The Most Fun We Ever Had

by Claire Lombardo

  “Are you two mocking me?” her mother asked, appearing in the doorway, the dog gravitating to her. She smiled kind of sadly at Liza as she rubbed Loomis’s ears.

  “Never,” her dad said, jostling Liza gently against him. “Come sit with us, kid. I was just about to ask Liza to explain this conscious uncoupling thing.”

  She talked, sandwiched between her parents, about various divorced celebrities and the faculty daycare she was looking into. After a while she felt herself getting lethargic and her mother leaned away to look at her.

  “Are you eating enough, sweetheart?”

  “I eat constantly. I think I’m just tired.”

  Her mother lifted a hand to her cheek. “Of course you are. Why don’t you go lie down?”

  Naps were against Liza’s nature, even more so after she’d met Ryan—because logistically speaking, not everyone could take naps at all times—but as soon as Marilyn mentioned it she found she could barely keep her eyes open.

  Her mother rose. “Come on, honey.” She led her to Violet’s old room and tucked her into bed like she was a kid. Maybe she could stay here forever. Maybe her parents could help and her kid wouldn’t have to go to the faculty daycare after all; maybe they were in the market for another second wind as they’d been with Grace, and now with Jonah; maybe she could sell her house and languish rent-free on Fair Oaks for the rest of her life. “I’m going to leave you a snack on the nightstand in case you wake up hungry. Try to eat something, okay? You’ll be doing yourself a favor.”

  She murmured in response, halfway to sleep, and the last thing she remembered was the faint whiff of lilacs as her mother leaned in to kiss her.

  * * *

  —

  Wyatt was preparing for his upcoming kindergarten musical performance with the fervor of someone headed to Carnegie Hall. In a month’s time it would be his turn to be his classroom’s Star of the Week, and during his reign, he got to showcase a special talent. So they were sitting together in the living room, and her son was strumming the opening chords of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”

  “Mama, could Jonah come to my concert?” he asked, interrupting himself.

  She froze. He’d been smitten since they’d had Jonah over for dinner, brought up his name with alarming frequency—“Do you think Jonah likes pad thai too, Mama?”; “I’m going to draw Jonah a horse.” She’d been careful, popping by her parents’ house solo when she could, avoiding family gatherings. But there had been a few times when she’d been forced to take the kids with her, and Wyatt seemed to grow only more enamored. But, Jesus—to have Jonah show up somewhere other than the house on Fair Oaks? The thought made her dizzy.

  “He’ll be in school, sweetheart,” she said, wondering if her son would one day recall her voice and recognize the strain in it, a strain indicative of deep unrest, just as she’d done with her own mother’s voice, one trying to save face, I’m sorry I scared you, little bear. “Just like you.”

  How could she possibly explain his presence at Shady Oaks? This brooding young man just sprang, full-grown, from my tortuous loins. Domestic adoption of recalcitrant adolescents is all the rage; hadn’t you heard? Wyatt was staring at her with such earnest inquisition, her sweet tiny boy who never asked for anything. She reached to brush some hair from his forehead.

  “You like Jonah, huh, pumpkin?”

  He was arranging his little fingers into a chord position, tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. “Uh-huh.”

  She couldn’t think of anything nice to say. “What is it—about him that you like so much?”

  He strummed the strings. The pick was not much smaller than his hand. “He’s funny,” he said. “He’s nice.”

  Why didn’t it please her more to hear this? Why wasn’t she leaping at the chance for her forgotten teenage kid to bond with her little boy? Why didn’t that fill her heart with something glowing and warm, the fact that you could fuck up everything in your life, make all the wrong decisions, and little bits could somehow still work out for the best? Because she was cognizant of the reality, she supposed, one that Matt had repeatedly articulated: that one thing would inevitably lead to another, that things with Jonah were unfolding whether she wanted them to or not, that she couldn’t stay in this pleasant limbo state forever and that there was no way her life—her family—could be spared from change.

