Reunion: A Novel (13 page)

C
an I just say,” I’m saying, while someone is lighting up the second joint, “that I’m sorry about earlier.”

“She’s high,” says Nell. “You can tell. See, watch; see how she’s tapping her teeth?”

“I’m not high,” I say. “I’m just checking to make sure I can still feel them.” I tap a few more times. “And I can. So, ta-da, I’m not high.”

“You’re high,” says Elliot. “We can tell because you’ve now apologized a dozen times.”

“Seriously?” I say. “I didn’t know anyone could hear me.”

We’re all outside, sitting in the dark, trying to remember to whisper so as not to wake up Mindy, who’s asleep in the bedroom above us.

Sasha says, “I know, I know. Mindy explained everything. She said she was eavesdropping. It’s a habit she picked up last year. We’re working on it.”

I nod and try to remember that I’ve already apologized and not to do it again. Then, just as quickly, I forget what I’m trying to hold on to. I should become a pot smoker. I should smoke pot before bed instead of considering drugs like Paxil. List making? On pot? Impossible. I could wake up at three in the morning and not know what year it is, much less what’s troubling me in my real life.

Year.
Last
year. What Sasha means is it’s a habit Mindy picked up when they were both still living with our father. Our father. My father and Mindy’s. And Nell’s and Elliot’s. Nelliot’s father. The man lying on that lonely slab in a funeral home thirty minutes away with his head under construction. Tomorrow the ex-wives arrive, and their horde of children. The day after that, we’ll drive to the home and look at his body. The day after that—who knows?

Actually, I’d make a terrible regular pot smoker. I get twitchy, like I’m getting right now. And I get paranoid—not like I think people are talking about me, but like I think I sound stupid. I hate sounding stupid. I hate not being able to control the words that are coming out of my mouth. Like, for instance, right now, sitting cross-legged on the concrete porch, looking up at Nell and Sasha, who are rocking back and forth on the swing and who are saying something very serious to E
llio
t, who is sitting cross-legged across from me, I am trying very hard to pay attention to the topic of conversation and trying very hard not to blurt out something irrelevant like, “What about Stan? When are we going to talk about Stan?” But apparently I’m doing a piss-poor job of following along and staying quiet, because now Sasha and Nell, up on high, are looking down at me, not at Elliot, and I realize I’ve asked my questions aloud, even as I specifically was telling myself
not
to.

Elliot reaches over and takes a joint from my hand. A joint that I didn’t realize I was holding.

“Kiddo,” he says. “We
are
talking about Dad. We’ve been talking about Dad for the last hour.”

It’s not fair: a funeral. The star of the show isn’t even able to defend himself. Stan doesn’t want all his wives in the same room, gabbing. He probably doesn’t even want
us
in the same room. On the same porch.

“Oh,” I say, still looking down at my fingers, trying to remember which muscle is responsible for making them move. “I’m sorry.”

“We know,” says Elliot. “You’re very sorry.”

“And very stoned,” says Nell.

I look up.

“Where did you come from?” I say.

Nell gives me this
You’re adorable
smile that lets me know I’m behaving every bit as idiotically as I fear.

“I need to go to bed,” I say. I grab at my forehead. “Can I sleep here? Is this a bed?”

Elliot says, “Take the couch. I don’t think you’ll make it upstairs.”

It must be the weed, but right now, my brother is the light of my life. He is everything that is decent and good in the world. All I want is for him to be happy. All I want is for Rita and him and those three gorgeous girls to be happy. I’d give up everything for the guarantee. I’d give up all my toes. And, I don’t know, I’m looking up at Sasha and it occurs to me that she’s the most generous, loving hostess in the world.

“What a mother!” I say, perhaps assuming they are following my thoughts.

“To bed,” Elliot says. “Get.”

“I love you guys,” I say.

“Same here,” he says. He pushes at me with his foot. “Get some sleep.”

I’m trying to stand up, trying to keep myself from saying anything else, trying to get inside the screen door and onto the couch before I do anything else adorable (read: embarrassing). But it’s too late; even while I’m telling myself not to, I’m already saying it: “What if I wet the bed?” And then, just like that, waterworks.

“Oh brother,” I hear Nell saying. “I’ve got this one.”

I feel an arm around me and then I feel the air-co
nditioni
ng of the inside and it feels like we are floating across the wood floor. I feel a cushion under my thighs and then under my shoulders and then under my head.

I’m crying now, but I’ve already forgotten why. I’m afraid I’ve been left alone in a dark room in a strange city, and I’m about to call out when I feel a cold washcloth on my forehead.

“You’re okay,” says Nell, her hand on my cheek, the washcloth on my forehead. “It’s okay. Don’t talk.”

