes made over the course of thirty years had been a new refrigerator, the addition of high-speed cable, which her mother had had installed once she discovered online Scrabble, and the absence of her father, his basement workroom crowded with unopened boxes.
And now it was Annali at the water’s edge with Jacob, while Pru and Patsy sat on the striped lounge chairs under a big cobalt blue umbrella, like a couple of queens. They flipped through their magazines and watched Jacob try to coax Annali into the water. Whenever a wave rolled in, Annali ran away from it, shrieking with laughter. Jacob had a nice way with her, Pru had to admit. She let out a contented sigh, and Patsy turned to smile at her.
“Glad you finally joined us,” Patsy said. “Another minute of your crazy city energy, and I was going to have to hit you with a stuffed marlin.”
Pru put her hand up against the glare. Jacob, lean and sinewy in his swimming trunks, water dripping from his head, was lifting Annali up and carrying her toward the water. She shrieked and clung to him. Slowly, talking to her all the while, he walked out into the water. When a wave came, he held her up above it. She loved it, laughing and screaming, scared and thrilled at the same time.
She needs a daddy, Pru thought, and instantly felt horribly guilty. The Whistler women had agreed, silently, never to mention this among them. Even though they’d never spoken about it, she knew her mother and sister had worked hard to make up for the lack of a father figure, especially after Leonard had died.
Now, seeing them together, she remembered what it was about a daddy that Annali was missing. A daddy who could lift you up in his arms, a daddy with all that warm, salty skin to hold on to, a daddy never too tired or too busy or too worried or too angry to carry you as long as you wanted, wave after wave after wave after wave. A mommy wouldn’t let you be afraid in the middle of the night. But daddies could actually do something about it. Even a daddy like Leonard, who, Pru was sure, had never raised his fists against anyone in his life. Daddies, everyone knew, could hold you safely up above the whole world, with their strong arms.
AT DINNER THAT NIGHT, IN ONE OF THE SEAFOOD RESTAURANTS in town, Jacob cracked open his lobster and said, “The first time I saw a cadaver, I couldn’t wait to touch it.”
He had little ways like that of surprising you, Pru was learning. He could be so earnest. Despite his obvious advantages, he so clearly wanted to be liked, he might have even been a little in doubt of whether or not anyone should like him. She turned to him. “So why aren’t you doing autopsies, or something like that?”
“That’s a little more distance than I really want from my patients.” He dragged a piece of lobster flesh through the butter and popped it in his mouth. “I wouldn’t want to see the same person day in and day out, but only the deceased?” He shook his head. “Plus, you get to see everything in Emergency. Everything. Then they go home, and you play video games with the ambulance drivers until the next lot comes in.”
“Like what do you get to see?”
He ran a finger under the neck of his lobster bib, loosening it. “Last week? I saw a post-op transsexual whose surgery hadn’t gone so well.”
“Hadn’t gone well how?”
He withdrew a pen, then drew a rough sketch on a napkin, making circles and arrows, showing Pru exactly what should have been where, and what really was there. She grimaced.
“It’s all a matter of taste, if you ask me,” he said, putting down the pen. “Who says what we should and shouldn’t look like?”
“Well, there are sort of minimum acceptable standards, aren’t there?” Pru said.
“You’d be surprised. People have all kinds of arrangements. All kinds.”
She might have been imagining things, but the air between Patsy and Jacob suddenly seemed charged. Patsy was just sitting there, drinking her beer, with Annali in her lap, quietly coloring on the restaurant’s paper place mat. Nobody said anything, while Jacob continued to crack open his lobster. But it seemed to Pru that something had been transmitted between them. He’d been talking about arrangements—probably it had something to do with Patsy’s newly unveiled plans to move to Rehoboth, Pru decided. Maybe he wasn’t so thrilled about it? Or maybe she was annoyed that Jacob hadn’t asked her to move in with him, in D.C.? Whatever it was, Patsy wasn’t happy. Pru could see that, plain as toast.
Later, when Jacob was outside making a phone call and Annali was all but asleep on her lap, Patsy said, “I’m glad you finally eased up on him. It means a lot to me.”
Pru stared at her. “What’d I do to deserve that?”
Patsy shrugged. “I know you didn’t like him. He knew it, too.”
Pru couldn’t deny that, but she didn’t like to think it had been so obvious. Jacob brought out some unsavory side of Patsy, a side that was just a bit smug, a bit satisfied. It was as if their love confirmed Patsy’s long-held suspicion that she was a touch more special than ordinary people. That she was destined for a kind of love exactly like this—sudden and true and deeply spiritual. She met a doctor on a train when he’d overheard something clever she’d said about sex—a story bound to appeal to Patsy. And this wasn’t looking like a short-term thing. Pru had the feeling she’d be living with the Specials from Planet Special for a long time.
Patsy was watching her closely, waiting for her reaction. She really was afraid of something, Pru realized. Her annoyance faded. Possibly she’d been on the mark, with the idea that Jacob and Patsy had different opinions about whether they should move in together.
