Harold stares at you from the safety of his mother’s hip. You give him a weak smile, which seems to interest him for a minute, but then he looks past you, checks out the action happening at your back: his grandmother straightening your father’s tie. The minute he sees your father, he holds out his arms and kicks his legs.
“Not now, Harold! You’ll get spit-up all over Pop’s suit.” Cynthia wipes his mouth with the diaper she’s draped over her shoulder.
Pop? That’s a new one.
“Can you go any slower, Wally?” Pat yells down the stairs, which prompts Wally to do exactly that, lifting his leg by microscopic degrees, as if trying to free it from quicksand.
“Oh, brother,” breathes Pat.
Franz opens the heavy courthouse door. “Let’s just go,” he says. “He’ll catch up.” He ushers Pat in, and Cynthia follows, pausing briefly to let Franz tickle Harold under the chin, which makes him laugh. You know that you should find this endearing—heartwarming, even—but honestly, Harold was a lot easier to love when he was in Cynthia’s belly, when he wasn’t wriggling his way into your family.
Everyone has made a point to tell you what a good baby Harold is, how he almost never cries, but it seems today is the exception. The minute the party steps in front of the judge, Harold’s lower lip pokes out, his chin trembles, and a wail escapes from his lungs that could tie a knot in any woman’s fallopian tubes. The judge tries to go on with things for a while, but before long, the cries have escalated to a point that they can’t be ignored. He folds his book closed and waits for some semblance of peace to resume.
“Give him here,” says Franz, holding out his arms. As soon as Harold is in them, he quiets down. For the rest of the brief ceremony, Franz holds Harold’s back against his chest, keeps a firm hand under his bottom, and softly clucks into his ear while Harold chews on Patricia’s outstretched finger. When it is time to kiss the bride, Franz twists Harold over to the side and leans forward, and Patricia hops up on her toes and meets your father’s mouth with her own. The kiss is brief and tidy, no more than a brushing of the lips.
Is your father’s marriage to Pat strictly one of convenience? You will never be able to answer this question with complete confidence—it is impossible to know what really exists between two people—but it does serve many practical needs. Pat gets her daughter’s family right where she wants them: close, but not underfoot. On top of that, she gets a man who makes her life a little easier, who knows he is lucky to have her and acts like it. In return, your father gets economic security; he gets to keep his house, even if he doesn’t get to live in it anymore. Sure, taking on the household responsibilities while Pat earns the paycheck requires some pride swallowing, but he probably thinks it’s better his wife pay the bills than his daughter (which, let’s be honest, is convenient for you, too). This probably does not seem like enough to a young woman with her whole life ahead of her, but in time, you will come to appreciate the value of noises in the home, a warm body in the bed.
• • •
After a celebratory lunch comes the business of moving. Everyone’s boxes are shuffled over to their respective new homes easily enough. The real job will be hauling off Franz’s old couch, which has seen better days. It is slated for donation to the church and needs to be loaded on the back of Wally’s truck and carted over before the office locks up at six. This will make room for the new one that is waiting for Cynthia and Wally at the furniture store. The menfolk prepare to tackle this chore, but you insist on taking over your father’s role.
“It’s your honeymoon!” you argue.
There’s that, and sure, there’s a little residual concern for his health packed into your reasoning. The memory of him hunched over on the sidewalk, struggling for air, is still fresh. It will also keep your mind off Sam, who has been running in the background of your thoughts all day.
Your father scratches his head and says, “I don’t know. It’s pretty heavy.”
He’s right—on top of being ugly, that old couch is a monster—but obviously he doesn’t realize whom he’s talking to, so you flex a bicep to remind him. “I think I can manage.”
All of the other players have stepped back and let the tug-of-war go on without them. None of them are sure what their role in this discussion should be, or if they even have a role. After all, you’ve only been a family for, what, five hours now? The first one to step forward is, to your great surprise, Wally. Even stranger: he takes your side.
“Come on, Franz. We watched her pick up a grown man last night and throw him on the ground. Surely she can handle one end of the couch.”
“Wally,” says Cynthia, a note of caution in her tone. But this warning comes too late: Franz is ready to throw in the towel. He shrugs his shoulders and says, “Okay. If you think you can handle it. We’ll have dinner ready for you when you’re done.”
After they head next door, Cynthia goes into her new bedroom to put the baby down for his afternoon nap, leaving you in the living room with your new brother-in-law and advocate.
“I guess we better get to work,” he says.
Getting the couch into the truck is physically demanding work, but coordinating the task with Wally goes smoothly enough, with none of the tawdry once-overs from your last encounter. Perhaps he’s not such a bad guy. Ms. Riley may consider him trouble, but you know a thing or two about heels, and you are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Once the couch is roped down, the great mass of it weighing down the bed of the truck, Wally motions for you to get in. You’ve already got the door open and a foot on the well when a voice calls out to you.
“Leonie, stay here,” the voice says. “I’ll go.”
It’s Cynthia. She’s standing on the curb in a pair of dungarees and saddle oxfords, her hands on her hips.
Wally laughs. “You?”
