Within Arm's Reach (31 page)

I hope, I wish, I think, that somehow these women—my grandmother, my mother, my sister, my cousin, my aunts—will be able to say to this boy what I have not. Will be able to fix what I have broken. Will make clear everything I have convoluted with my memory and my coldness. I hope, wish, think—with no logical reason for doing so, with no precedent to rely on—that they will help me make everything all right.

NOREEN BALLEN

Shortly after Lila and a young man with a crew cut walk into the room, I tap Mrs. McLaughlin on the shoulder to let her know I am going to step outside. It is still a few minutes before I expect my kids, but I am uncomfortable in this close room with the McLaughlin family. In their paleness and their freckles and their fair eyes I see my own family, but these people behave differently than mine ever did. The conversation is stilted, and there are long silences, and everyone looks either upset or worried. I do not belong here; I do not understand the sharp way they speak to one another, and they deserve their privacy.

To draw less attention to myself, I leave through the kitchen. I loop my purse over my shoulder and look over the plastic catering trays balanced on the kitchen counters. There are tight balls of cellophane scattered about. There is the smell of prepared food and the zap of the microwave in the air-conditioned air. When I swing open the back door, I am hit by the heat of the day. It is August in New Jersey, which means hot, sticky weather that makes walking even a few steps a chore. “This air is like molasses,” my mother used to say during the Augusts while I was growing up, when there were too many children and not enough space and no air conditioning.

I take off my cardigan as I walk around to the front of the house. I stop under the dogwood blossom tree and breathe in the pink perfumed scent. I don’t turn my attention to the street yet, as I have never known Betty Larchmont to be early. I hate to have my neighbor watch the children on a Saturday, as the few hours after camp each day are more than enough, but I felt I had to accompany Mrs. McLaughlin to this party. I was concerned by how excited she had been all week. Her excitement was high-pitched like a child’s. She worked feverishly to finish the blanket for the baby, and each afternoon called her daughters to make sure they were coming to the shower. I think she’s become aware that there are a limited number of family gatherings left to her.

I wanted to be on hand today to keep her from overtiring herself. She argued with me at first. She said she wasn’t interested in paying me for a Saturday and that she didn’t want to show up at Kelly’s house with a nurse. She said she didn’t need the help. But I have found that the best way to deal with her is to not argue back, but to just go ahead and do what I need to do. That was why I forced my way into the bathroom with her upon her return from the hospital, so I could help her wash herself. That is how I get her, at least once in a while, to stop faking sleep. I talk to her softly and ask her questions about her children and her husband and her past until her eyes open and she responds.

And today, that is how I got here, on the front lawn of Kelly and Louis’s large house, looking for my neighbor’s car and my children’s faces. Tonight is my daughter’s first sleepover, so I asked Betty to stop here on the way to Jessie’s friend’s house. A few months ago I would have told Jessie there was no way she could go to the sleepover, and particularly not if I wasn’t home to help her pack and drive her there myself. But I am trying to be more open now. I am trying to let go of some of my need for control. I’m doing this not for myself—it is too painful for that—but for my children. Shortly after Mrs. McLaughlin told me about her dream of my brothers and sisters and the massive oak tree in our backyard, Eddie Jr. came home from camp and asked me if he could invite a boy he’d met over to play. It wasn’t the request that struck me, but the look on Eddie’s little face while he asked. He seemed afraid of me, and of what my response might be. I remember staring back at him in disbelief. Had I caused this? Had I said no every time my children wanted to leave our house or bring someone into it?

The truth was, I had, ever since my husband died.

I hadn’t been aware that I was limiting Jessie’s and Eddie’s lives by keeping them close to me. I just knew that I needed them in my sight. I needed to know where they were at all times. I needed to call their names and see their faces turn toward me. I chose not to go to the hospital staff picnic this year for the same reason. I did not want to lose my children in a cluster of six- and nine-year-olds in a potato-sack race. I did not want to sit on a blanket and compare notes with other mothers. I wanted my children with me inside the walls of the house my husband had renovated over the course of countless weekends. I wanted Jessie and Eddie Jr. seated at the kitchen table where their father had drunk his black coffee every morning. I wanted them tucked into their twin beds in the small, neat bedrooms across the hall from each other. I wanted to be able to hear them breathe from where I lay down the hall on my half of the big bed. If either of my children had a bad dream in the middle of the night, I was at their side in an instant.

