Reunion: A Novel (7 page)

B
ad news,” says Nell.

We’re in a bedroom—what once must have been Mindy’s bedroom, as there are pink images of lamb babies and goat babies and unicorn babies stenciled all over the walls—where we’ve managed to push the knickknacks and dolls and typewriters out of the way in order to create two pallets made of couch cushions and pillows: a largish one for me and Nell and a small one for Elliot.

“What?” says Elliot.

“Here.” She hands a bottle to Elliot and a bottle to me. It’s some kind of poison meant specifically for biting mites.

“Oh,” I say. “Bedbugs. He has bedbugs.”

“Had,” says Elliot.

“Not bedbugs,” says Nell. “Biting mites.”

“Same thing,” I say.

“No,” she says, “it’s not.”

“Thou sayest,” says Elliot. Then, after a beat: “I’d kill for some pot.”

“Or blow,” says Nell.

Elliot and I look at her.

“It’s big in SF right now,” she says. “What?”

“Where did you even find these?” I say, handing the bottles back to Nell.

“The closet.”

Who knows? Maybe there was a sale at Sam’s Club and he couldn’t help buying a couple of bottles. It’s no guarantee that there are actually bedbugs in this house. Plenty of people buy bug spray preemptively—bug spray and bandages and sunscreen. Plenty of people.

It’s close to three in the morning. We have an appointment at the funeral home at nine. At this point, though I’m dead tired, I have no idea why we’re even pretending to try to get some sleep. We should be out looking for a rental car or a moving service or pesticide. But no. Instead we are here. Nell insists that a rental car is unnecessary. She says Sasha wants to drive us around; she wants to catch up. I can tell this annoys even Elliot, but he’s gung ho on extended family for some reason and so he’s willing to go along with whatever plans and schedules Nell has dreamed up for us.

I crawl under the covers fully clothed. “I feel like a kid,” I say. “Like I’m sleeping on the floor at some friend’s house. This brings back memories.”

Nell gets into bed next to me. Elliot walks over to the light switch.

“Except the friend probably has lice,” I say.

Nell fidgets under the sheets. Elliot flips the light.

“And also this friend is a hoarder and also he’s just shot himself and for some reason I think it’s a good idea to spend the night anyway.”

“Shut up already,” says Nell.

“We don’t say shut up in this house,” I say.

“Hey,” says Elliot, and I fully expect to be reprimanded yet again. “It’s good to see you guys.”

I’m quiet. Sincerity has a way of throwing me off sometimes, especially when it’s not me who started it. Like, I always feel somewhat caught off guard, somewhat embarrassed for the other person, but also somewhat ashamed for not having thought of it first.

“You guys too,” says Nell. “For real. I needed this.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Ditto.” Because it’s all I can think to say.

Yellow glow stars slowly come to life on the ceiling overhead. It’s been years since I thought of those stars, since I even remembered they existed. I had them in my bedroom on Woodward Way and also in my bedrooms at Tanglewood and Howell Mill. But I gave up on them sometime after that. I can’t remember when exactly. And I can’t remember why. I’d be a better person, maybe, if I’d had those stars in my life a few more years. I’d be less cynical. My childhood would have lasted a little longer. I should have them in my bedroom now. I should have them in Chicago. I should go first thing on my return to a toy store and buy them out. I should stick them all over the ceiling and all over the walls and I should wait in the dark until Peter comes home, and then I could show him the stars and say, “I’m sorry.” That’s it. Nothing more. Just “I’m sorry,” and see if there’s any way that could be enough.

I am so lonely.

Under the covers, Nell reaches over and grabs my hand. Sometimes, I swear, it’s like she can read my mind. She gives my palm one squeeze, and I give hers one squeeze back. That’s it. That’s all there is to it, and then we sleep.

I
dream about a yellow trunk. It’s large and heavy—so
methin
g like what they had on the
Titanic
. Something old and unwieldy and grand. It stands vertically, not horizontally, like you could hang clothes in it if you wanted to. I’m wearing this Polo sweater that my mom used to wear when I was tiny. It’s a sweater she was photographed in often. So even if I don’t really remember it from my own memories, I remember it from the pictures. The Polo is a dark mustard color and it’s too big for me and I keep worrying that it’s going to weigh me down. It’s too big, it’s too big. I fold up the sleeves, but no one is watching me. On my wrist is my mother’s gold Rolex, and it’s heavy and hard to look at, but I realize—even as I’m dreaming—that I have no idea where the watch is. It’s on my arm, yes, but only in the dream. In real life, I have no idea where it is, and this is a strange realization to be grappling with in my sleep. It’s here, I keep telling myself. But it’s also not here.

