The Most Fun We Ever Had

by Claire Lombardo

  “Because it is a surprise,” he said. “How could it not be a surprise? Gracie’s been in this house every day since she was born.”

  She rued his composure, but she’d seen his face when he hugged their daughter for the last time, knew that he was holding himself together for her benefit.

  “Let’s take the dog for a walk,” David said. “This quiet’s going to drive me nuts before I start to love it.”

  They were alone in their house—really alone—for the first time since Iowa City, she realized, since they’d first been married. This thought seemed to occur as well to David, who pushed her gently against the kitchen counter with his hips.

  “Is there an empty nest joke about spring chickens?” he asked, his mouth near her ear, then moving down to kiss her neck.

  She laughed, but then felt herself growing serious, here in this familiar space with her husband again. The nest would never be empty so long as she was in it with him. They both stilled in the newfound quiet, and she met his eyes before lifting her face to kiss him, really kiss him, without having to worry about being interrupted.

  Loomis, sensing his walk was being postponed, skulked away resignedly to chew on one of his discarded rawhides.

  * * *

  —

  It was astounding to Violet how ignorant she’d been during her first pregnancy, how blithely and offhandedly she’d approached the whole process, blind to the boundless melancholy that awaited her after the birth—to say nothing of the breast engorgement, the ghoulish blood clots, the racing thoughts and spontaneous weeping, the afterpains that curled her into a ball in her bed at Wendy’s house. Wendy sustained her, keeping her elbow-deep in painkillers and leaving trays of tea and toast outside of her door like a scullery maid. And this gave her the ability, then, to tune out everything besides her bodily horrors. She slept sometimes for twenty hours a day. She existed in a psychotropic fog, cabbage leaves on her breasts and archaic puffy pads between her legs, pretending she was dead, because denying the fact of her existence allowed her as well to deny the fact of all she’d allowed herself to lose.

  With Wyatt, these same things happened—the soreness, the swelling, the hemorrhoids and stitches and ghastly emissions of blood—but they were secondary, perhaps even tertiary to their cause, this tiny perfect person she’d borne, this person who slept in fits and over whom insatiable hunger descended in seconds, this person for whose existence she was exclusively responsible. And the end-all love she felt for him—of course she loved him! God, how intensely she loved him—raised the stakes even higher, caused her to focus on him with such sleepless intensity that once she forgot to change her pad and bled onto the couch while feeding him, a woman who no longer had control over her most basic bodily functions. She endured these days with no medicinal aids, without so much as a single cup of coffee, because he deserved it, didn’t he, her son; but also, convolutedly, though the other baby was ignorant of her goings-on, because she wanted to redeem herself, to be fully present for this intentional child in the way she hadn’t been for the first baby. She had the luxury of a do-over, and she’d be damned if she took it for granted. She felt it was her comeuppance, the price she had to pay for so cavalierly abandoning her first child, for thinking that she could just go on like everything was normal.

  For weeks she ignored it—lacked the wherewithal to acknowledge it, really, blinded by her exhaustion and her newfound routine, at once foreign and soul-annihilatingly boring. She wept while she nursed her son to sleep and pictured, sometimes, smothering him at sunrise, when she’d been up with him for hours already, but these wrongs would right themselves eventually, when Matt came home in the evenings and the three of them would curl together on the couch, she and her two most favorite people, and she would feel as though things were on an upward trajectory, but then they would all fall asleep, and by the time the baby woke her up she would forget about the bright spots. Endless hours spooling before her, Matt off to work, and she would be alone with Wyatt, aware constantly of his pressing need, so different than that of the first baby, so much more dire.

  And so each day the sun would rise and everything would begin anew, the weeping and the smothering and the drifting away, until one evening when Matt got the baby down in his crib and came and cradled her against him and said, “Hey, sweetheart; I’m worried about you.” And she’d resisted then, for weeks, indignant and offended, until one day when she was changing Wyatt and she looked down at his tiny defenselessness and thought, I could do anything I want to him right now, and the thought startled her so that she called her husband at work, and he came home within the hour, already in crisis mode, prepared to talk about next steps and getting help.

