Sisterland (11 page)

“Jeremy’s too cool for a minivan?”

“What would you do if Courtney said she wanted one?”

Hank grinned. “As if I haven’t been emasculated enough with our his-and-hers Priuses.”

I said, “When we were at the grocery store, I’d just put Owen and Rosie into their car seats and Rosie was screaming her head off because I hadn’t let her get a cookie—I mean, it wasn’t even nine
A.M.
—and I was cramming the groceries into the trunk, but they didn’t all fit because the double stroller was back there.” Another reason they hadn’t all fit in my sedan was that I’d bought six gallons of water, along with batteries and extra diapers, which I planned to store in the basement; in addition, I’d withdrawn three hundred dollars from the ATM, not that it was clear to me what I’d do, in an emergency, with the money. I said, “I had to put bags in the front seat next to me, and then that sensor thing on the dashboard thought a person was sitting there who wasn’t wearing a seat belt and kept dinging. And as I pull out of the parking lot, I pass this woman loading up her minivan all placidly, and there’s room for everything, and she has two children in car seats, too, but they’re both very calm.”

“You know a minivan doesn’t guarantee that Rosie won’t scream for cookies, right?”

“Also, we could all go places in one car,” I said. “Like if you and I wanted to take the girls to Grant’s Farm, we wouldn’t need to drive separately.” Before Owen’s birth, Hank and I would drive together, but neither Hank’s car nor mine could fit three car seats. I said, “Is the dealership you guys used last time the one out in Hazelwood?”

“Yeah, but what if they’re so persuasive that I come away with a minivan, too?” Hank said. “Then what? You’ll have a lot to explain to Courtney. Here’s what I really want to know, though. When the seat-belt sensor was going off, did you buckle up your bag of bread and milk?”

“If we’d been driving more than half a mile, I would have, because it was so annoying. But no.” Amelia had moved to the center of the bridge, its lowest point, and she began jumping in a way that made the bridge shake; Rosie clung to the metal railing and shrieked with joy. I said, “I let the bread and milk live dangerously.”

As soon as
Owen and Rosie were down for their naps on Friday afternoon, I began making my father’s birthday cake, and I’d just set the pan inside the oven when the phone rang. Seeing that it was Vi, I said, “Did you figure out when the earthquake will be?”

“Daze, you’ll be the first to know if I do. But Jesus, you need to relax.”

“You’re the one who went on TV warning people about a life-threatening natural disaster.”

“Well, I don’t think your time is up. Do you?”

“I hope not.”

“I was calling to ask if you got Dad a present yet, and can I go in on it?”

“You can, but it won’t seem like it’s from you. We got him a Wash U sweatshirt and a picture of Rosie and Owen in a frame that says
WE LOVE GRANDPA
.”

“You always have to make me look bad.”

“Give him an IOU for a fun activity, like you’ll take him out for brunch.”

“That’s what you give your dad when you’re twelve.”

“Then do what you want.”
But do not
, I thought,
ask me to pick you up right now and drive you to the mall
.

“Jeremy’s coming to get me at five-fifteen, right?” Vi said. “You think we could swing by the Galleria and I’ll run into Brookstone for literally three minutes?”

Which is the same amount of time it would have taken you to order something online two weeks ago
, I thought. Aloud, I said, “That won’t work because Jeremy’s picking up Dad, too. I’m sure Dad doesn’t care if you give him a present. He probably won’t even notice.”

“So says the good daughter with multiple gifts.”

“You can put your name on our card,” I said.

“Yeah, and maybe I can Photoshop my face into the picture of Owen and Rosie.”

“So did Dad have fun on your date?”

“Very funny. He didn’t come inside. The woman was okay but kind of intense.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah, but I hadn’t even finished my coffee when she’s like, ‘I’d like to see you again. How about dinner on Saturday?’ I said I needed to check my calendar, but don’t you think that’s weird not to wait until the end of the date? Or she could have sent an email after.”

