The Grief of Others

by Leah Hager Cohen

  “What? Why?”

  “You blush a lot.”

  “I do?” She cupped her face. “No, I don’t.”What had they just been talking about? It escaped her. “I don’t think I do. Anyway, shy people blush. I mean—what, blushing means you’re ashamed?”

  The psychiatrist had shrugged, as if it were nothing to him. “That’s how we generally read it.”

  She’d been incensed. Who was he to bring up shame, when she had gone to him in grief? At the end of the fifty minutes, he asked whether she’d like to set up another appointment.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, as if it were nothing to her.

  Only after he did not try to convince her otherwise did she realize she’d been relying upon him to do so. In the car afterward she’d sobbed. Though she had not even liked him, she felt bereft.

  Now at the light, which had turned green, as she sat remembering that day from last spring, Ricky filled with a cold, wringing anguish. Its source was a terrible realization and it seemed to saturate her, slowly, as though she were sinking in it, drowning. She had been banking on Jess as a kind of second chance, an opportunity to remind John of her own goodness. But she had been banking, too, on Jess’s being an artifact, a living reminder of how things had been, of who John had once been, the old self he still carried folded within, as we all must eternally carry our previous iterations: not blameless, not good only.

  But what Ricky now saw, as if it squatted leering at her through the windshield, was the fault in her own arithmetic.The idea that Jess somehow balanced the equation, that John’s being responsible for her paternity equaled or canceled out Ricky’s infidelity, was false. They were not the same at all. She’d been trying so desperately to convince him of it, willing him to sign on, to adhere to this logic. Wasn’t that the very thought she’d been attempting to press into him the other night when she bit him, branding the flesh of his thigh: that we are all helpless before our bodies? And the next night, when he showed her what she’d done—lifted her head to see the mark, stark against the white skin, patterned there with sparse black curls: the purple stain of her bite—wasn’t it clear, when she bit him there again, that it was only a kind of surrender, an admission of her own baseness; a return, blameless and profound, to what he’d first loved about her, a boring back into pure element? And in spurring him to be rough in turn, eliciting from him a like carnality, she’d meant only to win her case. To win him.

  The car behind her honked and Ricky drove on. Not until she’d pulled into their driveway did she realize what she’d done: for the first time in a year, crossed the Tappan Zee without rehearsing the nearness of the guardrail, the number of degrees she’d have to turn the steering wheel, the force with which she’d have to accelerate in order to drive off the bridge.

  INSIDE THE HOUSE she heard the television going, quick bursts of sitcom laughter. Looking through the living room, through the French doors that led into the den, she saw the silhouetted backs of Biscuit’s and Paul’s heads; they were snuggled close together, sitting as they had often done when they were small, on the listing old couch, watching TV. She felt a flash of remorse; they had no idea the den was about to become Jess’s room. It was the same difficult remorse she’d felt ten years ago, on the eve of Biscuit’s birth, knowing Paul was about to be robbed of something: his place in the sun, his unchallenged primacy. She remembered his innocence of the fact, how his threeyear-old’s inability to comprehend what was about to happen and what it would mean to him had made him more tender to her, more terribly lovable.

  They looked just so to her now: soft, ingenuous, mesmerized by the flickering light of the screen, lost to themselves and to the world. Paul was wearing his ridiculous hat, the filthy one he’d bought himself at the street fair last fall. Biscuit—when had Biscuit gotten so tall?—had her head inclined slightly toward her brother, as though she might in a moment rest it against his shoulder, a thing Ricky could not imagine her doing, nor Paul tolerating. Yet their postures, their proximity, made them look like close siblings. Were they? Ricky was not used to thinking of them as close. She was struck by an impulse to touch them, to see their faces before she went to find John, before she went to find Jess and ask her to stay. She would just say hello to her children first.

  The sound of John’s voice stopped her.

  “That’s crazy,” he said, from the kitchen. He was not quite yelling.

  Ricky tensed. He must be arguing with Jess. There was a silence.

