In the Middle of All This (10 page)

Sarah stood counting her fingers under the warm shield of water.

“Okay, honey,” Lauren said. She pulled her from the shower, shut it off. “Get dressed.”

“Will you do my hair?”

“We'll see.”

But there'd have to be another try; it wasn't the last word. Maybe there never was a last word. She believed in hope. She believed in luck. She believed in mercy, but she didn't know whether mercy meant denial or acceptance.

From the bag she dug out the hair dryer—what a princess, she couldn't help thinking—and began on Sarah. Over the roar her daughter said something, and she couldn't hear it. She clicked off the dryer.

“What?” Lauren said.

“I said thank you,” Sarah said.

“Oh,” she said, startled. She clicked on the dryer again. “You're welcome.”

Sarah had what had been her father's hair, dirty blond, frizzy. Unpredictable. Sarah liked it in pigtails or a braid, to tighten and straighten the wildness. She wanted straight hair. I love your hair, Lauren kept telling her.
I
don't, she'd say. Every morning and after every shower or bath, she had to have it “straightened.” Lauren sprayed it now with a detangler and started hurriedly combing it out. Every time the comb caught, Sarah jumped in pain and Lauren apologized. The other mothers and daughters had already gone. It was just the two of them in the dank locker room. Martin would be standing out in the cold parking lot, Max would be the last howler in the toddler room. Night would have gathered. She kept combing it out and combing it out, but still she could not quite get it straight.

“So how many times are you going to do it?” Martin said, as they slipped into the study and shut the door behind them. He was wearing a set of oven mitts and toting a hockey stick. The room reeked of old cheese.

Lauren stepped up onto a chair. “A few more times, at least.”

“What'd the doctor say?” With the stick Martin began to poke around under the baseboard heaters, where he thought the mouse was. For the last day he'd been reasonably sure it was stuck in the study, even if none of the traps had sprung. Maybe the little bastard could live off its fat.

“He said to try it again. There's plenty of stuff.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You don't really care, do you?”

He pulled back a five-drawer file and tapped on the wood floor. Not a sound. “Of course I do,” he said. He got up on the foldout futon sofa and angled the hockey stick over the desk and started poking it deep into blind corners.

“You think it's a dumb idea.”

“It was
my
idea. Where the fuck is this guy?”

“Maybe it got out.” She started to get down off the chair then stopped herself. “It was
our
idea.”

“So try again,” he said. He stepped off the sofa and crawled partway under the desk. In the mitts it was hard to grab on to the trunk that contained all their manuscripts, but finally he caught the latch and pulled the trunk back.

“I see something. Pass me the flashlight.”

She handed him the flashlight. He pointed it at a brown something that seemed to be oozing out from under the baseboard heater.

“It's either mold or it's our guy.” He poked it with the stick. “It's not moving,” he said. He pushed and pulled the trunk farther out and lifted up the wires attached to all the computer equipment.

“Is it?”

“Must be.”

She handed him the dustpan. With the curved blade of the stick he drew out the little pile. Sometimes, when he'd been chasing it, he thought it might be nine or ten inches long. But now it was curled into a stiffness that could fit into his hand. It was still tentatively connected at the mouth to the pointy needle of the cable wire.

“Ugh,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Look.”

It had the coloring of a domestic creature—shades of brown, a streak of white—and a stiffened bushy tail.

“What?”

“It's not a mouse,” she said.

“You
said
it was a mouse.”

“Well,” she said, “it isn't.”

He separated its tiny clenched snout from the cable prong and scraped it into the pan, then dumped it into a plastic bag. He took off the oven mitts and knotted the bag, carried it outside to the curb, and carefully stashed it in a can. When he came back in, Lauren was already on her knees washing the corner of the floor.

“We did it,” he said.

She looked back at him. “Don't you want me to try again?”

“Of course I want you to try again. Try anything you want.”