That watch was meant to be mine. I remember that. There were so few things appointed to anyone specifically in her will, but I remember that the watch was mine, though I was too small to wear it when she died, and the engagement ring was Elliot’s, and the pearls—the black ones—were Nell’s. I know Elliot got the ring because Rita wears it every day; I have no idea whether Nell got the pearls. But again, this is all happening in my dream. So I’m confused, but also curious and abnormally certain that these dream facts are also real life facts.

In my dream, I am all alone. Everyone is gone. It’s been decades. It’s been centuries. And everyone is lost. I look down at my wrists and there is a slow trickle of blood. This isn’t how I want to die, but the blood is warm and wet and comforting. I don’t fight it. There’s no reason to fight it. And then I realize, this is not blood. Then I realize, this is not blood at all. This is urine.

I sit up in bed. My first thought is relief—relief that I’ve awakened in time. My second thought is that I’m embarrassed by how obvious the dream is—yellow trunk, yellow sweater, yellow watch, yellow urine. I tiptoe out of the room and skirt the junk in the hallway. It’s not until I’m in the bathroom, my pants down around my ankles, that I realize I didn’t in fact wake up in time. My underwear is wet. Not drenched, not soaked, but wet. My pants are moist too, which means my side of the makeshift bed is also damp. The world thought of everything but not of this.

There’s a soft knock on the door.

“Kate?”

It’s Nell.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

I flush the toilet and unlock the door. Her eyes are small and red. Her hair is in an untidy bundle on top of her head. She looks like a little kid with wrinkles.

In her arms is the sheet we were sleeping on.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

I cover my face with my hands.

“I’m so embarrassed,” I say.

She stuffs the sheet into the bathroom trash can, which we’d set up before bed, so that now the small bin is almost entirely full.

“Seriously, I’m not going to tell Elliot or anything.”

“Thanks,” I say.

She puts her hand on my arm tentatively. She looks more troubled than I am.

“Does this happen often?” she says.

I can’t help it, I laugh.

“No,” I say. “No. Never.”

“Kiddo,” she says, which is everyone’s nickname for me, even Rita’s and Peter’s. “I think you’re more upset by all this than you’re letting on.”

I put my arm around her and flip the switch in the bathroom. “Maybe,” I say. “But also. There’s stuff you don’t know about.”

“What stuff?”

We move into the dark, narrow hallway, made all the darker and narrower by Stan’s endless collection of garbage.

“Let’s get through the next few days, okay? Let’s do that first, then I’ll tell you.”

We tiptoe one after the other back into Mindy’s room. Nell gets under the covers first. Somehow, she’s already changed the bottom sheet. She is a natural mother, though there are no real children to prove it. Elliot’s every fifth breath comes out a snore. I can feel that Nell is now wide awake next to me.

“It’s nothing,” I whisper. “I promise. It can wait awhile.”

If I borrowed twenty thousand dollars from Nell, I could pay off the last of the credit card debt and come current on the back taxes and have a little left over to lean on during the summer months. There’d still be the school loans, but the monthly payment is so low already—cheaper than most car payments. Of course, all this would involve coming clean. This would involve explaining the debt, explaining the extent of my secrecy. If she said no, then I’d be in the same place I am now, but with the additional discomfort of her judgment. That said, if she agreed and I paid it off, then maybe I could make a fresh start. I could see how my brain feels about Peter when money isn’t an issue. But it doesn’t matter. I won’t ask her.

“Kate,” she says, suddenly serious. “Are you sick? Would you tell me?”

I feel for her face and find it. “That’s so sweet,” I say. “No. I’m not sick.” I stroke her cheek once. “Look,” I say. “Look at all the glow stars.”

I feel her turn away from me, in the direction of the ceiling.

“I’d forgotten those existed,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”

“Maybe Mindy is more like us than you thought.”

I think about this. I think about little Mindy standing on her bed, moving her desk chair around the room, stretching her chubby little arm toward the ceiling, sticking the stars on one by one.

“Maybe,” I say. “We’ll see.”

