by Robyn Carr
Ten children. Fourteen adults. Mattie, on her feet the whole time, getting some trouble from the daughters-in-law about how hard she worked. They called her Mother, but her own children, to the last, called her Ma. It was an experience in itself, hearing an orthodontist say, “Ma, hey, Ma—we have any beer to go with this ball game?” And the kids called her Gram, like a metric measurement, nothing so precious or pretentious as Mimi or Grandmother. Everyone called their dad and grandfather Big Mike, and of course they called the bigger Mike, Little Mike.
Chris should not have bothered to worry about what they would ask her. They talked so much, all of them, that they could easily have ignored her presence, except that they included her quite naturally.
“The prints?” Margie howled. “Did Little Mike pretend he had something to do with the McKnights? What a hoot! He didn’t even buy the coasters! I did the house. He wouldn’t let me upstairs, though. I bet he doesn’t even have a shower curtain.”
“I have a shower curtain, brat.”
“Oh, yeah? What color?”
“Never mind the color. You don’t need to know the color. I’m not helpless.”
“I bet it’s brown. Or green. Come on, is it green?”
“It’s red,” he supplied.
Margie laughed and held her big belly. “Red? In a blue bathroom?”
“It looks good. It looks fine. Tell her, Chris. Doesn’t it look fine?”
Chris had a vision of them—six of them born within ten years—growing up here, in this four-bedroom, one-bathroom house, fighting or laughing, yelling all the time, the way their kids were doing.
Mattie managed them all. She placed them where she thought they would be most comfortable. She set up a card table and put children with coloring books there, at the end of the living room where her boys—her men—watched the game, so that arguments over crayons could blend with shouts over a touchdown. The women stayed around the dining room and kitchen, talking about their houses, their kids, their work. That was where Chris felt she belonged, yet didn’t belong. The bigger kids were in the garage-converted-to-a-family-room with games. The family room had been added, Chris learned, after the first three of Mattie and Big Mike’s kids had left home.
Carrie had been intimidated at first. She held back, but Maureen swept her in with her five- and three-year-old. Soon Carrie was playing hard, behaving like a normal child rather than a whiz kid. And Kyle talked. Carrie was too busy to speak to him, so he spoke to the others, snatched toys away and alternately offered them, negotiating his terms. Here, among so many Cavanaughs, no one looked askance at the things children did, whether sweet or mean.
The small house became hot, close, with so many bodies that Chris felt at once trapped yet never more alive. They touched, this family, hardly ever speaking without hands on one another. Even the men. Except, perhaps, Big Mike, who sank into the role of patriarch, letting them come to him. The children came readily and often. “Big Mike, will you get this apart?” “Big Mike, what color is this color? Is this color red or rose?” They climbed on him, asked of him, sought comfort from him. He attempted to look a little aloof, a little bored, but he wiped four noses with his own old hankie.
Chris, who had been afraid they would be suspicious of her, saw Big Mike draw Carrie in, and she had to look away before she wept with longing. Carrie, who had watched all the other children take their minor accomplishments and miseries to their Big Mike, had approached him holding a picture torn from a coloring book. She stared at him; he had a newspaper in his lap, which seemed natural for him, even with his entire, huge family around him. As if he might read it, hide behind it, while they carried on their intimate family relations.
“Does Big Mike mean Grandpa?” Carrie asked him.
“Around here,” he said, looking at her over his glasses.
“I don’t have any Grandpa. Or any Big Mike.”
He stared at her for a long, gloomy second. Then he said, “You’d better come up on my lap, then.”
She went very easily, as if she had climbed onto that lap many times before. Together they looked at the picture she had colored. As if she was one of them. With so many, there were no favorites. Or they were all favorites.
It took three tables for the Thanksgiving meal: the dining-room table, fully extended, pockmarked and burned from many such dinners; the kitchen table for the smallest children, where their spills would create fewer problems; and two card tables in the family room for the not-so-small children. Christopher and Little Mike took sides against Tommy and Clyde in an argument over unions. Rick and Margie tried to convince Big Mike about some investments that would yield him more from his retirement, even if there was a risk. It was perfectly clear that Big Mike had no concept of what they were suggesting, would not change anything about his retirement but loved their frustrated interference.
Watching them, Chris ached. She wanted to share with them the way they shared with one another—advice, arguments, concern, love. It was a family so tight, so enmeshed, so interdependent—original Cavanaughs and in-laws alike—that there was barely enough autonomy here to fit a gasp of surprise into. But no one seemed to mind. Not at all.
She wondered how they had done it, how so many people could achieve this kind of intimacy. But their closeness, so involved and intense, seemed to be a thing they simply had, not a thing they strived for. It was too effortless to be contrived.
Through snatches of conversation and questions freely answered she had figured out who was responsible for whom. Christopher had gone to college on a football scholarship. Dental school had been made possible through loans Little Mike, probably a young widower by then, had cosigned. Matt had borrowed for college with brothers cosigning, then Christopher had paid for nursing school for Maureen. Tommy had gone to school on Little Mike’s and Christopher’s money, and Big Mike and Mattie were able to manage for Margie. They had all done it together. Whoever had, gave. Whoever needed, took.