“You are so full of shit,” she said. She crumpled the wet paper towels into a plastic bag and stood and surveyed the study. “None of the wires look chewed into.”

“Great,” he said.

Holding the bag of fur and crap, she pushed past him toward the study door. “I'm going to try again,” she said.

“Of course you are,” he said.

For a while, it seemed to her, nobody mentioned it. Richard took his annual two weeks in India and came back and asked not a word about it. Martin called at least twice a week and e-mailed every now and then and said nothing. Sometimes Lauren would call when no one was around, and there was a hitch to her voice—or so it sounded, a kind of forced dullness to it, or a sheen around it—and even Lauren could not bring it up. Of course it had to be left unsaid. When she heard the falseness or the emptiness or the glibness in all of them, she knew not to try to break it. Every morning when she woke, it was Do-Have-Be, Do-Have-Be, making herself go, willing herself not to pack it in.

She looked at her half-packed suitcase. One of them should just tell her. Really it was up to them. It wasn't up to her. She understood. She could just say she understood. They could retreat to that way of talking where you didn't say exactly what you meant, you just said enough around it that people could gather it. That took longer, of course. It wasn't really honest. It disappointed her. Was that the way they would all talk now? When she saw them again would she say, I understand, and would that be the end of it?

“Elizabeth.”

He wrapped his thin arms around her. She swore he still smelled of cardamom and curry.
She
wanted to go to India.

He gave her a kiss. “We've got only two hours.”

“I know,” she said. “I understand.” She heard the shift in her voice and turned, but he was already marching from the room to check out timers and alarms. This was ridiculous. He was her husband, for god's sake. It was him. “I understand,” she said again, her voice thinner than she wanted it to be but still with an edge to it.

Slowly he came back into the room. He looked at her. He'd heard. What did he think she thought he wanted her to understand? What did you have to accept?

It wasn't over. She wasn't over.

She looked at him slowly, the pale blue eyes, the lightly freckled face, the mouth partly open as if in question, and turned her back and carefully set another piece of clothing into the suitcase.

“What is it?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said, her back to him. “I just said I understand, is all. Why don't you check the lamp timer in the guest bedroom.”

“All right,” he said. She felt him pause in the doorway. “There isn't anything I'm not telling you,” he said softly, “if that's what you're thinking.”

She glanced at him. He could be like that. He
was
aware. She wanted to hold him. She smiled and shook her head.

“I know,” she said.

It was true that sometimes on planes in the last year she'd had to fight the desire for a catastrophic crash. The first plane ride after the bone specialist, it was all she wanted, to go down instantly in a great ball of flame with a whole lot of other people. I don't really want this plane to crash, I just think I do, she wrote, then put her nearly empty notebook away. At least that was brief enough.

“Do you want anything?” Richard asked.

She stretched. “A bigger seat.”

“Hah.”

“You think it's true that whenever you fly it takes a while for your soul to catch up with you?”

He pried off his shoes. “Maybe.”

She sighed. “I guess we could read something.”

In their carry-on were the well-thumbed meditations and a few survivor books. He pulled out their checkbook and began ticking through the account. Ever since her retirement she handled all the bills, but he reviewed every expense. Her package had been quite generous, and yet she'd lost four-fifths of her income.

“No trash?” she said.

Grinning, he pulled out a celebrity magazine. “Got it for you right before we boarded.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder and began to flip through the pages. Now they both smelled of the inside of the plane. “Thank you,” she said.

“I tell you,” his mom was saying as they stood in the backyard watching Max wash the playhouse in the wet cold, “this family is falling apart.”

“Yup,” Martin said.

“Do you exercise at all? How's your drinking?”

“I'm drinking pretty well,” he laughed. “My usual two or four a night.”

“That's not so good.”

“I walk to school.”

“I'm afraid you have to do more than that.”

He darted over and stopped Max from sponging his hair. “Maybe we ought to go inside,” he told him.

“Okay,” Max said.