  “Should we practice again?” she asked.

  Her son: heartbreakingly shy, cripplingly anxious. He was too nervous to perform on his own, so she’d agreed to provide vocal accompaniment. She and Matt had laughed about it in bed, but when she actually practiced with Wyatt, his frank concentration and the waver in his tiny voice almost brought her to tears. He strummed the first chord and she tapped at the coffee table for percussion. He moved his fingers around the frets to form the opening progression. This little body she’d made, now making music of his own. Her voice wavered, too, when she started in with the vocals.

  When they finished, she applauded wildly.

  “Mama, why are you crying?”

  She shook her head. “I’m just happy, honey. I’m proud of you.”

  He clambered over, tucking himself under her arm, smiling as though this were the silliest thing he’d ever heard. “Why are you crying if you’re happy?”

  She stroked his forehead, breathed him in, contemplating the autonomous intricacy of him, all the things he would learn to do beyond her influence. It was a fair question, but one to which she didn’t have an answer.

  1996

  When Marilyn tried to imagine David and Gillian together, she had to admit she couldn’t. Her husband had been a virgin when she met him, and this gave her confidence, an upper hand that neither of them ever acknowledged. She’d never worried about David straying, and part of that was because—stupidly, she thought now—she’d been his first. His only.

  He was, objectively speaking, a good-looking man. But he seemed so oblivious to it, so mired in his own head—though she supposed wandering around the grocery with your wife and toddler was a different animal than going to work each day as a handsome free agent. She had always felt a little jealous of this woman with whom her husband spent every day, especially because Gillian had seen her at her most primal, watched her through a difficult labor, reached her gloved hand repeatedly inside of Marilyn’s body and, then, eventually, cut into her belly to retrieve a distressed baby Grace.

  She wasn’t sure what to do with this new business of not trusting David. It was nothing she’d ever had to do before. He’d started sleeping in their bed again but she was mostly ignoring him—though not entirely, because to do so would have been too much a comical mimicry of their teenage daughters. She tried to be composed and polite and diplomatic. He still seemed rattled. Once, they’d gone upstairs together and he’d said, in the dark, “Honey, you know I’d never…”

  And she’d said, impatiently, “I know. It’s beside the point.”

  She did know. But it was also beside the point. And those things in concert brought her to his office one afternoon a few weeks later when she knew he had his clinic hours. Gillian was her doctor, but she had also, once, been her confidante. The woman had to know that going out to dinner with David meant something more than friendship. She had to know that Marilyn was an adult with feelings and agency, not just the woman on the other end of a phone call who turned Dr. Sorenson into a lovesick buffoon. And at the front desk, leaning over the receptionist’s shoulder to look at something on the computer, there she was: Gillian.

  “Marilyn.” She sounded surprised but not incriminated. She came from behind the desk and Marilyn was taken aback when she reached out for a hug. “You look fantastic. It’s been so long. Are you here for an appointment or to see David? He’s in Englewood this afternoon.”

  “Not an appointment,” she said. Gillian was smiling at her blandly, looking a little confused, not like
a woman standing before the wife of the man she’d had an affair with. Confirmation, then. Why didn’t it feel better? “I had—ah. Gracie threw something of mine into his briefcase this morning. He said he’d leave it on his desk for me. Do you mind if I run and—”

  “Of course,” Gillian said. “Come on back.” She led her down the long, familiar hallway, past the scales, past the posters on infant nutrition. “How’s Grace doing? I haven’t seen her since—God, I couldn’t tell you. She was in diapers.”

  “She’s great. Out of diapers. Talking nonstop. She’s the most energetic human being I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. I don’t know where she gets it.”

  “She’s beautiful. That photo on David’s desk kills me. Those eyes.”

  “What photo? When did you— I mean…”

  Gillian turned to her uncertainly. “You’ll see it when you go in there. Front and center.”

