The Most Fun We Ever Had (64 page)

“Water under the bridge. As long as we’re throwing around clichés.”

“I love you. Just, like—fucking stupendously.” The threat of crying returned, but this time she didn’t specifically fight it.

“I love you cetaceanically and immeasurably, Wendy Eisenberg.”

The only person on the planet who spoke to her as though she was of equal intelligence. She slipped her hand down the waist of his pants, wrapped her fingers around the warm familiarity of him. She wanted to fuse herself with him, to keep him earthbound with her.

Miles had grown quiet. “Things are going to be okay?” he asked.

The last time she’d seen him this scared was on the day Ivy was born. She had no fucking idea if things were going to be okay.

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I
could
die before you,” she ceded.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t.” He kissed her breast. “But I appreciate your willingness.”

—

V
iolet couldn’t tell, when Wyatt was born, if her disorientation was simply a characteristic of routine new parenthood, or if all those who had come before—her own abandoned child and her sister’s lost one—were leaving their mark on her prospects of happiness. Did other new mothers, after the blunted relief of the birth itself being over, have to search the twisted corridors of their insides, like those emotional intelligence assessments with the many-expressioned smiley faces, to determine what, precisely they were feeling? Other new mothers cried, of course, upon face-to-face acquaintance with their infants, but how many of them did so not entirely out of elation and exhaustion? How many of them felt another presence in the room, a pallor hanging over what was supposed to be one of the most enchanted moments on the human spectrum? Matt seemed not to notice, and she was glad that at least one person in the room was enjoying himself the way he was supposed to.

His parents were en route from Seattle, and hers were stuck in traffic. She knew she had to call Wendy; she knew her sister couldn’t hear the news from their punch-drunk mother. She couldn’t help but think of the message Miles had left for her the day Ivy was born.
Hey, listen, Violet, I have—the worst news.
And how Matt, who’d just proposed to her on a bench by the Fountain of Time, was standing behind her when she listened to it, how he’d opened his arms to hug her and how, with her face pressed against his chest, she let everything wash over her, her sadness for Wendy, her guilt for missing the calls, and—only inklings of this, at the moment, inklings she wouldn’t allow to concretize until later—shame at the fact that she’d never intended to be there in the first place, whether or not Wendy had given birth as planned, to a healthy full-term baby. That she’d begun planning a trip to Seattle to meet Matt’s parents in the vicinity of Wendy’s due date. That she knew she couldn’t do it, couldn’t be there when her sister gave birth, no matter how much Wendy wanted her there, no matter how happy she was for Wendy and Miles, because the first time around had nearly killed her. That she
knew
she’d never be able to pay Wendy back for being there for her.

And alongside all of those awful thoughts, the dread crept in, because there was no way she could bow out of visiting Wendy given what had happened instead. That she would, again, have to share an empty birthing room with her sister. She’d feared the sensory memories she’d endure—from the iron-spiked smell, the unnatural whiteness of the sheets—and she’d feared what Wendy’s grief would do to her own, how her sister’s agony could potentially awaken all that she’d been keeping tamped down, still so fresh, then, and with such potential to unhinge her completely. But when she’d gotten there, Wendy hadn’t wanted to engage with her at all. Her sister had been like she’d never seen her be before, which of course made sense, given everything, but still surprised her a little, Wendy’s cold impassive tone and her insistence that Violet needn’t have come, not to mention her—again, well-earned but still smarting—barbs of cruelty when Violet tried to comfort her. And of course much of this was owing to the trauma Wendy had endured before Violet arrived, but she couldn’t help but know, deep in her gut, that Wendy was also, rightfully, angry with her, hurt by her absence and her betrayal. And while Wendy certainly couldn’t have
known
of Violet’s plans to avoid the birth, had things not gone so terribly wrong, she seemed to sense Violet’s guilt, and the guilt itself seemed a kind of admission. To feel guilty was to know you’d done something wrong, and she’d felt guilty, and there was nobody on the planet who knew her better than Wendy.

Perhaps that was why it took her so long to muster up the fortitude to call her sister. Wyatt—far from lifeless and in possession already of an impressively complex mastery of REM sleep—was tucked against her, and Matt was stroking his tiny knee with one finger, and she took a deep breath and reached for the phone by her bedside and dialed.

