“It’s dumb,” she conceded. “It’s such a dumb thing to be fighting about.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m apologizing. That was me apologizing for bringing it up.”
“Ah, I missed that. Have fun at Jennifer’s.”
He went off in pursuit of the kids without looking at her again. She carefully removed the rest of the knives from the dishwasher before following him into the den. She stood in the doorway and observed. Matt was on the couch with Wyatt’s socked feet in his lap. Eli, who she had just laboriously bathed, was absorbing his father’s postworkout sweat. She took a deep breath. Let it go, she told herself. Drop it, drop it, drop it. She exhaled louder than she intended to, with a bovine hum, and Matt looked up at her.
She smiled at him, trying, really. Invite me over, she willed. She could ditch the Shady Oaks moms, join her boys and snuggle and be snuggled and they could have an extremely photogenic family evening that concluded spiritedly with a romantic reunion with Matt, possibly some kind of avant-garde union in an obscure place—the kitchen table?—after the kids were in bed. She could see it vividly, could feel the pleasurable dampness of her husband’s Double Door shirt and the smooth, electric cool of her sons’ little feet and the sleepy complacency of a night in with your sedate young children, watching a show where hamsters wore baseball hats while the man you loved traced lines up and down your spine with his fingertips. They could find themselves again, get back on track, erase some of the tension of the previous months. All he had to do was smile back; all he had to say was Get over here, darlin’.
Instead he looked confused. “Are you still mad?” he asked.
“Am I—?” She stopped, hurt. “No.”
“You look mad.”
“I was smiling at you.”
“Mama, I can’t hear,” Wyatt interjected politely.
She pressed her lips together. “Forget it,” she said, and the crack between them widened further, the Matt-shaped hole grew larger, and another day would go by with them failing to connect. I’m lost, she wanted to say. Help me, Matty; help me, help me. She wanted to tell him that the accretion of these kinds of days could be fatal to a marriage. She wanted to tell him that the entire point of being married was so neither party would ever have to go through times like these alone. She wanted to tell her husband that she missed him a lot, but that she missed herself even more.
“I’ll see you guys in the morning,” she said instead.
Driving to Jennifer Goldstein-Mayer’s, she started feeling anxious, the kind of anxiety she could feel burning through her sternum and lifting the hair on her arms. She became suddenly aware of the terrifying responsibility of driving a car, navigating two tons of steel at forty miles an hour, how easy it would be to turn the wheel a little and end up wrapped around an elm tree or floating in Lake Michigan. The thought startled her so much that she missed the light turning green, causing the car behind her to honk, which made her even more anxious, and so she flipped on her blinker and turned onto a side street, parked the car, rested her forehead on the steering wheel.
This kind of anxiety was disturbingly familiar to her. She tried to slow her breaths. She’d never been good at relaxation exercises; in yoga classes, during corpse pose, her mind always raced wildly from her grocery list to the deadline for summer camp registration to whether or not her sports bra was giving her back fat. Now she felt as though her lungs weren’t filling completely with air, like she had to yawn but couldn’t quite finish. This was supposed to be a fun night out for her, a foray back into the Shady Oaks social set, pinotage and petty gossip, but the more she fixated on not being able to take a full breath, the harder it became, and she also couldn’t stop thinking of her car, barreling down McCormick Boulevard; how quickly things could change; how easily things could end. She rolled down her window and tried to remember the rules of nadi shodhana breathing, which nostril was supposed to be the calming one. Who knew what would come tumbling out of her in a routine Shady Oaks conversation? I’m celibate now! And a pathological liar! And prone to panic spirals!
