The Birthdays (32 page)

She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the roar of the engine. Soon she would see MacNeil again at the Gardner. She pictured the Tapestry Room lit with candles and lanterns, throngs of people piling in and walking toward their seats. “You know,” she said loudly, and nudged Joe, “the opening night of the Gardner was on New Year’s Eve. Fifty members of the Boston Symphony played Bach and Mozart, Chausson, Schumann. Can you imagine it?” It felt like a cruelty at first, speaking so admiringly of this world to Joe. But it was not, she reminded herself. There was nothing wrong with adoring a place.

“It must have been something,” he said into her ear. The engine droned behind them.

“Back then there was a two-story concert hall. Now the Tapestry Room is what the upper floor used to be. Isabella hung lanterns from the balconies and candles from the arches
and windows. She filled the hall with flowers, every sort available. Think of the scent! And there were fountains everywhere. It makes me happy to think about. I know it’s silly, being so enamored of a museum and a woman, but it does.”

“It all seems otherworldly, doesn’t it?”

“Mm,” Ellen said, unsure what he was referring to.

“Like a dream, really,” he said, his lips now against her ear. His warm breath gave her a rush.

He’d startled her, his face in the window of her parents’ car that day so many years ago. She didn’t know what made her roll down the window for him. Now no one would so easily talk to a stranger, but back then, she supposed, it was a different planet. Joe had leaned his face almost inside the car, asked, “You all right in there?” and looked down at her, and she’d been at once taken aback and exhilarated and ashamed of her unkempt state. “Sort of,” she managed. “You look good to me. What’s your name?” “Why do you need to know?” she said in her deepest voice, and she felt the warm rush of his breath on her cheek as he said, “It’s just a feeling I have, that it’s something I ought to know. I’m Joe Miller,” he said, and he smiled, and right then her parents approached from behind him and he pulled back, taking away his breath and his eyes that had looked her up and down so audaciously. “Goodbye for now, Joe Miller,” she said, and waved two fingers as she rolled up the window.

She would cancel her plans with MacNeil and bring Joe to the Gardner; after all, the tickets to the concert were hers. So what if Joe didn’t like it there? She’d plead with him and find some way to convince him to go with her.

Or she would go alone. She would call MacNeil and tell him that she’d caught a nasty cold. She would drive herself
into the city, park beside the skinny river nearby and walk toward the great house by herself. She’d never been there alone, and it would be a completely new experience. She felt something inside her loosen, as if from a tether.

Jake drew a map of the circuit breaker box on a scrap of paper while Liz showed Hilary how to use the washer and dryer. His head throbbed from all the wine he’d drunk the night before. It was the oddest thought, leaving his house to his brother and sister, and Jake began to wish he could stay on with them, show them around the island, charter them a boat and have long chats with them in the evenings over dinner. But he had an annual meeting with the partners the next day and Liz had a doctor’s appointment the following day.

He found Daniel sitting by a window in the living room, sketching something on a pad. Jake handed him the map of the circuit breakers. Daniel briefly glanced at it and set it aside. “This is just in case one of the breakers blows. We blow them more than we should. I need to get the electrician back in here.” He looked down at Daniel’s pad. “What are you drawing?”

“I have this book jacket due soon. I’m just doodling some ideas. It’s for a novel set in Cuba.”

“Ah,” Jake said. How different their jobs were. The next day, Jake would sit in a room with ten other men and discuss stock portfolios and bonds, the revenues of smaller financial firms, current trends in fiber optics and computers and entertainment conglomerates. The last time he sat down to draw anything had to have been at least twenty years ago, and it struck him as infinitely strange that his brother actually made
a living this way. “You think that you and Brenda really will try to get pregnant again?”

Daniel thought a moment. “Probably not. This might have been it for me.” He looked down at his hands. “This whole thing wasn’t easy. But I guess ask me again in a year or so.” He glanced up at Jake. “Who knows?”

“You’re right. Who knows?” Jake said, and set his hand on the side of his brother’s chair. He didn’t know what more to say about the matter without smothering him in sympathy. “This weekend was nothing like I thought it would be.”