  There was a diagnosis: quiet and crisp; and a subsequent cure: candy-colored and complex. She switched Wyatt to formula and began taking the pills. She became used to the way her husband tiptoed around her. She grew accustomed to the beige hum of her psyche, no longer in overdrive but now seemingly in no drive at all, out of gear, quietly churning as she cooed benignly to her baby.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Matt one night, the two of them unsure of how their bodies fit together anymore, his arm wrapped around her abdomen, her abdomen clenching at his touch, mortified by her excess flesh and her newfound emptiness. At this point she was medicated enough to feel self-conscious, and the thing she hated more than anything was how helpless she felt, while still being entirely in control of her faculties.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said, his mouth pressed against her temple.

  “I never would’ve hurt him.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I know that.”

  “I’ve never seen you be so urgent about anything before.”

  “I didn’t recognize you, Viol. It scared me.”

  “It’s just a lot,” she said. “All of this.”

  “Of course it is. Violet, it— Everything’s new, and constant, and—of course you were feeling overwhelmed. I’m just so glad you called me.”

  And it both appealed to her and repulsed her, how he was speaking about this so matter-of-factly, like they’d already gotten through the worst of it, like it was possible to move forward without glancing back at the past, like maybe this was simply a matter of chemicals, a physiological imbalance that had nothing to do with anything that had happened before.

  “You can tell me anything,” he said, but she couldn’t bring herself to move her mouth, so she said nothing, so it wasn’t true—anything—and the tiniest crack formed then, in their bed on a warm Wednesday evening, and she held herself responsible for all of it, everything, anything; and she committed, thenceforth, veins full of tonic, fallout be damned, to never frighten him in that way again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Marilyn was the first one to witness the change in her husband, to see it before he’d even had time to realize it himself. David shifted when Jonah returned, culminating in the kind of smile—genuine, full of relief—that she hadn’t seen from him in ages. They’d both been characteristically reticent at first: Jonah, though he’d consented to her hugging him for aeons straight in the foyer when he’d come in with Wendy, had simply held out a hand to David and said, “Hey, man.” And David—only she, too, could hear the fullness in his voice—had replied, “Look who it is.” And they shook, and that was that.

  Later that night, the four of them sat together around the dinner table. Wendy, adhering thoughtfully to the dietary specifications of David’s cardiologist, had ordered out a fancy and heart-healthy Mediterranean spread. Marilyn watched Jonah devour two folded-together pitas in three bites, like he hadn’t eaten in years.

  “Should I acknowledge the elephant in the room?” she asked, and her motley trio of family members looked up at her innocently over their plates.

  “Honey,” said David.

  “My God, Mom,” said Wendy.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jonah, and she fo
cused her gaze on him, this sweet mysterious boy with the prematurely mournful eyes. “I freaked out and I figured it would be easier for everyone if—”

  “Mom, I swear to you that Jonah and I just debriefed this in the car. Exhaustively. He’s sorry. He’s embarrassed. He’s hungry. The Catholic trifecta. You’ve taught him well.”

  “This isn’t something to joke about, Wendy.” Amid the relief of having him back, she’d allowed herself to entertain all of the thoughts she’d been pressing into the depths of her mind since Wendy had assured her everything would be okay: even if it were okay, Jonah had still run away from them; in the wake of a terrifying, terrible event, he’d taken David’s car and driven cross-country without a license; he’d behaved recklessly and childishly and disturbingly, and could this not, perhaps, have had something to do with their failure, as a family, to offer him any real permanence, from his jarring arrival into their lives to Violet’s white-knuckled avoidance of him to Wendy’s failure to give him a stable home? She and David had been good for him, she thought, but there was no such thing as good parenting, apparently, and so who knew what blind spots they had with him, what they’d overlooked. They were all capable of doing better. “Jonah, that was an incredibly irresponsible thing that you did.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You can’t imagine how scared we were. On top of what was already an unbelievably awful time. You can’t ever do something like this again, okay?”