In the kitchen his father snored in a chair while Sarah and Lauren stirred batter for banana bread.

“I want to!” Max shouted.

Martin's father didn't wake.

“He can be like that for hours,” Martin's mother said.

“How's he doing anyway?” Martin pulled a chair over for Max and he climbed up, and Lauren handed him a spoon and he reached into the bowl and stirred jerkily.

“He's ruining it!” Sarah said.

“No, he isn't,” Lauren said.

“He begins radiation in a month,” Martin's mother said.

“Oh,” Martin said.

“What's radiation?” Sarah said.

“It's medicine.” Lauren swept up the bowl over the children's shouts. “Now we can pour it.”

“I want to pour it!” Max shook his spoon at her.

“We all will,” she said.

“Is Grandpa sick?” Sarah asked.

“A lot of people are sick,” Martin's mother said.

“Help me pour.” Lauren slid the baking tin in front of the children and then cautiously offered back the mixing bowl. The three of them held on to it with all hands and she slowly tilted its spout into the tin. The batter oozed out.

“I wish he'd wake up,” Martin's mother said.

Lauren handed each of the children a plastic spatula, and they scraped whatever they could into the tin. Max had batter on his chin and both cheeks and near his left eye.

“We're baking bread!” he said.

Lauren took it from the counter and set it in the oven. Max whimpered. “I want bread,” he cried.

“It has to bake first.”

“I want bread now!” he howled. Lauren picked him up and he kicked, but she still held on to him. “I want my bread!”

“What a cutie,” Martin's mother said.

“Can I light the candles?” Sarah whined.

“Not now.” Lauren held Max tight so he couldn't kick her. He still howled.

Martin's mother nudged him and pointed to his father. “See, he's still asleep.”

He was slumped back in the hard chair, his mouth open, his throat exposed, his stomach out. When Martin was little he used to love poking that big stomach and crawling all over it and bouncing on it.

“You want a glass of wine?” he said.

“Sure,” his mother said.

“Lauren?”

“Not yet.” Max settled and she stood him on the floor. “You want to go watch TV?”

He wiped at his wet face. “TV.” He nodded.

“Me, too?” Sarah said.

“Yes, you, too.”

The two of them raced into the living room, and in a few moments Martin could hear the roar of Nickelodeon. He handed his mother a glass of wine. “What do the doctors say?”

She shrugged. “Not much. That it should help. The hormones have helped. They have to put him in some kind of body cast each time he goes for radiation.”

“Is he in pain?”

“No more than usual.” She took a big sip of wine. When Martin and his sisters were kids, they used to watch her empty a bottle of Pepsi with one chug. A Mommy sip, they called it. “Do you think I should wake him?”

“How long's he been asleep?”

Lauren looked tiredly at the clock on the microwave. “An hour.”

“I want to wake him,” Martin's mother said, “but I guess rest isn't bad.” She sat in the chair opposite him. “Carl,” she said in a low voice, directly to him.

He snored.

“Carl,” she said, “it's almost dinnertime.”

For an instant his face trembled. His eyes opened. “What?” he yawned.

She shook her head and looked at Lauren. “That's something, isn't it?”

They all laughed.

“When do we eat?” Carl said.

By the time she woke, he was gone to morning chants. Muyamaya herself was on the grounds, and Elizabeth felt a twinge of excitement. Muyamaya knew about her, had even given her a scarf. They were humbled by her attention and did not confide about it to anyone.

She got up stiffly and opened the curtain. They were miles outside of Bridgetown, in an area that looked like a landing strip. She took a long bath and forced herself to dress. She sat on the bed and dug out her first bag of vits. It took her twenty minutes to take them all.

Downstairs she wandered the lobby. Every foursome of leather chairs was occupied by people sipping tea or a frothy pink punch. She bought a package of rice cakes and munched them as she leaned against a wall. They were dry. She bought a bottle of water and sipped it slowly until it was finished.