I Knew You'd Be Lovely (23 page)

We're sitting at a booth just inside the revolving door. The four-year-old is in a booster seat she doesn't need, but I'm letting her use it anyway. They are coloring in farm scenes with nubs of crayons.

“Tell us the story again,” says the outgoing twin. During the car ride over, she has asked that we call her Coco.

“Which one?” I say.

Coco rolls her eyes. “About the chicken,” she says. The shy twin slides her paper place mat away from her, but still holds her flesh-colored crayon. The youngest one continues drawing.

“Your father was doing orientation for his new consulting job,” I say.

“What's the
O
word mean again?” Coco asks.

“When they make you do things to fit in with the group.”

The shy twin tilts her head. “What's the other
O
word?”

“What other
O
word?”

“The one you taught us before? About God knowing everything?”

“Omniscient,”
I say, and the girls grin. “So. Your father was at orientation, and there was a scavenger hunt. The assignment they gave his team was to find the freshest meat in Chinatown. And your daddy, because he was so smart, figured out a surefire way to win.” The girls start giggling. They know what's coming. “The next morning, he showed up at company headquarters, with a live chicken on a leash!”

When the waiter arrives, I let them order whatever they want—stacks of pancakes topped with whipped cream and blueberry sauce, piles of hash browns, sausage patties for everyone. I have my sister's credit card in my purse. It has her husband's name on it. When you call the house, you still hear her husband's voice on the machine.

The waiter's a lefty, and his wrist bends at an acute angle when he writes.

“My name is Coco,” says my niece.

“Pan-cakes for Co-co,” the waiter says, sweetly.

After he's gone, the shy twin scoots back into a corner of the booth. “I want to be Saltine Teacup,” she says.

“Why,
Saltine Teacup
. What a pretty name,” I say.

The youngest one stops drawing. “I'm Pepper.”

I slide forward with my elbows on the table. “Did you know that Pepper was the name of a Dalmatian my mommy and daddy had when they were first married?” The girls shake their heads: They did not know. “I have a picture of them standing in front of a cottage by a lake, with the Dalmatian in front. My mother's wearing a white bikini with black polka dots. Can you girls guess why?”

“To go swimming?” Pepper says.

“To match the dog!” I say. Coco wrinkles her nose, and we laugh. After a pause, they all start coloring again. Saltine Teacup looks up from her place mat. Superimposed on the chest of the farmer in the picture, she has drawn an enormous red heart.

“Our daddy's with your daddy now,” she says.

I wipe a smudge from her cheek with my napkin. “That's right,” I say.

When we get home, I let the girls tell me what to do. First we bounce around on the trampoline, then I push them on the swings, then we ride in the Barbie cars, circling the pool. I'm amazed at the stamina my sister has secretly had all these years. When they ask if we can jump on the trampoline again, I suggest we play a game called Auntie Takes a Nap. I lie down on the bounce mat and close my eyes. Coco laughs and punches me in the chest.

“Ow!” I say. It hurt more than it should have. “Please
don't do that.” I pull up my shirt—I'm not wearing a bra—and dip my chin, examining myself. There's a large purple bruise that covers my right breast. My niece's eyes grow wide with horror, then she starts to cry.

“It's okay, sweetie,” I say. I slide my shirt down, sit up, and rub her arm. “You didn't do that. It was like that already.” Before I flew out, I had to have a breast cyst aspirated. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced—the hypnotically thin needle, the oddly cheerful banter, the eerie amber fluid filling the reservoir. Had the doctor given me laughing gas? It felt as though he had, although I couldn't quite remember. I remember telling him about my brother-in-law.

“One weekend he was skiing with his children, and a month later, he was dead,” I said.

“And they don't know how he contracted it?”

“No. Doesn't staph live on our bodies all the time?”

“Yes, but … How'd it get into his blood?”

“Nobody knows,” I said. “Maybe the dentist? Or a puncture wound?” I looked at the needle, then at him, then we both became silent. He used the ultrasound on me when he was finished. Then he gave me an ice pack to stick in my bra and told me to cut down on my caffeine intake.

