by MB Caschetta
“You can’t unwrap it,” Ma says.
“Why not? I wrapped it. Come on,” she says. “I’ll put it back the way it was. It’s really beautiful.”
Henny and Penny’s ears perk.
Kneeling next to Bo, Alice-James peels back the tape, lifts off the paper, revealing a background black as night with the slightest hint of a cross in the charcoal.
“Ma, get the bus light.”
No one moves.
We are crowded around the head of Bo’s gurney staring at the little drawing.
Ma whispers, “Oh, that’s nice.”
Alice-James stands up abruptly. “You can’t hardly see it without the light on.”
She is wrong. The garlic nearly glows; our eyes are swallowed up in veins and delicate buds: the ordinary, magnificent facts of existence. It’s plain as anything, extraordinary.
“Like a rose,” Ma says softly.
“A heart,” I say.
Bo reaches out as if he might peel a piece of papery skin away, or put the bitter bud in his mouth. Alice-James fumbles around up front, producing light from a smashed plastic fixture on the ceiling. At nearly the same moment, headlights appear up the road, weak at first.
“I told you it wouldn’t be long,” Alice-James shouts.
Grabbing the frame from the seat, she tucks the gift back in its paper, stashing it behind the driver’s chair. Yanking curlers from her hair, she pulls out each tendril. She runs her fingers through the tight blonde curls, pulling them down and shaking them out in a way that makes her look suddenly glamorous.
“Get out there, Ma, and start waving them down.”
She winks at me, applying a few dabs of pink to her mouth. “A little lipstick never hurts.” Producing a flare from the dashboard, she jumps down the steps, the entire bus rocking with her weight. A pink glow fills the bus as she sets the flare off in the street, then comes back in to look for her hairbrush.
Bo’s eyes are closed.
“It’s important,” he says.
“We’re going to get you someplace warm,” I say.
“I’m warmer than I’ve ever been.” He holds out his hand.
“We’re getting you someplace warm, Bo,” Alice-James says, poking her head through the bus doors before heading back outside. “Looks like Ma and me are going with this guy in his car up the road, and we’ll come back with an ambulance.”
Bo grabs my hand, and pulls at me weakly. “No, Ginny,” he says.
Walking to the front, I motion Alice-James off the bus for a private conversation.
She steps back into the cold.
“Go to the wedding,” I say. “Don’t call an ambulance.”
“Are you crazy? You’ll freeze to death.”
I hand Alice-James five twenty-dollar bills from my pocket. “You and Ma go.”
Alice-James looks at the money, but doesn’t take it.
“Tell Andy that Bo couldn’t make it today.”
Ma is standing in the dark behind Alice-James. “That’s the first true thing anyone has spoken all day.”
“Tell him good luck. Bo wished he could say so himself.”
The car waiting on the shoulder of the road honks its horn.
Alice-James stares at me, deflated, her mouth slightly ajar. “We voted.”
“It’s my life, Alice-James.” I walk to the back of the bus, the dogs on my heels, and throw open the emergency doors, pulling the luggage out. Ma stands with her arms open, ready to catch her dress. The dogs bark at her. Ma gets into the car. As the stranger revs the engine, she sticks her head out the passenger seat window. “Let’s go,” she shouts to Alice-James who is still standing in the doorway up front.
“Don’t forget the garlic.” I hand Andy’s gift to Alice-James. She looks at me, puzzled, frowning.
I tell her, “I’m not nothing, you know.”
Finally, the car pulls away. A weak stream of light from the broken plastic fixture and the dying pink glow of Alice-James’s flare are all we have. I sit listening to the panting of the dogs and the sounds of evening, which seem silent in the absence of everyone else.
“Your life went somewhere,” I say, staring out the window.
I look away from Bo and his absolute stillness, picturing Ma and Alice-James in their best clothes. Andy will take Ma in his arms and give her a secret hug in the foyer, telling her she’s the most beautiful girl at the wedding. Alice-James will report back in full detail, her feelings hurt by a dozen different comments, including mine. I think of how it will be when it’s just the three of us—me, Ma, and Alice-James—dividing and redividing our loyalty, making grids out of our lifelines. Three is not enough to make a vote, and some things are beyond our jurisdiction.