“I do,” I say.

“Shhh.”

“I really do,” I say. “I really do love you.”

“Of course you do,” she says.

“You’re my best friend,” I say. I am falling back, melting back into the pillow. My brain weighs fifty pounds, but the weight feels good because it’s resting so perfectly on this perfect pillow.

“Get some sleep,” she says.

“Am I yours?” I say.

“Get some sleep,” she says again. “Shhh.”

And I do get some sleep. I get the sleep of my lifetime. I get the first full night’s sleep I can remember in years. The sleep itself is wonderful. The sleep itself is this transformative experience, like swimming in a cold bath of liquid rejuvenation. It’s the dreams I don’t like. Matt Damon is nowhere to be found. Instead, a telephone call. Crying. A limb being removed. My brother circling but not talking. Sasha and Mindy weeping, whispering. And Nell, Nell at the center, standing in front of me, a phone in her hand. “We can be together,” she’s saying. “Now we can be together. You and me.” I’m shaking my head. I’m trying to talk; I’m trying to tell her no, no, that’s not what I meant. She’s pleading with me. She’s screaming now: “You said you loved me.” I’m shaking my head still and I’m trying to make her understand, but my mouth is gone. My lips are still there. The hole to my mouth is still there, but it’s just a giant cavern, it’s just a hole leading nowhere and to nothing. There is no tongue, no larynx, no voice box. All I can do is shake my head.

I wake up to what sounds like a gunshot. I sit up in bed. Sasha is sitting in the chair next to the couch. It’s sunny and I realize I’ve slept later than I wanted. It’s the fear of all youngest children, to be the last to wake and therefore the only one to miss the thing you don’t even know you’re missing.

“Did you hear that?” I say.

Sasha puts down the newspaper.

“Hear what?”

I rub my eyes and stretch my arms out in front of me. My body is not yet prepared to be awake.

“Like a gunshot?” I say. I’m groggy, but at least I’m not high anymore.

She smiles and looks back at her newspaper.

“Your father had that,” she says.

“Had what?”

“Exploding head syndrome.”

Maybe I
am
still high, because I’m pretty sure Sasha’s just made the most tasteless joke in the world.

She looks up suddenly.

“Oh my God,” she says. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t—”

I must be giving her a hateful look, because suddenly she’s sitting next to me, holding my hand.

“Your father had a syndrome. He saw a doctor for it,” she says. “I haven’t thought about it since…” She trails off, then shakes her head and takes her hand away. “You must think I’m a monster.”

My mouth tastes like a burned-down forest. “Are you saying there’s actually a thing called exploding head syndrome?”

“Yes,” she says, nodding but not looking at me.

“And it sounds like a gun going off?” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “It woke him up almost every night.” I’ve embarrassed her, which is not how I wanted to start the day. I wanted to start the day a better person, but now I’ll have to put it off until tomorrow.

“They should really come up with a better name,” I say.

This world gets more and more perplexing. Fact: the longer I live, the less I understand.

E
lliot goes for a jog and Nell goes upstairs to take a shower. Sasha is tidying up the living room, getting ready for the day’s guests. I am in the kitchen, drinking coffee and nursing a mild hangover. There are two new text messages from Marcy. There is no word from Peter.

A carton of eggs is on the counter in front of me. I don’t know what the menu is, but I’m assuming it’s something brunchy and inoffensive. My money’s on quiche or strata. I open the carton of eggs and look at them. They’re the brown type. Organic. Big, with little mole-like flecks. I’ve always liked the look of an egg. Joyce kept a basket of hollowed-out ostrich eggs as a dining room centerpiece.

I pick up one of Sasha’s eggs and close my fist around it. I’m tempted to disprove the myth—that an egg squeezed in a palm won’t crack—but I don’t. Instead, I put the egg back, close the cardboard cover, and then, very slowly, use my finger to push the carton across the counter until it falls to the floor. The sound is stunning.

“Shit,” I say.

I wait, but nothing happens. Sasha must not have heard me.

“Shit,” I say again. This time louder.

She appears at the entryway to the kitchen.

“I’m so sorry.” I bend down and start picking up the eggs. “I think they’re all broken.” The mess isn’t too bad. Only a little goop has escaped. But all twelve eggs are, in fact, broken.

Sasha gets a roll of paper towels and bends down next to me.

“No problem,” she says. “I have to go to the store anyway. I forgot the pasta salad.”

I look up. Of course! It’s what I wanted all along.

“I’ll go,” I say. “It’s the least I can do.”