“Why not me? The baby’s down. Leonie can stay here, keep an eye on Harold, visit with her dad a little more. She won’t be here long, you know.”
“Think about it, Cynthia.” He starts counting on his fingers. “We still have to get this thing out of the truck—”
“I know. I can do it.”
“You’re nuts,” Wally counters. “Look at Leonie and look at yourself. Now, which one of you do you really think ought to go with me?”
Cynthia says, “Why don’t we let Leonie decide?”
How is it that you have managed to get yourself tangled up in another one of Cynthia’s love spats? Truth be told, neither option—(a) go with Wally, or (b) watch the baby—is terribly appealing. Harold is probably harder to handle than Wally. Sure, he’s out for the count now, but what if he wakes up and needs something? You know, baby stuff: a bottle, a clean diaper. You can swing a little domesticity when you have to, but this? This is way out of your league. Still, you know whose side you want to be on, which one of them is the real force to be reckoned with, so you choose accordingly.
• • •
You should have opted for moving. Dealing with Cynthia’s objections would have been preferable to the sweat you start working up fifteen short minutes after they leave, when Harold begins crying his eyes out.
He is a good baby. What a crock.
How does your father do it every day? You decide to find out and head next door, honeymoon be damned. Before you can knock, the door swings open and Franz appears. It is more than a little strange seeing your father in the Rileys’ home—his home now.
“I was on my way,” he says. “I could hear him through the walls. But what are you doing here? I just heard the truck pull off.”
“Cynthia went with Wally. I got put on baby duty.”
He bends over, tickles Harold’s chin. “How’s that working out?”
Harold answers for you by stretching his arms toward your father and shrieking like an injured cat. “I need help,” you say.
“Come on, turnip.” Franz lifts
the baby out of your arms, drapes him over his shoulder. “It’s okay. Pop is here.”
That’s all it takes. Within seconds, Harold’s cries soften into a whimper. You thought this would bring relief. Instead, you feel a stab of possessiveness that puts you even more on edge.
For the next two hours, you struggle to make yourself useful, to no avail. First, your offers to help Patricia unload boxes and find places for your father’s things are gently rebuffed. This is her territory; these are her decisions. Meanwhile, your father single-handedly cares for all of Harold’s needs, which includes a diaper change, a warm bottle, and a lullaby that puts him soundly to sleep, releasing Franz long enough to assemble a meatloaf and pop it in the oven. All of this seems a monumental effort of organization, patience, and persistence, but every time you ask what you can do, your father says, “I’ve got it under control!”
“There must be something,” you say. “I’m just sitting here while you two swirl around me.”
“Here,” says Patricia, dragging a couple of boxes into the living room. “Tell me what to do with these things.”
The first box contains the flotsam and jetsam of Leonie Putzkammer: a stack of paperbacks, ribbons signifying various achievements, yearbooks, random school supplies, and the records you didn’t take to Florida when you took the record player. “Let’s see what you have there,” says Franz, and you hand him a pyramid of 45s and 78s. Everything else is just odds and ends from your childhood, and a few of your mother’s things, too, possessions—not quite trash but not quite treasures, either—that were swept into the dustiest corners of trunks, drawers, and cabinets, where they’d remained for years, decades, untouched and unneeded.
None of this stuff has any real purpose for you anymore, nor any memory or emotion attached to it, but it frightens you to think of it gone forever. What you have wanted more than anything was change, to shed this old life, but the idea that the old life would no longer be waiting here for you is hard to accept.
The second box is full to the brim with more of the same. Unsure of what else to do, you sift through it and assemble a small pile of things that appear precious and compact enough to fit in your suitcase: costume brooches you can’t remember your mother wearing, photos with water spots on half of her face, a plastic Kewpie doll and baby’s blanket that could only have belonged to you, a silk scarf you can tie over your head the next time you ride in Sam’s convertible. But then, at the very bottom, under all those layers, you spot the wide brown O of the brim on an upside-down hat. You try not to get too excited. So far, it is just a hat. But when you remove the balls of yarn from its crown and pull it out, you can see that this is it: the Musette, as perfect as your memory of it. I doubt you even realized you were looking for it, but of course you were. You place the hat on your head and put everything else back in the void of the box. There is no need to fake sentimentality for the other stuff when you have the one true thing.
Harold begins to stir. “Right on time,” says Franz. With speed and efficiency you can barely believe, he changes the baby’s diaper and scoops him out of the bassinet. “Have I got just the thing for you,” he says. He slips one of the 45s out of its sleeve and places it on the turntable: Patti Page. “Not bad, huh?”
Harold certainly seems to agree. Franz sings along with the record and twirls him around the room in their well-rehearsed waltz. As he does, the whimpers become hiccups, and then giggles. Pat steps into the doorway and leans against its frame, a hand over her collarbone, a thankful smile on her face. And just how do you fit into this picture? It’s not clear yet. You were not prepared for your usual roles, however undesirable they might have been, to be so quickly and totally taken over. Amazing, isn’t it? You may be skilled in the arts of theater and adaptation, but you have no idea what character to play.
• • •
Cynthia, on the other hand, has a few suggestions.
