If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (15 page)

“Y
ou have to stand up to them,” Cliff used to tell her. “Children need to know who’s in charge.”

But she had learned early on that she could not. She was incapable of battle, so if a child chose to fight, that child would win. Little things. Making them eat unfamiliar foods. Forcing them into clothes they had rejected. Ben had spat every ounce of medicine he was ever given across the room, if not directly into Jean’s face. And Brooke would run away with both hands on her head, hiding in the empty cedar closet under the eaves when Jean tried to brush her hair. When Jean dangled bright metal butterflies and ladybugs, attached to elastics, and cooed about how pretty they were, how pretty they would look affixed to Brooke’s curls, Brooke arranged her face into an expression of such haughty disbelief that Jean told Cliff that their five-year-old daughter looked like an old Frenchman. The one time she took her to have the curls sheared into some manageable form—like a topiary creature, she couldn’t help thinking—Brooke threw the kind of tantrum Jean had only heard about from friends, her body seeming both stiff and capable of moving in ways the presence of bones and ligaments would argue against, her screams so piercing that Jean found herself glancing toward the large mirrors, as though to catch the moment of shattering. And needless to say, they had driven home, mop of hair still intact.

Looking down from her bedroom window, Jean can see that hair from behind, loose and windblown, the artificial hue without Brooke’s face to testify to its worth, unsettling against the garden’s greens and grays.

H
is name was Aaron. He was a great huge man a bit older than Brooke, maybe fifty, bald, and—Jean thought—remarkably ugly, dressed in blue jeans and a pale yellow shirt that looked recently ironed. His handshake was firm. His arms were enormous. His eyes were obscured by an unending squint. His lower lip hung just to the left of his upper, as though he were perpetually reeling from a punch. The sheer physicality of him took her aback, the size of him and the specificity of his oddness. He banged his head on the dining room doorway, the cottage itself making some none too subtle point.

Brooke had cooked all afternoon
—ruthlessly
, Jean had thought, walking into the kitchen at one point. Now, she shuttled dish after dish to the table, refusing help from both her mother and her, what? lover, it seemed. Her enormous, homely lover. No dish had fewer than five ingredients, or fewer than three layers. Chicken, plums, almonds, in pastry. White, purple, and yellow potatoes, sliced thin, stacked into little striped towers, sprinkled with cream, dusted with nutmeg.

He was an engineer, a structural engineer. He talked about the bridges he had built, about span and tension. He talked about what had failed in the ones across the country that had recently fallen down. With Brooke’s encouragement, he also spoke about his three sons. Jean, who felt a bewildered form of curiosity, feigned genuine interest, while Cliff, who had been interested in the bridges, did not, but poked at the structures on his plate as though unsure of how to transform their architecture into food.

The oldest boy was an avid reader, he said, a real intellectual. He would be applying to college in the fall. The second, the middle one, was an athlete, he told Jean—as though between them the two boys might make one whole boy. How odd it was, she thought, that parents so often did that, handed out attributes to their children like sections of the same cherry pie.

“Aaron’s youngest son is in a wheelchair, Mom. He was in a diving accident, two years ago.”

“Oh,” Jean said. “How terrible. I’m sorry.” She thought she saw Aaron’s eyes flutter open for just a second. She thought she saw his cheeks grow redder.

“Well,” he said. “It’s been very difficult. It is. For him, I mean. He was just nine when it happened.”

“And for you,” Brooke said. She turned to her mother. “It was a quarry. Kids diving off the rocks. You can’t imagine what’s involved now.”

“It must be very hard for you,” Jean said. “He’s your child. I’m so sorry. It must almost be worse for you. In some ways.”

Aaron shook his head, the lower lip, askew, now jutting out. “I used to think that.” He picked up his fork and tapped it on the table, twice, then a third time. “I used to see children, like him, with something wrong. And I would always feel worse for the parents.” He shook his head again. “Because I think, I think what you’re really afraid of is how you’d feel. If it was your kid. But it isn’t like that,” he said. “Not really. You know—I know—it’s worse for him.”

Jean said nothing. Across the table, Cliff was wearing the face he had developed for times like this when he couldn’t quite hear a conversation and didn’t want to seem rude—a thoroughly noncommittal expression, poised to shift quickly should he suddenly catch some words. She hadn’t been so ready, so poised, hadn’t expected tragedy to join them at the table.

