by Cameron Lowe
The day before the two brothers and Denise left for Maine, Charlie and Hugh showed up at Matto Furio’s to take Malcolm to a long lunch, with a blessing from Dinah. Over cheeseburgers and fries, they began to talk about everything going on with Gwen and Malcolm.
“If you tell me it’s none of my business, I’ll butt out,” Charlie said, “but are you two okay?”
No farting around. Malcolm liked that and thought about how to answer. Gwen would kill him if he said the truth about their financial situation, so he opted for a bit of tact. “We’re great.” Relationship-wise, that was certainly true. “Winnie keeps us on our toes, but with your parents watching her the days we both have to work-” which was most “-we’re keeping on top of things.”
Charlie swirled a thick steak fry in ketchup and bit off an end. He swallowed before he spoke, studying Malcolm the whole time. “Hm. I thought maybe with the Denver trip and her illnesses, you two might be on some shaky ground.”
“Nope. Doing great. And Gwen is feeling better, so that’s kind of a relief.”
Hugh gave him a pitying smile. “Until a single germ hits her and she gets sick again.”
Malcolm laughed. “Yeah, her immune system pretty much has a roll-over-and-die philosophy.” Glancing at Charlie, he added hurriedly, “I don’t… that is… I… you know I would always take care of her…”
Charlie cocked an eyebrow and nudged his brother. “He always get this nervous?”
“Just around people related to my wife who could break every bone in my body blindfolded and kneecapped,” Malcolm said. “Which, uh, is pretty much every guy in your family. And half the women.”
Charlie grinned. “Relax, Malcolm. I already like you. And it’s true, seems like. Gwen had a lot of sick days in school. She’d catch a stomach bug every other week. But is she all right? There’s been a lot happening in our family and with you two. Is she holding up okay?”
“Honestly? I think she’s the strongest woman I’ve ever known. But… yeah. There’s a lot of strain there. I wish I earned more so she didn’t have to stress so much about us both working all the time. And I know it eats at her how much we have to rely on your parents to watch Winnie. But the alternatives there are even more stressful. Good daycare and babysitters just aren’t in our neck of the woods.”
Hugh stared down at his plate. “I know you two would have it a lot easier if I hadn’t tried to cut myself.”
“No, hey,” Malcolm said. “We were happy to help. And financially, we’re stable. You have nothing to be sorry about, especially if you stay on the path you’re on.”
“Thanks,” Hugh said. “I have good days and bad ones.”
“And you’ve got family to help you through the bad ones,” Malcolm said. “Me included. Any time you need to talk, I’m here. That’s not a platitude. Good days, bad days, you need someone on the other end of the line, you’ve got my home and work number.”
Hugh nodded, but said nothing. Charlie slapped his brother on the back. “Well, you and Gwen need anything, you give us a ring too. And get yourself a damn cell phone. I want to see pictures of my niece more often.”
“Will do.”
The three men finished up their food. Hugh insisted on paying as thanks for all the favors Malcolm had done for him, and when they shuffled out to their cars, the youngest Caplan grabbed Malcolm in a hard hug.
“Thank you,” Hugh said. “Laugh if you want but I love you, Malcolm. Never said that to you, I don’t think, but it’s true. You’re the best man our sister could have wound up with, you’re a good dad, and you’re our brother, blood or not.”
“Thank you,” Malcolm said, touched. “Love you too. And I mean it. Any time.”
Hugh nodded and got in the car. After the door closed, Charlie pulled a can of dip from his pocket, tapped it against his palm, and pulled out a wad. “Denise is going to kill me,” he muttered, and shoved it in anyways. Quietly, he said, “You dodged around it pretty good in there.”
“Dodged around what?”
“Money.”
“We’re fine, Charlie.”
Charlie shook his head. “You know, ‘pride comes before a fall’ is a pretty good saying.”
“We rely on your family enough.”
