Objects of Desire

by Clare Sestanovich

Years ago, she explains, the man had donated his sperm. Back when they gave you cash, and genetic testing didn’t exist. He’d moved around a lot. The sperm ended up in many different states. When he eventually settled down, not too far from where Iris’s mother lived, he got married, divorced, married again, divorced again. But he never had any kids.

  “The ex-wives all live nearby,” Iris’s mother says. “He thought, if anything, that his world was getting too small.”

  By the time she started dating him, the man was online; everyone was.

  “And the sons and daughters just kept coming out of the woodwork.” She eats the last bite of chicken. The plate is clean, except for the tomato, still whole, which she will throw away.

  “Then what?” Iris says. “Did he want to know the kids?”

  Her mother places her knife and fork at four o’clock. “I didn’t want to know.”

  On the last day of the month, Iris flies back—she doesn’t know, now, what flying home would mean. The woman between her and the window has a cheery ponytail and a brightly colored backpack. She could be a little older than Iris or a little younger. She starts to say something as soon as their seat belts are fastened. Iris puts her headphones on and smiles blankly. She tells herself she will keep her eyes closed for the entire flight, because this is a test that is both extreme and achievable. She sleeps on and off, and when she is awake, the image that comes to her, accusing her from the backs of her eyelids, is of her mother on her hands and knees, scouring the bottom of the pool.

  * * *

  —

  Iris lives in a room the size of her mattress, in an apartment that belongs to a married couple. She keeps her clothes in a closet in the living room, or lets them pile up on the bed, a stack of unironed dresses like a body beside her. The married couple is in a relationship with another married couple, who live down the street.

  “You can ask any questions about how it works,” one of the wives says.

  “You probably have a lot of questions,” the other wife says.

  They look at her expectantly, which makes Iris’s mind go blank. She shrugs.

  Sometimes the couples all assemble in the kitchen. They make elaborate dishes that involve a lot of waiting—slow-cooked meats, twice-risen loaves—or else require speed and perfect timing. Slabs of tuna still pink in the center, chocolate cake that’s half liquid inside.

  “Who are they trying to impress?” Iris asks Charlotte, who is still on the other side of the country, whose friends, by now, are all semi-famous. Maybe Charlotte is semi-famous, too.

  “I love chocolate lava cake.”

  “Californians don’t eat dessert.”

  “Maybe they’re just impressing themselves.”

  The couples always invite Iris for dinner and mostly she declines, even though she doesn’t have anywhere else to be. On those nights, she buys a liter of seltzer and a bag of sunflower seeds from the bodega on the corner. She walks around the city, sucking the salt off the seeds one by one, imagining the decadence of the kitchen. Oven heat, garlic air, sweat and butter, someone’s husband with someone else’s wife. She cracks the seeds with her teeth and spits. By the time Iris returns, the dishes are piled in the sink, the couples drunk. They say they’re happy to see her, which she doesn’t really believe. She slinks away to her room.

  On New Year’s Eve, Charlotte comes home to see her parents. Iris imagines spending the night at their house, a few miles and one bridge away. A dumb movie, champagne in coffee mugs. Instead, Charlotte invites herself over for dinner. She wants to know everything about the couples. Who sleeps in which bed, who pays for which meals, who makes the rules and who breaks them. These are not things Iris has wondered about, but she is embarrassed not to have the answers—her own life made small and incurious in the face of Charlotte’s questions.

  “Of course,” the wife down the hall says. “The more the merrier.”

  All afternoon, the couples prepare. Iris chops cilantro and watches. They start drinking early, the glasses put down and picked up without looking, the rims smudged with everyone’s lips. Soon they’re snapping at each other. The garlic should be crushed, not chopped. The oranges should be blood, not navel. The oil pops and sprays and burns someone’s wrist. Iris ranks the spouses in order of attractiveness. Or unattractiveness; their faces are all too big. Then she guesses how Charlotte would rank them. When the door buzzes, the couples glare at each other.