“I just had some reservations, is all. Come on, I’m protective of you guys. So sue me,” Pru said.
“What about now?”
“Look, I see the attraction. He’s great. And great with Annali. But”—she had to choose her words carefully, she knew—“you know what you’re doing, right?”
“Here we go.”
“What?”
“Here’s where you make me feel like shit.”
“I don’t want you to feel like shit. I’m just saying, make sure you can trust the guy. Sure, today he’s great with Annali, but that doesn’t mean he’s in it for the long haul, you know.” She hated how she sounded, sometimes, with Patsy—all cautionary and “long haul” and all that. What was it about her sister that made her suddenly become a TV-sitcom dad?
“Thanks for your concern,” Patsy said, bitterly, “about Annali.”
“Come on, I’m worried about you, too. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I haven’t done one thing in two years without thinking first of Annali,” Patsy said. “I wake up in the morning: Annali. I drive myself to work: Annali. Maybe I’ll take a vacation: oh, right, Annali. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Any idea, Pru?”
Pru didn’t reply. When they both lived at home, she and Patsy had certainly had their fights. Screaming names, pulling hair, throwing clogs—the works. Maybe it was living alone for
so long that made her unable to engage in it, but now she felt cowed by the prospect of a toe-to-toe with Patsy. She didn’t know why. “I haven’t had it so easy, either,” she could have said, to which Patsy would have answered, “What does that mean?” And Pru would say, “It’s not so easy being alone. Do you think I like being alone?” But then Patsy would probably snap, “Oh, I think I know alone, Pru. I think I know alone better than most.” She pressed her lips together and stared at the aquarium under the bottles of liquor at the bar.
Pru had meant to do more, after Annali was born. She sent clothes and little gifts for both of them, just so they’d know she was thinking of them. But it had never felt like enough. She was never called upon to babysit, never asked to help with Annali’s expenses. She’d gotten off far too easily, and her own conscience hadn’t picked up the slack. She was glad Annali was coming home with her the following day. It would give her a chance to make up for all that, and to get some veggies in the girl, to boot.
Patsy drank her beer moodily. She kept glancing to the door where Jacob had disappeared to take his call. Pru tried to turn the conversation to the afternoon at the beach, how it reminded her of their childhood and their father. She wanted Patsy to remember the bathing suits they wore with the cinching strings up the sides, but Patsy ignored her. A wall had risen between them. Jacob came back from his phone call—a scheduling problem at the hospital, he said, and he needed to be back to the city sooner than he’d thought. Pru would still take Annali to D.C. in the morning, but just for the one night, not two. They were silent the whole way home.
In the morning, as she was getting ready to leave, Pru went into the bedroom where Patsy was packing up Annali’s suitcase and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. “I love you, you know,” she said, and Patsy said, “Oh, shut up.” But she let herself be hugged, and everything seemed back to normal again. Still, Pru made a silent vow to stay out of this business with Jacob. Where he was concerned, she’d keep all unsolicited opinions to herself and concentrate her efforts on Annali. She had much to make up for there, and she thought she would be a good influence. Steady, and calm. Patsy was only all too eager for the help. Jacob was a touchy subject. She and her sister were closer now than they had been in years, and she didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize their fragile new alliance.
Nine
When they arrived at Pru’s apartment the next day, Annali dashed right after Big Whoop. He backed away but, to Pru’s surprise, let her pick him up and cuddle him. He was so big that Annali could barely get him off the floor.
There was a note on the kitchen table from McKay: “Love your boy. Call me when you’re back.”
“He likes this one the best,” she said to Annali, giving her the toy that looked like a spider on a long, thin wire. Annali waved it in front of Whoop, who jumped and snatched it out of the air. Annali let out a shriek, and dropped the toy.
While Pru unpacked, Annali wandered around the apartment. She said, in her slow monotone, “Aunt Prudence, where is your TV?”
“No TV,” Pru said cheerfully. “What should we do instead?”
Annali shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”
She tried to remember what she’d seen her friend Fiona’s kids doing. “Well, how about Go Fish? Would you like that?”
Annali nodded. They sat on the floor and Pru dealt out the cards. Annali fingered her knit hat and sucked her thumb until Pru told her to pick up her cards. It quickly became apparent that she had never in her life played Go Fish. “I’ll start,” said Pru. “Do you have any sixes?”
She solemnly nodded.
“So, you give them to me.”
She looked at her cards carefully, then handed Pru a card. It was the jack of hearts.
Pru looked at Annali’s cards. “You don’t have any sixes. You say, Go fish.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t. Okay, I’m fishing. Now it’s your turn.”
“Do you have any sixes?”
“Annali, you don’t have any sixes, so you can’t ask me for sixes. You have to have something to ask me for it.”
“Go fish,” Annali said.
Pru began to gather the cards. “I know,” she said, “let’s play matching.”
She showed Annali how to turn all the cards face down and match them. After a while, Annali went back to her thumb and her hat, and watched Pru match up all the cards.