“You’re telling me.”

Jake moved his tongue around his mouth. “What was all that stuff Hilary was saying about MacNeil Burgess? It was ridiculous. Sometimes I think she would learn a lot from just being in a relationship for a while. And a job too, for that matter.”

“She seems pretty happy to me.”

Jake reluctantly agreed that his sister did seem more content than she had in a while. Pregnancy actually suited her. “Still, I think it’ll be tough for her to be a single mother.”

“You’re in for something yourself with those twins,” Daniel said, and Jake wondered why no one in his family ever really agreed with him about anything. Except for his father, in his quiet, passive way. And as for Daniel—he was just protecting Hilary, who had no one to really protect her in the end. Though of course she’d brought this on herself, she always did. She’d made her choices.

“I guess we are in for something.”

“Hey, thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting us stay here,” Daniel said.

“I’m happy to. Can I do anything else for you?”

Daniel shook his head. “This is plenty. You’ve been so generous,” he said, as if forcing himself.

“No I haven’t.”

“You have. All weekend. I know Dad was touched.”

Jake looked at him. “Well, thank you,” he said. “You know, you can stay here as long as you want. I like knowing that someone’s here.” He wanted to discuss what had happened to Brenda and to tell him how very sorry he was, how unfair it was to the two of them, who’d already been through so much. And he wanted to apologize for fighting with Hilary and ask his brother if he and Jake could start over and try to talk more frequently, visit each other more often and be more a part of each other’s lives, but Liz and Hilary walked into the room.

“Jake, our ferry is waiting,” Liz said, and moved beside him.

Hilary went to sit beside Daniel. “There’s a map of the island in the kitchen drawer. And a tide schedule there too,” Liz said. Jake looked at his sister and brother, a pregnant single-mother-to-be beside a paraplegic man—how had his family come to this?

“We won’t have any parties,” Hilary said. “We won’t tear the place down.”

“Ha,” Jake said.

“Thanks again,” Daniel said.

“Really,” Hilary added, looking at her feet. “Thanks for this.”

For the first time in too long, Jake swore he noted a brief but definite fondness on their faces.

In the rearview mirror, he watched his house grow smaller and he tried to imagine what his brother and sister were talking about. Him? Liz? Their parents? He tried to estimate
where Joe and Ellen might have been at this moment. He looked at his watch and figured they had to be in their car, driving home, sitting side by side quietly as they had thousands of times over the years, as he had so many times with Liz. There was nothing like sitting in silence next to his wife after a weekend on Great Salt, he decided. There was nothing to compare to that kind of solace.

Liz ambled up the gangplank, as did Jake behind her, wobbly with all of their bags. He could hear her heavy breath, or was it his? Liz collapsed on a bench on deck and Jake took the seat beside her. He lifted her hand and set it on his lap. She’d leaned over and laid her head down and Jake watched her breathing slow. Her hand sat like a heavy sponge on his legs and he lifted it, but it dropped with the weight of a brick.

“Hello? You there?” he said.

“Mm. I’m tired. I’m spent. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so spent,” she said, and he wanted to pour gratitude upon her for all her work this weekend. And for more—for her being willing to endure all the infertility treatments, the long bouts of sadness, the constant anxiety in order for them to have a family, and then he wanted to apologize again for the
Kama
Sutra
and the magazine (which in the end she’d thrown away with the rest of the weekend’s garbage). But if he thanked her profusely and apologized as urgently as he felt he should have, she would prickle with irritation. She would cut him off and he would apologize again and none of it would ever really stop. This rhythm would continue to pulse beneath them even when they went about their business separately or held each other affectionately. Beneath the surface of everything, beneath the balance of his entire life was an
unstoppable pendulum that constantly threatened to knock him off-kilter.

He counted to three in his mind before he said anything. Liz began to lift herself and sit upright. “Got it?” he said.

“Got it.” The ferry pushed away from the dock and the foghorn blew.

“Do you worry about the babies? You know, after what happened to Brenda?” he asked her.