“He isn’t an unhappy boy,” Aaron said, as though reading her mind, banishing that word, probably practiced at doing so. “His mother has done an incredible job.”

“She used to work as a lawyer,” Brooke said. “But she stopped when the accident happened.”

“He doesn’t have a sad life,” Aaron said. “When I’m with him, I’m not…” He was looking across the table at Brooke. “It’s when we’re apart that I sag. He’s going to camp this summer,” he told Jean. “It’s a big deal for him. My wife did months of research to find this place. It’s amazing when you see what these kids do.”

“It must be,” Jean said. What more could she say? “I hope it works out well.”

“He’s a great kid. He’ll do great.”

Jean was out of conversation.

Cliff, at his end of the table, was staring off now, a vaguely worried expression on his face. Maybe just unused to company, Jean thought, or maybe disturbed by some unformed intuition that there was more going on here than he had been told.

“You’ll be pleased to hear that I bought traps, and Aaron has volunteered to set them,” Brooke said, suddenly bright—though looking at Jean
diagnostically
, as though trying to determine how much she had guessed. “The mice,” she said. “If you have peanut butter, we can use that. I’ll do the dishes and he’ll load the traps.”

“In the pantry. No, in the refrigerator.” Jean frowned. “It’s the all-natural kind, half oil. I don’t even know why we have it.”

“Probably Ben.” Brooke turned back to Aaron. “My brother’s a granola type, a tree hugger. I think I’ve told you that.”

“I thought your brother’s name was Glen.”

Brooke shot a look to her mother, tried a small, rueful smile.

“It’s Ben,” Jean said. “His name is Benjamin.”

“It’s just a family joke,” Brooke said. “I should have told you. Because of Cliff and Brooke. Cliff, Brooke, Glen.”

“We didn’t do it on purpose,” Jean said. “Brooke and Cliff, I mean. I wasn’t trying to be clever. Or cute.” That was what people had always said:
How cute
. It had embarrassed her then in a way it now seemed impossible to be embarrassed. The name Brooke had been a fancy of hers, a signal that the baby who had just emerged from her was special, a hope born of that moment’s euphoria that with so unusual a name—this was 1965—her daughter would have no choice but to step into the world more confidently than she herself ever had. She had cried when the link between Cliff and Brooke was pointed out to her. Two years later, Benjamin was named after Jean’s father, but also after her own retreat from flights of fancy. “I’ve always hated his being called Glen,” she said.

“My oldest boy is named Wright, a family name, on his mother’s side.” Aaron was turned toward her, his eyes so squinted she couldn’t see them. “So, his brother,” he said, “the middle one, is always called Wrong.” He frowned a bit. “I suppose that’s obvious,” he said. “He certainly hates it.”

“That one’s Edward,” Brooke said. “The middle boy.”

“He hates that too,” Aaron said. “Somewhere along the way, he turned into Teddy. Ted now that he’s a teenager, though we forget. I forget.”

“What’s your youngest named?” Jean asked.

“Jason.”

“I love that name,” Brooke said. “I think people grow into their names. Though I always loved mine.” This was said for Jean—with a larger smile thrown in, to make up for Glen.

“I told the boys they could change whatever they liked once they were eighteen. Or maybe I said once they were paying for their own food.”

“Funny,” Brooke said. “I’m constantly telling mine everything they can do when they grow up too.”

“Some days the list is pretty long.” Aaron looked bleak.

“Yes,” Brooke said, “and then you grow up and discover how very short it really is.” Jean watched them droop in unison, for just a moment, then recover. “Actually, I like Teddy for a girl, too,” Brooke said. “Teddy and Sam. Alex.”

“I like Alex a lot.”

It had become an strange conversation, Jean thought. They sounded like a young couple broaching the subject of their future together. What to name the children? Except they didn’t look excited. They looked, if anything, tense. They looked sad; and for the first time, it occurred to Jean to wonder at how deep their feelings ran. What they had done together, here, in the cottage, what they were doing, had loomed so large, like Aaron himself, taking up too much space, banging its head on the doorways. For just a moment, instead, Jean was aware of all they hadn’t done, would never do.

