Reunion: A Novel (9 page)

S
omehow Sasha and Nell have talked Elliot into agreeing that the three of us should move our stuff from Dad’s place to Sasha’s. Given the state of things—boxes of dirty dishes, random collections of ashtrays and television sets, not to mention the powerful smell of misery—it makes sense even to me that we not stay another night on those terrible makeshift pallets.

And so now we’re on our way to Holy Innocents’ to pick up Mindy from school-slash-daycare before heading back to Sasha’s. Whenever the Volvo stops long enough—in a parking lot, outside a store—Elliot hops out and calls Rita. His mood is completely dependent on whether or not she answers. So far, nobody has noticed that I’m not on the phone with Peter every five minutes. So far, nobody’s said anything about it at all. When no one was looking, outside the funeral home, I texted him one line:
Can we talk?
It’s only been a few hours, but he hasn’t written back yet. I’m trying to limit how often I let myself check for a response.

Nell has offered to cook dinner for everyone—like a family, which is how she said it—so we’ve gone to the Harris Teeter and picked up enough food for a small army. Was it deliberate that I chose to find the restroom just as they were turning the cart toward the checkout? Does it matter?

When we pull up to Holy Innocents’, Sasha leaves the car running and I stay by myself in the backseat. Elliot gets out and leans against the trunk and dials Rita, and Nell and Sasha head toward the front entrance together.

“We’ll just be a minute,” says Sasha over her shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to come?”

“I saw too much of this place when I went to school here,” I say, and it’s true. Just being in the parking lot gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’ve got that feeling in my stomach like the first time I tried to spend the night away from home at a friend’s house and ended up puking the evening away into the toilet. There was nothing wrong with me. Nothing but nerves. Stan—and I do give him credit for this, but it’s like giving credit to a hermit for remembering to say hello, because, I mean, congrats, he got
one
tidbit of parenting right, well done there—came to get me at three in the morning and didn’t even give me a hard time about it. But then, those were the days of Whitney and he probably welcomed the chance to get away from her. No one liked Whitney, especially not Stan.

My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Rita:
Tell Elliot I’m fine. I’ll call later. OK? Ell = driving me nuts.
I turn and look outside the rear window of the Volvo. Elliot is looking at his phone like it’s disobeyed him. My phone buzzes again.
Don’t tell him about nuts. Haha.
I delete the messages and knock on the glass. He comes over to my side of the car and I open the door.

“Rita’s fine,” I say.

“How do you know?”

“She says she’ll call you later.”

“You talked to her?”

“No.”

“She texted?”

“Yes.”

He kicks the rear tire.

“Let me see the text,” he says.

I look at my phone.

“I deleted it,” I say.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I say and, truly, I don’t. It was instinctive. It felt utterly natural at the time. Perhaps I have the instincts of an adulterer. Perhaps they have seeped into me and changed the course of my life for good. Perhaps it’s hereditary and there is no going back. Or perhaps I am naturally secretive, I have always been naturally secretive, always looking ahead to the chance that someone might say “Let me see” or “Prove it to me,” but I never have to worry because the evidence is already gone. Deleted before it was even considered evidence.

“What’s going on with you?” says Elliot. “You’re different.”

“Dude,” I say. “What’s going on with
you
? I haven’t seen you like this with Rita since you started going out. You’re like a little boy with that phone.”

“Forget it,” he says.

“Fine,” I say.

I feel so far away from Elliot, which makes my guts feel gnawed out. There’s a piranha swimming around, filling up on my intestines. All I want is for Elliot to hug me again, like he did at the airport, and tell me that this—
life
—is going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay. And the thing is, I know that if I were simply to ask him, if I were simply to knock again on the glass and ask for a hug, he’d give it to me in a heartbeat, but for some reason I just can’t. I don’t want to have to ask. I want it offered. I want someone to read my mind and I want it to be him.

My phone buzzes again. I’m about to hold it out the window—to show the evidence to Elliot and prove both to him and to myself that I don’t have to be cagey and guarded if I don’t want to—but the text is from my agent, not from Rita.

Call me. I have a crazy idea.

My agent and I are not close. An unnecessary detail, but I’m trying to keep everything as accurate as possible. The point is, this text is out of the ordinary. I didn’t even know she was capable of texting. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we were in touch.

