Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (22 page)

Josephine was standing in front of the house with her hands on her hips. She looked so much like their mother that Laura paused, as if to make sure she knew the difference. Her hair had grown in a bit, and it hung from her middle part to just below her ears.

“Hey, there,” Josephine said, coming down the drive to meet them. Laura felt like a lunatic, bringing all three kids plus a husband her family didn’t understand, as if she’d brought all of California with her on the airplane, and they were waiting around the corner for an opportune moment to pop out and sing.

“Josephine,” Irving said, holding out his hand. Of course he’d reached her first; there was nothing for him to wade through. Laura stood still and watched as the rest of her family made their way to the front door. Junior was the last one through, the sweet boy, and Laura urged him in with a jut of her chin. She would go in too, when she
was ready. She just didn’t know when that would be. Laura hugged her arms across her chest. The house was so much smaller than she remembered. The entire trip seemed like a cruel joke, orchestrated by another studio. If someone were going to write a movie about Laura’s life, they would have to start here. There would be panning shots of cherry trees, the round red fruit hanging delicately off the thin stems. It would be the story of a girl and her sisters and their father. Laura turned away to face the road. Cars drove past more frequently now. Were they looking for her? She was wearing a plain cotton dress, but the cut was too good, the darts too precise—she was too put-together for Door County, everyone would say so. But, oh, like a punch to the stomach! Laura hated herself for thinking she was the center of the story. This was not about her. Slowly she made her way toward the screen door.

With the exception of a refrigerator in the icebox’s place, the kitchen was unchanged. The same patterned wallpaper clung defiantly to the walls, and the same wooden cabinets sloped away from the ceiling. Laura stepped in slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Josephine was at the stove, fixing the girls what smelled like grilled cheese sandwiches. Irving had settled into one of the worn wooden chairs at the kitchen table, and the girls were next to him, their backs to the windows, their three bodies taking up half the space of three Emerson bodies. Without the heft of the studio and a good night’s sleep behind him, Irving looked smaller and more sallow than usual. Junior had found a spot on the floor, and zoomed a toy car back and forth, revving its tiny engine with a whisper. He understood what Laura needed: space, quiet. Her son was a sensitive boy, and Laura was grateful for that.

“Where’s Mom?” Laura asked.

Without turning around, Josephine said, “Upstairs, resting.”

“Should I go say hello? Tell her that we’re here?”

“I wouldn’t.” Josephine turned, holding a sandwich aloft in front of her on a wide spatula.

Laura slid the sandwich onto a plate and cut it in half. The bread was soaked in butter and browned on the outside, with white, melted cheese oozing out of the middle. She hadn’t eaten anything like it since Clara was born, since before she had a figure to maintain. Florence took one look at the sandwich and slid the plate over to her sister, who inhaled the grilled cheese in a minute flat. There was grease on Clara’s chin and flecks of bread wedged in between her teeth. Laura’s stomach made watery noises; she hadn’t even realized that she was hungry. Being in one’s childhood kitchen made all food look and smell as if it were made from memories alone, as if each taste were capable of transporting you back into your younger self, when things were better, simpler, and more delicious.

“Will you make me one too?” Laura said. She waited for Josephine to turn around again, to look her in the face. There was something hard about her sister that Laura wanted to see soften. It was the Door County winter and the miles of frozen ground and water and snow. Laura walked around the butcher-block island until the heat of the stove was warm against her legs. Josephine stared at the skillet, patiently pressing down on the next grilled cheese. Laura slid her arm around her sister’s thick waist. She didn’t care whether Josephine had to elbow her out of the way, or that she started dripping with sweat, and felt the liquid collecting at the backs of her knees and notch of her throat. She could have stayed there all day, feeling her sister’s ribs expand and contract underneath her arm. Laura ate her sandwich standing up, not caring whether there were grease spots on her sleeves.

