The House of Deep Water

by Jeni McFarland

  He escapes to the living room, seats himself near the Christmas tree, pretends he’s ventured into the forest to watch these strange creatures in their natural habitat. What he finds is confusing. Steve is in the middle of the living room letting Hannah climb him like a jungle gym. Sage sits on the floor nearby, clapping his hands and squealing. He crawls over to Steve, raises his arms, and says, “Up,” and Steve lifts the child, standing with Sage in his arms and Hannah clinging to his back like a monkey. He tosses Sage in the air. Diane is clearly uncomfortable, watching closely for any falter in Steve’s balance.

  On his way back to the kitchen, Derek stumbles upon Paula and his dad, standing in a doorway, kissing. She doesn’t belong here, never did. Their kiss looks halfhearted, obligatory, as they stand in the hallway underneath the pointy leaves and red berries of the mistletoe. There’s a sadness to it, a chasteness. It makes Derek turn away even faster than if it had been passionate. These are the men he holds himself up to, the men he compares himself to, always finding himself lacking. They are his How to Be a Man template. He wonders now whether he has ever really seen them clearly. He’s always blamed his stepmother for leaving, for breaking his dad’s heart. But now, after seeing his dad with Paula, his arms draped loosely around her body, with enough space between them to see daylight from the window, kissing under the mistletoe—which isn’t even mistletoe, he realizes; those pointy leaves and berries are holly—Derek wonders whether he shouldn’t make a new template.

  * * *

  • • •

  After goose and fixings, after pie and coffee, Hannah begs them to finally, finally open presents. The family crowds into the living room, the children on the floor.

  “I’m not a kid anymore,” Mandy mutters, but she seats herself next to her sisters on the hardwood. She motions for Skyla to join them, but Skyla shakes her head, lingering near the doorway like she wants to make a fast break.

  Steve also hovers in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, where the drinks are.

  Diane is shivering in her seat by the drafty window. Paige goes to the fireplace to light a fire, as if her attentiveness, the anticipation of her wife’s needs, could erase the fight they’re having. See how sweet I am? See how caring?

  When the presents are all doled out, after the children have littered the floor with torn wrapping paper from their gifts, Paige makes sure Linda sees the package from her and Diane first. “For baby,” Paige says, handing over the gift, and when Linda opens it, Paige watches her sister’s face go soft with tears.

  “Cute, right?” She’d gotten a doll with springy curls in her hair, a stiffly starched dress.

  “Oh, Paige,” Linda says.

  “It was nothing,” Paige says.

  “You know I’m having a boy.”

  “Ah, shit,” Paige says.

  “It’s fine,” Linda says, holding the box with white knuckles. “Did you get a receipt?”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Paige says.

  “That’s my daughter,” Paula mutters. Jared laughs and pats her knee.

  “Maybe your son will be gender nonconforming,” Paige says.

  “Let’s hope,” Diane says.

  “I hate Christmas,” Paige admits.

  “Everyone hates Christmas,” Derek says.

  “At its essence it’s good, right? I mean the bastard child, the idea of extending hospitality to those in need, no matter how mangy or Arab they might look.” Paige bounces on the balls of her feet. “But what does that have to do with gift giving in the name of a morbidly obese old guy? Like, what the fuck, America?”

  Paige looks to her wife, hoping her little rant has at least amused her. It has not. When Paige went on like this, Diane used to kiss her forehead and call her her Little Radical. Now Diane gets up, picks her way through the family, and goes to the bathroom. Paige listens for the toilet flush, but even after the door opens again, Diane does not come back.

  “I was reading about Finland, I think,” Paige says, “where they just give each other a new book and a chocolate bar on Christmas Eve, and maybe a new pair of pajamas. You go to bed early in your new fleece and eat chocolate and read. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  Those two are doomed, Derek thinks.

  Steve gulps from a coffee mug.