Annali looked up and suddenly said, “Tell me a story.”
Pru frowned. She could never tell a story on the spot like that. Her mother was the one with the knack for inventing little adventure tales. Whenever Pru would try, she ended up using something they’d just seen in one of Annali’s videos. In her stories, Annali was always climbing up a tree to retrieve her honey pot or making friends with a big red dog. Besides which, she found herself irritated that Annali wouldn’t let her finish the matching game.
“Let’s play something else,” Pru said.
“Okay, let’s make believe.”
“That sounds good.” But her heart sank. She didn’t really want to do any of these things. What did she think Annali was going to say, Let’s read the last three weeks of The New Yorker and go to bed early?
“You be Mary Poppins and I’ll be Jane Banks.”
“Okay,” said Pru.
They sat there staring at each other. Annali’s mouth made little sucking sounds around her thumb.
Pru couldn’t remember much of Mary Poppins. She’d seen it only once in her life, when she was six. “Spit-spot?” she ventured.
The thumb came out. “Make me take my medicine.”
“Here’s your medicine.”
“No!” Annali cried. “You have to say, Children who get their feet wet must learn to take their medicine. Then I say, Cherry cordial, and you say, Rum punch.”
They did that, then did it fifteen thousand times more.
Finally it was time for Annali’s dinner and blessedly early bedtime. Although Pru had meant to stuff fresh veggies into the girl, Annali absolutely refused to eat the steamed spinach and carrots Pru put before her. Pru was forced to prepare mac and cheese she’d gotten from the health food store, but Annali rejected it, too, saying it was the wrong kind of mac and cheese. At bath time, the shampoo Pru used to get the sand out of Annali’s hair burned her eyes and made her cry, and then they got into an argument over whether Annali was supposed to get five books before bed, or four. Lord, but Patsy had spoiled that child! Annali definitely wasn’t the same kid she was six months ago, when she was still delighted by anything Pru did. “Lie down with me!” Annali cried, when Pru turned off the lights. “Open the door! More, more!”
“It’s a good thing you’re so dang super-cute,” Pru said. “Otherwise I’d eat your head.”
Annali giggled and made room in the bed. Pru sighed, then crawled in next to her. She’d been warned that Annali absolutely would not fall asleep without a grown-up. She’d had secret thoughts about breaking Annali of that habit, too, but she was tired. She’d already tested her willpower against Annali’s, and was found wanting.
Annali sang softly and played with her hat for a while, pushing her feet into it and stretching it out, until Pru said to stop and go to sleep. When Annali’s mouth had fallen open and her breathing was deep and slow, Pru slipped out, and began to search the kitchen for a drink. She felt the need to exercise, however tenuously, her prerogatives as a grown-up. Which meant, in this case, getting a little drunk while looking at the new Pottery Barn catalogue.
Just as she was about to sit down with her usual dinner of tuna and crackers, she heard shrieks coming from the bedroom. Pru jumped up and hurried to the bedroom, her heart pounding in her chest. Annali was sitting up in bed, crying. There were monsters under the bed, she said. She saw one.
“It was just the cat, honey.”
“There was a monster!”
“You know there’s no such thing as monsters,” Pru said. Annali cried harder.
“Spray them!�
�� she yelled, bouncing up and down on the bed. “Get your monster spray and spray the monsters!”
“What?”
“You have to spray them,” she sobbed, falling to her knees.
Something from Mary Poppins came back then: Not another word, or I shall have to summon the policeman. Brisk, kindly, firm. “Annali Whistler, you calm down. You know there’s no such thing as monsters.” With that, Pru began to leave the room.
“Stay with me!” Annali yelled, lunging at her and clutching at her sweater.
“Oh, all right.” Pru lay down on the bed and Annali wrapped both arms around her neck. After a while her sobs subsided and her breathing slowed. Every now and then she would hiccup. Pru fell asleep, too, and when she woke up later, the little arms were still holding on tightly to her neck. The phone next to the bed rang and Pru snatched it before it could wake up Annali.
“Hello?” she whispered.
“How’d it go?” Not Patsy, but their mother. “Is she asleep already? I was going to call earlier, but then I thought it might upset her to hear my voice.”
Pru untangled herself from Annali’s grip and brought the phone out to the living room.
“She freaked out about monsters.”
Her mother laughed and said, “That’s a big thing right now. Did you spray?”
“What is that?”
“She can’t go to sleep until you spray for monsters.”
“Patsy didn’t mention anything about monster spray.”
“I just use my deodorant.”
“Why are we indulging this? I mean, is it healthy? What if she gets dependent on it?”
“Nobody’s ever gone to college needing monster spray,” said Nadine.
“If she even gets into college.”
“Prudence. She’s two. When you were two, I used to have to sweep out from under your bed every night with a broom.”
“Really?”
“You had terrible fears. Always did. We used to keep a pallet on our floor so you could sleep next to us. Until Patsy was old enough to share a room with you, anyway.”
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