When everyone was fed except for Florence, who was a picky eater and had the scrawny figure to show for it, Josephine led them upstairs to show them to their rooms. Laura didn’t want to ask, and
so she didn’t. Let her family decide; that was what she thought. Josephine showed Junior into the cubby that had been Laura’s bedroom. At some point, her parents had made it into a proper room, carving space out of the neighboring walls to make space for a bunk bed. Junior quickly scrambled up to the mattress on top, and pulled a comic book out of his back pocket, happy as could be. Laura half wanted to sleep beneath him, to listen to his sleepy snuffling. They could whisper until they fell asleep. Irving would be fine on his own. But that wouldn’t do, Laura knew, and so she kept following her family as they trudged along behind Josephine. Their parents’ bedroom door was closed—Laura would have bet a hundred dollars that her mother wasn’t sleeping, just putting off seeing her. Josephine had won. It wasn’t quite fair to put it that way, she knew, but that was how it felt. Hildy was dead and Laura was gone, so Josephine—quiet, steady Josephine—had won the silent contest for her parents’ love. No matter how much money Laura had, or how many people looked at her when she walked down the street, her mother wouldn’t want her to climb into her bed and let her face rest on the same pillow. Irving would have told her that it wasn’t a competition, but he’d never been a sister.

Laura and Irving were to stay in what had been Josephine’s room—it looked out over the front of the house, onto the driveway. Of course she wasn’t using it—she lived nearby, a three-minute drive down the road, in a house that Laura had never seen. It hadn’t even been built yet when she left. The room was small but tidy, with an iron bed and a patchwork quilt that Laura recognized. It was reassuring that some objects remained.

“I thought the girls could stay in the cabin,” Josephine said. “Or they could stay with me.”

“Cabin,” Florence said quickly. “That’s here, isn’t it? Right outside?”

Josephine nodded, no doubt relieved. Laura couldn’t imagine her interacting with adolescents. She’d hardly been one herself. “All right then,” she said. “This way.” Josephine turned around and started walking the girls back downstairs, and through the kitchen. Clara paused at the top of the stairs, waiting for Laura to follow, but Irving waved the girls on, and then they heard the
step–step-step, step-step-step
of their feet on the stairs, and then the creak of the screen door, and they were gone.

Laura walked over to the window. There were two cars parked behind their rental: neighbors, maybe, or actors. She was glad that there were still players wandering around. Josephine must have kicked someone out of the cabin for the girls’ sake, someone important, in the scheme of the playhouse. Laura remembered when the Cherry County players were the only actors she knew. In some ways, acting on the stage still seemed more real to Laura than acting for the screen—she couldn’t imagine Susie and Johnny treading the boards, or Dolores Dee, actors who could live on close-ups alone, who had never sweated through their costumes because the night was warm and there was no alternative angle. Irving opened their suitcase on the bed and started hanging his suits in the small, empty closet.

“How are you?” He spoke without turning around. Laura closed her eyes and listened to the soft thumps of the clothes hitting the bed, and then the small scrapes of the wire hangers against the clothing rod.

“I’m glad that the girls didn’t have to sleep in Hildy’s room.” It was the first time Laura admitted it to herself, her fear that she would have to watch her daughters’ sleepy faces vanish behind that closed door. She’d tried not to look as they walked past it, as though even a simple glance would have made Josephine offer it up faster.

“Oh, Lore,” Irving said. He looked up at her. “Or do you want to be Elsa here?” It was a practical question. Irving adjusted his glasses
on his nose. It was still mild in September, and none of the house’s rickety fans seemed to have made it into Josephine’s room. Laura’s skin felt warm, and her dress stuck to her legs as she moved.

“No,” she said, though her voice belied the word that had just come out of her mouth. “Let’s just see, okay?” But Laura did want to be Elsa, if not forever then for the foreseeable future, certainly for the length of the visit. There were more people on the lawn now; they couldn’t all be actors. Laura hadn’t even thought to ask which play had been halted. It would have been what her father wanted her to know. Her father would have wanted his baby girl, his
Elsa
, to walk down the stairs and talk to the actors, get to know the voices he had chosen. Instead, Laura backed away from the window and sat down on the bed. “Will you sit with me for a minute?”