I hold my own hand, waiting in the dark for the snow to come at last.
A line
of
e.l. Doctorow
When dreams come true, disappointment always follows. Restriction of the heart, Lorena thinks, sensing that she is the perfect example.
Of course, there was never any question about the house; she’d wanted it. And the husband with a ready-made family; recently, even, a baby of her own. And yet on certain days she cannot seem to breathe.
Twice a week, she manages to distract herself at a gourmet shop, selling overpriced champagne grapes and figs the color of lipstick to people like herself, wealthy.
She’s gotten used to thinking this way.
The job is really just research for starting her own market: Lorena’s Fruit. She has a degree from Smith, for goodness sake, and credits toward her MBA from Yale. Besides, she’s always wanted her own business, though several years ago, when she couldn’t find a decent distributor for her greeting card venture (pine needles on homemade paper), her interest began to wane.
“Find an au pair,” the other Connecticut mothers say. “There’s more tennis that way.”
Lorena does find an au pair, a perfectly suitable one from a decent family in the city, but she does so simply for the challenge, a labored search through haystacks and something to talk about to friends.
Early on a Friday morning, not even ten, she is late picking the girl up at the train station. She’s mad at herself for being disorganized, for being overly eager to see the young woman, whose love affair created a scandal with an assistant professor at Lorena’s own alma mater, perhaps a delightful distraction after all.
Lorena sees the girl on the train platform, where she is standing innocently, overnight bag tucked casually under her arm, as if she’d never even heard of love-gone-wrong. Taking a sharp left into the parking lot, Lorena halts the minivan and lays on the horn.
“Allison?” she says through the open window. The girl is surprisingly young, round-faced and freckled, a swatch of red hair, a turned-up nose. “Sorry we’re late. Joshy slammed his finger in the door.”
“Oh dear,” Allison says. “I hope he’s okay.”
“Indestructible.” From her own rearview mirror, Lorena sizes up the Spencer children as if with a stranger’s eye; they seem vague to her this way, their heads small and gourd-like, easy to harm. “They all are.”
Allison takes a quick glance back at the children, then opens the door.
“Get in,” Lorena says, cheerfully. “Say hello, boys.”
Eric, her husband Babe’s oldest son, is nearing puberty. Soon there’ll be girls to contend with, hormones, and angst. Teetering on the edge of acne, Eric waves a hopeful hand at the new babysitter, lifting out of his seat to get a better look. On his left is Josh, Babe’s youngest son, a boy who reeks of sweat and insecurity, who taps his hands involuntarily against hard surfaces. He slouches in the prized seat by the window, won by virtue of asthma, and twitches through the introduction. In the far seat is Little Jake, drooling peacefully, strapped in, head lolling, half-asleep.
Lorena tries to imagine how Allison might see them. Amoebic? None of Babe’s children have made it unscathed through their respective mileposts of danger: infancy, boyhood, pre-adolescence.
Their thin bodies appear innocent and unassuming.
They spend their days at the mercy of other people: teachers, tutors, babysitters. She watches Josh, another woman’s child, as he continuously raps his knuckles on the window, as if to contain himself, to find some rhythm of calm.
The human cranium, Lorena knows, is not fully formed until age seven. She wonders briefly if that other mother, the inattentive one, or some previous sitter—au pair—is responsible for the boy’s twitch and obsession with computers. Dropped him on his head? Pressed a thumb into his soft spot?
At least it wasn’t her.
Allison fumbles with the seat belt, and Lorena reaches over to help. Her hands flutter like white moths at the girl’s hip, then up to her own mouth, wistfully, as if searching for a source of light.
This visit had been Lorena’s idea. Why not come and see how you like us? And now Lorena is nervous.
Allison smiles with the ease of unflappable youth.
Immediately, Eric starts his inquisition: “Guess how many brothers I have?”
Allison smiles. “Two.”