Wendy arrived almost immediately—Violet couldn’t help but think some part of her may have been trying to make a statement about sisterly obligations—bearing an ostentatious bouquet of dahlias and a box of Cuban cigars, which she dropped into Matt’s lap without airs. She tossed her coat over a chair and glanced critically out the window for several seconds before she finally turned back to face them, fixing her gaze just above Violet’s line of sight.

“Could you have gotten a worse view?” she asked.

“It’s hideous, I know,” Violet said uncertainly. She had deliberately chosen not to go to Prentice, though she would have liked to, because she’d been anticipating this moment, anticipating her sister having to return to the site of her own trauma, and had instead opted for a hospital on the North Shore, which had been a bitch to drive to during rush hour that morning. Its views, whether or not the ambient lakeshore spans of Northwestern, had not once entered Violet’s mind.

“Dumpster art has its merit” was Matt’s feeble contribution.

“So you’re okay?” Wendy asked.

“Absolutely.” Did other new mothers feel crushing guilt for being okay? She thought of how Wendy had squeezed in next to her in her hospital bed after the first baby was taken away, how she had eventually cried herself to sleep in Wendy’s arms. Wyatt was asleep in her arms now, tightly swaddled and at the apex of adorable, and Wendy hadn’t even looked in his direction. And it was hard for her sister, Violet was sure, but she’d come all the way there to—what? Insult the room?

“What do you think, Wendy?” Matt asked, his voice a touch more jaunty than Violet would have liked. She saw Wendy’s gaze drift finally downward and land on Wyatt’s sleeping face. There was a vague, nauseated smile on her lips.

“Mm.” And then she looked back up at Violet and her voice, though strained, was free of all the irritating, tightly sealed airs to which she usually defaulted when she felt uncomfortable or defensive. “He’s perfect.” She sounded, in fact, stunned. “He’s so—
big.
”

She’d never seen Wendy’s daughter, but she knew she had been only three or so pounds. Her son, who had seemed until that moment to be the smallest person ever to have existed on the earth, was gargantuan in comparison to the photos of preemies she had seen online. Like just-hatched dinosaurs, iridescent and impossibly fragile. She felt a fleeting second of disgust with herself for safely, successfully giving birth to this enormous person when her sister had been robbed of the same opportunity. And then she felt an equally fleeting surge of anger toward Wendy for making her feel this way, for ruining her happiness.

“We’re glad you’re the first one to meet him,” Matt said, covering for her, his voice now acknowledging the unbearable mix of elation and sorrow hanging heavily in the moment.

“Do you want to hold him?” she asked. Maybe it would be different because he was a boy. Violet had hoped Wendy would have an easier time of things because the situation did not entirely resemble what her own situation ought to have looked like.

“Sure,” Wendy said finally. “Yeah.”

Violet lifted her arms toward her husband and offered the baby. She watched as Matt placed him into Wendy’s arms, and she watched as Wendy accommodated her posture around the baby, and she watched as something like contentment settled onto her sister’s face.

“Hi,” Wendy whispered. “Hey, there.”

Matt sat on the edge of the bed and took Violet’s hand, sensing her emotion before she felt it herself. It wasn’t until she tried to squeeze his hand in thanks that she realized how tense she was, already gripping him viselike.

“He has Mom’s nose,” Wendy said to them, not lifting her eyes from the baby. Wendy, whose husband was currently undergoing chemo. Wendy, who’d been dealt the shittiest hand of them all. Wendy, who had lost so much, and whom Violet would always have failed, and who somehow found it in herself to be generous at this moment, though it couldn’t have been easy.

“I hadn’t noticed that,” she said, brimming with gratitude. Perhaps they could let this moment play out like it would with normal sisters. Perhaps not everything, always, would be quashed by what had come before it. Matt rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. The father of her child, to whom now—lest there was ever any doubt—she was indivisibly bound, the man who’d proposed to her on the very day Ivy was born. She’d allowed herself to be happy that night, for the first time in ages—what luck, that the person she loved loved her back, that the universe was giving her a pass, a chance to move on—only to have it shadow-darkened a half hour later by one of the worst things that could possibly ever happen. She remembered him standing behind her as she listened to Miles’s messages. How elated they’d been—giddy, champagne-sloshed—and how quickly it was extinguished, her brother-in-law’s voice on the machine getting hollower with each message,
Violet, please, you’re the only one that she— Please just come; it’s almost over.
And Matt, newly cemented into her life, waiting open-armed to comfort her. The sick juxtaposition of that: she’d gained Matt the day she lost her sister forever. And yet here they were, she and Matt and Wendy and her brand-new baby, and the air between them felt almost peaceful.