“It’s flattering,” I said. “She must like you.”

“Well, I
am
irresistible.” Vi sighed. “You really don’t think an IOU for Dad is lame?”

“You could make it for something he’d never do on his own, like getting massages together at a spa.”

“Dad would hate a massage,” Vi said, which was probably true.

I’d set Owen and Rosie’s monitors side by side on the kitchen table, and just then, from Owen’s, there was an unhappy yell.

“Wow,” Vi said. “I guess the pleasure of your teats has been requested.”

The phone rang
again as I was changing Owen’s diaper, and I answered it without looking at the caller ID panel; I assumed it was Vi.

Instead, Hank said in a tight voice, “So Courtney just got a call from her doctor about the CVS, and it looks like the baby has Down’s.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” Was
I’m so sorry
even an appropriate response? “Is there anything we can do?”

“Courtney’s coming home from work now, and she’s pretty upset.”

“They think the baby has Down’s or they know?”

“Well, we meet with a genetics counselor next week, but if there’s an extra chromosome 21, that’s Down’s. I guess the question then is how severe.”

I thought of Janie Spriggs’s brother—
You’re twins because there’s two of you
—and I wanted to say something to Hank about how sweet Pete had been, but again, I wasn’t sure of the protocol of this moment; maybe mentioning that I’d known a nice retarded person was akin to announcing that some of my best friends were black. “How about if we drop off dinner tonight?” I said.

“Nah, I’m sure you’ve got your hands full with your dad’s thing.” Hank
sounded miserable as he said, “Tell him happy birthday from the Wheelings.”

When I’d hung
up, I called Jeremy.

“Wow,” he said. “Poor Hank and Courtney.”

“You don’t want to come home early, do you?”

He hesitated. I was asking because Hank’s call had made my heart clench—it was a particular kind of nervousness I thought of as anxious heart—and because Jeremy’s presence in the house calmed me, even if he was upstairs reading or grading and I was downstairs with the children, and these were facts that both of us understood without discussion. When Rosie had been five months old, she’d gotten very sick—she’d been in the hospital for three days—and sometimes, even though more than two years had passed, the panic I’d felt then abruptly came back to me, the nauseous fear that something terrible was happening or about to happen; if anything, now that we had Owen, when the panic surged, it was worse because there were two of them and (Pete Spriggs’s proclamations notwithstanding) only one of me. What Jeremy and I also didn’t need to discuss right then was his belief that he ought not to accommodate my every flare-up of anxiety, a belief I mostly agreed with, though more in theory than at specific times such as this one. Nevertheless, knowing he’d be home in a few hours and that in fact nothing about Rosie or Owen’s well-being had changed since Hank’s phone call, or for that matter since Vi’s earthquake prediction, I made myself say, “It’s fine if you can’t.”

“I’m supposed to meet with a couple students.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“You got the steaks for tonight, right? I don’t need to stop by Schnucks?”

“I have everything. The cake’s baking as we speak.” I could feel Jeremy’s attention turning, and I blurted out, “You know how I didn’t want biological children?”

“Was that you?”

“Seriously,” I said. “If this had happened to us, I’d have felt really guilty.”

“They’re not responsible. It’s a matter of genetics.”

“The chances of Down’s increase the older you are.”

“Sure, but the great majority of women over thirty-five still have healthy babies.”

“No, I know.” I paused. “I wonder if they’re considering—” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word
abortion
in front of Owen, though apparently I didn’t mind announcing to him that I once hadn’t wanted biological children.

“I’m sure they’re in shock right now,” Jeremy said. “But will you do me a favor? Will you take a deep breath?”

Rosie awakened and
started talking nine minutes before the timer for the cake was set to go off—over the monitor, I distinctly heard her say, “The baloney has a pee-pee in she’s diaper”—and my heart was still clenching. Before taking Owen upstairs to get Rosie, I called Vi back. When she answered, I said, “If you’re ready right now, we’ll come over and take you to the mall.”