  When he spoke again, his anger—a thing he rarely displayed—was more distinct. “Well, then, the policy’s nonsense.”

  She glanced toward the den again; the television volume was high and the children seemed oblivious. She strained to hear whatever Jess was saying in reply, but could not make out even the murmur of her voice. Ricky realized she was standing with her shoes still in her hand, like a guilty person, a spy. She set them down, along with her briefcase and the glossy black bag, and walked into the kitchen.

  Jess sat at the round table beside two large shoe boxes—boot boxes, more like—both of them made over into little scenes. For a moment, Ricky mistook them for her husband’s work. John had made dozens of set models over the years, many of which resided at the college, but some of which had found a permanent home languishing in their dampish basement, on the shelves next to the washing machine. On second thought, she realized they were nothing like John’s work. These were more like a child’s school project. There was something at once rough and precious about them: the scale was off, and the workmanship imperfect, yet the overall result signaled a degree of investment, of care, that was beguiling, and which placed them, on third thought, in a whole other realm: these could hardly be the work of a child. Even at a fleeting glance, Ricky realized these were not models for something else but creations in their own right.

  Jess turned as Ricky came in and gave her a rather wan smile, wan and something else—sympathetic? condoling?—before facing around again toward John, who stood with his back to them both, the cord of the wall phone snaking out from under one arm, so that Ricky realized it was not Jess who had raised his ire but the unknown conversant on the other end of the line. For that she was relieved. Ricky found herself placing a hand on Jess’s back. She brimmed with the urge to tell her about the plan, the proposal: how they would remake the den, visit yard sales, procure rocking chair and cradle, about all the care Jess would receive if she stayed. It was more important than ever that she say it in front of John; he had to hear her make the offer. She pursed her lips, willed him to finish his call, whatever it was.

  After a long silence he spoke again. “Well, then I’d like to talk with the superin—. . . I said if he’s not available, then I’d like to talk with the superintendent.... No, before Monday.”

  A pause. Ricky tried to work out what was going on. The superintendent. It must be Biscuit, the truancy thing. Had she been skipping again?

  “Then give him my home number and ask him to call me.” John’s voice was frighteningly deliberate, the words paced with unnatural evenness. “That’s correct.”

  This silence lasted longer. John, though he must have heard her come in, still did not turn around, and Ricky, despite her impatience, found herself drawn to him for this very reason, his single-minded dedication to the matter at hand. Steadfast, she thought, taking in his broad shoulders and large dark head with something like pride. John was steadfast. She had always felt (and wasn’t it odd?) both attracted to and rebuked by this quality in him. Perhaps—very likely—it was the chief reason she’d married him. It could not be—she would not believe it—too late for them. She prepared to take him in her arms once he was off the phone, to hear the story of his frustrating dealings with school officials, to soothe and admire him, show she was grateful—and then to invite his daughter to stay, and receive his appreciation, his gratitude, for that.

  “No,” John said now, and his voice nearly shook with the effort to contain his emotion, “what I said was, if you’d seen hi
s face, you’d realize that can’t be the whole story.”

  Silence again, and something swift and burning clouded Ricky’s mind like smoke in a bowl.

  “Yes,” said John. “Yes . . . I’d appreciate that. Thank you.” He hung up.

  When he turned and met her eyes, his own were cold. He filled her in with a tone of indifference that made her head pound. That had been the school principal on the phone. Not Upper Nyack, no; this was not about Biscuit. Although she had cut school that afternoon and set a fire in the upstairs bathroom. This was about Paul. He’d been in a fight on school grounds, which meant a mandatory three-day suspension. The other parent was insisting Paul had thrown the first blow, and although Paul would not say why he’d hit the other boy, he had not disputed the parent’s claim—although from the look of him, he’d received the worse beating. John had considered bringing him to the emergency room.

  “When did this happen?” Ricky’s breath came shallow and short. “What did you mean about setting a fire? Is Paul all right?”

  It happened right after school. Paul seemed all right; he was icing his eye. No, he wouldn’t say anything about the cause of the fight. Fuck if he knew about the fire, Biscuit wouldn’t talk, either. And now—John checked his watch—he had to go.