S
asha is outside the apartment at eight on the nose. She doesn’t honk and she doesn’t come in. She just pulls up in her blue Volvo, steps outside it, leans against the hood, and lights a cigarette. I know all this because I’m watching her from the living room like a reverse peeping Tom. Mindy is not with her, which is a relief. I’m not yet ready for dealing with any of the half siblings, especially the super-young ones.

Here’s what I can say about Sasha: she’s prettier than I remember. Not many women do that—get prettier over time or out of memory. It’s been, what, three years since I last saw her? Which means—can this be right?—it’s been that long since I last saw Stan. Mindy was three and had just mastered the phrases “I’m adorable” and “You can hug me if you want.” My father had rented a cabin in the Upper Peninsula. They’d flown into Chicago; I’d met them at the airport, gotten a coffee with them, waited while they rented a car. I remember Sasha as having been slightly overweight then, with baby fat still in her cheeks. I remember thinking my father was a fool. I remember him saying, as he got into the driver’s seat of the rental, “I love my children,” and me saying back to him, “You must. You keep having them.” I’d wanted to hurt him. I’d wanted to dismiss his newest wife and newest child. I’d wanted him to feel small and weak and embarrassed by the choices he’d made. Instead he laughed and hit his thigh. “Goddamn,” he said. “I like that.” Peter had offered to go with me to the airport, but I’d said no. I’d said I didn’t want to burden him with my father’s aura. But really, if I’m being honest, which I am trying very hard these days to be, maybe I was already feeling bored with our marriage. Maybe he was feeling bored too, which is why he went to Dan and asked about reversing the vasectomy and then, when he found out that wouldn’t work, asked about adoption.

Nell comes up behind me. “Ready or not,” she says.

“Not,” I say.

“Too bad,” she says, and then she pinches the back pocket of my jeans.

Outside it’s dense and thick and muggy.

Nell is the first to greet Sasha, and I think it’s a little weird and maybe even unseemly and definitely unnecessary the way they hold on to each other so long. Sasha whispers something in Nell’s ear that I can’t hear and the two of them laugh and look my way.

I hold out my hand before Sasha can try to hug me. She obliges by shaking it, and again I feel relief.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she says.

I nod. “I’m sorry about your husband.”

I’d forgotten about this—the formality of death.

“Well, you know, them’s the rules,” says Sasha. It throws me a little, to hear her use an expression I associate so closely with Stan. But it makes sense, I suppose. She was married to him.

Sasha’s eyes are swollen and sad-looking, but what I suspected from the window of the house is true—she’s prettier than before; it’s like she’s blossomed. She’s lost weight, and hiding underneath all along was a beautiful woman. It makes me a little bit jealous.

Elliot is last to the car and shakes Sasha’s hand in the same businesslike manner as I did, which makes me glad he’s my brother and that he exists and that we’re on the same side. He’s not going to manufacture some friendship with this wife or any of the exes just because our father is dead. He’s here for something else, I’m realizing. He’s here for closure, yes, and, sure, okay, maybe because it’s the right thing to do, but he’s also here for himself as a father. I’m not sure yet. But he’s here to figure something out in his own life. I see that now, and I make the decision to be as well behaved and supportive as possible. I can do this for Elliot.

“We’ve got time for a coffee if anyone wants,” says Sasha, and the three of us, nearly in unison, say yes.

N
ELL
TAKES THE FRONT SEAT
, and all the way to the funeral home Elliot quizzes Sasha from the backseat about our father’s hoarding—when it started, what it was like six months ago, when it got to be the way it is now. She answers his questions patiently, one after the other. A few times her voice cracks and Nell puts a hand on her knee, but mostly she’s able to keep it together.

“Why did you leave?” he says.

I hit Elliot’s chest with the back of my hand.

“Sorry,” he says. “Is that too much?”

“I left because we weren’t in love anymore,” she says. “Not like we should have been. I wanted to take care of him. He was old, you know.” She looks in the rearview mirror when she says this. She looks at me, and I wonder if she’s trying to accuse me of something—of not knowing he was old (which I did), or of not caring (which mostly I didn’t), or of not being a good daughter (well, yes, she’d be right there too, but the problem started with him being a not-good father). “And I left because one day I came home from work and Mindy was sitting inside a cardboard box with a loaf of bread and an uncooked chicken in her hands and when I asked your father what he thought he was doing with his daughter, he said, ‘Daughter? Daughter? She’s not my daughter.’ And that was it. That was just it.”