  Give it a rest already, Paula thinks. Part of her is still in the barn with the calf, its skinny, slick legs, its nostrils twitching when she tickled them with the straw. The newborn was much smaller than a calf should be. When they left, it had yet to stand, hadn’t even tried stretching its legs. How certain she had been that it was dead, that it would never breathe. But it had breathed, Paula reminds herself. She had done all she could.

  Her daughters are bickering now, still opening presents. Linda and Paige—those two were never close in the way Paula thought sisters would be. Yet in a lot of ways, they were much closer, and Paula wonders whether there is something about age proximity that drives sisters apart, each one struggling to outgrow the other, to shoot above them like a sapling trying to break through the canopy. Maybe they are close, just in their own way.

  For a moment, just a moment, Paula thinks she could stay here and pick up her old life. She had felt something earlier when she kissed Jared, and even though it wasn’t exactly sexual, it was familiar. Familial.

  Nobody notices Skyla sneaking into the kitchen to answer her phone. When Steve goes in for a refill, he finds Skyla waiting by the window.

  “You know Santa already came,” he says, and Skyla rolls her eyes so hard, he worries she might detach a retina. He looks a little sheepish as he pours whiskey into a coffee mug. “Our little secret,” he says, as if anyone in the living room were fooled. Her uncle makes her sad, and she doesn’t like to feel sad. She doesn’t really like to feel in general, so she usually lets him know, nonverbally, how incredibly lame he is. When the eye roll doesn’t work, she realizes she’s going to have to say something before he’ll leave her alone.

  “I invited someone. He should be here any minute.”

  “Attagirl,” Steve says, raising his newly refreshed mug. She’s not his daughter, so he can condone such acts.

  He doesn’t get it, but then he never does. Rumor has it he’s sleeping with Dan Hansen’s mom—and how can Aunt Deb stand it? At sixteen, Skyla’s already done with romance. She’d chased after Dan along with her cousins, but he didn’t even notice her. It seemed like such a pointless pursuit.

  No, her guest isn’t for her, but for her mother.

  When the rental car pulls up in the driveway, Skyla goes outside to greet Jorge. This is her gift: She’s spent the last month talking to Jorge, convincing him to come here. She knows her mother will be angry, and that her father will be heartbroken. But she also knows her parents are becoming too chummy again; all throughout dinner, she watched them sneak glances at each other. In a sense, bringing Jorge here is really a gift for her father.

  * * *

  • • •

  Jorge pulls into the driveway and turns off his GPS. The farm, built up on a hill and covered in snow, looks to him like a Christmas card. Season’s Greetings, Warm Wishes, and all that. For a moment, he wonders if he’s made a mistake. He didn’t expect a full-on farm, with barns and a silo, and he realizes how seldom Paula talks of her old life, how few details she’s provided.

  From the driveway, he can see into the picture window in the kitchen, straight through to the living room, where Paula sits in a chair next to a man with a full beard and glasses, a heap of wrapping paper at their feet. Jorge has no doubt the man is Jared. Watching her framed in the doorway like this, it’s almost like watching her on a movie screen, and Jorge finds himself wondering how the scene will play out, waiting for Paula’s body language to tell him what’s really going on. She holds a mug in her lap and smiles, presumably watching the rest of the family unwrap presents.

  Part of him
wants to head back to the airport, but then the back door opens and out steps a teenaged girl who’s the spitting image of Paula, wearing an oversized sweater, leggings, and unlaced men’s boots. She clomps toward him with a smile, her arms wrapped around herself to stave off the cold.

  “You coming in or what?”

  She doesn’t bother introducing herself or asking who he is. He can still see through the window behind her; Paula is leaning toward Jared, who says something in her ear and then laughs, his fingers buried in his beard.

  When Paula left, Jorge spent the first month trying not to call her, trying to give her space. He’d imagined going with her to Michigan, meeting her daughters, her old friends, convincing her husband it was time to let her go. When Paula said no, this was something she had to do herself, it sounded sensible because it was a line so often used on TV. Of course he understood.

  But then, despair set in. She wasn’t coming back. And even though he felt certain of this, he found himself unable to let go. He called daily, they argued daily, they made up—as well as a couple can make up while fifteen hundred miles apart.