  “Who is that?” one husband accuses the other.

  “It’s me,” Iris says. “I mean, it’s my friend.”

  They remember. They smooth their aprons. (When, Iris wonders, is the right age to buy an apron?) Someone turns off the oven fan, and it’s quieter than it’s been all day. The oil crackles benignly.

  Charlotte is wearing the perfect black dress. Both wives confirm this. They forbid her from helping and bring her wine in a glass that is not a jar.

  “So,” Charlotte says, the glass stem held delicately between her fingers, “how did you all meet?”

  For a moment, the couples survey the girls from the other side of the counter. Iris resumes chopping, the rhythmic sound of metal on wood filling the silence before their answer arrives.

  * * *

  —

  The week after Charlotte has sex with the married couples—she is already back in L.A., sending pictures of grapefruit from her backyard—Iris falls asleep on the train and wakes up in a neighborhood where old rich people live. All the apartment buildings have names and all the dogs have haircuts. On a street with a wide median, she stares at the map on her phone and swivels back and forth. The blue dot on the screen bobs uncertainly.

  Iris walks with no particular goal in mind, crossing to the other side of the street whenever she reaches a red light, so that she never really stops moving, crisscrossing all the way down the city. Iris is imagining the very end of the journey—if she is gone long enough, if her feet hurt enough, if the light above her door is glowing warmly, if her mind is blank with exhaustion, surely it will feel like coming home—when she is stopped short on a corner by the sight of Ben in a suit.

  He is standing on the other side of a restaurant window. The restaurant is crowded with people in grey jackets and dark dresses, and there’s an old woman leaning against him, clutching him. He doesn’t see Iris right away, and when he does, his eyes get wider and his face gets softer. What she feels most of all is guilt. He will wonder how long she’s been standing there. He will wonder if his hair is right, his tie straight. He will wonder if it’s ever really possible to be unwatched.

  “Sorry,” she says, but there is a window between them.

  When Ben raises his hand to wave, the woman gripping his sleeve looks up. She isn’t as old as Iris thought, but her back is hunched and her skin is loose. Without breaking Iris’s gaze, she says something to Ben, releases his jacket, stands a little straighter. He hesitates, and she says it again. A command. He vanishes into the crowd of dark clothes, and then, a few seconds later, the door to the restaurant opens and he’s standing in front of Iris.

  “So.”

  The walk sign above him turns from white to orange. One last car speeds through the intersection.

  “Someone died,” she says.

  He nods. His grandmother.

  “A few more days and she would have been one hundred.”

  “I admire that.”

  “Admire what?”

  “Like, not bothering to reach the milestone.”

  Ben laughs and she feels her body relax.

  “You’ll have to come inside,” Ben says. “She insists.”

  She is his aunt. They sit down at one of the empty tables, with an untouched breadbasket and someone else’s purse.

  “If you live long enough,” she tells Iris, “everyone thinks your mother is your sister.”

  Ben hovers behind his aunt�
��s chair, but she waves him away.

  “Some drinks,” she says, and he heads off toward the bar.

  The aunt looks at Iris intently. Her eyes are depthless brown, her eyebrows gone. She kneads a pink packet of sugar, or fake sugar, between her thumb and index finger.

  “He’s a good boy.”

  Iris nods.

  “Probably not a great boy.”

  A few minutes go by, and Ben doesn’t come back from the bar. They wait in silence, or maybe Iris only thinks they’re waiting. Maybe he stopped to talk to his great-uncle or his great-great-uncle. Maybe he decided to escape. She wouldn’t hold it against him.

  “When old people die, they only show you the young pictures,” the aunt says, gesturing around the room.

  It’s true. There are black-and-white photographs taped to poster boards all over the restaurant. It reminds Iris of a science fair. The woman in the photographs has wavy hair and pretty sundresses. She’s lying on a beach, leaning out a window, holding a baby to her chest.