On the buffet were the pictures. A few studio portraits, six wedding couples in tuxedos and lace—yes, Joanie and Mike, too—but mostly school photos in their traditional tacky cardboard frames. And there was Joanie and Shelly, the same picture Mike had on his desktop, only larger. The young mother, the little blond angel.
All things considered, she thought, the Cavanaugh family had held together pretty well, lost little compared to what they had. The Palmers had been a family of four, after all, and had lost two, leaving the two survivors estranged. Half gone, half broken. Still, Chris felt a twinge of despair over Mike’s losses.
Mike. He seemed to need little. Chris had been surrounded by ambitious people: her father, her scheming husband, her aunt Flo. Her mother alone had loved her gently. For a man to be content with simple things—some work, some play, some family, some privacy and some companionship—seemed to Chris to be of the highest virtue. He did not seem to long for easy money so much as comfort he had earned. Nothing too fancy, nothing too complex, nothing too frivolous.
The Cavanaughs had no idea how different she was, had no idea of her secluded, privileged childhood. She had gone to Tibet when she was fourteen, for heaven’s sake. She had had none of what they had and probably much of what they longed for. Despite the differences, though, they did not allow her to remain an outsider. They drew her in, delighted to have an audience.
“So, the big shot, Chris, says to me, ‘If you go down the clothes chute, I’ll go, too. I’ve already done it three times,’ he says. And he says, ‘Come on, Tommy, you’re skinny, you won’t get stuck. Chicken?’ And of course I didn’t get stuck, but the big shot, who had never—I mean never done it himself, got stuck. And I had to go to the church, where Ma was doing volunteer work with the League women, and get her and bring her home to try and unstick him from the clothes chute.”
“Yeah, sure. As I remember, you called me the chicken and said you’d tell about the names I’d carved in the dresser top, under the doily….”
“And how do you s’pose he got out?
You think Ma got him out, Chrissie?” Tommy went on. “Oh, no, nothing so nice and neat as that. Ma had a fit, and I thought she was going to die of a heart attack, because the big shot had turned his head inside the clothes chute and couldn’t turn it back.”
“I called the police,” Mattie said. “What could I do but call the police?”
“You shoulda called the undertaker,” Big Mike said.
“Almost had to after you got home,” Little Mike said.
They had to tear out the wall to get Chris out of the clothes chute. When Big Mike got home and the wall had been torn out, it was almost murder. But that was nothing compared to the time Little Mike was kissing his girl—Joanie, probably—in the front seat of his car in her driveway, thought he had his foot on the brake when it was on the gas and plowed through her dad’s garage door and into his car.
The banter continued throughout the meal, through cakes and pies and ice cream and coffee, engulfing Chris, making her laugh, making her forget herself.
Preparing to leave the Cavanaugh house, however, stirred up her original anxieties. In this intimate, nosy family where everyone minded everyone’s business but their own, wouldn’t someone mention the new housekeeping arrangement Little Mike had introduced into his life? She fairly shivered with nerves as she cloaked her children for the trip back to Mike’s house.
“Goodbye, God bless you, go to Mass. Are you going to Mass?” Mattie quizzed her brood as they departed from the Thanksgiving gathering.
“Yes, Ma,” each of them said. Even Mike.
Chris wondered what Mattie was going to say to her. Go to Mass, perhaps? Are you Catholic? Where, exactly, do you sleep?
“You come again sometime, Chrissie,” Mattie said. “And the kids. Don’t make them be too good, now. They’re good enough, those kids.”
“I won’t. I mean, yes, they are. Thank you. Very much. It was lots of fun.”
Big Mike said to Carrie, “Take care of that dog, now. You make Creeps behave himself.”
“Cheeks.” She giggled. “I keep telling you his name is Cheeks.”
“I know, I know. Creeps. Good name for that dog.”
During the quiet drive back to Mike’s house, with the kids nodding off in the backseat, Chris knew what was going to happen later. She wanted him. She wanted to be part of something again.
She put her good-enough, happy, exhausted children into the twin beds in the fireman’s house. They went to sleep instantly, but she waited a moment to be certain. She tried to warn herself about the danger of getting more deeply involved with this man, but she was drunk on family, on hope and life and pleasure. Lonely, weary, needy. A little afraid, but not afraid enough. All her alarms were malfunctioning; she could not summon the least ping of warning. She couldn’t remember a time in her life, even way back when she had had a family of her own, that she had felt this secure. Mike’s embrace was so wide. Had he known, she wondered, that by taking her to where he had come from, she would find the surety and peace of mind she needed to touch him, hold him, invite him in?
Downstairs, the house was quiet. A light was still on in the kitchen, but Mike was sitting in the living room, on the couch, in the dark. Waiting. He had known. Or hoped.
It would be a holiday from real life for them both, Chris decided. For just a little while there would be no tangled, complicated pasts for either of them. Nor need they consider their uncertain futures.
She went to the couch, knelt beside him, put her arms around his neck, kissed his lips. She meant for it to be light, preliminary, but he had little patience. He was a man, as he had said, who didn’t think for a long time about things but simply did them when they were right.