But then Matt was leaping from the bed, because Wendy had suddenly lurched forward.

“I’m going to be sick,” she said, and she swiftly handed off Wyatt and was out the door, and moments after that, David and Marilyn arrived, and the world continued to turn, and Violet tried very hard to pretend that it wasn’t her fault.

—

I
t was almost nine. Too early for bed. Grace stretched, cast aside the latest issue of
Teen Vogue
and went downstairs. She paused on the landing, feeling oddly bashful. Her parents were together on the couch, her dad stretched on his back and her mom sitting near his feet.

“Of course they’ll find him guilty,” her mom said. Loomis was curled up by her legs.

“In a perfect world. But it’s always the most obviously guilty ones who—”

“You’re such a cynic.”

“One of us has to be.” Her father nudged her mother with his foot and she smiled, pushing him away with her elbow. It occurred to her that if their family had followed the normal trajectory, without its Epilogue, her parents would be living alone now. She wondered if they ever thought about it like that, if they ever wished they could live their boring lives without a teenager overhead. But when her mother noticed her she didn’t sound disappointed or bothered.

“What’re you doing, honey?”

She realized she probably looked weird just standing on the stairs so she advanced into the living room, going over to pet Loomis. She squatted before him, just a foot or two away from her mom, and stroked at the wispy light hair on his belly. Intrigued initially by her entrance, he closed his eyes again and let out a contented snort.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Ah,” her mom said. “Well, we’re watching
Law and Order,
if you’d like to join us.”

Grace shrugged, settled back to sit beside Loomis.

“I know we’re just your dorky old parents,” her father said.

“But of course we’d love to absorb your presence,” her mom said, reaching down to ruffle Grace’s hair. “Glom on to our sweet lastborn while you’re still under our roof.”

“We’ll live vicariously through your youth and vitality until you abandon us,” said her dad, and Grace could tell it was becoming one of those moments when her parents were technically talking to you, their child, but were obviously talking to each other, lame overdone jokes to make the other crack up.

“Fine. God,” she said. “I’ll watch with you. Just stop.” Her dad reached down with his socked foot and brushed at the ends of her hair with his toes and she squealed and jumped up. “Ugh,
Dad.
Are you
trying
to get rid of me?”

“Of course he’s not,” said her mom. “Get up here, little love. I know you’re our wildly mature driver-in-training but I just want to touch that sweet head of yours before it goes off to rule the world.” She looked up at them, so content with their station in life.

“Come on, Goose,” her dad said. “Humor us before we’re sent off to assisted living.”

“Lord, you’re morbid.” Her mom nudged his legs away with her hand. “Move those feet. Make way for goslings.”

There had never been anyone else on the entire earth who was so simplistically happy to be around her. But it was weird to be best friends with your parents, right? She rose slowly, self-consciously, and fitted herself between her mother and father, hugging her knees.

“Oh, my heart,” her mom said, snaking an arm around her back. “The only daughter who will still indulge me in snuggles and horrible network television shows about sex crimes.”

“Our lenient lifeline,” said her dad, “who has not yet realized her parents are the lamest of the lame.”

She wrinkled her nose, trying not to delight in their attention. “Can we just watch the show?”

“Our diplomat,” her dad said, elbowing her gently. “I knew we made the right decision when we kidnapped you.”

—

S
he’d seen Miles weeping and delirious and covered in his own shit. She would ask her mother this if she ever had the balls: How was it possible to love another person this much? How was it possible that she didn’t care, that the effluvia and the heartbreak became minor details? That the smells made her gag, but the feeling of his body beneath her hands—in the bath, on the toilet, being maneuvered into the movie-theater seat of his wheelchair—roused such throat-filling tenderness, the conviction that she’d been put on this earth to bolster the bulk, however insignificant, of another body? Not a baby, but her husband. Her person.