While I'm Falling (29 page)

Shortly after dinner that evening, Elise pretty much had the same argument with my father. It was just louder. Poor Susan O’Dell sat blinking into her eggnog as my father got increasingly agitated by the idea of Elise becoming a stay-at-home mom. He stood up and paced around the dining room, almost bumping right into the glass-topped table. Was she
crazy
? he wanted to know. Did she not understand that she was
brilliant and immensely talented
? Did she forget how hard she had worked? Did she realize what she was throwing away?

“Should we give them some space?” Susan whispered, her eyes on mine.

I shook my head. “This is kind of how it goes,” I said. I didn’t actually say
Get used to it,
but I hoped she got the idea. She seemed nice enough. She was quiet, but alert-looking, with a suprising spread of freckles across the bridge of her graceful nose. She was maybe ten years younger than my mother. At dinner, she laughed appreciatively at almost everything my father said. He was charming. He told good stories. He pulled her chair out for her and asked her opinion on a recent ruling by the State Supreme Court. But after dinner, because of Elise, she got to see what he was like when he was mad.

“Was this Charlie’s idea? Did he just want to take the job here, whether you could get one or not?”

“You’re seriously asking me that?” Elise shook her head and yawned. She put her feet up in his empty chair. “How much eggnog have you had?”

They stared at each other.

“I can always go back,” she said. “I get to keep my degree, you know. I also get to keep my brain.”

My father did not smile. “You’re stepping off the ladder, honey.” He pointed down at her. “Don’t kid yourself. They’re not going to let you back on.”

She met his eyes, her smile gone. She didn’t like him pointing, maybe. She looked tired all at once. “I stepped off the ladder when I said I wanted to come home for Christmas,” she said. “I stepped off the ladder when I asked for three days off instead of two.”

I looked into the corner of the room, where my father had placed his poinsettia. Elise and I had placed all our gifts around it, almost hiding the plant from view. We’d assumed there wouldn’t be a tree.

“Susan has a kid.” My father nodded at Susan O’Dell, who looked suddenly ill. “Susan has a kid, and she always worked. She did it.”

“I should go,” Susan O’Dell said. She wasn’t talking to anyone, just announcing it to the room.

“I changed my major,” I said, with a similar volume and tone. “I’m not pre-med anymore. I’m doing English literature. I might go to grad school. For literature.”

Everyone looked at me.

“I think I’ll be happier,” I added. “I’ll try harder and do better. I’ll always want to go to work, you know, if I’m doing something I love.”

I lowered my eyes, studying my hot chocolate. My non sequitur had actually been thought out, though only for about ten seconds. I’d understood, all at once, that this was the time to strike. For one, Susan O’Dell’s nervous presence was keeping my father somewhat in check. He was yelling, but not as much, and not quite as loudly, as he would have been if she weren’t there. Furthermore, Elise’s defection was so much more extreme. In a year, she would be a housewife. I would be in grad school. There was a big difference.

My father pressed both hands against the top of his head. He looked at Elise. He looked at me. “What the hell is happening here?” He looked at Susan O’Dell. “Talk to them!” he said. “They need a strong role model. Now!”

I didn’t like it, even if it was just a joke.

“We already have one,” I said, my voice firm, before even Elise could speak. I was as mad as I’d been at the steak house, right before I’d gotten up and walked out. He was putting us all into boxes. I was with my mother and Elise, nothing like the bright and hardworking Susan O’Dell.

“Sorry,” my father said, palms raised. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”

I didn’t believe him. I knew what he’d meant. But I’d spoken, and he’d apologized.

Elise gave Susan a sympathetic smile. “Coming back next year?” She picked up her mug and stood, stretching on her tiptoes, and as she arched back, her shirt lifted, and I saw that her jeans were only zipped halfway, and a rubber band stretched between the button and the eye of them. “He has some good qualities, as I’m sure you know.” She walked around the table to where he stood, leaning in against his crossed arms to kiss him on the cheek. “You just have to know when to ignore him.”

By the time she shuffled into the kitchen, I wasn’t mad anymore. I was just impressed with the advice. I looked up at my father and smiled, raising my mug in Elise’s direction. If he wanted to put me in the same box as my sister, well, that was fine with me.

Christmas morning, while I was still asleep, my mother called and left a message. Bowzer had had a bad night. He’d been okay when she went to bed, but at two a.m., she woke to his quiet whimpers. He was having trouble breathing. He’d messed on the bed. He’d always been such a clean, fussy dog; but he either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stand up.

I closed my phone and woke Elise. She swatted me away at first, but as soon as she understood, she opened her eyes and sat up straight.

“I’ll come, too,” she said.

We dressed quickly. While she was in the bathroom, I heard footsteps downstairs and the jingle of keys. I pulled on my boots and ran down the stairs.

“We need to borrow your car,” I said.

My father looked at me over the rim of a mug of coffee. He was wearing nylon running pants and a matching jacket. His car keys were cupped in his free hand. Either the gym was open on Christmas morning, or Susan O’Dell still believed that he had some good qualities, too.