  “They’re beautiful pictures,” Iris says.

  “I didn’t even know her then.” The aunt tilts the sugar back and forth. “Our biggest fight was about my wedding dress.”

  Iris looks at her sympathetically, and she laughs.

  “No, no. Why is fighting always bad?”

  The aunt tells Iris that her wedding dress had long sleeves and a high neck. From the front, it was old-fashioned, even a little bit ugly, but the back was wide open, all the way down to her waist. Every inch of skin exposed. Her mother hated it.

  “But it was my consolation prize.” Outside, the sky is getting dark. Their reflections begin to appear in the window. “My back looked good. A dancer’s posture.”

  “Consolation for what?”

  The aunt frowns at herself in the glass.

  “The church was historic,” she says, as if she hasn’t heard Iris. “In one of those towns where everyone’s ancestors came on the Mayflower.”

  She stood at the back of the church and watched all the faces turn toward her. A dramatic pause, so that she could hear the rustling and breathing, and then the organ came to life all at once. She glided down the aisle. In front of her, the faces smiled and nodded, wiped tears or pretended to wipe tears, and behind her, gradually, one row after another, there was a wave of gasps.

  “So much skin.” The aunt laughs again. “Back then, it was a shock.”

  For a few seconds, Iris thinks the laughing will become uncontrollable. The sugar is leaking through the pink paper. Her body is a trembling bird. And then, suddenly, it’s still.

  When they have been quiet for a while, Iris says it again:

  “Consolation for what?”

  The aunt dusts the sugar off her hands.

  “Oh, you know.” She looks Iris in the face. “The husband, the babies. All that.”

  Ben appears behind the aunt, clutching three wineglasses in an awkward bouquet. She twists around to look at him. The crenellations of her spine press through her silk dress.

  “I was married for fifty years,” she says, staring up at him. “Fifty on the dot.”

  Ben smiles kindly, and Iris can’t tell if the aunt smiles back. The windows are nearly opaque now. She has to focus to see the shapes outside—the people walking through her reflection. Iris stands up abruptly, and the glasses in Ben’s hands clink.

  “It’s a long walk home.”

  “Oh,” he says, but he doesn’t really look surprised. “Okay.”

  The aunt turns around. Her face is calm, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

  “Don’t spill, Benjamin.”

  He puts the wine down carefully. She bends over in her chair, her chin nearly touching the tablecloth, and blows. The sugar scatters.

  BY DESIGN

  .

  Her son and his future wife took Suzanne out to lunch and asked her to do the wedding invitations. Not so long ago, she had been a successful graphic designer. Her own boss. They were anxious to make her feel useful. When the food arrived, it was vegetables sliced in long, nearly see-through strips, a pile of ribbons in orange and green and red.

  Suzanne saw her son’s ulterior motive clearly. Being unemployed, she had told several friends, was sharpening her perception. But Spencer took pride in being subtle—probably someone had led him to believe this was the same as being adult.

  Suzanne’s aesthetic was elegant and inoffensive. Occasionally a little too austere.

  “As you may recall,” she told the future wife, piling carrot shavings onto her fork, “I didn’t lose my job because of bad taste.”

  The future wife was named Allegra. She reminded Suzanne of a well-bred dog—a whippet, maybe. She had very clear skin and managed to look dressed-up in jeans. Her purse had many small pockets inside; she could always find what she was looking for.

  “Oh,” Allegra said, a little taken aback. “We like your taste.”

  When the plates had been cleared, Spencer smiled placidly and signaled the waiter for the check. This gesture disgusted Suzanne. His finger raised almost imperceptibly, the quickest flash of a smirk. If only she had told him how disgusting it was when she had the chance, when he was still young enough to acquire aversions.

  “Children are so puritanical,” Suzanne said wistfully.

  They gave her a few sample invitations for inspiration. Cy and Julep, Booker and Tolu—all the names looked fake. When they stood up from the table, she resented them for masking their relief.