“All right, I get it. You want to do things on your own. But if that little girl or my sister ever need anything, make me the first person you call. We’ll figure something out.”
Malcolm stuck out his hand, and Charlie shook it. He worked his jaw like he might say something else, but then he just nodded at Malcolm, walked around the back of the car, and got in. Malcolm watched them go, feeling queasy and unable to figure out why.
* * *
Ten minutes to say goodbye to a brother Gwen was sure she’d never see again.
It wasn’t enough, but then, it could never be enough. Sandwiched between Hugh and Charlie on a concrete bench outside the shelter, she tried to say a thousand things, but it all came out in a cold, dazed tone.
“You’ll call when you get in,” she said, meaning for it to come out like a question.
“Of course,” Hugh said.
“And every day. Just a message. Just to let me know…”
“…that I’m not worm food. Got it.”
“It’s not funny, Hugh,” she snapped.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Gwen shook her head. “A message. Every day. Doesn’t have to be long. But that’s what I want to come home to. Understood?”
Hugh wrapped his arm around her and kissed the side of her head. “I got it. Also, your shampoo sucks.”
She laughed, a bitter, caustic sound that ended in an abrupt sob. Charlie held her too, and together there was silence for a while. Finally she looked at her older brother, red-eyed and shivering. “You need anything…”
“We’ll be fine,” Charlie promised. He glanced up at Denise, leaning against their rental car. “Denise will kick our asses into shape.”
“Darn straight,” Denise said, grinning. “You can come out any time, Gwen. You and the family. Our home is your home.”
“Thank you,” Gwen whispered, trying to smile. “And same to you. If you don’t mind crazy neighbors playing video games until six in the morning.”
“Aw, to see that little cutie again, we could handle anything,” Denise said.
“And Winnifred too,” Charlie added.
“Give him a good elbow to the ribs for me,” Denise said.
They talked for a while longer, but the trio’s flight was coming on, fast. Finally Gwen hugged Charlie and Denise one more time, and turned to Hugh. She hugged him tight and pressed her head to his chest.
“Don’t,” she whispered against his chest.
“You know this is the best thing for me right now,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. And I will call. However often you need me to, I’ll stay in touch. And someday I’ll figure out how I can make it all up to you and Malcolm. I’m sorry I let things get so bad.”
“Don’t you apologize. Just take on every day, okay?”
Hugh finally pried himself free and squeezed her shoulders. “We gotta go, Gwen.”
“I know. I know.” She wiped at her nose with the back of her sleeve. “Go on. Enjoy the coast. Send lots of pictures.”
Hugh nodded, and headed for the backseat of the car. Gwen gave Charlie and Denise another quick hug, and then they were piling in. Hugh tried to smile, but when he thought she wasn’t looking, his face shifted into distant forlornness. It was a picture of him she’d carry in her heart for the rest of her life, Hugh, so youthful looking but carrying the weight of a thousand years of sadness on his back. A child who never got a chance to be one. They reversed out of the parking lot. She meant to just let them go. To not create any more drama on their way home.
But as they neared the parking lot’s slow decline to the street, Gwen ran after them, the tears finally coming. The car jerked to a stop and Hugh was stepping out of it, hugging her, cr
ying too. Their embrace was short and sweet, and though there were no words, it was the best goodbye they could manage.
Chapter 35
Winnifred was not a child easily given to anger. She had her fits, to be sure, but she was content in her own little world and was, by and large, cheerful and upbeat. That was why it came as such a surprise when she became out-and-out angry when Roslyn May Irving decided to make her way into the world just a matter of days before her birthday.
“She was supposed to wait!” Winnie wailed when Malcolm helped her tug on her coat. At five – and very nearly six – she knew how to dress herself, but when she threw a fit, all logic and reason went out the window with her and it could take half an hour to get her to do something simple and ordinary. They had no time for that, so on went her coat.