  When he was beginning to come to terms with the loss—about the same time Lola had stopped whimpering in the evenings, stopped staring at the spot in the drive where Paula usually parked her truck—when he was beginning to find other things to occupy his mind (nights out with friends, remodeling the bathroom, finishing the porch, having the neighbors over for brisket), when he was starting to feel like he might be okay, he got a call from Skyla. She sounded eerily like her mother, the tone and timbre of her voice. The cadence, though, was distinctly teenaged.

  “She misses you, you know,” she told him after minimal small talk.

  “She sure doesn’t act like it,” Jorge said. He was outside when she called, up on a ladder, painting the eaves, and he hadn’t bothered to climb down when his phone rang. He clung to the ladder awkwardly, his phone held with his shoulder while his paintbrush bristles stiffened with paint.

  “You should come for Christmas.” Skyla said it so casually he found himself agreeing without really thinking it through.

  Standing in the snowy driveway, though, watching Paula through the window—Jorge decides he’s not leaving here without a fight.

  * * *

  • • •

  Derek’s gift for Linda is cheap, he realizes now. Questions of gender aside, Paige’s gift is thoughtful, tuned in to Linda’s future in a way that Derek’s gift is not. He got her a pound of coffee, ordered online. He imagines Paige spending hours looking for a doll, the perfect doll, a doll that reminds her of her sister. All he did was click some buttons on the computer, the whole time remembering a trip they took in high school. They drove with some friends to Seattle, where the family of one of the friends lived. Derek remembers being crowded into the backseat with Linda and arguing over what to listen to on the radio, taking shifts driving through the night, eating at fast food restaurants because they’d all pooled their money for gas. And after days in the car, when they finally arrived in Seattle, the first thing they did was find a coffee shop. He remembers the look on Linda’s face when she took her first sip, the contentment. He was hoping to see that on her face again when she opened his present.

  But she’s pregnant. As much as he doesn’t want to think about that, doesn’t want to acknowledge that she’s having another man’s baby, it’s undeniable. She can’t even drink coffee right now. God, he’s so stupid.

  He won’t give it to her, he decides, and steals his own gift from her stack when nobody’s looking. But before he can make it out of the living room, he finds the doorway blocked by a man he’s never met before.

  Jorge enters to find Paula with her hand on Jared’s knee, her eyes trained on his face, her laugh quiet, meant only for her husband. He barely has time to compose himself before Paula sees him.

  “Surprise,” Skyla says from behind Jorge.

  “Baby,” Paula says. “What are you doing here?” She presses her hands to her mouth, not quite obscuring her awkward smile.

  His appearance has the desired effect: She leaves Jared sitting alone and goes to hug Jorge.

  “Merry Christmas,” Jorge says.

  “Who’re you?” Dinah says from her seat by the tree. It isn’t that she means to be rude, but she’s had a very long day, and his arrival surprises her. She’d been so focused on Christmas, and Maribel, that she’d failed to hear the car pull into her driveway. She scolds herself. You can’t be too careful, especially in this day and age. Why, just this week, that Thurber man was in the news again. It’s getting to the point where you can’t even trust the people you’ve known your whole life.

  “Everyone, this is Jorge. Mom’s fiancé,” Skyla says. The look on her father’s face breaks her heart. She can tell that seeing Jorge in his home has made the man real for the first time. He takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, his beard. He looks so old to Skyla. She had thought that bringing Jorge here—that getting her mother to leave—was the best thing she could do for her father, but now she’s not so sure.

  Dinah is sure, though. She looks from Jared to Skyla, and when she realizes Skyla’s plan, she whispers a silent thank-you to her granddaughter. “Goodness, you’ve come a long way,” she says, putting an arm around Jorge. “You must be exhausted. Can I get you a plate? Cup of coffee? I’m Dinah. The kitchen’s this way.” And she steers him away from her son.

  “I’m not really hungry,” Jorge says.

