The Almost Archer Sisters (3 page)

After our mother died, people used to whisper these things about Beth and me. They granted us the same lofty wisdoms cultivated by adults transformed by the terrific blows of random tragedy. (“The girls are strong. They’ll survive this. They have old souls.”) But it was Lou who had deepened and aged; Lou’s hair turned white in one year. And now Sam’s condition was something we experienced, we witnessed, we feared, not Sam.

While Sam stirred in the grass, I tried to engage Jake.

“Would you look at that sunrise. Beautiful, isn’t it, Jake?”

“I hate the sun.”

“Me too.”

Sam opened and shut his hands, studying the blood on his fist, my blood.

“Welcome back, buddy,” I said. Convertibles had always infuriated me, how they commit such cheery violence on a driver’s head. The ride had spun his hair into a cotton candy Afro. It reminded me of the way home perms used to make Beth and me look like masculine soccer moms until our hair would finally relax. My dad loved the chemical precision of administering perms, so we had had a lot of them as kids. Beth still flew home for the odd touch-up at Salon Chez Lou, because it cost the same, if not less, she said, to fly home on points and to rent a car at the airport, than for her to get her streaks done at a top Manhattan salon. Also Lou took his time, booking the entire day to do his daughter’s head.

Chez Lou was parked behind the farmhouse along the river, the silver tube topped by an enormous upside-down sombrero of a satellite dish, the only truly “Ugly American” thing left about a man born in East Texas who still retained a slanty Southern accent even after almost three decades in Canada. Beau and I never intended to shove my father out of the house my mother had been born in, the one Lou fixed and adored. There was plenty of room, and I
would have been happy with us all under one roof. But Lou said he had always wanted to drop anchor closer to water, that he had always dreamed of living in a Airstream. He had driven a truck for almost ten years, which had happily prepared him for living in the miniature.

I pulled the wadded Kleenex out of my nose.

“Did I hit you?” Sam asked.

“You did, bud. You socked me clear in the schnozzola. We didn’t see it coming.”

“Jeez,” he muttered into his lap. I could tell he was thinking that if he could almost break his mother’s nose at eight, eventually he might kill me as his condition overtook a growing body.

Jake pointed in the general direction of our house out on the highway and stomped a foot, a stunt he picked up from Sam.

“Why do we gotta
not
go home?” he whined. “It’s forty-five thousand o’clock. I wanna see Auntie Beth before you guys go to New York. And I want to see Grandpa too, and Dad.”

“We can’t right now, Jake. I’m mad at your daddy,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because he did something stupid, that’s why.”

“Well, tell him to stop it,” Sam said, picking grass off his T-shirt.

“Too late.”

“Then tell him to say sorry for it,” said Jake.

“Too late, too.”

“Are you going to get a divorce? Annalisa’s parents are,” Sam said, perking up. We all knew that, and though I was sad for the Morrows, more so for their three kids, without their epic arguments, to whom would the rest of the town’s couples compare themselves? When things between Beau and me would get a little sour, I too thought, At least we are not like the Sorrowful Morrows, at least we
don’t make a public display, at least Beau’s not drunk at the tavern like Scott, at least I didn’t put on sixty pounds after the kids like Jean did, so no wonder Scott messes around with Trina Leblanc, because Jean had just let herself go. I said these things, out loud, to other assholes in town, and now perhaps I was paying for it.

“We’re not getting a divorce,” I said. “I just need a time-out from Daddy.”

“Are you going to get another husband? Annalisa’s mom said she’s going to,” Sam said.

“How’s your head feel?”

“Okay.”

“What’s going on in your ears.”

“A little ringy.”

“Lemme feel your fingers.”

He handed me his hands. They were cold.

A
FTER THE DIAGNOSIS
, the last remaining plans for Beau to finish renovating the farmhouse, or for me to finish my degree, or for the both of us to do any of the things young couples were supposed to do when their kids were old enough to be left with relatives, were completely scrapped. Life was all Sam: Sam’s symptoms before a spell; Sam’s diet and whether what I fed him had a positive or negative effect; Sam’s sleep patterns; Sam’s stools. I’d pull him to me, almost ardently, in order to smell his skin. Metallic? Putty? Grassy? Fishy? It was hard to think of anything but his ceaseless metabolism; how often he peed and pooed, the color and consistency of both, his stomach size, weight, height, his bruises and how long they took to heal; how dirty he was, or how smelly were his feet.