Sasha grabs a bottle from under the sink and sprays the floor. Then she puts down a wad of towels and uses her foot to finish the job. I’ve always liked people who use their feet for chores usually reserved for hands. It reminds me that we came from monkeys. Or apes. Whatever. It reminds me that we all came from the same place.

“Take my car,” she says. “Keys are on the front seat.”

“Make me a list,” I say. “Anything you need.”

She ducks into the pantry and I try not to think about how easy it would have been just to say, “Hey, I need to get away for a few minutes. I’m panicking about the arrival of the ex-wives. I’m panicking about the idea of the half siblings. Do you mind if I take your car and get some air?” Is there a chance in hell that she would have said no? No. There’s not. And so why couldn’t I have been direct? Why couldn’t I say what I wanted? At least I didn’t hide the eggs. At least I didn’t take them upstairs and stash them under the bunk beds to be found, no doubt, by Mindy at some inopportune time.

Sasha reappears with a list.

“You know how to get there, right?”

“I remember,” I say.

“They have about a hundred different pasta salads. Pick one with lots of colors,” she says. “Your choice.”

She hands me the piece of paper and I put it in my pocket, which is when I rediscover the two five-dollar bills, which is when I remember I am without funds.

What I think is:
At least I know when it’s raining
.

What I say is: “This is embarrassing.”

I make an exaggerated face.

“Can I borrow some cash?”

“Sure,” she says. “Of course. But, you know, they take cards.”

Of course they do.

“I lost it at the airport.” A lie. “I canceled it, but it’ll be a few days and they’re sending it to Chicago.”

“Of course,” she says.

I am lying to a saint.

She opens a cabinet above the stove and takes down a tin of coffee. “Take what you need.”

She pushes the tin across to me. I open the lid. There’s a few hundred dollars in there. Maybe more. I am being tested.

“You do it,” I say. I push the tin back to her. “I’m already so embarrassed.”

She counts out five twenties and hands them to me.

“Kate,” she says. “For real, don’t be embarrassed. I lose my entire wallet every six months. I’m not kidding. I’ve been to the DMV three times this year. No joke.”

I fold the twenties up with the list and put them in my back pocket.

“And now you know where the money is,” she says. “Take whatever you need whenever you need it.”

I am definitely being tested.

She puts the tin back above the stove.

“Hey,” I say. “Would Mindy like to come with me?”

It’s the guilt talking. Bill Cunningham would be so disappointed in me.

Sasha cocks her hip and looks at me. “Are you sure?” she says.

No. No, I’m not. I take it back.

“Absolutely,” I say.

“She’d love it,” says Sasha. “You’re sweet to offer.”

S
weet? I don’t think so. But whatever I am—unsteady, unsafe, unstable—it’s how I ended up here, with Mindy, at the fanciest, cleanest, coldest grocery store in Druid Hills, picking out stinky cheeses and multicolored pasta salads.

Mindy is acting timid and clingy. Whenever I turn an aisle, she grabs onto my shirt and looks up at me, as though to make sure it’s still me. I feel culpable. Nobody ever asks kids what they want to do. Decisions are always being made on their behalves. Probably Mindy wanted to stay and hang out with her cool half sister Nell. Probably she wanted to bake and churn and stir and taste and greet the guests as they arrived. Instead, she’s helping push a cart down a too-cold grocery store with Big Scary Kate.

“You and your mom seem super tight,” I say.

I look down at her. She’s nodding, scanning the shelf in front of her.

“Does she have lots of friends?”

We’re moving slowly through canned goods now, which we don’t need, but it’s a way for us to talk—walking side by side, pushing the cart in front of us—without having to look directly at each other. I’m trying hard not to shock her into complete silence.

I look down at her again. Now she’s shaking her head.

“Your mom doesn’t have lots of friends.”

She shakes her head harder, but doesn’t look up.

“She’s so pretty, though,” I say.

Still the shaking.

No words.

“I would think she’d be popular,” I say.

Mindy stops in front of a display of soups. I stop too. She tilts her chin up toward me. Her face is bright red, her eyes completely bloodshot.

“Mindy,” I say, and squat down so we’re eye to eye. “Oh, kiddo.” I pull her into me. “What’s wrong?”

She lets me hug her, which surprises me, and I almost think I’ve fallen for some trick—like she’s maybe twisted the skin on the inside of her wrist so hard that she’s made herself cry (something I’ve thought about doing with Peter)—when she starts full-on hyperventilating and spits out the words “I miss him.” The phrase comes out wet and I feel moisture seeping through the shoulder of my shirt from where she’s crying into it.

I pull her off me gently, just so I can look at her and reassure her.

“Who?” I say in a near-whisper, wiping under her eyes with my thumbs.

“Dad,” she says, and clutches me all over again.

