Losing Charlotte (12 page)

“Who,” Knox said.

“You can’t give up, you have to guess who it is.”

“Maybe we should go over our options,” her father said. “We should decide what the plan is, don’t you think?”

Knox’s mother got up from the table and went to the refrigerator. She opened the door, bent forward at the waist, reached in, pushed several cartons and bottles to one side, then the other. “Would anyone like butter with their bread,” she asked.

“I would,” Knox said, though she didn’t usually take butter. It was easy to abandon whatever preferences she had when her parents cooked for her—or to forget, temporarily, exactly what those preferences were. During breakfasts at this table, to which she came as often as not on weekend mornings, she drank cup after cup of coffee simply because it was on offer, and left feeling heavy and unmoored at once, as if she might float out of the top of her head if it weren’t so leaden. She walked home, nodding like a narcoleptic, and crawled into bed, wondering why she hadn’t refused something—that last piece of bacon, the cluster of grapes that her father had clipped for her with a pair of kitchen shears. Now she slathered butter on a piece of crust, and listened.

“Do we all fly up tonight, or do just Mom and I go, or what,”
her father was saying. “That’s what I’m going to need to know. If this was a month from now, I’m guessing we would descend on Charlotte in shifts, but since we’re all together—”

“Can I say something?” her mother said.

“Yes. Of course.”

“I just think it’s a lot for the two of them, with the whole family all at once. We should wait and see what Bruce and Charlotte want us to do.”

“So,” her father said. “Min, it never hurts to go over the possibilities. Whether or not the kids—”

“Let’s just say that whoever wants to go can get packed, and we’ll wait for the charter company to call,” her mother said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. They might not even want
me
up there tonight.”

“That’s ridiculous, honey.”

“It’s not,” her mother said. Her voice rose on the
not
. Knox noticed that the redness she’d seen in her mother’s face as she stood over the sink had either returned or never dissipated. Then, more quietly, she said, “Sorry. I just don’t want them to be overwhelmed.”

“I don’t have to go,” Robbie said. “I can come up next week, or before school starts.”

Knox thought she saw gratitude flash in her mother’s eyes. She wondered if her mother imagined having Charlotte all to herself, if she feared any possibility other than that.

“I don’t have to go either,” Knox said. The sound of her voice surprised her. “But I’d like to. Charlotte and I talked about it this afternoon.”

Her mother looked at her.

“You talked to Charlotte?” she said.

“Yes.”

“What did she say?” The innocence in her mother’s expression—the braced, expectant quality of it—made Knox momentarily wish she hadn’t spoken.

“That she wasn’t sure what was happening next. She told me it would be good if I came, actually.”

“She did?”

Knox nodded.

After a few seconds, her mother smiled in her direction. “Of course she wants you there. I think everyone should do whatever they feel they need to do,” she said.

“Okay.”

“As long as the center can spare you right now.”

“Okay,” Knox said. She felt exhausted. She buttered another piece of bread, then put it back down on her plate.

“Dinner was delicious,” her father said.

“Back to the subject,” Robbie said.

“What?” Knox said.

“The sexiest man alive takes baths with a Vietnamese potbellied pig.”

“I’ll mull that bit of fascinating crap over.”

Robbie rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her. Her mother covered her smile with her hand. “Jesus, tough crowd tonight,” Robbie said, just before the phone rang.

C
HARLOTTE HAD LAID
a wooden shelf across two stacks of bricks in front of the kitchen window. She had bought a small pot of basil, a pot of rosemary, a mint plant, an African violet in bright foil, and arranged them in a row on the shelf. She had bought a grapefruit-sized water mister, filled it at the tap, and placed it on the shelf beside the African violet. She had stood back and admired what she had done. She had placed one hand at the small of her back. Bruce had watched her from the hall. The sun was white in the kitchen and fell across her in a dazzling shard. He imagined it warm on her skin. That night Charlotte had twisted leaves from the basil plant, chopped them into a mossy pulp, made tomato and basil omelets for their dinner. He praised them extravagantly, appealing to the domestic pride that flowered from her in these tiny bursts.