“Is that what causes cysts?”

“We don't really know what causes them,” he said. The body and its independent desires. A number of my childless friends had begun developing uterine fibroids in the past couple of years. It was as if our wombs were saying:
We don't need you! We can make things all by ourselves!

• • •

After supper the girls change into their pajamas and brush their teeth, and we all pile into the one big bed that's actually three twin-size beds squished together. Instead of reading to them from a book, they like it when I make up a story based on an old photograph. They especially like the photos where their mom and I are as young as they are now. I've brought a stack with me in my duffel bag.

“Who's that?” they say.

“That's me!”

“What's wrong with your hair?”

“We had something called perms. It was your mommy's idea. We did them at home, and they smelled bad when we went swimming.”

Coco props her head on one elbow. “How bad?”

“They smelled like rotten fish. Like dead dragons. Like dead dragons who had eaten rotten fish!” I pause, and Coco squints.

“What's the matter?” she says.

“I thought of a joke, but I don't know if you're old enough to hear it.”

“Tell us.”

“I don't think you're old enough.”

“Tell us,” they say. “Tell us, tell us!” They don't say the words, but I hear them anyway:
Our father is dead. For God's sake, tell us your joke
.

“Okay. A girl says to her boyfriend: ‘Does my breath smell like tacos?' And she breathes on his face, like this.” I exhale enthusiastically. “Her boyfriend draws back and says: ‘I don't know. Do you put cat shit on your tacos?' ”

Three separate looks of astonishment. No laughter.

“You're not supposed to use that word,” Saltine Teacup says.

“You guys made me tell you the joke.”

“That's a naughty word,” says Pepper.

“I know,” I say. “I'm sorry.” And then I tell them how their mother and I used to scream and yell over the bad words when we listened to the eight-track of
Grease
while our father drove us to private school in Cambridge.

I tuck the folder of pictures back in my duffel bag and turn out the light. Through the sliding glass doors, we can see the leaves of the tulip tree shiver in the breeze.

“Let's go outside, to pray,” Coco says.

“I think you're supposed to be trying to fall asleep now,” I say. Their mother is asleep on a cot in the kitchen, and we'd have to walk through that room in order to get outside.

“Mommy won't mind,” she says.

“Mommy will mind,” I say, but before I can say anything else, she has tiptoed through the kitchen and is sliding open the glass door.

She gets down on her knees on the concrete and prays to her father. The sky above her is a flock of stars.

“I love you, Tata,” she says. “You will always be the best daddy in the whole world. Always and forever and ever.” I never saw a man more devoted to his kids. When he came home from work, at the sound of his voice, there would be a stampede for the door.

I kneel beside her and take her hands. “Your father loved you very much,” I say.

“I know,” Coco says.

Suddenly her mother is standing over us. “That's enough now,” she says. “It's time for bed.”

After Coco is asleep, I hover awkwardly in the kitchen. “Can I make you some hot chocolate, or anything?”

“No, thanks,” my sister says. “I'm not really hungry. I just want to try to get back to sleep.” And a moment later, she's in her cot on the other side of the room.

I don't want to admit that our grieving has not brought us closer together. If anything, it seems to have accentuated our differences. I believe in God; my sister does not. She lets me talk to her kids about God, and even wants them to take religious education classes, and receive their First Communion, but I know it's a strain for her. The strain has been added to of late. A couple cornered her at the funeral and said: “If you don't believe in Jesus, you'll never see your husband again.” I was flabbergasted when she told me; all I could do was shake my head and apologize. I assume these people mean well, but I suspect statements like that only drive my sister farther away.