“I did even before that,” she said.

“This morning I was reading that medical book, and it said that this kind of thing is really rare, and that it almost never happens. I’m glad we have that book up here, you know?” They’d bought it at Books & Beans a year ago, along with several others about fertility and pregnancy.

She nodded vacantly.

“Our babies will be fine,” he said. “I really think everything will work for us. I have this gut feeling.”

“You do?”

“Don’t you?” he asked.

“I suppose so. But to be honest, I’m trying not to think about all that right now. Right now I’m trying to think about sitting here on this ferry and then just making it home. I’m trying to ignore the pain in my back and the fact that I can barely keep my head up. I’m sorry, honey, I’m just a little out of it.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “That’s perfectly fine. Liz?”

“Yeah?”

“I was pretty drunk last night, wasn’t I?”

“You really were,” she said, smiling.

“It’s been years since I was that drunk,” he said, and returned her smile. 

Hilary struggled to help Daniel across the sand and rocks. He hadn’t been down to the water since he’d arrived, and though getting him there proved next to impossible due to the weight of the chair, the rocks on the beach, the sand, the mud, the seaweed, the wind, she was determined to do it. Together they managed to move him close enough so that he could just reach a finger to the tide.

“I never liked the beaches in Maine. What’s the appeal, all the rocks and the freezing water?” he said as a skirt of seaweed tumbled onto the ground before them.

“Yeah, I know, but it’s like a difficult child, this place. You can’t help admiring a beach that refuses to be sunny and soft, and water that makes your bones ache just looking at it.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said.

She steadied her arms against the top of his chair and gradually lowered herself to sit on the rocky sand. She kicked off her sandals and mashed her toes against a pile of wet pebbles.

“It’s funny. I never really knew what Brenda was thinking this whole weekend,” Daniel said. “I could guess, of course. But she never admitted much. I did all the talking. I told her how I felt and I asked her a million questions.” He paused. “Maybe it’s her being British or so much younger than me or something, but she’s always stayed about a half pace away from me.”

Hilary nodded and said, “You can never really know what anyone else is thinking.”

“But it’s different when it’s your wife. I’m sorry, but it is.”

“Of course it is. It’s probably more frustrating then.” She leaned forward, picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water.

“There have to be plenty of people who understand what’s going on in their spouse’s head,” he said.

“I’m sure you can always sense it on some level. But maybe you just don’t always like it, so you convince yourself everything is their fault, that they’re too distant or aloof.”

“Maybe.”

Hilary had listened to countless friends complain about their relationships and marriages over the past few years. “Can I ask you a question? Why do people stay together for so long?”

Daniel held his hands together in his lap.

“I’m sorry. That was a horrible thing to ask.”

“No, no, I’m just thinking about us,” he said. “I don’t know exactly why we have. It’s worked pretty well, for the most part. I like having someone around to watch out for me, someone else to be a witness to my life.” He swallowed. “For me, so much of it is predictability and knowing that every morning, there’ll be a warm body beside mine and I’ll know exactly what size she’ll be, what she’ll say and where I’ll fit next to her and where she likes me to touch. When that predictability started to fade away because she was out of bed early or didn’t respond to me like she used to, when there was this big part of my body that could no longer feel a thing next to her, that’s when everything started to go haywire.”

Hilary looked up at him. “That makes sense.”

“It does?”

She turned her eyes to the ocean and the horizon line far away. “Sometimes my favorite part of sex is the stillness afterward, just lying next to someone and feeling them right there beside me.”

“You’re such a girl.”

“And you’re not?” she said. “What were you just saying to me?”

“True.”

Hilary smiled up at him. “If I wasn’t pregnant and tired right now, I’d strip down and run into that water.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“If I had legs that worked, I’d join you,” he said.

“Excuses, excuses.”

They sat for a while longer, and once the wind grew stronger and the air chillier, they made the journey back to the house. They were like an old, broken-down couple, Hilary thought as she used every ounce of strength she had to help her brother back up the beach and onto the gravel path that led around to the front door.