Charlotte had stood on the bench in their living room, in the midst of a party she had given to mark some minor occasion—
Cinco de Mayo, or Bastille Day, or the Derby that ran each year just an hour from her parents’ house, about which Charlotte seemed to know little other than that the rest of her family was always in attendance, sometimes with a horse running, and that more juleps needed to be made, please: more. The mint on the shelf in the kitchen was brown by then; papery leaves lay scattered on streaks of dirt. A new pot of mint was bought, ice, sugar syrup, bourbon by the handle. Charlotte stood on the bench and her friends cheered. The television blared in the background. She danced to the music someone had put on: some Spanish guitar, or Piaf, or “Fulsom Prison Blues.” The song would be a detail that got lost. Bruce would remember, though, Charlotte lifting her shirt until her breasts were exposed. He would remember that the television was louder than the music, that it was possible to keep track of the race from across the room. “They’re all in line … wait, number five, San Dee Dee is getting set, all right, the jock has got the colt calmed, and they’re—” From his place on the window seat Bruce could see the pale blue veins that stretched from the aureoles of Charlotte’s tits when they appeared from under the raised hem of her blouse, though he was too far away to make out the goose-pimply texture of the skin just around her nipples. Her skin looked whiter from a distance. Charlotte caught his eye and beckoned to him in an exaggerated burlesque. Her—their—friends turned toward him, laughing. So he was expected to join her? Bruce glanced around, smiling. He was a little drunk. He shook his head. He had made the mistake of inviting a couple of guys from work, had invited Jeb Jackman to be kind; there was Jeb, whom he didn’t even know, by the doorway, with his fat tongue hanging out. Bruce shook his head. He waved his hand at Charlotte, as if to say,
Go on, honey, enjoy yourself. Go on
. A bell rang on the television; the gates crashed open.

Charlotte had leafed with him through the pages of photographs from their wedding. They had been sitting at the table in the back garden; the sky above them was overcast. An event photographer recommended by Charlotte’s boss at the time had taken the pictures, had arranged them into a leather album with a silver-embossed
image of a tree on its cover. The photographer, the hiring of her, had been one of their primary expenses, along with the fee to rent out the restaurant for an afternoon, the small price exacted by the justice of the peace. Charlotte herself had bought carrot sticks, potato chips, pretzels, cheese, and shaken them onto glass dishes that were arranged around the restaurant’s one small room, with its wall of windows that overlooked the same stretch of river Bruce could see from their front steps, its yellow walls, its scattering of distressed folk art. Her parents had paid for the liquor. The restaurant was just down the block from their apartment; Charlotte had used their street as an aisle, negotiating the cobblestones in her heels and borrowed dress. Her sister preceded her down the street; her parents came after. Charlotte had looked so serious, serious in a way that made Bruce momentarily want to go to her, or to yell out something funny, something that he might expect her to yell herself if her face weren’t so drawn, so still. Something like:
Hurry up! Bike messenger behind you, watch your back!
The dress emphasized the fact that Charlotte’s body had grown fuller, more lush, since he had met her. She moved toward him. There was no music, only the hush at their end of the street, the collective hush of the waiters, who stood in their white shirts near the restaurant entrance, watching, and a knot of friends and family, the few of Charlotte’s parents’ crowd who had made the trip up to New York and stood, dressed impeccably in silks and gabardines, with broad smiles on their faces. Across the street, a couple with a stroller stopped to look. They shaded their eyes from the sun, joggled their baby back and forth to keep her quiet. Bruce could hear a bird, distant passing cars. His father stood beside him; Charlotte’s brother stood just beyond. Afternoon light flashed in the windows of the brownstones, flashed in a quick pattern that Bruce couldn’t connect with any object or movement in the weather. The play of light showed up in some of the photographs; in this one, here, Bruce could see it, a nova sparking just behind the head of Knox, whose bare, freckled shoulders were thrust back, as if she’d been conscious her picture was being taken and assumed her most elegant pose. For an instant that day Bruce
had thought of the flashes as music. His head had been all over the place; he had felt guilty at moments for missing his new wife, for wanting to be alone with her, away from these people for whom she obviously felt she had to perform. He had felt guilty for thinking that dignity didn’t become her—and another thing he had seen was that Charlotte’s sister had felt the same way. She had stared at Charlotte at the reception, as if trying to locate the sister she recognized under that bridal patina.