He frowned. “I was just about to go—”

“Bowzer’s dying,” I said. “He’s dying right now. We need to get over there. We need to borrow your car.”

He squinted. He tilted his head. Later, I would consider that he was perhaps truly confused. Bowzer, in a different era, had meant something to him. You didn’t let an animal sit tummy-up on your lap every evening for over a decade and not grow at least a little attached. But he hadn’t seen Bowzer in over a year, and after he moved out of the house and into this neat condominium, he must have assumed that he would never see the dog again. So in a sense, for my father, Bowzer had already been dead for a year.

But if he was confused, he was also worried about me driving. He glanced out the window, at the morning sun shining on a fresh layer of snow in the driveway. He might have been thinking of my accident in Jimmy’s car.

I took a step toward him. “I’m a good driver,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with my driving. This is important, Dad. Please.”

I kept my eyes on his. I could have offered to let Elise drive. He could have suggested it. But both of us thought better.

He handed over the keys.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be in the garage, warming it up.” I moved past him, into the kitchen. “Tell Elise when she comes down?” I glanced over my shoulder to make sure he’d heard. The expression on his face stopped me. He looked sad. He was looking at the floor, frowning, his heavy brows pushed low.

“Dad? Do you…” I shifted my weight. It was a bad idea. It wouldn’t work. And yet, Bowzer was the family dog. “Do you want to come, too? It would probably be okay.”

He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. He shook his head and jogged up the stairs.

Dr. Bree told my mother she shouldn’t feel bad. He didn’t think she’d waited too long. As he said this, he filled two slim syringes and set them both on a metal tray. He was unshaven, wearing jeans and a blue hooded sweatshirt. If he minded coming to his office on Christmas morning, he didn’t let on.

“It sounds as if things turned for the worse only recently.” He looked up at my mother. “I think you’ve been good to him, Natalie. I would say you’ve done a pretty good job.”

My mother nodded once. She was dry-eyed, quiet. She had one hand gently rubbing Bowzer’s chest, the other unmoving between his ears. When Dr. Bree picked up the first syringe, she held her breath. Bowzer looked up then, his old eyes weakly peering up at the three of us.

“This one is just a sedative,” he said. “Once it goes in, no more pain.”

“Good dog,” my mother whispered. “Good boy.”

The only sound was his labored breathing. I leaned forward to rub his warm neck, my fingers grazing my mother’s. Elise put an arm around her waist.

“Did you hear that?” she asked, ducking a little. “Did you hear that? Mom? I want to make sure. He said you did a good job.”

We could leave the body there, the vet said. It would be cremated, the ashes scattered over his neighbor’s farm, unless we wanted to make special arrangements. My mother shook her head. Scattered ashes would be fine. She asked if she needed to pay just now. She’d prefer it if he could send her a bill.

When we got to the van, she turned around. “Incineration. It’s not a nice word.”

I shook my head. “He didn’t say incineration, Mom. He said cremation. It’s different.” I didn’t know exactly how it was different, but cremation sounded much better.

She nodded, but she did not seem consoled. Her mouth was hidden by the red scarf, but her eyes looked worried. She’d done the right thing, of course. She had no money for special arrangements, and asking Elise to pay for it would have clued her in to our mother’s circumstances. But now she was maybe thinking about fire, about images that might bother her later.

“Scattered ashes are nice,” I said. The wind was blowing cold from the west. I put on my hat and stepped closer to the van. “Scattered over a farm, right? That’s good.” I shook my head, searching for words. I didn’t want to say
fertilizer.
That was sort of the idea moving through my head, but I was looking for a softer word: I thought
change;
I thought
space
. “Like the dinosaurs,” I said, my voice uncertain. “They turned into something else…”

Elise shook her head as if she felt sorry for me for trying to think. But my mother moved toward me quickly. She pulled her scarf down below her chin.

“I can’t believe you remember.” She leaned back, squinting. “You remember I taught you that when you were little? Do you remember that? We were in the car? Waiting for the train?”

Her face was full of happy expectation, so I nodded, though I had no idea what she was talking about. On that hard, cold day, I would have said anything to make her feel better. If she wanted to think she was the one who taught me about dinosaurs turning into coal and oil, fine. Maybe she was. I only knew it was true, and that it was for the best that they had all died when they did, so there would be room for everything good still to come.

“Don’t take it personally,” Elise said. Miles, still wailing in her lap, tried to grasp a blinking light hanging low on the tree. We were in our pajamas, sitting on the plush carpet of Elise and Charlie’s enormous living room, which, Elise liked to point out, cost a mere fraction of what an enormous living room would have cost them if they had stayed in San Diego. She mostly pointed this out when my mother was around, though my mother had told her, several times, that she didn’t have to justify anything.

“It’s a great hat.” Elise raised her voice so I could hear her over the crying. She held the hat up and smiled a little. The fuzzy ball on top was lopsided. “I like that you made it yourself. You gave him your time. That’s sweet.”