  “Oh, sorry, I—I was going to show you one. But I think it’s the same one. So.”

  Gillian pursed her lips, squinted at her, touched her arm. “How’s Wendy doing?”

  “Well,” she said firmly. “She’s doing really well.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got to pick up Grace in a few minutes.”

  “Of course,” Gillian said, holding up her hands. “It’s great to see you, Marilyn.”

  She watched the woman walk away, imagined how she looked through David’s eyes.

  On his desk: a surprising number of photos. One from their wedding. Wendy and Violet at Christmas in the early days, tiny and velvet-clad. The girls crowded around a newborn Grace. One of Marilyn in her garden, a candid taken by Violet, where she was wearing ridiculous overalls but laughing, happy in a way that she could no longer remember. One of her with Wendy, minutes after she was born, exultant and exhausted. She imagined him purchasing the frames, picking up the prints. It endeared him to her. How she loved him, missed him, wanted to kill him. If someone asked her to poetically describe her marriage, she would articulate that particular feeling, one of simultaneously wanting him pressed against her and also on another continent.

  The picture Gillian had mentioned was indeed in the front. David had taken it about a year ago; Grace was cuddled in Marilyn’s lap on the couch. She’d been reading Frog and Toad Are Friends to their daughter and had stopped to smile tolerantly at her husband, charmed by his initiative and his affection. Gracie had been startled by the flash, looking into the camera with wide, dark eyes. Such a mix of the two of them. Wendy and Liza appeared to be direct descendants of Connolly lineage—photos of Liza now made Marilyn think unequivocally of her own mother. Violet was, without question, the Czech from David’s mother’s side, not a lick of Irish visible in the dark swoop of her hair or the unseasonable tan of her skin. But Grace: a perfect split, David’s hair and forehead and eyes and Marilyn’s nose and chin, her mouth a charming combination of both.

  All the times they’d fought in the last months. All the times they’d argued over Wendy’s treatment, Violet’s obstinacy, Liza’s isolation, Gracie’s arrested development. The house, the dog, the oil in their cars. All the times he’d yelled and she’d wept, or she’d yelled and he’d sat there, stock-still and expressionless, in his collected way that drove her crazy. All the times they’d spoken to each other through the children without even realizing it—“Tell your father you need a ride” or “Ask your mom that, Gracie.” All the times they could have been kind to each other and had instead chosen ignorance, solitude. She missed him so much.

  “Find what you were looking for?” Gillian asked, appearing in the doorway.

  She brushed a wrist across her eyes—was she almost crying? Who was she lately?

  “You know, I’m remembering now that he said he’d bring it home for me. When you get to be a trillion years old and married for half that, you’ll notice things start to slip. Cognitively.”

  Gillian laughed, and it bothered her, even though she’d been the one to make the joke, because, again, she wasn’t that much older than Gillian; her husband wasn’t coming home each night to a withered crone; she still had energy and verve and a sense of humor, and even if she had none of those things, she’d produced and raised his children and made him coffee in the mornings and had the decency not to poison it.

  “I was lying,” Marilyn said bluntly.

  “About what?”

  “I didn’t need something from his office. I came here to talk to you. I lied.”

  “To me?” Gillian frowned. “Should we— Do you want to go in my office? Is everything okay?”

  “I know about you and David,” she said. “I know that you’ve been—seeing each other.”

  Gillian looked suddenly smaller. “Oh, Marilyn, I—”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. I just came to talk to you about it. I don’t want to anymore, but I—I guess I thought, initially, that maybe you’d be able to tell me more. Because he’s not telling me anything. This is so inappropriate. I feel like such a—fool.”

  “It’s not—what you think,” Gillian said.

  “Oh? What do I think?”

  “Nothing’s…” Gillian pulled the door shut. “I know it’s a chaotic time for you guys.”

  “Ah, yes, well.” She waved a hand. “The steady accretion of years.”

  “You have a lot going on.”