Irving sat down beside her. The bed sank nearly to the floor. Laura heard the suppressed groan in the back of Irving’s throat, and loved him all the more for swallowing it. The bed would be bad for his back, and bad for his sleep, but Irving wouldn’t complain. They would curl their bodies against each other as though it were the middle of winter and they needed the warmth to survive.

T
he memorial service and the burial were the following day. Laura woke early and left Irving in bed. She tiptoed downstairs, past all the closed bedroom doors, but found Junior and her mother awake in the kitchen. They were making pancakes.

“Good morning,” Laura said.

Mary turned around slowly, as if she half expected not to find Laura standing in the doorway. “Good morning,” she said, looking Laura up and down. “Sleep well?”

“Sure,” Laura said. If they’d been at home, Harriet would have
been cooking, and Laura felt self-conscious, as if her mother could sense her own lack of familiarity with measuring cups and spoons.

Junior scampered over and wrapped himself against her waist. Other boys his age had already started to distance themselves from their mothers—she knew because Harriet had described the pickup scene at Junior’s school, when all the girls flew into their mother’s waiting arms, and the boys only kicked their schoolbags and battled one another with sticks. Laura wanted to talk to her mother about the wonders of raising sisters, but then realized that she couldn’t—what could Mary say, having lost one girl to death and another to California? Josephine could not have been enough. And so Laura kept her mouth shut. It seemed rude to even think about saying something that would make her mother even sadder. And she was not that kind of daughter, not here.

“We’re making pancakes with blueberries in them,” Junior said. He moved constantly—his shoulders, his hips. Even in his sleep, her son was never perfectly still.

“Delicious,” Laura said. “And maple syrup, I bet, too.”

Junior nodded. The kitchen smelled like melted butter, and he licked his lips.

“Can I help?” Laura knew what the answer would be.

“No, no,” Mary said. “You just sit.” And so Laura slid in against the windows and watched her mother and her son make breakfast. The service was in the early afternoon; there were so many hours to fill before then, Laura wasn’t sure what to do. Irving had the right idea, staying asleep. The Gardner Brothers doctors had given him some sleeping pills, and Laura some antianxiety medication. There was no reason to suffer unnecessarily. Laura had packed the drugs with her toothbrush and perfume, and now she wished she had the bag beside her. It wasn’t just that her father was dead; it was that she was still alive, and the house was still standing, and that her son wanted
pancakes, and her husband was still in bed, everyone everywhere functioning as if the world were normal and nothing were wrong. If her father had been in the room, he would have hoisted Junior up onto his massive shoulders, or held him upside down by his ankles, the kind of roughhousing that Junior never got at home. Laura felt her breath shorten in her throat. She wanted the world to stop and take notice before hobbling forward, forever changed. The problem was that no one seemed to be changed but her.

“I’m going to check on the girls,” Laura said, rising to her feet, which felt wobbly beneath her. She was out the door before either Junior or Mary could respond. Laura walked the short distance from the house to the cabin and knocked on the door, still breathing quickly. She heard them squealing inside.

Clara opened the door. She had stripped down to her underwear and camisole. It was warm inside—they hadn’t opened any of the windows. Without Harriet, maybe they couldn’t figure out how.

The girls loved the cabin; they said it reminded them of being at the studio, which was code for make-believe. Sometimes, when they were on the lot and Irving was feeling playful, they would find a stage that wasn’t being used and he would follow them with a spotlight, the yellow light bathing their dances and skits in fatherly love. In the cabin, Clara and Florence shared the full-size bed, which they didn’t seem to mind. The girls were used to sharing a room at home, and the novelty of being in a separate house, surrounded by trees and strange animal noises, was nearly too much fun.