“Okay. Give my love to Tessa.”
I hung up the phone and went outside, sat on the back steps, and looked up into the night sky. He wouldn’t call her. He was out of it now. I knew him. He’d be at his bar tonight, slapping the backs of his male patrons, charming the females. Talking about the White Sox and Daley. Not for him the mess of all this. I have a personal theory about why most men walk away from difficult emotional situations: It’s because they don’t have babies. It is bred in them to leave the dwelling place to hunt and gather, to be outward-oriented; it is bred in women to lie down and give birth and stay home in order to care for the small world they have delivered into the larger one. Men conk things on the head or are conked themselves; women work out the kinks of the inner life.
I wished the fair weren’t over. I wished I could sit outside and watch fireworks, blossoms of light in the darkness that would carry me up and away from myself. Instead, I thought of Caroline, of the life she had lived in this house: murderous rages and then a pork-chop dinner that night, with a mother whose face gave away nothing, with a father blinded by love, and with two siblings focused on anything but her. After such a dinner, days of relative peace, perhaps weeks. But I wondered if those peaceful times were any easier to bear, since she must always have been waiting for the next thing to happen.
I needed out of there. I looked at my watch—still early. I’d drive over to the huge bookstore a few blocks away, have an iced coffee, and look at some science books. There was a client who wanted a quilt made into linking chains, “kind of like DNA,” she’d said. “You know what DNA looks like?” What it looks like is interesting. What it does is fathomless. But it is only a part of what makes us into who we become.
IN THE COFFEE SHOP OF THE BOOKSTORE, two women about my age sat at the table next to me. “I think it’s hormones,” one of them said. “I’m just feeling so emotional. On the way here, I saw a blind man trying to cross the street. I wanted to help, but I didn’t want to offend him if he didn’t need me. So I just watched him for a while. He was listening to the traffic so carefully, his head cocked, and—anyway, finally I just took his arm and said, ‘It’s okay to cross now,’ and he smiled at me—this radiant smile—and it made me feel like bawling. I don’t know why.”
“It is hormones,” her friend said. “I have days like that, when my skin feels peeled back, when I feel completely exposed. And on those days, I cry over everything: Hallmark commercials, dropping a dish . . . it’s those damn hormones.”
But I wondered if it wasn’t something else. Maybe it was the tender irony of the way that we, blind ourselves, offer our arm to others, hoping to ease the crossing. Maybe it was the odd surges of love one can feel for an absolute stranger. Or maybe it was the way we give so little when it’s in us always to give so much more. Thomas Merton wrote about feeling a sudden awareness of a profound connection to others, understanding that “they were mine and I theirs.” I always loved reading things like that, things that pointed to our oneness and, by extension, our responsibility to others. It’s the execution of anything specific that’s the problem. It’s kneeling down to meet the eyes of someone slouched on a sidewalk that you’d so much rather walk past. It’s bothering to listen with an open heart to someone who smells bad. It’s hard.
The three of us kids are in a bathtub piled high with soapsuds. In the background Steve and I are grinning happily. I have made a lavish upsweep, using the thick lather of White Rain shampoo. Steve has made devil horns. My knees are up against my chest, my arms spread out wide—I remember I was being Dinah Shore, singing “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” Steve has his hands behind his head, “wewaxing.” In the foreground sits Caroline, solemn-faced, wide-eyed, dry-headed. Her eyes are raised as though in silent appeal to the person above her. She wants to be lifted up. She does not want to be there.
19
IN THE MORNING, I MADE A POT OF COFFEE. I’D HAVE A cup, and then do some handwork on the quilt I’d brought along, the one for the woman I met with just before I left. It was for a dog, as it turned out. That would eliminate any sew-ons, which the dog could eat. Instead, everything would be incorporated into the design of the quilt. I’d suggested some appliquéing, which would lessen the cost, but the woman thought appliqué was tacky.
I’m always amazed at how much people spend on their animals. I’ve never understood that kind of love, though I don’t denigrate it. Maggie has a mutt that looks like a poodle in the front and an extraterrestrial in the back, and she worships him. Every Friday night he gets an Italian beef sandwich from Johnny B’s.
When the coffee was ready, I went to the refrigerator for milk. I didn’t see any—where did Aunt Fran put it? I saw a carton of cottage cheese, a package of English muffins that, though unopened, had passed its expiration date. Some Tupperware dishes holding leftovers. And that was it. I looked in the freezer, thinking she might have absentmindedly put it there. Nope.
I searched the cupboards for fake creamer, found none. It might be Dunkin’ Donuts time. But first I’d call Aunt Fran.
When she answered the phone, I said, “Hey, you! Where’s the milk?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s me, Laura. I thought you brought us some milk. I don’t see any.”
“Well, yes, that’s . . . listen, honey, is Caroline there with you?”
“No. I’m going to see her for lunch today. Why?”
“I wonder if I could ask you to come here first.”
“Sure. Is something wrong?”
“Well, I just want to . . . I think there’s something you should see.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
I dressed and got in the car, headed for the drive-through window of Dunkin’ Donuts. If I didn’t go in, I wouldn’t be tempted to get a doughnut. When I spoke my order into the silver box, I requested a large regular coffee, skim milk, light, no sugar. “Anything else?” a voice asked, and I paused, then said, “A bowtie?”