But the look on my son’s face was a shock. It made me realize that I had gone too far. So now I am trying to do things differently. I am trying to make changes, and, as Jessie says, loosen up. But it is hard, and as I stand in the center of the lawn, my eyes on the road, I have to remind myself not to cry when my daughter bounds out of the car full of excitement because she gets to sleep across town from her mother and little brother for one night. And sure enough, this little girl whom I know so well, who has her father’s quick, face-lighting grin, jumps out of the station wagon as soon as Betty pulls to the curb.

“Mommy, I almost forgot to pack my pajamas! Can you believe it?” she says, headed for me. Then she stops, distracted by the house in the background. “Wow, this place is huge.”

“Which pajamas did you pack?” I say.

Jessie purses her lips, thinking. I can see in her face the teenager she will too soon become. “The blue ones with the pink seam.”

“You don’t look like you’re working,” Eddie Jr. says from behind his sister. He is unhappy because he wants to go to a sleepover, too. Or, at the very least, he does not want to be left all alone with Mrs. Larchmont on a Saturday.

“Mrs. McLaughlin, the woman I take care of, is inside,” I say. “I just came out here for a few minutes to see you two. But I won’t be late, Mr. Bean. You and I will have dinner together, just you and me. It’ll be our date night.”

He smiles, a slower version of his sister’s.

“We have to go now, Mom,” Jessie says. “I don’t want to be late.”

“You’re not going to be late, I promise. I just want another minute or two of your time. Can you spare that, please?”

Jessie is bouncing on her toes now. “Mother, why? Are you trying to torture me?”

“Hey!” Eddie points behind me.

“Please don’t do that, it’s rude.” Eddie is forever pointing at something, no matter how many times I scold him. His arm seems to shoot up from his side without his noticing. His favorite things to point at are large machines like bulldozers, eighteen-wheelers, and fire trucks. I don’t let him roll the car windows down when I’m driving because I’m afraid his arm will shoot out and be hit by the passing eighteen-wheeler that has caught his excitement.

“But it’s the man that almost hurt my lizard. Remember, when I told you about that?”

I turn around now and Jessie does, too. I see Louis standing at the base of the front steps, looking confused to see all of us standing on his lawn.

I wave to Louis and say in a low voice, “Eddie, that’s someone from Mrs. McLaughlin’s family. You’ve never met him. Don’t point.”

“No, Mom, that is the guy,” Jessie says. “He was on our front lawn the day camp ended early because of the lice.” She automatically touches her long black hair, which she has insisted I check nightly since the outbreak at camp. Contracting lice and then having to cut off her hair is her worst fear. “You never believe us.”

But suddenly I do believe her. I watch Louis walk toward us. I hear Jessie say, “That is the guy.” Something I have known for a while is rising to the surface.

He has almost reached us now, an awkward smile on his face. His hands are in his pockets. “Hello there,” he says.

“Hello,” I say, in a polite voice a little harder than my own.

Louis flicks his gaze from the ground to my face. He looks to Eddie. “We had a little run-in with a lizard, didn’t we?”

Eddie giggles behind his hand.

Of course it was Louis. I realize now that I knew it all along. The facts come at me in a rush. He is the one who arranged for the lawn to be cut. For my car to be serviced. The gutters to be cleaned. He arranged for me to have the cushy job with his mother-in-law.

“I happened to be in the neighborhood that afternoon, and wanted to see if you needed any work done on your house.” Louis’s face brightens slightly. “I’d like to check inside and make sure your wiring is all right. Would you be comfortable with that?”

