Family and Other Accidents (17 page)

“Yeah. Why don't you forget to take your pills again?” He rubbed her head. “And we should get a house. We've got the money from when my brother sold my parents' place.”

“We
should
get a house. I hate our apartment, and they're killing us in rent.” Laine crawled under his arm. Resting her head against his side, she wrapped her arms around his ribs. “I thought you didn't want to stay in Boston?”

“I don't know, I've gotten used to being ‘Kahnah,' ” he said. “Let's get a big old house with that New England–y roof thing.”

“Shaker?”

“That's it. A big old house with that roof and fireplaces.”

“Do you know how to build fires?” Laine laughed.

“I can learn.” He kissed her forehead. “And a dog, I've always wanted a dog.”

“Not a yappy little dog, though. Let's get a big dog the kids can play with, a lab or a golden or something.” Laine slipped her fingers under his belt and jeans and the waistband of his boxers, took him in her hand.

“Lainey,
”
Connor whispered, nodded toward Jorie in the back.

“It's okay,” Laine said in his ear. “She can't see anything.”

all the words
to “thunder road”

It wasn't the best method of family planning. Three months after her thirty-sixth birthday, Mona unceremoniously stopped taking the pill. She didn't discuss it with her husband. Jack always waved away the topic when she brought up children, saying the time wasn't right, that they had their careers to think about, their lifestyle. But at his firm's company picnic last summer, Jack dove into the pool when a junior partner's son fell in. The boy in his arms, Jack emerged, water rolling off them in sheets. As Mona watched her husband try to calm the child, she'd had to look away, tears in her own eyes—a picture of what they could be.

Jack was forty-one, and they'd been together almost fourteen years. Mona knew he would never think the time was right. It was easier, she figured, to ask forgiveness than permission.

But she doesn't get to ask for either. Sitting on the white paper of an examining table, Mona doesn't realize she's pregnant. Next to her, Jack can't stop yawning and black stubble seasons his cheeks. He'd held back her red curls while she puked the last three nights, and still put in his fifteen-hour workdays. He'd insisted on taking her to the doctor, assuming she has food poisoning or stomach flu.

“Sometimes birth control is less effective because of an antibiotic,” the physician says. “Is there a chance you might be pregnant?”

Right then Mona knows she is, even before she pees in a cup to prove it. Jack studies a diagram of the female body where blue and red lines depict arteries and muscles, but he flexes tapered fingers and shifts his square jaw; he realizes she's pregnant, too.

“It's a possibility,” Mona says to the linoleum floor.

“You did this on purpose, didn't you?” Jack asks flatly when the doctor leaves so Mona can get dressed. He doesn't sound angry or even surprised, just disappointed. “Without talking to me.”

Mona intends to lie, to say the pill is never a hundred percent effective, that even the doctor says so, that it probably
was
the antibiotic she took last month for strep throat, but instead she just nods, tears in the folds of skin between her eyes and nose.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she says, but feels herself starting to whine and stops.

Jack hands her a stiff tissue from a box next to glass cylinders of cotton swabs and tongue depressors. Closing his eyes, he rubs his eyebrows like he does when the computer crashes or his brother calls with some new problem.

“I really wanted to talk about it,” Mona says, wiping her lips. “But you never let me.”

“Let's not do this here.” He puts a gentle hand on her back, takes a deep breath. “Wait until we're home.”

But they don't discuss it. He drives to their condo in the high-rise where Oprah Winfrey lives, stopping on the side of Lake Shore Drive so she can vomit while the October wind blows her long hair everywhere. Then he goes back to his office in a different high-rise farther down LSD.

“I thought I'd pick something up on my way home.” He calls around nine, like he always calls around nine. “Anything you feel like you could keep down?”

He brings back coconut soup and pad Thai, which they eat from the cartons while watching a syndicated
Seinfeld
episode in the living room.

“It's the one where George's fiancée dies from the envelope glue,” Jack says, chopsticks midway to his mouth—the wormlike noodle strands making Mona question her decision to eat. “We've seen this one.”

“We've seen them all,” she says. “Want to see what else is on?”

