She thought of how George prominently displayed her two books on the coffee table in his living room, and how, after reading each of them, he had taken the time to write her a long letter detailing his favorite parts. Her father hadn’t finished either book and didn’t even feel bad about it, just said, You know me, I like a thick presidential biography and that’s about it.
“George, have you tried the potatoes?” Gloria said. She lifted the serving dish and reached across the table to pass it to him.
Elisabeth watched her father watching Gloria.
The woman wore slacks and a silvery old-lady blouse, but you’d think she was Claudia Schiffer in a negligee the way he stared.
“Gloria is so good at taking care of a man,” he said. “On our second date, I went to her place for dinner. She cooked. I’d thrown out my neck doing something or other. She gave me a two-hour massage. Best I’ve ever had.”
Why he would choose this moment to say those words was anyone’s guess.
“What did you do on your first date?” Davey asked. A question nobody else cared to hear the answer to.
Her father and Gloria exchanged a revolting look.
“Dinner and dancing,” he said. “You know, Davey, women like to be shown a great time. If you do that for them, they’ll make you happy. It’s as simple as that.”
As if anything could be simple when you were telling the story of your new great love in front of the woman who, until recently, had been your wife for forty years.
“Young men today have no clue what they’re doing,” he went on. “They send a girl a text message. They can’t fathom talking to her and asking her out on a date. You should try it, Davey. You’ll have them lining up at the door. Women are starved for romance.”
“He’s right,” Gloria said. “Elisabeth, hon, do you have any butter for these rolls?”
“Oh shoot, I forgot to put it out,” Andrew said, rising.
Gloria stood up. “Keep your seat. I’ll grab it.”
She left the room. Elisabeth’s father followed.
“Mom, are you okay?” Charlotte said.
Their mother nodded. “I could use more wine.”
“I’ll get it,” Elisabeth said.
“Bring the bottle, will you?” her mother said.
Elisabeth took her mother’s empty glass into the kitchen.
Her father and Gloria were locked in an embrace by the sink. She covered her eyes.
“Oops. Caught in the act.” Gloria giggled.
“Dad,” Elisabeth said. “Why are you giving Charlotte’s boyfriend dating advice?”
“That guy?” her father said. “No way he’s her boyfriend. Not her type. Don’t you remember Matthew Callanan?”
Even three years later, he held Matthew up as proof that Charlotte was capable of making good choices.
“You mean the Matthew Callanan she left at the altar?”
“Don’t exaggerate, Boo. She called it off months before the wedding.”
“The invitations had already gone out,” she said.
“I still think there’s a solid chance those two will get back together,” her father said. He laughed and shook his head, as if at an amusing anecdote he didn’t feel the need to share.
“Matthew Callanan,” he said. “Great kid.”
The three of them went back to the dining room, where Faye was telling Davey about something called the new math.
Elisabeth felt sorry for her mother, who was watching her father and Gloria as they took their seats, his hand on the small of her back.
Charlotte was watching too.
Elisabeth met her eye. Her expression, she knew, would be enough to communicate her thoughts. When they were kids, Elisabeth used Charlotte as a sweet and adorable distraction, a buffer she could wedge between their parents when they fought.
“Try the conch, Daddy,” Charlotte said, passing a tray of what looked like any other unidentifiable fried thing. “That’s considered a delicacy on-island.”
Their father took a few pieces with his fingers, ignoring the tongs that rested on the tray.
“I was wondering what the charge for three hundred bucks from Da Seafood Hut on my Amex was,” he said. He popped a conch fritter into his mouth.
Elisabeth looked from him to Charlotte, slowly comprehending his meaning.
“Seriously?” she said to her sister.
“What?”
“What do you mean, what? You’re taking money from him?”
“Who do you think owns that condo on the beach?” their father said.
“I thought it was a rental,” Elisabeth said. Her body went rigid with anger. “Didn’t you mention the rent, Charlotte?”
Charlotte fixed her face with an innocent look. “I might have said rent when I meant HOA fees, I don’t know.”
“Though to be fair, I pay those too,” their father said, with a shit-eating grin.
“You have no shame,” Elisabeth said. “You drained my bank account. And you didn’t even need the money?”
“I told you I’m working on paying you back,” Charlotte said. “I’ve said it a hundred times. But none of you believe in me. Do you? Elisabeth’s the writer, Charlotte can’t be a writer too. Well, guess what. I am. And I’m more successful than you’ll ever be.”
“What?” Elisabeth said, baffled as to where she should even begin.
“People go online every day to receive my wisdom,” Charlotte said.
“They go online every day to hate-read your nonsense posts and to ogle you in a bikini,” Elisabeth said. “When will you grow up and take responsibility for yourself?”
“Me?” Charlotte said. “I only came here because you needed someone to referee while you play house.”
“Shut up,” Elisabeth said. “You’re just like them, you know.”