“You knit?” My father stood in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing the green turtleneck sweater that Susan O’Dell had given him for Christmas. He did not seem pleased or comfortable. My mother knew—we all knew—that my father hated turtlenecks. Susan O’Dell still did not. But Elise had invited Susan for brunch, and so my father was in the turtleneck, waiting. He looked at me over his coffee mug and frowned. “When did you start knitting?”

I stretched out my legs, leaning back on my elbows. “Since I realized I had no money for presents.”

“Get used to it, Ms. Liberal Arts.” He sipped his coffee and chuckled at his own joke. Elise looked at me and shook her head.
Ignore ignore ignore.
That was not impossible. I really didn’t care what my father thought of me knitting. I’d gotten myself a little stand that propped up any size book on a table, so I could read hands-free. In the last three months, I’d knit a hat for every member of my family—all while reading
Moby Dick
,
The Turn of the Screw,
and
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
When I got tired of reading, I would look down, surprised by how much my hands had accomplished.

I didn’t always read while I knit. In October, I put up signs in the elevators, and I soon heard from seven freshmen who either wanted to learn to knit or who knew a lot more about knitting than I did. We met every Tuesday at eight in the lobby of my floor. I got programming credit. And it was nice, for one hour a week, just to sit around and talk and, at the same time, get something done.

“It’s a little…domestic, don’t you think?” My father walked into the room and stood next to the tree, looking down.

“No flies on you,” Elise said. “Knitting can only mean one thing.” She looked down at Miles and then at me. “Veronica got knocked up, too.”

She was making fun of him. I was not pregnant. I did not plan to get pregnant anytime soon. In January, I would take the GRE and apply to four graduate schools.

My father nodded and sipped his coffee. “That’s very funny, Elise. If you ever decide to go back to work, you could be a comedienne.”

Looking at her face, you wouldn’t think she had heard him. She leaned forward and tapped my knee. “Don’t knit yourself any socks, sweetie. If you’re going to be pregnant, you’ll want to be barefoot, too.”

He took another sip and gave her a weary look. “That’s right,” he said. “Laugh. Make fun of the guy who paid for college.”

She brought Miles back down to her lap and bounced him a little, cooing soothing words. She was different than she’d been before the baby. She no longer had to have the last word with our father. They would fight the way they always had, and then, right in the middle of it, she would stop as if suddenly bored; and whenever she did this, there was often something in her expression, and the way she tilted her head, that made me think of our mother. Elise was picking up gestures and habits, maybe; she and my mother talked more often these days. Elise called her several times a week, asking what to do for a diaper rash, or a fever, or on a long, cold day with no distractions.

My father leaned forward, looking at Miles. “You need anything?” he asked. “Do you want me to get him a bottle?”

“He just had one. He’s just fussy this morning. He was up three times last night.” She looked at me. “Did you hear him?”

I shook my head. The guest room was on the first floor, and Miles’s room was on the second.

“Huh,” she said, shifting him to her other arm. “Neither you nor my husband. What heavy sleepers you both are.”

Miles quieted, looking up at her face, one small hand pressed over his mouth as if trying to hide his awe. He had my mother’s eyes, and he already smiled with just one side of his mouth, the exact way Charlie did. For a few minutes, we all stared at him, entranced, as if he were a fire in a fireplace.

“Susan should be here soon.” My father walked around the tree and settled himself onto the couch, tugging at the turtleneck. He looked over his shoulder and pulled back the curtain from the window. He seemed nervous. He hadn’t given Susan her present yet, but he’d shown it to us: a diamond engagement ring, beautifully cut. He had proposed to her before Thanksgiving; they planned to get married on a beach somewhere the first week they could both get off work.

My father had told me and Elise about their plans the day after Thanksgiving, when Susan wasn’t around. He’d sat both of us down in his dining room, his face stern, his hands pressed flat against the glass table as if he were holding it down. He’d been defensive, ready for a fight. Neither of us gave him one. We both liked Susan. When he had chest pains the last week of October, it was Susan who made him go to an emergency room, where it was decided that he was not yet having the heart attack that he would soon have if he did not make some changes. It was Susan who made him take his medication, and it was Susan who actually got him to go to a yoga class with her twice a week after work. Also, she laughed at his jokes. She listened attentively to the stories—the new ones as well as the old ones we had already heard too many times. Elise and I saw Susan as fresh troops, a whole new person who was not at all tired of him, who was ready to absorb his energy.

“I know it’s only been a year,” he said. “Or not quite a year,” he added, seeing that Elise was about to correct him. “But I’m not a kid. And I want to be happy. I deserve to be happy, don’t I?”

We were only quiet for a moment. “As much as anyone,” Elise said, with a lilt in her voice that made her sound happy as she went to hug him. I hugged him as well, my congratulations sincere. I did want him to be happy, whether he deserved it or not. I ignored the nagging sadness that Elise did not seem to feel, and focused on the pulse of his heartbeat against the side of my face.

As soon as he left the room, whistling down the hallway, Elise’s smile faded. She looked at her reflection in the glass table and tucked her hair behind her ears.

“There’s an expression,” she said, and I was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Women mourn. Men replace.” She laughed a little, meeting my gaze only for a moment. “You know? He hasn’t even gotten a new dog yet.”