I hadn’t looked closely enough to see the truth because I hadn’t wanted to. I’d let myself be distracted. I grew attached to Mrs. McLaughlin, I believed in her stories and dreams. I even called information and gathered the phone numbers of a few of my brothers and sisters. The numbers are written on a piece of pink construction paper and taped to my refrigerator.

“That won’t be necessary,” I say. “Jessie, you don’t want to be late for your sleepover. Betty,” I call to the woman standing at the curb, “will you please take the children?”

“Don’t yell at him, Mom,” Jessie says, with her best imitation of teenaged weariness. “He was nice. He didn’t do anything.”

“I’m not going to yell at anyone,” I say. “Eddie, I will see you soon. Jessie, call me later tonight please.”

She looks horrified. “In front of all my friends? Please Mom, no, I can’t.”

“Then I will call you. Go on now.”

Eddie kisses me and gives me one of his neck-strangling hugs that I love so much. Jessie presses her lips to my cheek so quickly, we barely make contact. Betty loads the children into the car and drives away.

I am left alone with Louis Leary. All I can think when I look at him is that he was the one who was with my husband when he died. I feel surprisingly calm. “Did you fix the railing on the front steps too?” I ask. “Is that why it doesn’t wriggle anymore?”

“Um, yes,” he says. “I didn’t want you or the kids to fall. And I would like the chance to check the wiring inside the house. If you’ll just let me know when it’s convenient for me to stop by . . .”

“I don’t want you to stop by.”

“Oh.” Louis looks uncomfortable. He glances at my face. “You’re not going to quit, are you? Catharine needs you.”

An idea occurs to me. “She didn’t know, did she? Does Mrs. McLaughlin know why you hired me? And that you were snooping around my house?”

“No! I wasn’t . . . She has no idea. Nobody knew, except for me. It was all me. And I never meant to invade your privacy. It was just a little exterior work. I thought that it must be difficult raising two children on your own. And I owe—Eddie meant a lot to me.” Louis takes his hands out of his pockets. They are huge and callused from years outside in all weather on building sites. “I needed to help.”

I raise my voice slightly, to make sure this man hears me. I can’t believe he is making me say this. “You don’t
need
to do anything. You don’t have to help us. You’re not responsible for my husband’s death.”

Louis’s face freezes for a second, then he turns his head away.

My calm is beginning to break apart. I feel myself splitting into large pieces, like a volcano exploding from deep within. I wanted it to be Eddie. I wanted, magically, impossibly, for my husband to be the one caring for my family. I know Louis meant well. But he watched my husband—my heart—die and then dragged his ill mother-in-law and the rest of his family with him into what remained of my life. Then Mrs. McLaughlin made me believe that I should open myself up again. That I should relax my grip on my children and my husband. And I let myself be changed by these people. It is too late to stop that. I have been changed.

I watch, as if from the other side of this big lawn, as I split open, all the different pieces of my self afloat in boiling lava. I don’t know what the answers are. Jessie is probably in her friend’s bedroom by now doing things I don’t allow her to do in her own room, like jump on the bed and listen to music too loud. Eddie is probably knee deep in an ice cream sundae at Dairy Queen because Betty has no sense of nutrition and reveres junk food as if it were a religion. I grasp for something to say. I talk to hear my own voice, to make sure I am still here.

“You don’t think you’re in love with me, do you?”

“No,” Louis says, looking pained. “I love my wife.”

I hug my cardigan to my chest. “Then, thank you.” The words are hard to say. They are powerful words. “I won’t quit, but you don’t need to help me anymore. I don’t want you near my house or my children unless I’m there. Okay? Do we have a deal?”

I look from his face down to my hands. I need to see the shape of my fingers and my wedding ring. The ring is a simple circle of gold Eddie put on my left hand in a church ten years ago, which I have taken off only during the late months of each of my pregnancies when my fingers swelled so badly that the ring no longer fit. I flex my fingers now. These are hands that mother, and hands that nurse. My hands have always been strong and capable. They have never let me down. They look unfamiliar to me now, though. There are new lines around the knuckles, and a rash of freckles I never noticed before.