He flips through the channels—more sitcom reruns,
Star Trek
with its language of strange galaxies, sports networks he knows she won't like, news channels with bad things they don't want to hear about. They end up watching Jerry and the gang, and then Letterman. Chin drooping to his chest, Jack dozes during the musical act but jerks awake when the phone rings.

“It's your brother,” Mona says, checking the caller ID without picking up the receiver. “Do you want to talk to him?”

“I'll call him tomorrow,” Jack says. “Let's just go to bed.”

In the massive California king that allows them to sprawl and never touch, Mona stares at the smooth plaster of the ceiling and waits for Jack's snoring to start. After an hour she turns to face him, puts her hand on his shoulder.

“You want to talk?” she asks, but he pretends to sleep.

         

Because she's pregnant and not dying of salmonella poisoning, Mona tries to pick up a four-to-midnight shift from the other Metro editor who covered for her all week. But she's home sick by seven when Jack's brother calls.

“Everything okay, Mo?” Connor asks. “You sound down.”

She wonders if Jack told him she's pregnant, decides he probably didn't, even though Connor is the only living member of Jack's family and the closest thing Jack has to a friend.

“I've got some sort of stomach thing,” she says. “How are things with you?”

“Not so great, actually.” His daughters, dog, and new age/investment banker wife all seem to be yelling in the background. “The big guy around?”

She tells him Jack is still at his office, asks if there's anything she can do.

“Naw, I'll just try him at work,” Connor says, and Mona thinks he probably needs money or maybe he's having some sort of problem with Laine—Connor and his wife are always almost getting divorced. “If you want to help, come visit soon. It's been, like, forever.”

An hour later Jack plows through the front door. Mona follows him to the den, where he flips up the laptop on his desk.

“My brother's sick,” he says, flushed and hurried. “I told him I'd go to Boston this weekend and do money stuff. Do you want to come?”

“Of course, if you want me to.” They watch the computer screen turn blue before Windows kicks in. “What kind of sick?” she asks, even though she knows it's a bad sick. Even before Jack says things like “advanced stages” and “spleen involvement,” she knows to put her arm around Jack's waist.

“Let me see if I can get tickets for under a million bucks.” He kisses her head, but brushes her hand away.

He plays around Priceline and Hotwire and finally calls United to cash in frequent-flyer miles. The newspaper wouldn't let her take home any work, so Mona thumbs through copies of
The New Yorker
and
Atlantic Monthly
, magazines she and Jack subscribe to and never read. Periodically she looks at Jack's back, studying the point his thick hair makes at the base of his neck. The loudest sound is the laugh track of sitcom reruns, easily overpowering the ink jet's hum as Jack prints page after page about external radiation and autologus marrow transplants.

“If Laine has him on some kind of crunchy organic shit, I'll kill her,” Jack says. “This isn't the kind of thing you fuck around with.”

“I'm sure they're not taking any chances,” Mona says, though she's not certain he's talking to her. “We should go to bed.”

“Go ahead, I'll be in in a minute,” he says, then looks up, the panic flooding his face, making him younger than forty-something. “Conn said they're giving him all this crap that's making him sick. Do you think his hair fell out?”

         

But Connor has all his floppy black hair when he and his family meet Jack and Mona at Logan's baggage claim the next day. Mona expected he'd look worn and weather-beaten, like actors playing cancer patients in made-for-television movies, expected she might be unable to keep her face light and pretend nothing is wrong. But Connor looks pretty much the same as always, lanky and young. He could pass for twenty years Jack's junior instead of ten.

“Was the flight bad?” He hugs her. “You guys look like you've been used as soccer balls.”

“It was storming at O'Hare. Things were kind of rough.” Jack says, eyes red and puffy. When the alarm went off at seven, he was still staring at his computer's green glow, a dictionary-thick stack of printouts marked up beside him. He turns toward Mona. “And Mo's had a stomach thing for the past week.”

“We've got some chamomile tea that's great for that.” Embracing Mona, Laine's bones stick out in too many places. She's the one who looks sick, blond hair tied back in a limp ponytail, shed pounds making her classic features severe. “Say hello to your aunt and uncle.” Laine prods her daughters—Jorie, seven, and Keelie not quite four. They stare blankly at their mother. “Go on.”