The Galleria was
crowded pretty much all the time, and on a Friday afternoon it was mobbed; we had to park at the far north entrance beyond Dillard’s. Rosie didn’t want to ride in the double stroller, and I ended up mashing her down into the seat and snapping the buckles around her waist as she writhed up. “Mommy is a bad Mommy,” she howled. “Rosie does
not
like Mommy.”

“Tell us what you really think, Rosie,” Vi said. “Don’t hold back.”

Inside Dillard’s, I let Rosie out and said to Vi, “Feel free to go ahead and we’ll meet you.”

“But I need your advice.”

“I thought you had something specific in mind from Brookstone.”

Quickly, Vi said, “There’s a few possibilities.”

By the time we’d made it across the mall, up the elevator, and into the store, and Vi had dawdled in the way of the childless as she considered
whether our father would prefer a shower radio or velour slippers, it was after four. The double stroller was too wide to push inside the store, so I’d left it near the front, carrying Owen while I chased Rosie around, righting the picture frames and alarm clocks she knocked over, returning the wine openers and noise-canceling headphones she’d grabbed to their rightful shelves.

The cashier who rang up the slippers Vi decided on was a short, sandy-haired man who took Vi’s credit card then glanced back and forth between us. I was so sure that he was going to say
Are you twins?
that I was already half-nodding (
She is. By eight minutes. Yes, identical
), but what he said instead, looking only at Vi, was “You’re the psychic, aren’t you? I saw you on Channel 5.”

“Oh,” Vi said, and the energy of the encounter shifted; she became the most important of the three adults present. “Yeah, that was me.”

“You predicted a big earthquake?”

Vi’s brow furrowed; the excitement of being recognized was suddenly imbued with the seriousness of what she’d predicted. “I hope I’m wrong,” she said. “I really do.” This was such a perfect response that I silently begged her to say nothing else; when she plucked a business card from her wallet and passed it to the cashier, it was impossible to know whether she’d chosen to ignore my plea or been unaware of it. “If you’d like to talk about your own path, this is how to reach me,” she said to the man. “Issues with loved ones, romantic and career guidance, what your true purpose is—really, anything you’re confused about, I’d be happy to help.” I wasn’t hearing her spiel for the first time, but still, the irony was so rich, and she was so oblivious to it. She added, “I do private consultations for seventy-five dollars and group sessions for thirty per person.”

The man set the card on top of a clipboard next to the cash register—he wasn’t obviously disgusted—and I averted my eyes so I wouldn’t see the card’s background, which featured a peach-tinted sunset and, on the left side, a mountain; next to the mountain it said
VIOLET SHRAMM, PROFESSIONAL PSYCHIC MEDIUM
and had not just her phone number and email but her home address, which was where she conducted her sessions.

Outside the store, as I wrangled Owen and Rosie back into the stroller, Vi said, “I just want to get a Diet Coke in the food court and then I’m done.”

“I need to make the icing for Dad’s cake.”

“Homemade icing, huh? Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart.” But Vi was already walking away, and she called over her shoulder, “I’ll hurry.”

“Meet us at the car!” I yelled. Three teenage girls passing by looked at me.

A solid twenty minutes later, beaming and entirely unapologetic, Vi opened the front passenger-side door. Owen and Rosie were both in their car seats and the stroller was put away; I was in the driver’s seat with my own seat belt fastened and the car’s motor on. As Vi climbed in, a twenty-ounce cup in her hand, she said, “You’ll never believe who just called me.”

I said nothing as I backed out of the parking space, and Vi said, “You can’t give me the silent treatment right now. This is way too exciting.”

“I’m not giving you the silent treatment. I’m trying to get us out of the parking lot.”

“Fine. I won’t tell you if you don’t want to know.”

The truth was that I wasn’t that curious, and certainly not enough to beg her. I suspected her allegedly juicy tidbit would be along the lines of the cousin or mother-in-law of some Rams player requesting a reading.