  “What do you— Has he—said anything?”

  Gillian looked uncomfortable.

  “Right,” Marilyn said brusquely. “Confidentiality. I’m not a patient anymore.”

  “David’s not my patient; he’s my friend.”

  “Your friend.”

  “Look, Marilyn, I’d prefer to not—” Gillian’s face grew redder by the second; her voice wobbled. “I’m just saying David knows where the lines are. If I’ve learned anything from talking to him, it’s that. He—”

  “I really don’t need to hear reassurance from you that my husband loves me.” She pulled her coat more closely around her and started toward the door.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you that. I was just going to say that he’s a good man.”

  Marilyn stopped. “I know he is.”

  She supposed that was part of the problem. Her husband was a good man. It was hard to get mad at him. And perhaps it was this—the anticlimax of it all—that frustrated her so much. He hadn’t had a traditional affair. She’d confronted first him and then his alleged mistress and both had sincerely denied it. But what they weren’t denying was their closeness, the fact that David had actively chosen to spend hours and hours of his limited time with another woman, to confide in someone else his worries and observations. She felt—as she had three years ago, crying in the exam room—so far from him. She could identify that as the problem—not just the distance but the fact that it had grown so much since then, that it was so much more dire than it had been—and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “I’m sorry, Marilyn,” Gillian said. “I confess I’ve always envied you. But I also really like you.”

  The perfect ridiculousness of all this, to be debasing herself for no real reason, to have arrived at this point in her marriage.

  “Listen, if you could not— I mean, I can’t stop you from— I’m embarrassed, Gillian; I’m mortified by all of this, and if you could not mention to him that we had this conversation, I’d—”

  “Of course I won’t,” Gillian said.

  “I owe you my life,” she said. “Literally. I realize that. And I’ll always be grateful to you for that. But I need you to stay away from my husband. I don’t—” She opened her mouth, closed it again. “There’s more to it than me.”

  * * *

  —

  It was Sunday, and David was home when Marilyn left to go into the city, mowing the lawn in the backyard while Gracie pla
yed on the swing set. She came out to say goodbye and found Grace at the top of the slide by herself and immediately dropped her purse and sprinted across the lawn, David oblivious to his surroundings beneath the roar of the mower.

  “Honey, what’d we say about no climbing when you’re alone?” she asked, breathless.

  “Daddy’s here,” Grace said, smiling at her, ignorant or impish; she had a hard time telling with her youngest daughter: she was either an evil genius or the exact opposite.

  “David,” she said, but he didn’t hear her. He kept walking away from her, finishing his row, and it wasn’t until he got to the end and turned around that he saw her staring at him. He turned off the mower and waited for the motor to die.

  “Something wrong?” he asked, and she gestured at Grace. “What? I’m ten feet away.”

  “She’s too little to be on the swing set alone.”

  “No I’m not,” Grace chimed in from behind her.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” David said.

  “You need to be watching her. I have to go, David; your dad’s expecting me.”

  “I’m not too little,” Grace protested, a quickening in her voice, a tearful breathlessness, and she swung boldly from the bar at the top of the slide, making Marilyn physically convulse.

  “Gracie, get down. This second. The right way. On your bottom. Feet first.”

  “You’re turning this into a scene,” David said. Grace was now crying in earnest, the telltale signs of a tantrum oozing into her little limbs—stiff arms, an indignant stomp of a sneakered foot. She had turned it into a scene; she’d found them enjoying a pleasant afternoon in the yard together and she’d come out and ruined it. But when she saw Gracie, alone, at the top of the slide, her head had immediately morphed into a flip-book of gruesome injuries. She couldn’t set foot in a hospital again, not anytime soon. There was a time when David would have understood this. But now she’d taken a stance and she had to follow through; all of the parenting books she’d read over the years drove this home. Be firm in your punishments. Don’t back down. Don’t let your spouse undermine you, even when he is being a childish asshole.