She had nowhere to go—not back home, where her husband didn’t recognize her, and not to the opulent Goldstein-Mayer residence, where her friends weren’t really her friends, and not to her parents, or her sisters, because she’d isolated herself from them, too, hadn’t she, by her failure to embrace Jonah, the boy who’d lived inside her and whom she was never supposed to see again. She felt like a teenager, not the teenager she’d actually been—the one who was bright-eyed and forward-looking, the one who brushed her hair seventy-five times each night and volunteered on the weekends at the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio—but like an average teenager, aimless and contrarian and confused. It astounded her now, how uncomplicated her life used to be, a mere six years ago: jogs along the lakefront with her husband, their charming Edgewater apartment, litigating cases against major and victimless corporations, earning more money than she knew was possible for an individual person to make, climbing dutifully up the ladder. But then Wyatt had come along, and his arrival was accompanied by a new darkness, and she couldn’t, at the time, justify abandoning another child.
She texted without being fully conscious of doing so, an effortless lie: E is projectile vomiting; have to take a rain check; cheersing you in spirit! She sent a vague heavenward plea that her son would enjoy his night with his dad and not be karmically hindered by her using him as a pawn in her social avoidance. Jennifer fired back a message right away, a sad face alongside a festive champagne emoji.
1993
Liza woke with a panicky feeling, that few-second twilight stage where you weren’t sure whether or not you were dreaming. But then she felt the hot wetness, already turning cool on the pilled fabric of her Sleeping Beauty nightgown. She had been bumped up the totem pole of their family, which was not nearly as fun as it sounded. When her mom had returned home from the hospital with the new baby—her mom, who seemed smaller, slower, sleepier now—the bed-wetting started to happen, like clockwork, every night. She squirmed. The house was quiet, the baby sleeping and thus her mother sleeping—a rarity, she knew, judging by how her mom sometimes poured orange juice in their cereal or milk in the dog’s bowl, how she packed them lunches that consisted of an apple and a pudding cup, sandwiches forgotten on the counter or unmade entirely. She slipped from her bed, holding the wet nightgown away from her body, and tiptoed into her parents’ room.
Her mom was sleeping so soundly that Liza had a momentary worry that she was dead. She inched over and watched, looking for signs of life. Her dad wasn’t in bed: she remembered he’d been called to the hospital after dinner to fill in for someone overnight. She remembered she’d heard her parents fighting after she’d gone to bed, her mother crying, “So I’m just supposed to get up with her four times myself?” and her father rebutting, “What is it you’d like me to do?” and her mother replying, disintegrating into tears, “I just want to sleep,” and her father leaving, slamming the door out to the garage. She had fallen asleep concerned that her parents would get a divorce.
“Mama,” she whispered. She hadn’t called her mother Mama in months, either. She and Violet had taken to calling her Mom, while Wendy called her Mother with a very specific disdainful inflection. “Mama.” She poked apologetically at a shoulder. “Mommy,” Liza whispered, worried she might cry. “Mommy,” she said, loudly this time, and her mother startled.
“God,” she gasped, blinking, like she’d just narrowly avoided hitting something with her car. She squinted, reached a hand out, pushed herself up on her pillow. “What is it, honey?”
“I peed in my bed.”
Her mother seemed to register the announcement and then visibly deflated. She sat up completely, disoriented, looking for the clock. Their eyes found it at the same time: 2:32 a.m.
“Sorry,” Liza said. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“Oh, sweetheart, it’s okay. Don’t apologize for that.”
For some reason then she started crying. Her mom reached out to hug her, pee-nightgown and all. She was softer since Grace was born and Liza snuggled against the pillow of her belly.
“You can always wake me up, little one,” she said. It was the first time she had called anyone besides Grace “little one” since she’d gotten home from the hospital. Grace was pretty easygoing, but she demanded attention in a way that Liza found shocking—how was it possible for a person to be so helpless? She needed their mother for everything, and there was an obvious shift, the noticeable insertion of a tiny extra person into everything they did.