“Wrong!” Eric crosses his arms over his painfully skinny chest, smirking at Lorena in the rearview. “The answer is one of each! I have a half brother, a whole brother, and a step brother.”
Lorena rolls her eyes emphatically. “His father taught him that.”
“Oh,” Allison says. Lorena sees her look doubtfully at the three children in the back seat, searching for resemblance.
She ploughs headlong through the unasked question. “Eric and Joshy have been with me for quite some time, three years now. Their real mom lives in Tampa. I always tell Babe, if he ever wants a divorce, he’ll have to leave the boys with me. Isn’t that what I tell your father, boys?”
“Yup,” Eric says.
Lorena flicks on the blinker in the middle of a turn.
“Okay,” Allison says, poised and smiling, turning toward Eric. “If Josh is your whole brother, and Baby Jake is your half brother, then who is your step brother?”
“Aaron,” Eric answers eagerly. “He doesn’t live with us anymore. We sent him away to boarding school, right Lorena?”
Lorena laughs. “Aaron is my first born from my first marriage. He has a good heart, really. A little impulsive is all.” For a moment, she considers telling the truth about all the diagnoses from school experts: ADD, AHD, mild Autism, personality adjustment disorder. “I guess you could say he’s had some difficulties along the way, mostly competitive feelings toward Eric and Josh, even Babe. And it was really tough on him when I got pregnant with Baby Jake. It’s hard to blame him, though. He was used to having me all to himself, then all of sudden it was like the Brady Bunch, only not so happy, you know? He lives with his Dad for now out on Block Island.”
Eric leans into the front seat. “My Dad didn’t like Aaron’s attitude.”
She eyes her stepson in the rearview mirror. “Your father can be a little impetuous, himself, Eric.” She laughs again, self-conscious now. “Anyway, our decision to board Aaron at Andover has more to do with his future than anything else.”
“Does Mr. Spencer always take such long business trips?” Allison asks.
Babe is scheduled to stay in Germany through the summer, a brief respite for Lorena, which must feel like an eternity to someone as young as Allison. She seems lost in her dreamy observation of Connecticut through the window, Lorena notices.
“I mean,” Allison says, rephrasing, “how do you do it?”
“Babe’s pretty driven,” Lorena says, “which means he’ll pick up and go halfway around the world if it helps Spencer Enterprises.”
“The Starship Enterprise,” Eric mumbles from the back seat. He crashes several shiny objects, toys, together in front of him, making battle noises.
“I don’t really know how I do it.” Lorena smiles at the windshield. She notices the strange afternoon light, as if a hook of sunlight has pierced through her eyelid, obstructing normal vision. Everything is a blur in the syrupy days of early summer; even the Connecticut pines appear pliable and huddled. “I hire you, I guess.”
The rest of the drive home, Lorena tries to envision Connecticut through fresh eyes. Houses whiz by, surprisingly unattractive, opulent even. When she herself first arrived in Greenwich, there were overwhelming manicured lawns to contend with. “The Emerald City,” she had remarked. The area is woodsy and dim—nothing like what Lorena was used to when she quit her job as a copywriter, married Babe, and moved from Manhattan. That he chose her of all the people in the office still seems amazing to Lorena and sometimes, when she is honest, terrible.
The pine trees—she noticed this right away, nearly first thing—look like poles, about as natural as lampposts, tall and spindly with an awkward triangle of green above the roofs. She’d mentioned it to Babe, asking if Connecticut grew them that way on architectural principle. Back then, the entire new world seemed affected, though now she barely notices.
“I loved Smith,” Lorena says to fill up the silence. “Of course, I graduated in the 80s, which is a long time ago now. What year are you?”
“Class of 1998,” Allison says.
Lorena rests her elbow out the window, enjoying the warm breeze and conversation. She wonders how Allison must see her: Big boned and medium framed? She thinks of herself as moving through the world with an illusion of elegance, a concept that may not translate easily. A Norwegian face distracts from her flaws: square jaw, big gums, short neck. Lorena wonders if her defects are apparent to Allison, whose attention she is having trouble keeping.