On the way to Aunt Fran’s, I passed a sign for a backyard play posted to a telephone pole. Aunt Fran once had a role in one of our backyard plays (to which Steve sold tickets, ten cents for a show and a paper cup of Kool-Aid), and she played a wicked witch so convincingly that one of the little kids in the audience went home crying and the mother called my mother to complain. I tried to remember the last time I stayed over at Aunt Fran’s. I believe it was a summer night when I was fourteen. She helped my cousins and me write letters to stars that night. Gregory Peck was her choice, Paul McCartney was mine. Everyone I knew loved either Paul or John, except for Caroline, who preferred Ringo.
When I knocked at the door, it took a long time for Aunt Fran to answer, but then there she was, in her bathrobe. “I was just getting out of my gardening clothes,” she said. “I’ll be with you in a minute. Go in the kitchen, there’s a big plate of chocolate chip cookies.”
“Did you bake this morning?” I asked.
“No,” she called, from her bedroom. “Brunderman’s Bakery.”
“I’m disappointed,” I said.
“Eat one,” she answered. “You won’t be disappointed anymore.”
Since I had already ruined my “diet,” I ate two. Then, as I was pouring myself another glass of milk, Aunt Fran came into the room, carrying something under her arm. A small photo album, it looked like.
“Here’s the milk,” I said, holding up the carton and smiling at her.
“Sit down, Laura.”
“Okay.” I put the milk back in the refrigerator and sat down at her little kitchen table. There was a pitcher of flowers in the center, a beautiful arrangement from her garden: hydrangeas, lilies, small roses, all in shades of pink, a little baby’s breath here and there, not the nearly yellow, defeated kind sold in grocery stores but bright little white blossoms, full as miniature petticoats.
She sat opposite me and put the photo album between us. “I didn’t go over to bring you food the other day. I went over to get this out of the house. Your mot
her asked me to.”
I recalled the brief bit of conversation I heard between the two of them. No wonder my mother hadn’t wanted me listening in; she must have been talking to Aunt Fran about Caroline making trouble again. And she must have wanted her sister to remove anything that could get Caroline going.
“What is it?” I reached for the album, but Aunt Fran pulled it closer to herself.
“Your mother does not want you to know about this. But I’ve decided you should. I hope it’s the right thing to do. She just never wanted you to know.”
“About what?”
She opened the album to the first page, to a photo of a newborn in a crib. “Is that me?” I asked.
“It’s your sister.”
“Caroline.”
“No. It’s your sister who died. Her name was Claire.”
I looked up quickly at Aunt Fran and then back at the baby. She was remarkably thin.
“She died when she was only nine weeks old.”
“From what?”
“A heart defect. She never had a chance, really. It just about killed your mother.”
I looked at the photo again. The baby was so young, it was hard to see much in her face. And her eyes were closed, her fist close to her face. I turned the page: more photos, the old-fashioned kind with jagged edges. There were only about twelve in all, some with my mother or father, one with another baby. “That’s me, right?” I said, pointing to a picture with an older baby, staring in a direction opposite my sister.
“Yes, that’s you. I wonder—I’ve always wondered, really—do you have any memory of that child?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You weren’t even two when she died.”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to. And that’s certainly the way your mother wanted it.”
“Why?”
“The only way she could get past it, finally, was to deny it. But then when Caroline was born—too soon, really; it was much too soon for your mother to have another baby—she . . . well, it made all the sorrow come back. She saw Caroline healthy, and it reminded her of Claire, dead. And I think it affected the way she treated Caroline.”
I nodded my head slowly, though I didn’t really buy this explanation. It seemed to me that if you lost a baby you’d be overjoyed to have another one.
“At first it was just that she was afraid to get close, thinking it could happen again. Or maybe it was postpartum depression, which everybody talks about now. We didn’t know about it then. But Laura, despite the way things were between them, you must know she does love Caroline.”
“Pretty long time for a postpartum depression to last, Aunt Fran. And pretty selective behavior on my mother’s part.” I stared into the open face of a lily, all its parts exposed. Then I said, “Do you know that Caroline was in the hospital when she was a kid? She was there because—”
“I know,” Aunt Fran said. “Your father and I both knew, though your father thought he was the only one. It was a terrible thing. But at least Caroline got some help. Things got better after that.”
“But . . . what about my mother? What about help for her?”
“Things were very different then. People relied more on their own resources. I think your mother felt that if Caroline got help, she would be helped too.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
“It was a long time ago.” Aunt Fran turned the photo album toward herself to look at the pictures. “She was a beautiful baby. And smile? That baby smiled from the day she was born. I swear, she was the happiest little thing you ever saw. And then came Caroline, such a sad little girl. Always so sad. I think your mother saw that sadness and it bothered her, that the one who lived would be so—”
“But Aunt Fran, my God! Caroline had reason to be sad!”
“Oh, I know. I know. But I often wonder which came first. Who caused what in whom. She closed the photo album. “Anyway. May I ask you to keep this a secret?”