  “Go?”

  “The theater. I have an opening.” His words were clipped, as if it disgusted him to grant her even the length of his vowels. “Bye, Jess,” he said, differently. “Thanks for all your help this aft.”

  Jess reached up a hand and he squeezed it, and the ease of the gesture wrenched.

  Ricky followed John into the front hall, almost tripping to reach him before he left. The fear sprung from deep in her gut. She felt she might vomit. “Why didn’t you tell me this was going on? Why didn’t you call me at work?” An image came to her mind of where she’d been earlier, not at her desk but in the lingerie shop for an extended lunch break, turning this way and that before the three-way mirror. “Why didn’t you call my cell?”

  John grabbed his jacket from the coatrack and put his hand on the doorknob. His face looked gray and shuttered, but when he spoke his voice came out without bile and was the more devastating for it. “What difference would that have made?”

  “I could have come home, John.”

  He regarded her.

  “I would have come home early.What?”

  “You haven’t been home in a year.” He said it very quietly. The door closed behind him.

  “Oh, God,” whispered Ricky in the empty space. Her heart hammering violently, she leaned her forehead against the door. “Thank you for noticing that.”

  PART FOUR

  Eight Years Ago

  Paul begins the game out of boredom, out of the blue, forty miles outside of Albany. “Apples or applesauce?”

  His mother, seated directly in front of him, draws a long breath, as if it’s a tricky decision. “Apples.” Within seconds she volleys back: “Raincoat or flip-flops?” She is the one who taught him this game.

  Paul looks out his window. He is five, buckled into his booster seat.The sun on the stretch of blasted rock at the side of the road is so bright it makes his eyes ache.The sky is blue like the public pool. Black puddles glimmer on the highway ahead. Every single one of them vanishes just before they reach it.

  “Raincoat,” he says. And then, “Kangaroo or roach?”

  “Kangaroo. Balloons or pizza?”

  “Balloons.”

  “Why?” asks his father, who is driving.

  “There’s no why in the Or Game, John.” His mother turns around and rolls her eyes at Paul, and then she turns and makes a silly face at his father, too, so he will know she is only teasing.

  His father glances at his mother and frowns.

  It’s the end of August and they are going camping, as they always do, for two weeks. Not real camping in a tent, although Paul has wished for a tent ever since he got to go inside one in his friend Alexi’s backyard. Alexi’s tent was tan and inside it smelled like an old glove, and the sun lit up the cloth walls like the insides of a peach or, he imagined, like the insides of his own cheeks, and there were many zippers and you had to take your shoes off before you could go in.

  At Cabruda Lake they camp in the cabin his mother’s grandparents built. The walls still have bark on them. It has no bathroom, only a privy down a path, full of moths and daddy longlegs. Baths and toothbrushing you do in the lake. The lights are not like at home; his parents turn them on with matches and they make a soft pop and then a hissing noise, and you make them brighter or dimmer with a metal key. Mornings are cold even in summer, and the cabin has a woodstove for heat. Every morning Paul sits by it and drinks his milk while looking into the miniature orange city that burns beneath the logs. His milk comes from the short fridge, which runs on the gas they have to bring with them in a red tank. Water comes from the spigot attached to a tree out front. The spigot’s metal handle is rusty and Paul can’t turn it by himself. The cabin is one big room and two little curtained-off nooks for sleeping, one for him and Biscuit, one for his parents.

  This year is different because he has a new sister who is coming with them. He has never met her. She is fifteen. He told Alexi this and Alexi didn’t believe him. They are picking her up not at her home, which would take them too far out of the way, but in a city near her home, called Albany, which is a fine name, smooth and pale; he imagines tall towers, white as soap, rising steeply from a hillside. The sister’s name is Jessica and she will sleep (he has asked) in her sleeping bag on the couch in the cabin’s main room.

  “What time is it?” asks Paul.

  “Ten twenty-eight,” says his mother.

  “What time did we leave?”