Jake, however, I began to handle as though he was formed from rubber, shoving him down into tubs, unraveling his limbs
from bikes, wrapping forks around his filthy fists, lifting, dragging, and dropping him, tugging his shirt over his nose too hard, tying his shoes too tight, all the while watching Sam walk, saunter, canter, run, scanning his movements for flaws, for tilts, for clues to impending spells, clearing his path before certain accidents. Admittedly, around the time Sam started to faint and seize with daily ferocity, the part of my brain that had previously stored Big Plans for the Future, was suddenly flooded by relentless thoughts of adultery—just thoughts. Though it was miraculous how just thinking about sex with another man could take my mind off the tests and CAT scans doctors administered to Sam after they told us his epilepsy would get worse before he was old enough for an operation that might make him better.

“That’s so fucked,” Beau aptly responded, grabbing Dr. Best’s chart as though what was written there might make better sense than what he was saying. “So like my kid might get worse before we can have an operation to make him better?”

“Or he might not get worse,” said Dr. Best. “Or timing could be perfect. The condition could worsen just as he needs the operation. Then again, there’s no guarantee of the efficacy of the operation.”

“Fuck,” said Beau.

All the while I’d be imagining that Dr. Best, homely, brown-toothed, British Dr. Best, was falling madly in love with me. Beau would ask if he could use the bathroom, and in his absence, Dr. Best would clench his fist and quietly hammer at his desk, whispering, “Dammit, Peachy, why don’t you leave him and come live with me. I’ll take care of you and the boys. You can all live in my mansion on the lake with that ridiculous heated garage. You can go back to school if you want to. I’ll pay for everything. Beau doesn’t need you, but by God, Peachy, I do. And so do all those sorry people who are dying for you to keep a file on them, to tell them how to live their lives. To be better people. Don’t you see?”

I, of course, would say no, I couldn’t leave Beau. I could never
break the boys’ hearts like that, especially Sam’s. He was devoted to his father. My imaginary career would have to wait. Besides, leaving could worsen Sam’s symptoms, I’d say. And there’s more to marriage than sex and intimacy. It didn’t help that quality time with my husband was usually spent at the brain clinic where we would watch a nurse finagle the demonstration dummy so roughly it seemed almost sexual. Then my body began to reject Beau, maybe because he constituted half of whatever formed our damaged little boy and my womb was having none of him. Around that time I had become afraid of relaxing, of unraveling nerves fully stiffened with hypervigilance.

My adulterous thoughts had started out common: soap operas would fuel them, then I’d masturbate in the bathtub. But because Dr. Best was about the only man I saw on a regular basis who was roughly my age, I began conjuring a fantasy lover, someone who would surprise me on a rambling walk through the brush, like a kinder type of rapist might. I’d imagine myself strolling alone (alone being the most impossible part), and this lover would leap out and grab me. Take me far away from our rueful home. Pin me down hard to the ground. I would fight at first. And then I wouldn’t. That’s it. That was the extent of my fantasies. Maybe we’d make weepy eye contact. He might gently unbuckle his belt; take off his pants. Fold his pants. Dammit, fold
my
pants. I’d watch myself lying still beneath him like that marble-eyed demonstration dummy as he desperately worked to revive me, to fuck me fully alive again. These fantasies seemed stupid, but they were important. An imaginary lover gave me the sense of being beautifully unworthy of my family, even just for a moment. It became a way of breaking free from the people I loved so desperately that leaving them in my mind was my only respite from this exhausting vigilance.

I had no one in mind. No face. No body type. But the fantasy had the effect of an aspirin swallowed at exactly the right time, just
before the headache took hold. Beau could sense something rancid brewing in the dark corners of my mind. It made him open and close drawers, check and recheck phone messages, wash and brush extra hard.

The only person I had told about my adulterous fantasies was Beth. In fact, though I stopped sleeping with my husband and started treating my father like a sitter, and herding the boys like sheep, Beth I began to need more than ever. Our biweekly phone conversations provided a kind of tonic of distraction and drama. It was satisfying to talk to someone who seemed to have chosen her own life out of some mysterious catalogue stored on a high shelf that had always been out of my reach:
I’ll take that career, this city, those shoes, these dates, that past and this future
.