Look at this one, Charlotte said. Look at us.

It was a picture of the two of them, kissing by the restaurant bar. There was a grainy quality to it; the photographer had obviously swept a bit out of focus in order to turn quickly and capture the moment before it ended. What Bruce noticed about the picture was his hand, the way it sat on the back of Charlotte’s neck, gathering her head to his, tangling in the gloss of her hair. It looked to him like a brute hand, too strong and clumsy in its gesture, too insistent. His eyes were open, too, as if he’d surprised even himself with the pressure of his ardor. Charlotte’s eyes were closed. She looked pliable, acquiescent. Like a movie bride, disappearing into her joy.

It’s nice, Charlotte said.

It was a nice picture. Bruce agreed. But there was something about it that shamed him, too, that left him exposed. He wanted her to turn the page. When she didn’t, and kept looking, he glanced around and commented on the new bricks they would need to order for the patio, come next summer.

T
HEY LANDED
at Teterboro. Just Knox, her mother, her father; they had left Robbie at the back door, waving, the magazine still in his hand. Knox had a moment of regret walking away from him, away from the house; how appealing it would be to sink into the couch in the den beside Robbie, to watch, as he cruised the movie channels with the remote control whose intricacies only he fully understood, opening windows on the television screen that revealed other shows in progress, small worlds enclosed in
boxes over the actors’ shoulders that reminded Knox of the thought bubbles in cartoons. There would be salty chips, and beer, and warm lamplight, and no need for talk, where Robbie was. But Knox had chosen. Of course she had chosen the flight, which had been smooth until right at the descent, during which Knox allowed herself to feel heroic for an indulgent moment—to imagine, as the interior of the small plane rattled and the digital altimeter over her mother’s head subtracted from itself, that she was rushing to Charlotte’s side in her time of need. That she was that kind of sister: the Jane Austen kind.

Now that they were inside the small terminal, waiting for the car her father had ordered to take them into the city, Knox’s mother looked at her and said, “Do you think we should call the hospital?”

“How soon will we be there?”

Her mother smiled and rolled her eyes. “I know,” she said. It was the face she made when she reached for a second helping of pie, or took one of the cigarettes that Robbie had offered her on his first weekend home, having invited her onto the back porch and baited her with a declared desire for “Mom time.” “But could you call again? Here’s Bruce’s cell number.” She handed Knox a piece of cream-colored paper that Knox recognized as having come from a pad she kept on her desk in the library.

Knox took the cell phone her mother handed her and dialed the number on the piece of paper. After nine rings, she was prompted by a mechanical voice to leave a message.

“He’s not answering,” Knox called across the terminal lobby. “Should I leave a message?”

Knox’s mother blinked. “I guess so. Go ahead.”

Knox kept her eyes on her mother as she spoke into the phone: “Bruce. Hi. We just landed. We’ll call you again in a few minutes. Or we’ll see you first. Hope everything is going well.” She licked her lips, which felt dry. Her mother looked girlish, sitting prim on a huge piece of modular furniture by the window. Knox sometimes thought that, as her mother aged, she could see her returning to who she had been physically as a child—to the soft smoothness,
the eager glow, that children worked so hard to shed. She sat down beside her mother.

“You’re going to be good,” Knox said. “A grand grandmother.” She sounded effortful, saccharine, to herself, and wondered if she should pretend to be teasing. She turned her mouth up at the corners.

But her mother didn’t look up and began rummaging for something at the bottom of her purse.

“Thanks, darling,” she said. She put her free hand on Knox’s leg. “I’m really glad you came.”

Knox’s father strode in through a pair of automatic doors, which
chirred
closed behind him.

“Car’s out front,” he said. Warm air from outside seemed to swirl invisibly in. Knox thought that her father looked imposing, sure. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders pushed a bit forward, the way her own tended to be. “There’s a phone in it. I just called the hospital and they told me that Charlotte’s still in the operating room.”