  “Around nine.”

  He figures it out, drawing an invisible clock on the window. “So we’ll be there in thirty-two minutes?” He’d been told the ride from their house to the Albany train station was two hours. Then another three to Cabruda Lake.

  “I don’t know. Something like that, if we don’t hit traffic. I don’t know if we left exactly at nine.”

  “Is Biscuit still sleeping?” asks his father.

  His mother looks over her shoulder. “Biscuit is.”

  Biscuit is fat. She is strapped into her car seat, which is stained with cranberry juice and gritty with graham cracker crumbs. Her face is pink and her wispy hair is curling and damp at the temples, even though she is wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a diaper.Thin red crescents made by her pacifier mark her cheeks, but when his mother tries to slip the pacifier out, Biscuit, without waking, begins sucking on it hard. “Paul, honey, are you hot back there?”

  Paul shakes his head, forgetting she cannot see him.

  “Paul?”

  “I said no.”

  “You didn’t say anything,” says his father, rubbing his fingers down the side of his beard as Paul has seen him do hundreds of times. “You have to answer when someone talks to you.”

  “I did,” says Paul, but in a voice too low for anyone to hear.

  Biscuit has stopped sucking again, her mouth gone slack. They drive another mile. Paul pinches the ring on the pacifier. He holds perfectly still while the trees rush by the window; then, quick as lightning, he plucks it out. At first Biscuit does nothing. Then she smacks her lips. She makes a sound like a creaky gate and scrunches up her face. Here it comes. He can feel the pressure mounting like excitement in his own chest. She kicks out with both legs and, even before she has completely awoken, begins to cry.

  “What’s the matter, little one?” says their mother, her voice all of a sudden musical, pastel, all pinks and blues, a voice she uses often for Biscuit, never for Paul or for his father. Paul studies the back of his father’s head, the slice of profile he can see from where he sits. He is frowning, concentrating, both hands on the wheel.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “Pie-oo.” Biscuit can talk all right, but when she first wakes up she refuses to.

  “We’re still
in the car, sweetheart. Did you have a nice nap?”

  Biscuit grunts.

  “In a little while we’ll stop, and you can get out of your car seat.”

  “Pie-oo.”

  “Oh, her pacifier. Paul, did it fall down under her? Would you please feel around for it?”

  Paul turns toward his sister and grins. One of his bottom teeth is missing.The other one is loose. He wiggles it at her with his tongue. She scowls. He brings out his hand from behind his back.The pacifier dangles from his fingers.

  Biscuit’s eyes widen. “Mm!” she says, one fat heel thrusting forward.

  He is grinning so broadly his cheeks hurt.

  “Did you find it, Paul?”

  He doesn’t answer. Biscuit is making short, furious shrieks, like dog yaps.

  “Give it to her.”

  He circles it slowly in the air, closer and closer, before popping it in her mouth. Instantly she resumes sucking and it is quiet except for the rhythmic, rubbery squeak. “You’re not my only sister,” he whispers. She blinks at him slowly, like a bored queen. Already her lids are growing heavy again, her eyes glazed. “I’m your only brother. I have two sisters. You only have one.” She lets her head rest back against the wing of her car seat. Paul watches without blinking. They are having a staring contest, which he officially declares in his head, starting: now. He is confident; he is the master of staring, and he stares and stares. Sure enough: her eyes fall shut.

  IN THE MIDDLE of their first night at the lake John gets sick, throwing up on the flat stone just outside the cabin door, which is as far as he gets before being overcome. Paul and Biscuit do not wake. Jess does and calls softly from her sleeping bag, spread out on the couch, “What’s the matter? Should I do something?” but Ricky, having followed him out, replies in a low voice through the screen door, “No, it’s all right—go back to sleep.”

  Ricky has never known John to vomit, not in all the years they have been together. She would like to stand behind him and hold his forehead, as she would if he were one of the children, as he has done for her on many occasions during her pregnancies, but he is too tall, even crouched over; she cannot both stand clear of the vomit and reach his brow.