“Let’s get you cleaned up, Liza-lee.” Her mom stood slowly and they went into the bathroom and she started running a bath, not her usual remedy for nighttime accidents—usually she just stripped and remade the bed, still half-asleep, like a robot, and had you change into new pajamas. “Want bubbles, darlin’?” she asked, and Liza nodded, feeling a smile bloom onto her face, and climbed into her mother’s lap, towel-wrapped, as they waited for the tub to fill, and her mom began to hum into her forehead, her voice husky with sleep. Usually it was “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” or “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” but tonight she was singing something else, something folky and sad.
“What’s that song?” she asked, and her mother paused.
“It’s—” She faltered. “I can’t for the life of me think of the name. Isn’t that funny?” She gave Liza a feeble smile. “I’m just tired, not crazy, honey, I promise.”
Her mother proceeded to give her a bath, the longest she’d taken maybe ever, humming and engaging in dialogue with the various rubber animals they kept on the ledge—a cow, an elephant, a penguin. When they finished she poured warm cups of water over Liza’s head to rinse her hair, and Liza shivered with pleasure.
“Hop out, Lize,” her mother said, and she held open the towel. She wrapped her tightly and kissed her wet hair. “You know I’m still here, sweetheart, don’t you? I’m always here. I know things are different now but I’m always, always around.”
“I know.”
“Some times are easier than others,” her mom said oddly, and she nodded, uncomprehending. Her mom kissed her forehead. “You’re my old soul.” She dried Liza off and helped her into new pajamas and guided her into her own bedroom, where she pulled back the covers on her father’s side. “You sleep in Daddy’s spot tonight, pumpkin.” She thought this a fantastically exclusive invitation but realized later that they were probably just out of clean twin-size sheets; her mom had been doing about half as much laundry as usual lately. Her mother crawled in next to her and held her until she fell asleep.
Her dad ended up coming home early, slipping in just as her mom was finishing with the baby’s 4:00 a.m. feeding, and Liza watched them woozily from her place in her parents’ bed.
“I called Lacey and had him take over for me,” he whispered to her mom, taking the baby from her arms. “Go back to sleep.”
“Liza’s in our bed,” she said.
“I’ll sleep in her bed.”
“She peed in her bed.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he said, and there was a long quiet, a kissing noise.
A trademark of her parents’ dialogue: they rarely apologized. Fights were resolved via some mystical, unspoken understanding, concessions made and forgiveness granted through what seemed to be a scientific combination of eyes and mouths and lenient spirits.
“No, we’ll just squeeze in together,” her mother said.
So they did. She remembered feeling her parents on either side of her, remembered the cool antiseptic smell of her dad and the powdery sweetness of her mom, and she remembered thinking that it wouldn’t be possible to feel safer than that.
* * *
—
Wendy referred to her parents as “a physician and a homemaker” to make them sound loftier, when in fact her father spent much of his time at a clinic on the West Side, sometimes wearing jeans, and her mother wasn’t “making” their home so much as she was barely maintaining it, keeping the cacophony to a medium-high roar, often also wearing David’s jeans.
“If we’re really so embarrassing,” her mom was saying, methodically tearing up a pile of junk mail, “perhaps we should just move to a new house without you guys. Send your bills through the mail.” She was offended because Wendy had mentioned, just offhandedly, that she would prefer it if they took their homecoming photos at Scott Pratt’s house, a massive Colonial on Euclid. His dad worked for Wells Fargo and his mom legitimately wore an apron sometimes; it was just different. She couldn’t explain this to her mother.
“It’s just prettier,” she said. “There’s just—like, a lot of leaves in the front yard here.”
“You know, despite historical convention, leaf raking isn’t an explicitly masculine job, Wendy. It wouldn’t kill you girls to help Dad out with some of those things.”
“Can’t you do it?” she asked. She immediately knew she shouldn’t have.
“I’m a little busy, actually,” her mom said shortly. “I actually have a few other things going on.”
She had never known her mother to not have a few other things going on. She was a crazy person, in constant motion, her hair always swept back with various barrettes and her hands dotted with little notes she’d written to herself on the backs, against the grain of her veins.