  “I won’t. I’m really sorry.”

  “Which is why we’ve decided to ground you,” Marilyn said. David had tepidly engaged with her in this discussion, but he’d ultimately told her to do whatever she thought was best. “One month. Effective immediately.”

  “Mom, don’t you think he’s been through enough? Jesus Christ.”

  “Do you realize how lucky it is that he got pulled over? I can’t even think about what might have happened otherwise—another accident, or if something had gone wrong with the car out in the middle of nowhere, and—”

  “He got pulled over because I hired somebody to go find him,” Wendy said. “Christ. Yes, it was dumb of him and, yes, it was immature, but he’s back and he’s safe and it’s not going to happen again—right, Jonah?—so can we all just eat our fucking grape leaves in peace and let this horrible ordeal be over?”

  She recalled Wendy making similar moves as a teenager, dropping explosive lines like lit grenades in the middle of the dinner table and watching gleefully as they detonated. Jonah was staring at her, openmouthed.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Wendy said to him, pouring herself more wine. “God knows why, but we’re all quite fond of you.”

  Jonah’s face softened to the point where it almost seemed like he might laugh. “I’ve never been grounded before,” he said.

  “I’ll draw you a map of the escape routes,” Wendy said.

  “The comedic timing in this family leaves something to be desired,” David said.

  “How’s Liza?” Wendy asked.

  “She’s well.” Marilyn didn’t look at David. “Home with the baby. Getting acclimated.”

  “She sent me a couple of photos. Kit looks slightly less like the Crypt Keeper than the male babies born into this family.”

  She studied Wendy, surprised to hear her making this sort of joke, and tried to smile at her. “Yes, she’s darling, isn’t she?” It had just dawned on her that Kit was now occupying the space intended for Ivy, the coveted first granddaughter. It filled her with a guilty sadness.

  “What do you think, Dad?” Wendy asked.

  It snapped Marilyn out of her reverie. She stiffened. David looked to her, seemingly for help, but she busied herself with her salmon.

  “Pretty cute,” he said.

  “Not that he’d know firsthand.” She hadn’t meant to say it, but perhaps public shaming would nudge him in the right direction. Wendy and Jonah glanced up, and David glared at her.

  “You haven’t met her yet, Dad?” Wendy asked.

  “Doesn’t anybody understand that babies are highly susceptible to infection?”

  “Are you, like, radioactive now or something?” Wendy asked, and Jonah snorted.

  “Casts are full of bacteria,” David said, his posture caved rather dramatically around his own bandaged arm. “I’m just taking extra precautions.”

  “It’s not as though Kit’s going to be directly breathing in your cast bacteria,” Marilyn said, breaking her own rule about mealtime conversational propriety.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” David said, and the look he gave her—the fact that it was less angry than wounded—shut her up.

  “I broke my arm in first grade,” Jonah said. “The cast smelled so sick when they took it off.”

  “Thanks for ensuring that no person at this table is left with an appetite,” Wendy said.

  “Thank you,” David said to Jonah. “Finally, another voice of reason.”

  It pained her to see him like this. She couldn’t determine the origin of his objection to seeing the baby, but she knew it wasn’t rooted in his fear of infection, however vigilant he’d been about germs when their own children were newborns.

  “Dad,” Wendy said. “It’s kind of— I mean, like, shit happens regardless, right?”

  A quiet fell over the table.

  “Am I not allowed to say that? It’s not like Liza’s asked you not to come over, right?”

  “No, she hasn’t,” Marilyn answered for him. She realized, with shame, that she was allowing her daughter’s grief to get tangled up in her marital spat. “That’s a good point, Wendy.”

  “Thank you,” David said, “for all of this unsolicited feedback.”

  “Two fights in one dinner,” Wendy said, raising her glass to Jonah. “Your welcome wagon has arrived.”