Nobody says anything. I’m watching Nell’s hand, watching the way it seems to want to reach out and touch Sasha’s leg again. I should probably be taking notes.

“That was six months ago,” says Sasha. “I checked on him every week. When I left it was just the back porch and half the living room that he was using for storage. I don’t even know where he got the things he got. I just know that every week there was more—another television set, a box of keyboards, a box of video games, a box of dish towels.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell us how bad things were,” says Elliot. “I could have helped.”

Sasha nods, then shakes her head, then nods again. “I really like you guys,” she says. “You know that, right?”

What does her liking or not liking us have to do with anything?

Elliot doesn’t say anything and neither does Nell. Perhaps this is a turning point. Perhaps this is—as I would giddily point out to my students—a moment after which nothing will ever be the same.

“To be honest,” says Sasha, all business, “I didn’t think you’d be of much use. I didn’t think you’d do anything differently from what you’ve ever done.” She sighs. I could cut the tension in this car with a knife. “You weren’t close.”

She’s right. At least as far as I’m concerned, and so I look to Elliot, who I hope can put her in her proper place. Whatever that even means. But he’s looking out the window at Atlanta limping by.

“Listen,” she says. There’s not an ounce of apology in her voice. “I’m not pointing fingers or making accusations. But you guys haven’t been around.”

Now Elliot looks at her. His brow is furrowed. He’s all business too. When did he go and get so old? When did he turn so grossly glum? “No,” he says, his voice flat. “You’re right. You’re totally right. I just wish…” He pauses, searching for words, presumably.

“I’m not pointing fingers,” Sasha says again. “He wasn’t close to anyone but me and Mindy. His devotion was always to what was right in front of him.” She’s quiet for a minute, but I don’t dare look at the rearview mirror; I’m afraid I’ll find her staring right at me. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” she says, and she stops at a red light. She turns in her seat and faces Elliot directly. “I didn’t understand how bad it was. Do you know what I mean? I do now. I see it. And it’s glaring. It’s totally glaring. But I didn’t see just how sick he must have been.”

The stoplight changes and Nell says, “Green,” and Sasha turns forward and once again we’re moving.

As teachers, my colleagues and I are constantly being warned about how to deal with problem students: When confronted with a threat or by a violent situation, move immediately to safety. If safety is unavailable, move toward a door. Once through the door, lock it. If the door doesn’t lock, secure or barricade it with chairs, desks, tables. If safety or a locked door isn’t an option, approach someone for help. If there’s no one there who can help, make yourself invisible and then get your story straight and remember as many of the facts and details as you can, because if this kid opens fire, you’re going to need to explain how all this shit went down right in front of you. You’re going to need to explain why you didn’t see the signs before this exact moment when a gun or a knife or a bomb was finally involved.

I know what Sasha means about hindsight, and yet still.

“How did he pay for it all?” I ask, because it’s the only way I know to change the subject. “Where was the money coming from?”

Elliot gives me this
what the aphid
look, but I don’t care.

“He had a pension,” she says. “It didn’t amount to much. And I helped where I could.”

“Was he depressed?” I ask.

Peter, about a year ago, accused me of being depressed. I accused him of not liking my stance on adoption.

Another red light, and Sasha looks at Nell and then turns to look at me and Elliot.

“Your father was a lot of things, including, I know, a bastard to the three of you. He was good to Mindy, though. Really. The chicken notwithstanding. He was good to her. And he was good to me for a little while.” The stoplight turns from red to green, and Sasha steps on the gas slowly. “I don’t know what your father was, honestly. He loved you. All three of you. But you don’t need to hear that from me.”

I wonder if ever he cheated on her. He was old, yes. But he was able to snag Sasha. There’s always the chance that she was the first of his wives that he didn’t step out on, though that seems unlikely.

Elliot gets out his phone and starts going at it with his thumbs. I lean back in my seat and look out the window at Atlanta. Here again are the dueling cathedrals, their gaudiness on full display in the daylight. And here again is the duck pond and the high-rise I lived in for a short period of time before we moved in with Joyce. My real life is seven hundred miles away from me, fairly convinced he never wants me back and already thinking of ways to cut me off. But here I am in this other place, this giant, hideous city, this place where we were born. And here we are, driving down Peachtree on our way to begin the doleful business of putting our father to rest at last.