  “Nonsense. It’s Christmas, and you’re family.” She pulls leftovers from the refrigerator, fixes him a plate.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” Paula says, retrieving coffee mugs from the cupboard. She’s more shocked than surprised, and it occurs to her how long she’s been here, how easily she’s lost track of time. What was it about River Bend that bred such complacency?

  “I should have come sooner,” Jorge says as Dinah pushes a plate into his hands.

  “You’re here now,” Dinah says. “We’ll give you two some time to catch up.” She stares pointedly at her grandchildren. Skyla hovers behind her mother and Derek, who’s trying to hide a gift in his coat. She lets him finish, then shoos him back into the living room.

  Jorge sets to work on his food, while Paula pours them each a cup of coffee.

  “You’ve had a nice little reunion, I see,” he says when she sits down with him at the table. It’s out of his mouth before he can stop himself.

  “Is that what this is? You came to take back what’s yours?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says.

  “Then what did you mean?” She blows on her coffee, even though it’s old, almost room temperature.

  “It just seems like you and your family have gotten close.”

  She can hear the jealousy in his voice, not only jealousy over Jared, but over the roast goose and the farmhouse, the wood-burning fireplace, the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the snow-covered hills and gray sky, the harsh Michigan winter that has forced the family to huddle together for warmth. She knows this scene would appeal to Jorge, and there’s no way she can tell him everything else that goes along with it: the lack of privacy; the judgments made about how you run your business, how you raise your children, how you feed your family, how you love your spouse. Taking his hand, she decides she’s ready to be done with all of it. She nods, smiles, and says, “Let’s go home tomorrow.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The Jesus Cow dies two days later. Of course Grandma Dinah is sad, but she’s mostly concerned for Maribel, who Linda found in the barn, licking the ice from the stiff calf’s coat. Linda shows up at Derek’s house to share the news.

  “I can’t stand any more death,” Linda says. She wants to say more, but her voice has gone too thick to speak. When she has recovered, all she says is, “That coffee smells amazing.”

  “W
ant some? I just brewed it.”

  “No. I mean, yes, but no. It’s bad for the baby.”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, Derek thinks.

  “Well,” she says, “maybe half a cup.” Her stepbrother has been awful sweet these days, and when she thinks about it, she realizes he’s always been sweet. They’ve been best friends since before their parents even married. She’s closer to him than she is even to Paige. Wouldn’t it be great if she could make herself feel even a tiny bit of the love he feels for her?

  Derek goes to pour her a cup of coffee, adding just cream. And what now? he thinks when he hands it to her. She’s here, in his house, and how can he get her to stay? He wonders whether this is a family trait, the inability to get women to stick around. He heard from his dad yesterday that Paula is gone. No goodbyes, she just skipped town three days before the divorce became final. Linda drove up this morning in Paula’s truck. Not that his dad had expected Paula to stay forever—they knew she was getting remarried—but something about the kiss Derek had seen made him wonder. Because his dad was a different man, a more present man, with Paula around.

  “I see you got her truck,” Derek says, nodding to the window where it sits in his driveway.

  She shrugs. “Whoopie. The damn thing’s running on borrowed time.”

  Linda takes a sip of coffee, and her face brightens. This is how Derek gets Linda to take off her shoes. This is how he gets Linda to stay awhile in the house he bought three years ago, the house that just now, today, starts to feel like home.

  Elizabeth DeWitt Hansen

  25

  About a year after our son’s birth, a change takes Greg like a cold front. It’s subtle: He leaves piles of folded clothes on the floor, he cooks all the meat from the freezer, then lets it spoil in the fridge, he makes a full pot of coffee and drinks only a cup, he turns the air conditioner down to sixty-five without telling me. To compensate, he buys me sweaters, three sizes too big. He stores gallons of orange juice and leaves them to ferment in the fridge. He moves us to a bigger house, a bigger yard, a bigger city, more space to lose each other in. He plants a garden that takes up the entire yard, then lets it go to seed and weeds, green and glossy and so thick the grass underneath dies.