  * * *

  —

  Jonah went to shoot layups after dinner. His grandfather didn’t look great. He was pale and thin, and there was a big blue cast on his arm, and his hair looked matted, like he hadn’t showered in a while. He couldn’t believe that Wendy had hired someone to find him. Sniper-level shit. He didn’t hear the front door open.

  “Jonah.”

  He jumped about twelve feet out of his skin, clutching the ball to his chest.

  “Whoa, whoa, sorry.” David sat on the stairs facing the driveway.

  “Sorry, was I— I can— Am I making too much noise? I was just— Sorry. Sorry.”

  “Are you sorry about something? I couldn’t tell.” David smiled. “Just came out to say hello. You’re doing nothing wrong. I wanted to thank you, actually.”

  Thanks for fucking up our lives. Thanks for breaking my arm. He dribbled the ball for something to do.

  “I’m so sorry that you had to—see what you did. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.” David sounded almost teary, and it made him profoundly uncomfortable. “I didn’t see it coming. Though arguably I should have. I— It’s funny, the blind spots we have for ourselves. If any of my patients complained of shoulder pain, I’d have them go to the hospital straightaway.” He rubbed at his forehead with his free hand. “I wanted to thank you for calling the ambulance. For calling Marilyn. For telling her—what you told her.” Here he colored. “And I wanted to thank you for staying with me.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “I would have died if you weren’t there, Jonah. I don’t want to scare you, but I want you to know that.”

  “But I wasn’t— I didn’t hold the ladder.”

  “Oh, kid. The ladder was the least of my worries.”

  “I should have—”

  “You stuck around for when it counted,” he said, “and none of this was your fault.”

  “I stole my birthday present,” he blurted out. “From your desk. I was looking for your wallet for the parame
dics. And I found an envelope with my name on it and I—took it. Because I thought— I wasn’t sure if I was going to be coming back. Or if you…” I decided to take it in case you died and couldn’t give it to me. God, what had he been doing?

  But David laughed. “I’m glad you got it on time.”

  “It was really nice of you. Thanks. A lot. For—everything.”

  “It’s our pleasure,” David said. “You should move a little to the left of the net when you’re making free throws. I’ll show you when I get this thing off of my arm.”

  * * *

  —

  It dawned on Wendy later, when the vodka wasn’t helping her to sleep and she was prostrate on her living room couch, thinking of her dad, of how he didn’t want to meet Liza’s baby and of how, similarly, Violet had decided, way back when, that she couldn’t come to say goodbye to Miles.

  The fragmented cognitive leaps of the intoxicated, the mess of the last few weeks: her infant niece, blind to the fact of her grandfather’s incapacitation, the gray cast of his skin. Jonah, mysteriously missing and now returned. And, out of nowhere, the inquisitive little Bhargava girl, ignorant of her impending demotion by an incoming baby. Those big blue cyclone eyes that came, Wendy knew, straight from her father, the hot graceful tennis player who’d once fucked her on the hard acrylic of the court behind the baseball field. His agility, his dexterity, the current running through him. The vulpine abilities of his body, incongruous with the benign aesthetic magnetism of his persona.

  She sat up.

  This: her punishment. The grand reality-show reveal. Because Jonah was suddenly alive on Aaron’s face, all over, the flattish nose, the long lashes, the eyes—boundless blue typhoons—that betrayed an intrinsic kindness even when their proprietor was being kind of a dick. And then—she colored, even there, alone on her couch at three in the morning—his body, long-limbed, lined with muscle, an olive cast to skin that didn’t freckle—though Aaron had a birthmark high on his left thigh, just below the curve of his ass; she remembered that—and overall, generally, an alluring self-possession. And those weird inverted elbows. She pictured Jonah stretching beside her in the passenger seat of the Jeep. Catlike reflexes. She’d always assumed that that part of Jonah came from their dad. But—well, David had just fallen from a tree, hadn’t he?