I lean back against the seat and close my eyes. Peter says I have phobias. He says that waking up in the middle of the night isn’t natural. He says the lists I make aren’t natural. He said, “Most people don’t keep lists of their secrets.” I said, “What makes you think there are secrets?” He said, “There’s an easier way. You’re depressed.” I told him I wasn’t depressed. I told him, “I’m happy as a clam.” He said, “Yes, fine, but there’s something wrong.” He said, “You’re not exactly cool as a cucumber right now.” I said, “I’m good. I’m great.” He said, “I can feel your heartbeat racing under your sweater.” I said, “That’s unusual, huh?” He said, “Have you thought of Paxil?” I said, “I spent my teens sleeping under the kitchen table because of Prozac.” He said, “I know that.” I said, “No, I haven’t thought of Paxil, and anyway, I’m not depressed. Don’t try to be my therapist.” He said, “Stop putting me in that position, then.” He says I have a phobia of old age and honesty. He says I have a fear of the dark. I said, “Plenty of people are scared of the dark. It’s a reasonable fear. An unreasonable fear? Flying.” He said, “Paxil would help you not panic. It would help with your OCD.” I said, “OCD? Get out of here.” I told him no Paxil. What I should have done was ask for Xanax or Valium, but I get the impression that therapists—even husband th
erapis
ts—don’t like giving out narcotics when you ask for them by name. I get the impression that they like to be the ones to come up with the idea. I wonder if Sasha gets her little pink pills legally. I wonder if she gets them from some doctor she knows socially or from a real therapist. These are things I’m interested in finding out. Also: whether or not she’s the type of woman who likes to share.

A bell inside the school goes off loudly enough for us to hear it in the parking lot. It’s the same bell from twenty-five years ago. I turn and watch as the littlest children file out in groups. I spot Sasha and a minute later I see Nell. At her side—at my
sister’s
side and holding her hand—is Mindy. She’s bigger than the last time I saw her. She’s thinned out. She’s tall and lanky and kind of gray.

Elliot is beside me again, standing at the open door. He punches me in the arm.

“Oh my God,” he says.

“I know,” I say, rubbing my forearm. “We’re not going to be expected to hold her hand, are we?”

“What?” he says. “No, look at her.”

I look at the little girl who is hanging on my sister. All I can see is that she is hanging on my sister. All I can think is,
Why is she hanging on my sister?

“She’s the spitting image,” Elliot says.

“Of who?”

“Of you,” he says.
“Look.”

And I do. I look at her, at this lanky, awkward, gray little thing headed right toward us. She’s wearing a cap-sleeved shirt with a Peter Pan collar, and she’s got it half tucked in, half tucked out of a blue-checkered Dorothy dress. She’s an absolute mess and I can’t take my eyes off her.

“So much for being adopted,” he says. “You’ve definitely got Dad’s DNA,” which is something I’m increasingly aware of.

I
t’s a thirty-minute drive back to Sasha’s place in Druid Hills. I’ve had to scoot to the middle so Mindy can sit in her booster seat, which Sasha had been hiding in the trunk. She’s different than I remember, this little kid is. She doesn’t know why we’re in town—Sasha hasn’t told her about Stan’s “passing”—and it’s not really clear if she fully comprehends who we are. Yes, she understands the terms
half sister
and
half brother
, but she seems ultimately unimpressed by the idea, which I don’t mind, given that I’m ultimately unimpressed by the idea as well. She also seems curiously attuned to Nell, as in, “Nell, guess what?” and “Nell, did you know…?” and “Nell, ask me a knock-knock joke, but you have to start it.” To me she says nothing, just shoots an occasional and skeptical peek. Elliot might as well be in a different country, sitting a full seat away from her.

“Kiddo,” says Sasha, looking into the rearview at Mindy, not at me. “These guys are going to stay with us for a few days. I told Nell and Kate they could have your room. How’s that sound?”

Mindy pinches at the air in front of her as if there’s a delicate spiderweb she’s considering dismantling.

“Where do I sleep, then?”

“In my bed.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“
Tomorrow
tonight?”

“
Tonight
tonight.” Sasha glances at me and Elliot. She says, “We’re struggling with the idea of tomorrow.” She doesn’t say this to Nell, though. It’s like Nell has the skinny on all this already. Like everything that Elliot and I have to be told, Nell already knows. It’s just trickled in somehow, instant osmosis.