  * * *

  —

  Suzanne had delayed getting married. After Spencer was born, she and Jeb took pride in their informal tribe: lived in a cheap bungalow, pursued impractical degrees, said their plants were their children, too. What difference would a wedding make?

  When Spencer was two, walking and suddenly talking, Suzanne had a miscarriage. She knew this wasn’t extraordinary—later, she looked up the statistics—but there was more blood than she expected. On the way to the doctor, the towel underneath her turned dark red and smelled. The nurses were reassuring. She could try again.

  For years, she had wanted to try everything. Parasailing and acupuncture, Buddhism and Judaism and art school. Peppercorns that made your lips numb and drugs that made you puke until your life began again. She wanted to live in Patagonia and then in Beijing, because they were almost precisely antipodes. There was a tunnel through the earth between them; just start digging.

  Her friends rolled their eyes. Her mother said, Slow down. Her mother said, You can’t take an infant camping.

  A few months after the miscarriage, Suzanne and Jeb’s neighbor went into labor. The neighbor’s husband called before they went to the hospital: the other kids needed dinner, baths. He told Suzanne which books they liked, which toothpaste they wouldn’t swallow, which one wanted the door left open and which one wanted it closed.

  She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Jeb went instead. Suzanne watched him cross the street, then watched him through the windows. Someone else’s kitchen, someone else’s children, someone else’s warm yellow light. He made macaroni and he did the dishes. She willed him to look up, but he didn’t.

  Suzanne avoided the neighbor after that. Be nice, Jeb said—and she was. She waved from the driveway, she left a bag of zucchini on the front porch when she knew they weren’t home. The garden was overrun with zucchini.

  “I’m exhausted,” she told Jeb. She read somewhere that the average American family had 1.5 kids. “That’s us.”

  He frowned slightly, didn’t say anything.

  “Isn’t that enough?” she asked.

  Their wedding was just a dinner party in the backyard. Suzanne carried a baby monitor until Spencer fell asleep, then left it among the hors d’oeuvres—the sound of breathing beside the cheese plate. The childless guests got stoned, and the ones with babysitters waiting at h
ome brought side dishes: salads with bottled dressings, homemade dips with store-bought chips. Everyone had half the energy they required. Suzanne wore a skirt—not white.

  When the party was over, Suzanne and Jeb went to bed without cleaning up, had sex with their shirts on. In the morning, the house smelled like wine and salsa. They scraped the crusted dishes and put scented candles out of Spencer’s reach, grateful for the pleasure of minor transformation.

  They were vague about what they expected from a long-term union. At first—secretly—Suzanne was enamored with anything legally binding. She thought of glue. She liked the idea of adhering to someone.

  Jeb started paying an accountant to do the taxes. There was never any time for the garden, so he bought supermarket herbs in plastic packages that were impossible to open. Jeb said marriage took work, and he didn’t mind when the work was boring. Suzanne stayed late at the office. She went to the gym because she liked to feel her heart pounding in her throat. After important meetings, adrenaline made her confident and restless and she kept forgetting to eat lunch.

  Suzanne started the design firm and Jeb almost got his Ph.D. She planned the summer vacations and he did the back-to-school shopping. She paid for both, but no one ever mentioned that. He started rolling joints at night, to help him sleep. Eventually he started rolling them in the morning, too.

  Suzanne would never have guessed there would be so many occasions to say my husband. Presumably there were just as many to say my wife. But these were the words they used most of all in each other’s absence, so it never stopped being strange to hear them spoken aloud.

  They spent years delegating tasks—my wife made the reservation, my husband is running late—and then Spencer left and they were alone.

  * * *

  —

  Spencer graduated from college, and Suzanne tried to ignore the fact that she was jealous. When was the last time she’d reached a milestone? A distinguished professor in a tasseled robe said, The future awaits you, and she felt left out. She knew she was supposed to feel proud.