Of course. Dad. They probably came to this grocery store together. The seventy-year-old and the seven-year-old. They probably had a blast going up and down the aisles.

Tentatively, because there’s every chance in the world this could go very badly, I hold my hands up, palms facing Mindy. Her eyes widen.

“Do you know this game?” I say.

She bites on her upper lip and nods. My heart flutters. It’s nearly imperceptible, but the butterfly wings are there, behind the rib cage, just inside the right ventricle, flapping.

“Will it make you feel better?”

There are people in the aisle with us, other women, probably women who are mothers. If they’re watching, then they’re judging, but we don’t care.

Mindy nods again.

“Okay then,” I say.

I kneel so that I am directly across from her, my hands parallel with her shoulders.

“Hit me,” I say softly.

She gives my right palm a little punch.

“Again,” I say.

She punches me again.

“Ouch,” I say. It doesn’t hurt, but she cracks a little smile and that smile makes the wings flutter faster.

“One more?” she asks.

“Go for it.”

She lands a perfect little
thunk
in the middle of my palm.

“You’re strong,” I say.

She nods. “Dad said so.”

“He was right,” I say. I want to cry. He never told me I was strong. But this isn’t about me. “Want some ice cream?”

Her eyes go buggy.

“Don’t tell your mom, though, okay?”

“Okay.”

A
ND SO NOW
we’re in the car in the grocery store parking lot, the A/C on full blast, and I’m watching Mindy eat an ice cream cone in the passenger seat up front. There’s forty dollars and some change in my back pocket. I didn’t touch the two fives.

“Is it good?” I say.

She nods. Her eyes are still a little bloodshot, but the snot at least has abated and the tears have dried up. I reach over and tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye and smiles. I should be having some sort of breakthrough right now. I should be thinking something about me and motherhood. Something terrifying and big, like,
Oh fuck, it’s not that I don’t want children—mine or some poor stranger’s—it’s that I don’t want children with Peter.
But that’s a breakthrough I don’t want to make. That’s a breakthrough for another day, if at all. Sure, I’m able to see the timeliness of the thought, but nope, I’m not yet willing to lock it into place in any meaningful or long-lasting way.

“I’m sorry,” she says, a pause between licks.

“
You’re
sorry?” I say, and give her a big, friendly, dopey smile, actually thinking the words
big
,
friendly
, and
dopey
to try to make my face behave the way I want it to. “What are
you
sorry for?”

“Getting you in trouble.”

“You mean last night?”

She nods and eats her ice cream.

“I’m just really sorry you found out like that.”

Stan must have thought about Mindy. He must have considered how she’d get the news. A walk at dusk, just Sasha and his youngest. The girl’s little hand cupped around a few of the mother’s fingers. Something gentle and strangely sweet. Something to bring the two of them—his last wife and his last daughter—even closer than they already are. He didn’t have to worry about Sasha saying anything about suicide. Not her speed. But me. Stan probably hadn’t considered me. He probably didn’t imagine what I might do. He couldn’t have known that his thirty-four-year-old would drunkenly spill the beans while on the phone with her ex-lover.

“I told Mom,” she says.

“What did you tell your mom?”

“That I was spying,” she says.

I wipe a bit of ice cream from the seat.

“I did a bit of snooping when I was a kid,” I say.

“You did?”

I nod. “They called me meddlesome.”

“Who did?”

“Joyce,” I say.

“What’s meddlesome?” she says.

“Snooping,” I say. “Paying attention when you’re not supposed to.” Which, now that I think of it, probably isn’t the best way of saying it, because honestly, paying attention when you’re not supposed to doesn’t sound all that bad. Unless, of course, it’s a kid who’s doing it. Then it sounds bad. Or if not bad, tricky.

“Meddlesome,” she says back to me, nodding gravely, like she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders.

This kid. This little gray-skinned, gangly kid. I can’t believe that just last night, I was thinking of her as some sort of mastermind, some sort of long-awaited opponent. She’s just a girl. Just my weirdo little half sister who, according to my brother, anyway, looks just like me.

“You ready to get home?” I say.

She holds out the last of her ice cream cone.

“You don’t want it?” I say.

“Last bite is best bite,” she says, which is something my father used to say, and for a minute, I think I get it. I think I understand what all the fuss is about. For the briefest of seconds—a second split into nanoseconds—I think,
I miss him too.

“Are you okay?” she says.

“Yeah, why?”

She nods at my chest. I look down. I’m clutching at my breast like some sort of lunatic, and I realize my heart feels too big for its cavity.

“I’m fine,” I say, which is a lie. But I manage to take the piece of cone she’s still holding in my direction and pop it in my mouth.