“I don’t think she really gets a say,” Gwen said. She sat on a chair, trying to remain calm. Her water had just broken when she was fixing herself and Winnie bumps-on-a-log. With Winnie, her cravings had been varied, but with Roslyn, peanut butter and celery seemed to be all she wanted 24/7. Malcolm had quit buying the smaller jars and opted instead for an enormous vat – making sure three times he’d bought creamy and not crunchy. Just once he’d made that mistake. The glint of maniacal murder in Gwen’s eyes set him straight, even if months before she’d loved the crunchy stuff.
Remembering how long it took Winnie to enter the world, Gwen took the time to shower and change. Malcolm refused to leave her side the whole time, helping ease her out of the shower despite her grumblings that she wasn’t a glass doll. Now she was attempting serenity as she fixed her daughter and husband a sack lunch to bring with them to the hospital. Malcolm thought that was insane, but as she pointed out, the mundane activity helped her focus, helped her not think about all the things that could go wrong, both with the baby’s health and what came after.
They were finally, blessedly on their feet again. Things were still tight, but Gwen managed to nab a better insurer and now had coverage for her good seizure medications. It had been a full year since she had one, and they felt like there was never going to be a better time to have a second child. Within three months of trying, Gwen found out she was pregnant again, and despite a scary bout with another round of pneumonia that left her in the hospital for three days, the pregnancy had gone by suspiciously smooth. Both of them were waiting for something, anything to screw this all up.
Something had to give. They were pushing their luck on all fronts and were in a dash to save money while the saving was good. Gwen’s pregnancy could go south at any time given her medications, various illnesses and her propensity for breaking bones. Dinah had reached the upper limit of what she could afford to pay Malcolm, and his raises, already glacial, dried up. The Mack Machine’s radio made a strange, annoying pop whenever they started the van and the lights were starting to dim when Malcolm tapped the brakes. The transmission on Gwen’s Camry was going to crap out at any time. Both of them waited to see what shoe would drop first – or if it would be all of them.
At home in their crummy apartment they nicknamed the No-Good Hellhole, their landlord was nonexistent and there was no super. They made digital payments to a rental company, but when anything went wrong and they reported it through the website, it could take anywhere from four weeks to six months for someone to come by and take a look at it, even if it was marked as an emergency. Complaints to HUD went nowhere, and when a rare investigator did show up at the building to ask questions, the problems remained and the families making the complaints were evicted within weeks. No one was under any illusion that the investigators were being paid off by the owners. For many of the residents, this was a last resort at somewhere approaching decent housing, including Gwen and Malcolm, so the residents formed their own inner circle and protected their own, helping each other out with repairs and making sure unruly tenants got the message to leave. Malcolm and Nic’s friend Hunter Carr, now a detective, was a great help with that. He came by about once a week or so, making a big show of parking up front in the lot, taking a walk around the building, and once or twice escorting out a few addicts and violent types. Gwen was fond of him. He and his boyfriend loved board games, and they started up regular game nights every couple weeks. Malcolm got out with them now and then to go fishing. Gwen was big on most things outdoorsy but fish and fishing had never been to her taste, so she was happy to have someone around to help sate her husband’s natural Minnesotan itch.
“Just tell her to wait! Can’t she wait, Daddy?”
“No, honey, it doesn’t work that way,” Malcolm said.
“Well, I had a choice!” Winnie shouted nonsensically.
Malcolm pulled her to him and lifted her. It was usually her catnip. Winnie would eventually become far more independent, but at five, she craved attention, loved it, reveled in it. And when her father picked her up, she believed she was the center of his world. Usually it calmed her through the worst of her fits, but now it almost seemed to make her angrier. She leaned her head against her dad’s shoulder and gave Gwen the full blast of her furious glare, her nose pugged up and her upper lip pooched.
“This is all your fault!” she grumbled.
“Winnifred Cori!” Malcolm said sharply. “You stop that. It is not your mother’s fault. This is not anybody’s fault. This is the way the world works.”