“Got anyone in mind?” she asked. “Has anything happened? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No. Haven’t gotten that far.”

This was a tricky prospect in a place like Belle River. Beau and I knew everyone. Plus, I had married the only person in town I had ever really wanted to have sex with. So far. I told her I was waiting until summer to find a hot little tourist. Or maybe some hipster-type punk they hired at the marina. Someone kind of just passing through.

“And you think this will help?”

“No, Beth. I am really hoping it will
hurt
.”

“I think I’m a little bombed right now,” Beth said, acting surprised, like,
Hey, how did this happen?
But I knew it was a preemptive move in case she couldn’t recall bits of our conversation the next time we spoke. I had mentioned her drinking to Lou, told him that I was worried about its frequency, but he always shrugged it off, saying, “If she has a problem, it’s not like she doesn’t know where to go.”

“Oh yeah? What’d you do tonight? Did you go out? Tell me, tell me,” I asked, yawning. It was 9
P.M
.

“Nothing yet,” she said. “I’m going to Jeb and Nadia’s for dinner. Kate came over for a while.”

Jeb was one of Beth’s oldest friends. She met him when she worked at MTV, before she started her own production company and stole Jeb as her director. The way Beth had described Jeb always made him seem a little gay to me, the way they’d shop, and trade scintillating gossip about singers and stars they’d known and dressed. But then a few years ago, Beth spoke at Jeb’s wedding to a woman named Nadia.

“Hey, Beth. Tell me something. How many guys have you slept with?”

“Is that why you called? To lecture me?”

“No. Seriously. I’m just wondering.”

I had always gathered distracting information from Beth the way little birds tugged shiny string out of bushes, her confessions padding my anxious nest.

“What do you mean, ‘slept with’? ‘Slept’ as in
sleep
with, or ‘slept with’ as in
fucked
? There is a difference,” Beth said, drawing on a cigarette. I could hear her wine bottle clacking against a glass. “Why do you suddenly want to know the exact number?”

“I don’t know. I lost track.”

“Maybe so did I.”

I slid open the back door and quietly shut it behind me. I was careful to bunch my nightgown between my legs before crouching on the cool stairs, because God forbid should anyone see my underwear. Who did I think was watching me? Waiting to get a peek? Raccoons?

“I’ve only slept with two guys, Dougie and Beau. I don’t think that’s right, Beth. I wish I could do something about it, but who’d want me? Two kids and I got tits that point down now like a Snoopy’s nose.”

“Plenty. Beau still does. And why are you talking this shit? How’re things?”

“They’re okay, you know. Nothing big. Just … being married … and now with Sam …”

I admitted to Beth that it had been almost two months since we had had sex.

“Jee-zuzz,” she said. “I’m getting you a hooker next time I’m home.”

Suddenly, probably to make her bored married sister jealous, and for reasons that had more to do with accuracy than Beth would really admit, she let the number “fifty” fall out of her mouth.

“D’you just say
fifty
?”

“Yeah.”

“Bloody hell, Beth! You slept with fifty?”

“
No
. I’m kidding. I was kidding.”

“Ahh, I
heard
you.”

“Ahh, it was a
joke
. Anyway, why are you whispering?”

“Because, Beth Ann Archer, my youngest son is just learning how to count past forty and maybe I don’t want him to use Auntie Bethy’s sex life as practice.”

“Fuck you.”

“
—and how many fingers does Jakey have? Ten! And how many toes does Jakey have? Ten! And how many men has Auntie Beth slept with? FIFTY!
Eww, Beth, is that not kind of
skanky
?”

Lawyerly, slowly, Beth explained that actually it was not skanky. It was normal for New York. Then, sounding too defensive, she added, “And don’t forget, Georgia Peach, I am thirty. And I have been having sex for almost fifteen years, so if I
had
slept with about fifty men, that would really only be about three a year.”

“Guess when you put it that way.”

“Not that I’d ever tell Marcus.”

“No. Not a good idea. Hey, Beth. Are we going to meet this one?”