Brooke stood; then Aaron did. “Let’s go find that peanut butter,” she said. “My brother only comes east twice a year, he and his lunatic wife, Cheryl. They smell of incense and leave the place full of food that no one else will eat.” As Brooke spoke, she and Aaron began gathering plates. “But then, young Glenjamin doesn’t worry a lot about other people,” she said. Her voice had lowered, softening, taking on the tones of a private conversation. “That isn’t his thing. Human beings, I mean.” As she stood beside Aaron, she was practically whispering. He murmured something back. Then she murmured in response and back and forth it went, this indistinct exchange, these gentle vibrations of sound. It was like overhearing two tuning forks, Jean thought. Two whales.

It was like overhearing lovers.

When she looked over at Cliff, he peered at her expectantly, doubtless waiting for her to say it was time to go watch TV, as she did after dinner most nights. But she couldn’t bring herself to shout, as she would have to do. She couldn’t quite bear to signal so loudly that the soft pita-pat of their own intimate speech was a thing of their past. She smiled at him instead, just a little, and mouthed the words
Let’s go
.

I
n bed that night, hearing what she thought were sobs from her daughter’s room, unable to go check, lest she was wrong, lest Brooke wasn’t alone, lest the heartbroken Aaron was there as well, their hearts breaking together, Jean sat up. There was a reckoning of some kind to come. There always seemed to be. It was something she had long understood. She could remember Brooke’s very first few months, how she had been so little trouble, so docile really, that Jean had endured regular bouts of fear, not only that the baby wasn’t normal—by which she then still meant exceptional—but also that so easy an infancy would be paid for one day, fear that it all evens out somehow, suspicious even then of the deals life might make on our behalf.

I
n the morning, Brooke came down the stairs just after eight and peered into the kitchen, her bags in hand. She was wearing the green dress from two days earlier, but the sandals were gone, replaced by the old sneakers that had poked out from under the bureau upstairs. “Driving shoes,” she said, following her mother’s gaze.

Jean walked her to her car, parked under the willow four days earlier. The roof, sunroof, hood were all splattered with bird droppings. “Stupid,” Brooke said. “Acres of open field, and I park under a tree. I was thinking shade, when I should have been thinking bird.”

“Just watch out. It eats through the paint.”

Brooke nodded, and mumbled something Jean didn’t quite catch about a car wash on her way home. They hugged, and for a moment Jean thought she could feel the whole thing threaten to shudder its way out of wherever her daughter had tucked it, but when Brooke stepped back, a grim smile sealed her lips.

“Will you be okay?” Jean asked, not sure herself if she meant for the drive or for the next few days or for longer than that.

“I don’t really know,” Brooke said. “But I promise you, I’ll be careful. More careful than I’ve been for months and months.”

As Brooke opened the door, Jean had the impulse to ask her if she loved him, as though hearing her daughter say it out loud would make it any clearer than it was. As though she herself needed it stated, made official somehow, to justify all that had gone on.

She stopped herself. She watched as Brooke fastened her seat belt and slipped her dark glasses over her eyes. She stayed while the car made its way down the road, whispered
Safe travels
as it slipped from her sight.

I
t wasn’t until much later, on an October visit with Ian and the kids, that Brooke told her mother she hadn’t seen or spoken to Aaron since that night. She said it as though casually while the two women were alone cooking in the kitchen, Jean’s hand enough improved that she could put the weakness off to bad arthritis, doubtless from the sprain.

“I just wanted you to know,” Brooke said. “Since he was here. Since you met him.”

And then at Thanksgiving, while they did the dishes together, Brooke wondered aloud where Aaron’s son would be applying, what colleges. “He was so proud of him. Really of them all. He’s so devoted to them.”

“You’re still not in touch?” Jean asked, and Brooke shook her head. For a moment, it seemed she might say more, but instead she shut the faucet, shook the water off her hands, and stepped outside.

Brooke wasn’t there again until early in January, just after Cliff died, quietly, with no warning other than his age. The two families came, Brooke’s and Ben’s, crowding the cottage, bustle and noise descending where his quiet had been. Looking for an empty room, needing some solitude, Jean found Brooke in the guest bedroom, where there was no TV to draw an audience. They sat side by side on the bed, and it wasn’t long before Brooke brought up that night, asking her mother if she remembered the silly discussion about names, if she remembered that he had set the traps, listing the dishes she had made, a litany.
Remember? Remember?
Looking excited as she described her efforts, looking bereft as she talked about the youngest son.