Mona doubles at the waist and hugs her rigid nieces. It has been more than a year since she saw them last, she and Jack keep postponing visits. Mona can't remember how she normally greets them, but it seems important now. Leather carry-on bag still slung over his shoulder, Jack nods at the girls.

“You've got to get out here more often,” Connor says. “My kids don't remember you.”

“I know who they are.” Jorie thrusts out her lower lip. Already tall and fair, she's a little Laine. “We're still going to carve pumpkins tonight, right?”

“Pumpkins,” says Keelie—smoky and darker, with the same black eyes as Jack and Connor.

“If we don't get to them tonight, we can do them in the morning.” Connor puts a hand on Jorie's blond head. “Your aunt and uncle are probably hungry and tired.”

“It will be too late,” Jorie whines, glares at Mona. “Tomorrow's Halloween.”

That she could have missed it before seems ridiculous, because suddenly Mona notices signs of Halloween everywhere: goblin and vampire cutouts on the walls of the airline offices, “Monster Mash” on the Muzak, a few Delta employees are even sporting pointy black witch hats. Halloween had been insanely important to Mona and her sisters, growing up in Athens, Ohio, where their mother started sewing their costumes each August. When she was in college and her first years working, there were always parties where everyone used the day as an excuse to wear racy clothes—midriff-baring genie outfits, tight rubber cat suits. But October 31 is a day of no significance to her life with Jack in Oprah's building, where no children ever wander up to the eighteenth floor seeking candy. And Mona wonders when she began to forget.

In the parking garage, Laine clicks a key fob and lights blink on a blue minivan.

“When did you get this?” Jack looks at his brother. “You hate these things.”

“We hate it.” Connor shrugs, a daughter on each hand. “But it's the only thing that holds the girls and their friends. We still have the Jetta.”

Getting everyone in the van is a complicated procedure, and choosing a place to eat is even more difficult. Though everyone insists Mona decide because she's the one feeling sick, Laine is a vegetarian, Jorie lactose intolerant, and Keelie is in a phase where she eats nothing white. The six of them end up at a round table in a Chinese place in Natick, where Jorie continues to whine about pumpkins and Laine orders a ludicrous amount of rice. Fried rice for Keelie and Jorie, who refuse to eat it. Keelie no longer eats brown or beige foods in addition to white ones, and Jorie recently learned fried is unhealthy. Despite Connor's insistence that he only wants soup, Laine orders white rice that sits on the table in front of him.

“Can you try it?” Laine looks at Connor, who has eaten maybe two spoonfuls of wonton broth. “It's something you could handle.”

“I don't want any rice.”

“It shouldn't be too hard—”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Conn—”

They've gone from whispering to not whispering; Mona looks at the burgundy napkin in her lap. To her left, Jack chews sesame beef, oblivious or pretending to be oblivious.

“Laine, I don't want it,” Connor says, quietly again. “Let it go.”

“If Daddy doesn't have to eat the rice, do I
have
to eat it?” Jorie asks.

“Yes,” Laine says.

“Yes.” Keelie, apparently also in an echoing phase.

“Daddy,” Jorie looks at Connor, “do I have to?”

“No one
has
to eat any rice,” Connor says; Laine clicks her tongue and closes her eyes. “But do you like Aunt Mona's hair?”

Hearing her name, Mona looks up.

“Yes,” Jorie says grudgingly. This aunt is the reason pumpkins aren't being carved. “The color's pretty.”

“Well, look at all the rice your aunt ate.” Connor winks at Mona. “How do you think her hair got so red and curly?”

“It's not from eating rice,” Jorie says. “It's from her genes. Her parents probably have red hair.”

“Everyone in my family does have red hair.” Mona makes her voice cookie dough, and wonders if all seven-year-olds know about genetics. “But we all eat a lot of rice, too.”

Before Mona can gauge Jorie's reaction, Keelie picks up a silver dish of rice and hurls it across the table, where it knocks a plate of barbecued spare ribs in Jack's lap. Laine and Connor are both on their feet—Connor lifting Keelie out of the booster seat, Laine wetting napkins from a water glass, handing them to Jack, who looks at Keelie as if he expects an explanation.