“I was a mathematics major,” Lorena offers; “That’s how I know your friend’s mother who recommended you. Mary Gardener Hilton. Her little sister was my roommate. She could talk me into anything. I literally majored in Math because Lizzy Gardener was an Algebra whiz. Can you believe that?”
Allison laughs.
Why am I talking so much? Lorena wonders, but what she says is: “Tempis fugit.”
“Don’t tell me, Lizzy Gardener was good at Latin, too?”
“Absolutely.” Lorena laughs. “The things we did for love.”
An awkward silence unnerves Lorena—perhaps she’s gone too far—perhaps in the 90s women at Smith no longer routinely fall in love with their roommates.
Eric capitalizes on the pause in conversation by leaning into the front seat, between the driver and her passenger.
“Dad turned breakfast into a meal of champions,” he says. “And he made Slinky a national pastime. He was a junior copy writer for the Egg McMuffin, which was before burgers did breakfast.”
“Walking billboard,” says Lorena to Allison. “You know, you’re shorter than I expected.”
Allison blushes.
Lorena draws her shoulders up, concentrates on turning down the gravel road to the Spencer house, and better yet on keeping her mouth shut. Try not to frighten little lambs, she thinks. As they head deep into the familiar shaded lane, Lorena marvels at how quickly she has adjusted to Allison’s presence, a new member of an old family with a tradition of adding and subtracting participants. She is happy to have the girl snap into the space left by Babe, happy to have an added appendage. A new distraction to appreciate.
They pull in the driveway of Babe’s classic farm colonial. Lorena throws the car into park.
“Okay, boys,” Lorena says, “let’s try to make this one last for a change.”
Eric bubbles, “Yeah! We buried the last babysitter in the back yard!”
Lorena takes a deep breath, looking briefly in the mirror. Blue-green eyes gleam back at her; a French braid holds her hair out of her face to reveal just how natural and Connecticut the whole entire world can be. She pulls the key from its ignition.
“Home sweet home,” she says, practically shouting.
At the end of a weekend that includes the pool, a trip to the library, an impromptu stop at the video arcade, food shopping, two trips to the mall, and lunch at a fancy restaurant, Lorena and Allison sit in the kitchen. S
unday evening. Lorena has convinced her to take a morning train home, has been solicitous, flattering even. They slide a movie in the VCR for Eric and Josh and settle Jake in his highchair with a plate of peas and fish sticks. Allison pours them a glass of wine at Lorena’s urging.
“Cheers,” Lorena says, “you made it through your first two days.”
Lorena wonders if she’s being too pushy, but she has enjoyed the girl’s company. She feels alive again, as if somehow she’s forgotten all about friendship with women—not counting the stiff creatures Connecticut grows to mother and marry. Lorena wants real live chatter and lunches, companionship.
After baths and bed, which Allison manages without fight, flood, or tantrum, they sit on the back porch in the dark, stretching their legs over the wicker furniture. The lawn to the back woods is a messy tangle of toys and bikes only visible by the glints of the large New England moon. Inside, the house is also a mess. Florence, the housekeeper, comes again in the morning. Still, surprisingly, Lorena can tell that Allison is comfortable. She feels fine, she tells herself. She’ll work out fine. She has put in a good effort, handled the problems as well as possible with Lorena’s help and without it.
“So what do you think of them?” Lorena sits in patio furniture she’s picked out herself. It is white wicker with a pillow of soft mauve.
“You’ve got a great crew.”
“They’re pretty good kids,” Lorena says. “Though Joshy has real problems.”
Allison nods.
Lorena is always slightly shocked when anyone acknowledges her stepson’s issues. She often feels like reminding everyone in the room that he’s not her kid. “I don’t know what to do about it. I try to reassure him. He misses his mom, you know. He was attached to her. It’s terrible. The woman doesn’t even call on his birthday. He seems interested in you, though. That was a surprise. How was he, today?”
“Okay, I think, though there was an incident at the pool.” Allison pauses to crunch absently on a carrot. “Screaming at the top of his lungs.”
Lorena feels a sweet terror rising in her throat, then realizes it is just the effect of the wine warming her through. She pours a second glass. “What happened?”