“Oh, God, oh, Chrissie.”
The arms that pulled her close were so caring. Powerful, caring, needing arms; this was the embrace she had wanted to fall into, to disappear within, where she would feel forever loved. His mouth, hard in wanting, covered hers with such heat that she felt wild inside.
“Mike,” she whispered against his open mouth. “Mike.”
They couldn’t simply kiss for a while first, Chris realized, as if on a date. She lived in his house; she had come to him and put her arms around his neck. It was not a seduction and could not be misconstrued as one. It was surrender. Until now they had both reined in their desires, knowing it without speaking of it, until they were ready for all of each other. She would not have played with his delicate restraint; she wouldn’t lean toward him, inviting, until she was prepared to take him into her body, and this unspoken fact was understood by them both. That was why his hands were fast and greedy under her blouse, her bra.
“I want to touch you,” he said. “Every part of you. Every part.”
His hands on her were desperate yet considerate as he squeezed her small breasts. He held her waist, his thumbs and fingers almost meeting. He pulled her onto his lap, across him, and her hands worked on his shirt, tugging open buttons, as frantic as his hands but less careful.
One of his big hands went under her, between her legs, his palm flush against her, pushing, rubbing. She wished she had come to him naked, saving time. Beneath her thighs and buttocks she felt him grow; she ached so deeply, wanted so much to be full of him, full of passion and love.
He lifted her. He carried her. She had never before been carried to bed. With her arms around him she kissed his neck, licking in the taste of him, floating in his arms up the stairs. As they approached his bedroom she lifted her head, glancing anxiously toward the bedroom where the children slept.
“Mike?” she whispered.
“We’ll close the door,” he said, entering and doing so.
They tumbled onto the bed together, their hands moving wildly over each other, struggling with clothing, desperate to get it out of the way.
“Do you want me to use something?” he asked her.
“Can you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Sure.” But he didn’t stop kissing her or pulling at her clothing. He tugged at her jeans, her underwear, burying his head in her breasts, her belly, kissing, licking. She found the hard knot of his erection and unfolded him, rubbing him through his underwear, then beneath. He moaned. Then her jeans were gone, her legs kicking them away. Her panties flew off in pursuit. She tugged down his shorts, and he sprang out into her hand, large and hot and impatient. She folded her hands around him. She opened herself.
Mike rolled away a little, jerking open the drawer by the bed, retrieving a hard-to-open cellophane packet. “I can’t wait. I can’t wait, Chris.”
“Me, either,” she admitted, taking it from him and using her teeth to open it. “Is this ten years old?”
“Four days. Ahhh.”
“You knew?”
“I don’t think about things too much,” he said, rising above her, sheathed, waiting.
“Don’t think now,” she whispered.
He pressed himself in, slowly, very slowly. Then, lowering his head slightly, he tongued her nipple. She locked her fingers together behind his head, holding him to her, and it happened. That fast. That wildly fast. Almost without motion, almost without any movement at all. She felt a pulsing heat and could not tell his from hers. Five minutes, maybe less. The moment they came together, tightly fitted to each other, wham. Incredible.
“That,” she said when she caught her breath, “is almost embarrassing.”
“Yeah? Well, what did you expect? A warm-up game?”
“Warm-up game?” She laughed.
“To tell the truth, I’m lucky I got up the stairs.”
“You bought rubbers,” she said, her tone accusing when it should have been grateful.
“Yeah,” he said. “The eternal optimist.”
“All along, you knew we would? You wanted to on that first night you invited me to your house?”
“Nope. Oh, wanted to, yeah, just about right away, but I didn’t offer you the house because of that. And I didn’t buy the condoms because I wanted to or because I knew we would. I bought them beca
use things are complicated enough. And because if we got it into our heads we were going to, I didn’t want you to say no at the last minute because there wasn’t anything. So, what a Boy Scout, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, snuggling into the crook of his arm, not really wanting to discuss complications and what-ifs tonight. She had started to think responsible behavior was a thing of the past. Then Mike. “Thanks. I don’t need any more problems.”
“Who does? So, what do you need, Chrissie? Tell Little Mike.”
“Ohhhh,” she moaned, a laugh trailing on the end. “Little Mike…now maybe.”
That was the sex and the brief conversation afterward. Then came the lovemaking, which was, like Mike, generous and serious and very physical. As with all things he did, he used earnestness and strength. He had power and control but was so soft and loving that Chris couldn’t tell whether she was giving or taking.
She hadn’t ever thought of herself as a little woman before this night. His hands turned her so deftly, so artistically, that she felt small, lightweight, almost fluid. And cared for, always cared for, as this man she had come to think of as quiet, a man of few words, spoke to her, comfortable with words that usually embarrassed people. “Like that?” he whispered to her. “Here?”
“Now?” Or in giving her instructions. “Yes, here. Like this. Please, here.”
He took his time. She, to her surprise, did not have nearly the stamina or patience he had. When she frantically begged, desperately squirmed, tried to stop his playing around and pull him into her, she could feel the smile on his lips against hers, and he said, “Okay, baby, okay. This is for you, and you owe me one.”