This is the way the world works. For some reason, that stuck with Gwen throughout the whole day and into the night. Even doped up and falling asleep an hour after she’d given birth, Malcolm and Winnie’s voices converged in her mind.
Your fault.
This is the way the world works.
Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
* * *
Roslyn’s birth was almost surprisingly easy. Gwen, high on an epidural, even grabbed the doctor by the scrub and asked, “There’s more, isn’t there?” He laughed, squeezed her arm, and told her no, there wasn’t.
Daphne, Elliot, Juliet, and Winnie waited for them just down the hallway. While Gwen cradled their newest tiny addition to her breast, Malcolm staggered down the hallway, drunk off a combination of glee and relief. He burst into the waiting room, and Winnie, who’d been laying on her back with her head resting on her “aunt” Juliet’s lap, fell off the row of chairs in her haste to stand up. She started bawling immediately, but there was no real harm done, and when Malcolm picked her up to introduce her first to her new sister before everyone else came piling in, she popped her thumb into her mouth for the first time in a year and stared down the hallway with huge, determined eyes that only wavered back to her father’s face a few times for reassurance.
When they entered, Gwen smiled up at them with half-lidded eyes and rosy cheeks. Winnie whispered, “Mom?” like she didn’t know if she was real, and Gwen nodded, holding up the little wrapped bundle in her arms. Malcolm set his daughter down and she walked slowly to the bed, her mouth hanging open in a big O. “She’s tiny,” she whispered again, as quiet as a mouse.
“You were this little once too,” Gwen told her.
Winnie leaned over to peer at her little sister and stroked her cheek. Inexplicably, tears rolled down their first child’s face and she stared up at her mom. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I was mean and don’t hate me, okay?”
“No, honey, no, never,” Gwen said, and scooted over so Malcolm could help Winnie up on the bed. She sat next to her mom, legs dangling off the side, and kissed her sister on the head, then her mom. “You both mean the world to me, Winnifred. That’s never going to change.”
Winnie nodded slowly, processing this. “I think she’s the most nicest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Malcolm sat down next to her and pulled her to him. “Her and you both, hon. You want to sit with me and hold her?”
Winnie looked at her mom hopefully. “Is that okay?”
“So long as you’re gentle.”
Winnie glanced up at the sky and shook her head. “Of course, Mom,” she said, twenty years of exasperation packed into a five-ye
ar-old’s body.
Malcolm plucked up Roslyn, who worked her tiny lips as though she were whispering something secret and special. He pulled up one of the hospital’s plastic armchairs – not much of an improvement over the one he’d sat in quite some time ago – and Winnie clambered up onto his lap. Carefully, with a hand back behind the newborn in case of an accident, he settled Roslyn onto Winnie’s shoulder. “Gotta support her head and neck, like we showed you with the dolls, remember?”
“Uh huh,” she said, completely in awe of her little sister. “Her eyes are closed. Is that bad?”
“They’ll be open soon enough,” Malcolm said. Beside them, Gwen turned over onto her side to watch them, her hand trailing out lazily to stroke Winnie’s hair, making a thousand silent wishes for her daughters and her husband.
And maybe soon, baby number three.
* * *
In some ways, the year they had with Roslyn before Marley came along made both Malcolm and Gwen feel more than a little guilty. They missed so much when it came to Winnie’s first few years, thanks to health scares, working all the time, and the never-ending pile of debt at their doorstep. But with Roslyn’s birth came a year of relative peace. They were there for her first word – “mama,” which fueled Gwen’s bragging for years. She was around to encourage Rozzie to pull herself upright for the first time. By that point, she was pregnant with Marley and suffering the ill-effects worse than she had with the other two. The morning sickness almost felt like vertigo it was so severe, and more than a few times she had to go home from work with migraines so bad Malcolm, her mom, or Juliet had to come pick her up. It gave her more time with Winnie and Roslyn, which was a good thing, Malcolm assured her, but the exhaustion in his eyes from picking up the slack again broke her heart.