“I . . . don’t think I can. I’m sorry.”
“Well, Laura, I showed you this so that when Caroline complains about her life, you know part of the reason that your mother had difficulty with her. And the other part, I must tell you, was Caroline herself. She was a difficult child. Surely you remember that! She remains difficult today; that woman cannot settle down inside herself. I love her, truly, but she is a tortured soul. It is not easy to be around her—not then, not now. You’ve had good luck with your children, Laura. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about what it would be like to have a child like Caroline.
“I really don’t think your telling others about Claire will help anything. It might make things worse. Your mother made mistakes, but she tried her best to take care of all of you. That’s all a parent can do.”
I stood. “I’ve got to go.”
She took hold of my arm. “I will ask you again to keep this a secret, Laura. It was your mother’s wish that you kids never know. Not only so that she could try to forget about it, but so that you children wouldn’t have to know about such a sad event. She wanted to protect you; she still tries to protect you. Don’t remind her of things she tried so hard to forget and then, on top of that, tell her that her sister betrayed her—not when her husband has just died. Please, Laura.”
“I won’t say anything right now. That’s all I can promise.”
What I meant was, I wouldn’t say anything to Caroline. But I was going back to my mother’s house, and I was going to make a few calls. One to Pete for consolation; one to Maggie for advice. And then I would call Caroline, to tell her I was on the way to see her for lunch.
I drove home mindlessly, mechanically. The only thing I seemed to take in was a cemetery, which I noticed as I sat at a stoplight. Was Claire there? I wondered. I looked at one of the markers: a stone angel, bent at one knee, head hanging low, hands clasped over her heart, weeping tears of stone.
20
NATURALLY, I GOT ADVICE FROM PETE AND CONSOLATION from Maggie. Pete thought I shouldn’t say anything to Caroline; she was in such a fragile state that hearing what I’d learned might harm her further.
“But it might help her too,” I said.
Pete said, “Well, it’s hard to know how she would interpret it. So why take the risk?” I supposed he was right. I’d often been surprised by Caroline’s reactions to things. And this was a delicate time.
Maggie told me she felt bad for me, handling all this alone. Which I realized I was, at least at this point. I told her to tell me something funny, to give me a yang for the yin. She said, “Hmm. Something funny. How about an Amazing Fact instead?”
“Fine.”
“I used to be able to bounce a quarter off my stomach. Now I can hide an all-terrain vehicle in there.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t find that amazing. I find that funny. Also convenient. Next time we get tired on one of our walks, we’ll just pull out your Hummer.”
“Next time we take a walk, we’ll be too old to walk.”
“No, we really are going to start walking regularly.”
“I know we are, sweetheart.”
“As soon as I get back. I mean it.”
“Hey. I’m lacing up my sneakers.”
A FEW MILES FROM CAROLINE’S, I turned off the radio and listened to the sound of the rain that had begun. I turned on the windshield wipers and remembered, suddenly, a cabdriver I once had on a rainy night when I was visiting New York City. His wipers weren’t working very well, the traffic was heavy, and he was in a terrible mood. I wanted to put a daisy down his rifle barrel, so I said, “Pretty bad traffic on Friday nights, huh?” “Every night!” he said, speaking from between clenched teeth. I looked across the backseat of the cab, as though seeking some sort of rolled-eye affirmation from an invisible ally. Then, in the warmest voice I could muster, I said “I guess it can be pretty hard to live here.” We were at a stoplight, and I thought he might turn around and crack a smile. But he did no
t turn around. Rather, he began pounding his steering wheel. One fist, pounding steadily but slowly, terrible little intervals of silence in between. Bam! . . . Bam! . . . Bam! I got out then, said this was close enough, thank you very much, and gave the guy a really good tip, though he did not deserve one at all. I walked away thinking, What happened to this man? Why is he not like the cabbie I had earlier, who had a picture of his daughter on his dashboard, who pointed out tourist attractions in his thickly accented English, who sang a little song to himself as we waited for the light to change, who waved at and then laughed with another cabbie who pulled up beside him? Surely the angry man did not emerge from the womb shaking his fist. Who did this to him?
Pretty obvious memory to have pop into my head, as I drew closer to the house where my sister lived. Though of course what she pounded was not the steering wheel but herself.
CAROLINE WAS SITTING AT HER DRAFTING BOARD, looking at blueprints for an addition she was doing to someone’s house. I looked at the finely drawn lines on the big white pages and said, “Funny how we both ended up doing kind of the same thing.”
“What do you mean?” Caroline erased something, penciled in a correction.
“I mean, you know . . . making things out of raw materials. I use cloth, you use wood.”
She looked up. “You know what I think? I think it’s very different. I think I focus on seeing the actual substructure. You take things as they are and chop them up to re-create a new whole. And then you say, ‘See? That’s what it is!’ ”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I want to know the truth of what’s beneath. You want to transform things into something comfortable and beautiful, but not what they are.” She stared at me, a little smile on her face. And then her smile faded and she said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. It’s just . . . I’m in such a bad mood. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe it’s good for you to be in a bad mood.”