“I know,” Charlotte said. “At least I know it. You think you’re not. That’s the sad part.”
“When have you sent her money?” Andrew said.
Andrew.
Elisabeth looked at him. His expression was confused, hurt.
“She drained the account?” he said.
“I’d say that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” Charlotte said. “And I was only worth helping as long as you thought I wasn’t getting help from Dad. You were trying to manipulate me. You thought I was stupid.”
“That’s right, I did,” Elisabeth said. “Turns out you’re just a monster.”
Her father raised his voice. “Elisabeth. Stop attacking her. Yes, I help Charlotte. I’m happy to. I’ve done the same for you.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Yes, I have.”
“I haven’t taken a penny from you since I was twenty-three.”
“Be that as it may, you’re supported. Who bought you your first apartment?” he said. “I don’t recall you paying me back. No, you took that money and bought a better place in Brooklyn. As you should have. Then you sold that, and you took that money, and you bought this house. Or, I should say, I bought this house.”
Shame coursed through her. Somehow she had never thought of this.
“Face it, Boo,” he went on. “Someday I’m going to die, and all that dirty money will go to you whether you like it or not. If it makes you feel better to send Charlotte rent she doesn’t need, go ahead. I’ll get you back eventually.”
Would a normal person perceive the threat in his tone, or would such a person wonder how she could be angry because someone gave her a pile of cash? But her father’s money had been a weight around her neck. Elisabeth had been proud and relieved all these years that he couldn’t lord it over her anymore, when, really, he could. He did.
She was mortified to be having this conversation in front of George and Faye. They stared down at their food as if they couldn’t hear over it. Elis
abeth appreciated the gesture so much.
She kept trying to meet Andrew’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at her. She was furious with herself for not telling him sooner. It was a secret she had managed to keep for two years, and then, in the presence of her family, she had undone it with one offhand remark.
“Honey,” she said. “Say something. Please.”
Andrew still looked confused. “So, all this time you thought Charlotte wasn’t taking his money, you’ve been supporting her?”
“I wouldn’t say supporting, exactly,” Elisabeth said. “I’ve helped her for the last couple years while she waited for this sponsorship deal to happen. It was a loan.”
“Not that diet pill thing,” Davey said. “I talked her out of that months ago.”
Everyone was silent for a long while.
Davey’s words sank in. Months ago. Charlotte had known for that long that she wasn’t going to pay Elisabeth back.
She felt sick. She would never see that money again.
Faye dipped her napkin into her water glass and started wiping Gil’s face, as if she did this all the time.
“Don’t these two make gorgeous babies?” she said, clearly hoping they could change the subject. “I keep asking when they’re going to have another.”
“Let’s not rush it,” Elisabeth’s mother said.
“Why not?” Elisabeth said, offended, even though she had no intention of having another.
“Motherhood is making you tense,” her mother said.
“It is,” Charlotte agreed.
“Unbelievable,” Elisabeth said. “Of course you’d find a way to turn this back on me.”
She wanted to scream at all the members of her immediate family, each for a different reason. She wanted them out of her house.
“You know, I wondered earlier why we don’t do holidays together more often,” she said, in a manner that would sound calm, happy, if you didn’t understand the words, just in case Gil was storing the memory. “But now I remember.”
Andrew’s chair scraped against the floor.
“I’m going out for a while,” he said.
She followed him to the front door.
“I’ll come with you,” she said. “We should talk.”
He just looked at her and shook his head.
Elisabeth returned to the dining room. She said, “It’s time for all of you to go.”
* * *
—
Andrew came home after an hour, but did not address her.
He took the baby and went upstairs.
Elisabeth started cleaning.
Andrew’s pies sat uneaten on the counter. He had spent the night before layering a lattice crust onto the pecan pie. He made leaves out of dough and lined them up like a wreath around the edge. It looked perfect, like a picture from a magazine. The sight of it filled her with regret, despair.
After Gil was in bed, Andrew found her in the kitchen and said, “So.”
Elisabeth was grateful for that single syllable, for the broken silence.
“Wasn’t there three hundred thousand dollars in that account?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You gave it all to her?”
“Almost.”
“That money was from your book,” Andrew said. “You worked hard for that.”
She was amazed that he was thinking of her in this moment. She started to say so.
But Andrew wasn’t finished.
“Do you know how difficult it was for me to ask you about taking some of that money for my parents?”
“You never asked me,” she said quietly.
Immediately, she thought of her mother saying she hadn’t come sooner because she wasn’t invited. There were questions that shouldn’t require asking.
“Bullshit,” he said. “Sorry I never wrote up a formal request, but you knew I wanted it. You made me feel like an asshole for that.”
“Andrew, no.”
“Yes, you did. Now I understand why. I didn’t think we kept things from each other.”
“We don’t,” she said, even though she had.