Beneath the table, Wendy palmed her hip bones. They jutted against her sweater like wings.
“I forgot,” she said—the real reason she’d come to the kitchen: “I need my dress fixed.”
Her mother looked up at her tiredly. Grace was napping, had just begun to take regular midday naps—they had all heard about it in ecstatic detail. Her mother frightened her lately; she’d returned from the hospital after Grace was born looking pale and diminished and skinnier than ever; she’d walked for a month with a stoop because of her stitches.
“We had it tailored a month ago,” she said. They’d gone together to Marshall Field’s during a big sale for her homecoming dress.
“You look absolutely gorgeous, my grown-up girl,” her mom had said in the dressing room. And then, the clincher: “Are you losing weight, honey?”
Since they’d bought the dress, she’d lost six pounds. She felt her mother’s gaze.
“I’m worried you’re not eating enough.”
“I am.”
“You look thin.”
“I’m not. I just— I forgot I had my period when we got it tailored the first time.” She blushed, at the lie, at the subject matter. “Now it’s just a little too loose.”
Her mom studied her. “I didn’t make you a lunch today,” she said suddenly.
“It’s fine.” She’d been elated to see that her mother had forgotten, elated that she didn’t have to throw away the brown bag like she did every other day—the PB & J, the baby carrots, the granola bar—because it always made her feel guilty. “I shared,” she said desperately. She could see that her mother was preparing to make her a snack. Marilyn turned to look at her skeptically.
“Well, that was four hours ago. And I’m going to see how long Gracie’ll sleep if I don’t wake her, so dinner’s going to be later.” Her mother was cutting up an apple, going to the cabinet by the sink to retrieve the jar of Nutella.
“I’m not hungry,” she said desperately.
“Don’t argue with me.” Perhaps feeling guilty for how sharply she’d spoken, she added: “This is possibly the first time in history that a mother has bribed a child to eat chocolate.”
At this, she forced herself to laugh. She ate while her mother watched, because apples were easy to throw up if you chewed them enough.
* * *
—
On the morning after Wendy’s homecoming dance, he came home fr
om a night shift to find Marilyn awake at 5:00 a.m., hugging herself before the coffeepot.
“What’s going on?” he asked. She raised her eyes to him slowly. The fine dusting of blond hairs on her cheekbones was visible in the strange light and the purple circles beneath her eyes seemed to have carved themselves permanently into the structure of her face. They were both still adjusting, neither sure how to behave as parents to both an infant and adolescents.
“You’re home,” she said oddly. “Wendy’s drunk.”
He glanced behind him, never entirely sure of who was lurking where in the caverns of their enormous house. “Our Wendy?” he asked. It had moved him, the previous evening, seeing his daughter in a long shiny dress and high-heeled shoes, on the arm of a classmate—a junior, the boy—who seemed far too old for her, for the young girl who’d once seemed to be the tiniest baby he’d ever seen.
“She came home drunk at midnight, just in time to throw up all over our bed.”
“She was in our bed?”
“I brought her there to keep an eye on her,” Marilyn said defensively.
“She was drunk?” He felt his body stand to alert. “Where did she— On what?”
“We didn’t get that far. I’m assuming someone snuck booze into the dance.” She sighed. “I’m not ready for this.”
“Ready for what?”
“For our girls to be drinking at parties, David,” she said, like a poem.
“Well, everyone experiments.” This wasn’t what he wanted to be saying. He wanted to say, who in God’s holy hell got my daughter drunk? and she is only fifteen years old, for Christ’s sake, but he saw that his wife was already fielding these thoughts and so decided to take the laissez-faire approach, one that would either pacify or exasperate her.
“There is vomit in my hair,” she said, and he saw that she was choosing the latter.
“Do you want to shower? I can get up with Grace if that’s what you’re worried about.”
The Most Fun We Ever Had Page 24