“I hurt all over,” she says upon her return. “Do you think you could help Wally unload?” Wally, acting the slowpoke again, gets out of the truck just in time to hear this and rolls his eyes, but you say, “Sure thing, Cynthia,” eager to do something other than take up space. Besides, the work is easy enough, and dinner is all the better for having made yourself useful. During the meal, she leans over and whispers, “Why don’t you come camp out on our couch tonight? Let them have the place to themselves.”
Makes sense to you. It is your father’s honeymoon, after all, and it hasn’t been much of one so far. But Cynthia has an ulterior motive.
“Leonie,” she says later, helping you stretch last night’s sheets over her new couch, “do you think you could do one more thing for me?”
“Maybe.” You’ve been siblings less than a day and already she’s maxed out a year’s worth of favors.
“Do you think maybe Harold could stay out here with you tonight?” She bats her eyelashes a little. “It would give me and Wally a little . . . you know. Privacy.”
Privacy? How much privacy could they really expect with you in the adjacent room? You peek down into the bassinet, which, for reasons that are now clear to you, has been rolled into the living room and parked by the couch. There he is: the little turnip himself. He’s sleeping on his stomach, his fist pressed against his mouth. You have already spent much more time with Harold than you care to. But Cynthia, master of getting her way, senses your hesitation and is ready with her defense.
“He’s a really good baby. Probably sleep right through the night. And if he doesn’t, well, I’ll run right out. You won’t have to do a thing. You don’t mind, do you, Sis?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” you say. “I didn’t do so great with him earlier.”
“Please, Leonie.” This time, all the honey has dropped out of her voice. There is something urgent in her plea. This isn’t Cynthia the Snake Charmer. This is Cynthia the Desperate. “We need this.”
They need something, all right. Life is a grind: long hours at work, endless chores, sleepless nights. Resentments are building. For the next few years, every dispatch from home will describe the destruction of their marriage: she will spend too much money, his eye will wander. Surviving these disasters will take more than anything you or I can give. Still, it is a call for help, one you cannot ignore. You look up at the ceiling and sigh, resigned. “He can stay.”
“You’re the best,” she says, throwing her arms briefly around your neck before skipping into the bedroom.
Wally doesn’t follow immediately behind her. Instead, he stands in the doorway for a spell, staring at you with something of a dumb grin. Maybe the first impression you formed of him was the right one. You understand that people will make assumptions about you based on your figure, but whatever Wally is reading into it is far from any message you are trying to send. For the first time in a long time, you can sympathize with Sam’s need to run interference when he can.
For a minute, it seems like Wally might say something, but before he can, Cynthia calls, “Wally, come on!” It hurts to hear her hit that same note of desperation, and to see the way he turns his eyes away from you toward the bedroom before he waves his good-night and disappears, but at least it is over and, finally, you can be alone. Sort of.
After the door is closed and the mattress springs begin to groan, you stretch out on the couch and attempt to ignore the sounds of their efforts by flipping through the stack of magazines on the coffee table. They’re mostly Wally’s magazines: Motor Trend, Hot Rod, Popular Mechanics, Sports Illustrated. Nothing you care to read. You should call Sam soon, but you won’t tonight. What you really need is sleep. That is the only way to put an end to this day, to keep your mind from drifting in unpleasant directions, like whether a certain other couple is enjoying marital relations this evening.
Soon the cries of an infant summon you to duty. Harold. For all of my life, I have tried to love that little turnip. I have done auntly things. When he came to vis
it in the summer, I filled the pantry with indulgent snacks—MoonPies, Slim Jims, pork rinds, cheese curls, Coca-Cola in glass bottles, and, to go with the Cokes, bags of Tom’s peanuts—and let him eat to his heart’s content. The rest of the year, I sent cards on birthdays and holidays with crisp bills tucked inside; little outfits and various sports paraphernalia; posters, albums, and other memorabilia autographed by rockabilly and country-western stars. And I do love Harold. Perhaps it has not been in the natural, innate way that Franz did, but over time, I found my own way. This is all anyone can ask of family: that they try their damnedest to act like one. And that’s exactly what you do when you lift Harold out of his bassinet, hold him against you—one hand on his back, the other under his bulky bottom—walk him over to the radio, and turn it on: not so loud as to disturb anyone, but loud enough to dull the sounds coming from the bedroom, loud enough to soothe the crying infant. That’s what you’re doing when you hold his head against your chest and let out a long, low shhhhhhhhhh; when you begin to sway, the way your father did with him earlier, the way he surely must have done with you once upon a time. That’s what you’re doing when you tuck your resentment away, stroke his head while his cries subside, turning into little hiccups, and whisper, “There, there. There, there.”
TWENTY-ONE
The following afternoon, after taking the morning train to DC and checking into your hotel room, you gear up in ring attire, wrap your coat around yourself as tightly as possible, and take the elevator to the lobby, where a legion of platinum-haired ladies in trench coats is waiting for you. In another one of his half-inspired, half-cockamamie stunts, Sal Costantini asked Vicky Darnell to assemble all the local Gorgeous Girls for a photograph he can use to publicize tomorrow’s big event: your grudge match with Screaming Mimi Hollander.
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