Andrew inhaled, ran a hand through his hair. He looked like he was trying not to cry.
He had been wronged and she wanted so badly to comfort him.
“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I didn’t know how. Sometimes it’s just so hard to say certain things to each other, do you know what I mean?”
“Sure,” he said. “Like how ever since we’ve moved here, you’ve been acting like a terrible snob, like you’re better than the whole goddamn world because you lived in Brooklyn?”
“Jesus,” she said. “That was kind of mean.”
“We’re not your parents,” he said. “Learn to trust me, will you? Otherwise, what’s the point of any of this?”
“Any of what?” she asked.
When Andrew didn’t reply, she understood: he meant their life together, all of it.
Andrew said he was tired, that he was going to bed, even though it was only eight o’clock.
“I’ll sleep in the den,” he said.
“Seriously? Honey, I—”
She saw something flicker in his eye.
“What?” she said.
“When we were doing IVF, you wanted a second baby. Then all of a sudden, you didn’t. Is this why? Because you thought you’d have to go on supporting Charlotte? You kept talking about how expensive another kid would be.”
“Yes,” she said, though it was another lie. What was wrong with her?
She needed Andrew on her side. He had never not been on her side before.
Elisabeth felt terrified, watching him climb the stairs, like he might not come back down.
She wondered what Charlotte was doing now. Elisabeth imagined her in some dive bar, crying to Davey about how unfair it was.
She looked at her Instagram for clues, not that Charlotte would ever share a photo from this place, with its gray skies and suburban houses and fully clothed people.
The latest picture had been posted twenty minutes earlier.
Charlotte in a metallic one-piece, the sides cut out to reveal her abs to such an extent that it was somehow more revealing than a string bikini would have been.
She was laughing, head thrown back in a solid impression of joy. It was nighttime. Behind her was a palm tree, strung with white Christmas lights. The text beneath said: Merry + Bright xoxo @ Renaissance Island, Aruba.
Where was Charlotte when she typed those words? In the passenger seat of her weird boyfriend’s rental car? When was the picture taken? Elisabeth thought of typing a comment along the lines of Don’t believe her. She’s full of shit. She’s probably eating her feelings in a Taco Bell parking lot right now.
Elisabeth took a deep breath. Her eyes landed on a silver gift bag on the kitchen counter. A bottle of wine poked out from the top. It was the present Sam brought on her last day of work.
She thought of Sam, how these rooms were usually theirs, and felt so tranquil.
Elisabeth imagined Sam presenting her mother with the portrait she’d made, her mother bursting into tears at the sight of it. She would be crying at the memory of her own mother, the woman in the painting, only because she was gone; the memories all happy ones.
She pictured Sam in the bosom of her good, solid family on Christmas. Eggnog—but not too much—and homemade cookies, and more cousins than you could count. Elisabeth was long past wishing she could have all that, since there was no point. But now she wished it for Gil.
The thought even made her a bit sad for her own mother, whose father died when she was twelve; her mother went into a psych ward and never came out. She was raised by indifferent relatives, bounced around until she turned eighteen. Treated by all, she had told them, like a burden.
Could El
isabeth blame her mother, without considering what she had been through? Without weighing the sins of the mother who came before her, and the one before that? She didn’t want to carry it, but she had no choice. She was made up of women she’d never met. How to escape them and become something new?
She remembered a night, a year ago, when she was pregnant and walking home from a book party, thinking of what kind of mother she would be. She was too like her own mother, she feared, but softer edged. In her mother’s stories of a younger self, she was soft too. Maybe Elisabeth needed to try to be the person her mother would have become had her life not been so harsh.
That’s what she’d been thinking then.
Now, she looked again at the gift bag on the counter. She went toward it, as if toward the light.
* * *
—
In the morning, she woke up with a headache. She had had too much of Sam’s wine before bed. Elisabeth had thought that maybe Andrew would be there when she got upstairs, but he had been serious about sleeping in the den. For the first time ever, they slept in separate rooms under the same roof. There was something so alarming about it. That after ten years, a shift like that could occur.
When she got to the kitchen, Andrew was already there, washing dishes.
“Hi,” he said.
She tried to assess his tone. Neutral, she decided.
But when she attempted a joke and said, “I guess the upside of everyone leaving early is that we get to have pie for breakfast,” he did not laugh, or even glance up at her.
Elisabeth’s eyes landed on the empty French press on the counter, and she knew the anger he felt had not passed. Of course it hadn’t.
It was the first morning since they moved here that Andrew hadn’t made her coffee. She thought this was the equivalent of another man slapping her across the face.
Another first, then: for once, Elisabeth wished they could be more like her parents had been when she was young. That they could scream and throw things and make vicious accusations and come right up to the edge of disaster, but then turn back.
The cold shoulder, the unknown, felt worse than anything he might say.
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