Elliot nods. “Pigpie has no idea about time,” he says, looking at his phone. When parents talk about their children, it’s like they’re on autopilot. They don’t even have to turn on their brains to recount the most recent cuteness. “She cries every night thinking that school is starting in an hour. She can’t account for the hours when she’s sleeping.” It seems like a reasonable enough difficulty to me.

Sasha says to Elliot, “Pigpie. That’s Ellie, right?”

“That’s right.” He puts down his phone finally. Normally Elliot loves all conversations children-related. “First grade.”

“No kidding,” says Sasha. “We’re in second.”

“Really?” I feel Elliot squirming next to me. He hates the idea of parents who live through their children’s achievements, and likewise he hates the idea of parents who create competitions where there shouldn’t be any. In theory at least. “Second, huh?”

“It was a big class last year; they were looking for students to place out.”

“And Mindy placed out?”

“People don’t believe me, but she was reading at three.”

Elliot is silently nodding. He’s not pissed. But I can feel him going through the calculations. I can feel him mapping out the six years of Pigpie’s life. Maybe they shouldn’t have encouraged her to be so physical. Maybe they should have enforced Sunday morning reading time. Of course, I could be wrong. I could be completely making this up, but his rigid arm against mine suggests otherwise.

“So, kiddo,” says Sasha, again in the rearview. “What do you think about staying in my bedroom tonight?”

“Fine,” she says, still pinching her invisible web. “Bleh. Fine.” Pinch, pinch, pinch.

Seriously? This kid placed out of something? Elliot should take a harder look at her. Pigpie wins by twenty. But then, I’d also like for him to take back what he said about Mindy being my spitting image. Was I really that gray as a child? Was I sickly?

Thinking mean thoughts about a child—a stranger’s child, a relative’s child, my half sister, who happens to
be
a child—always makes me feel kind of small and a little bit guilty. It makes me feel like the bully I never was. I tap Mindy on the knee. This is my silent apology for an offense she isn’t even aware of. I am smiling insanely. She looks up at me with wet, wide eyes. I’ve scared her. Either that, or she’s offended that I’ve touched her without asking. Smart kid.

“My nickname is kiddo, too,” I say. “Did you know that?”

“I’m kiddo,” she says.

“Right,” I say. “But me too.”

“How can you be kiddo if I’m kiddo?” She turns and looks out the window. This is an open-and-shut case. To her, the question is rhetorical, not even deserving of a response. But actually, it’s not a bad question. How
can
I be kiddo if she’s kiddo, too? My answer is, she
shouldn’t
be kiddo. My answer is, I’m the original kiddo. It was supposed to stop with me. The same way the rocking chair was supposed to be mine. I was the last kid; it wasn’t supposed to keep getting more babies to rock to sleep. But it did. There’s a flaw to my logic. There’s a piece missing. But I can’t see it.

Nell turns from the front seat and squeezes Mindy’s wizened knee bone. Mindy squeals with delight and throws her head back.

Nell says, “Want to help me with dinner tonight?”

“Can I cut?”

“Hmm,” says Nell. “Maybe not cut, but there’s plenty of other dangerous stuff for you to do.”

“I like dangerous,” says Mindy.

“I bet you do,” says Nell. And it’s possible I am making this up, it’s absolutely possible, but when she turns back toward the front, it looks like Nell’s just winked at Sasha and that Sasha, Stan’s widow, has winked back. I look at Elliot, who’s missed everything. He’s tapping on his phone like a schoolboy obsessed. He’s worse than my students. Oh man, if Nell and Sasha turn out to be lovers, this weekend might not be a total bust after all. Here’s hoping there’s a surprise announcement at dinner.

“Two muffins,” Mindy is saying to no one in particular, “are baking in an oven. The first muffin turns to the second muffin and says, ‘Wooo, it’s hot in here.’” She raises her voice in a Southern-sounding singsong. No one says anything. My skin is starting to itch. She continues, “And then the second muffin screams, ‘Holy cow! A talking muffin!’” Mindy squeals again. Nell and Sasha chuckle from the front seat. Elliot tap-tap-taps on his cell phone.

What the aphid is going on in this car?