The next morning, we're back at the House of Pancakes. Same booth, same sweet waiter. After he takes our order, he tells me I have beautiful children. This is a misperception I not only allow, but encourage. I never correct the girls when they call me Mommy. They only do so when we're out in public—at home, they have a legit Mommy—and I get a secret thrill every time they do. When has motherhood ever come so cheap? None of
the diapers, all of the fun. For years, I've kept a list of places I want to take them when they're older: the British Museum Reading Room; the garden at the Musée Rodin in Paris; Sant'Eustachio Il Caffè in Rome; the Main Hall at Union Station in Washington, D.C., where the original sculptures caused a stir, so now the sentries hold modesty shields in front of their private parts. I've even planned out things I want to say. At Luray Caverns, in Virginia, there's an organ that plays through the stalactites and stalagmites. I've imagined taking the girls there, pointing at the earthen instrument, and saying: “Do you know what that means? That means someone once looked at those piles of mud and heard music.”

Driving home from the House of Pancakes, we listen to a CD of the songs that played during the video portion of their father's memorial. The girls don't know that's what it is; they think it's a CD I've made. “Just Breathe” by Eddie Vedder. “Live Forever” by Billy Joe Shaver. “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty. They know the words by now, and for a few verses, we all sing:

When we walk in the door, the phone starts to ring. “Maybe that's Daddy, calling from heaven!” Coco says. I try to give my sister an expression that says
I never suggested there were phones in heaven
, but I don't know if it tracks. She looks as if someone has just torn out her heart
and handed her a box of ashes, which is exactly what someone has done. Her purse is over her shoulder, and she lets the machine take the call.

“I have to meet with my lawyer,” she says. “Can you watch the girls for a couple of hours?”

“Sure,” I say, nodding. “Of course.”

It's started to rain, so I plant the kids in front of the TV. First they watch a show called
The Wiggles
. Then they want to watch
The Sound of Music
for the one hundred and seventieth time.
“ ‘Edelweiss,' ”
I'll tell them someday, “was my parents' wedding song.” While they sit in a row on the bed with their eyes glued to the screen, I lie on the floor and lean my head against my duffel bag. Before I do, I remove the folder of pictures. I begin to flip through them. Here is my sister wearing pink plastic sunglasses with lenses in the shape of hearts. There she is with her hair twisted in buns on the sides of her head like Princess Leia. Here she is holding a plate of cookies and carrots while I display a letter we've just written to Santa. Now she's cradling a Siamese kitten like a baby. A line from a Richard Powers story I read recently comes to me: “He's amazed that this fate has been lying in wait his entire life.”

Saltine Teacup climbs off the bed and comes over to lie down beside me. She may be quiet, but she sees. She sees everything.

“Why are you crying?” she says. I open my eyes, and on the screen, two teenagers in a gazebo are about to kiss.

“It's a sad movie,” I say.

• • •

My sister walks through the door, holding a stack of mail, rain and tears streaking her face. Sometimes she lets herself cry in front of the girls—she wants them to know it's all right to be sad—but it's clear this is not one of those times. Her keys thunk in a heap on the counter, and she turns in a circle. I can tell she wants to hide, or maybe throw up, but there's nowhere to go. I usher the girls into the bedroom and give them my makeup kit to play with.

“What's wrong?” I ask, and wonder if I have ever in my life asked a more idiotic question. She hands me the stack of mail. On top is a doctor's postcard, addressed in her husband's handwriting, a reminder for his yearly pilot physical. For a second, I'm vulnerable to the doorbell fantasy myself. Could he secretly be alive somewhere, and sending himself postcards? Could he show up at the front door any minute?

“I don't want this,” she says quietly. Her eyes are filled with desolation and restraint and fear. “I don't want this life without him in it.” She succumbs, and weeps silently, standing in the center of the kitchen, her body trembling. All around us, the windows stream with rain. I stare beyond her at the refrigerator, not knowing what to do. It seems impossible that this has happened. There's a magnet on the fridge that says:
INSTANT HUMAN. JUST ADD COFFEE
.

After she has cried for a bit, a subtle formality enters her body. She straightens and says: “While I was at the lawyer's dealing with the insurance, he suggested I redo my will.” She wipes her eyes, tucks her hair behind her ears. The tip of her nose is red, and once more, she reminds me of a version of herself I recognize from thirty
years ago. “I need to know if you'd be willing to take the girls if anything ever happened to me.”