I Wish You Happy: A Novel

by Kerry Anne King

  “Her name is Elizabeth,” Dad protests, reflexively. “We agreed.”

  “I never agreed to anything.” Mom’s voice is adamant, a tone that signals the onset of an argument that is as old as I am and will never be resolved. Dad wanted to name me after Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman obstetrician in the United States. Mom wanted to name me after Leila Denmark, the first woman pediatrician. The only reason Elizabeth precedes Leila on my birth certificate is because Dad snagged the form from the nursing staff and filled it out while Mom was busy breast-feeding their brand-new baby.

  “She’s just not a Leila,” Dad says. “She doesn’t even look like a Leila. What do you think, Kat?”

  Before Kat can voice an opinion, I dive in. “Why don’t we just go with Rumpelstiltskin and be done? Kat needs to rest. I still have to feed the kittens before I go to bed. And please, I’m begging you, don’t reschedule your flight. I really won’t be able to get any shifts off work.”

  My assigned role in our family dramas is to passively agree and try to make everybody happy, and this response befuddles them. Dad adjusts his glasses. Mom looks bewildered. I turn my back on them and start making formula for the kittens. My chest feels tight and heavy. There’s a bitter taste in the back of my throat that I can’t swallow down.

  Name your emotions, Rae. Put labels on them.

  I can’t. There are too many, all mixed up with what belongs to my parents, to Kat. It must be sleep deprivation, but the boundaries of my self, the place where Rae begins and ends, are no longer well defined. It’s like somebody has spilled water over a picture of the four of us, and all of the colors are bleeding into each other.

  The only clarity I can find is with the kittens. They are hungry, have been hungry for a few minutes now, and are done with waiting. The mewling is increasing in intensity and making it difficult to concentrate on conversation. Since my parents are making no move toward getting up and vacating the premises, I hand each of them a kitten and a bottle of formula.

  They stare at me like I’ve handed them something incomprehensible, like a cucumber and a chainsaw.

  “They’re just like babies. Nipple in the mouth. Burp them when they’re done.”

  Dad, always the more maternal of my parents even though it’s Mom who is the pediatrician, starts in feeding his kitten, or rather the kitten starts feeding herself, locating the nipple by sense of smell and latching on.

  Mom sneezes. Her kitten startles and digs its claws in.

  “Now look,” she says. “It’s ruined my blouse. Please. Richard, let’s go. Clearly, Leila is tired and cranky.” She detaches the kitten and holds it away from her body, pruning up her mouth in an expression echoing Bernie’s when she first saw Oscar.

  I rescue the crying baby and cuddle it under my chin, soothing it with endearments and milk.

  “Interesting,” Dad says, still feeding his kitten. “Rather rewarding, really. You should try it, Angela.”

  “No, thank you.” She brushes her blouse and skirt as if they’re plastered with cat fur, even though these kittens haven’t begun shedding yet. “I’ve done my time with feeding human babies. I see no need to nurture abandoned kittens. The Darwin effect is the Darwin effect for a reason, Leila. There are more than enough cats on the planet.”

  She crosses the room and kisses me on the cheek, her lips barely making contact. I know her well enough to know she’s angry but choosing not to show it.

  “It was so lovely to have met you both,” Kat says.

  Dad’s face warms into a smile. “Likewise. I think you’ll be a wonderful addition to Elizabeth’s life. Maybe even inspire her to take her fabulous brain to medical school.”

  “I’m not going to medical school. I’ve told you both how many times?”

  Mom covers a yawn. “Look at the time. Come, Richard. Put that animal down. The girls need their rest.”

  In that moment she looks smaller than I remember. Fragile. Her lipstick is feathering into the tiny lines around her lips. When my father gets up from the couch, a small, involuntary sound escapes him. One hand still cradles the kitten, but the other braces his lower back. His spine uncurls one vertebra at a time.

  My parents have been old since I can remember, but not this old. I have a sudden mental picture of both of them in shoeboxes, wrapped in cotton—tiny dead parents the size of a kitten or a rat. Sweat dampens my palms at the same time as goose bumps pop up on the skin of my arms.

  Dad sets his kitten down on the couch, very gently, and pulls me to him in a hug that is warm and genuine. “I’m fond of kittens,” he whispers in my ear. “Don’t tell your mother.”

  A hint of liniment drifts into my nostrils, mixed in with soap and deodorant.

  I hug him back, all of my outrage fading into loss as my hands encounter ribs beneath his suit coat and I recognize the decreasing muscle mass of an aging man. “Maybe you can come help us feed them in the morning,” I whisper against his chest.

  “I think we’ll hit the road early and let you sleep in the morning. You’re going to be ill if you don’t get some sleep.”

  “I’m sorry breakfast won’t work out.” All at once I am sorry. I feel like maybe I would have liked having YOLO parents when I was a child.

  Dad smiles and lets his hand rest on my hair. “We’ve already had our visit, yes? We hadn’t realized how many plates you are spinning right now. We’ll plan on seeing you for Christmas.” He turns to Kat. “I do hope the driver who ran over you gets locked up for a long time.”

  “Drunk drivers should get the death penalty, I’ve always thought,” Mom says.

  “Was there indication of intoxication? Kat never said . . .”

  The two of them move toward the door, gravitating toward each other and their usual form of communication as they leave me behind. By the time they reach the door their arms are around each other, even as their voices continue an argument that is based entirely on a faulty premise.

  “Good night, girls,” Mom says, as if we’re sixteen and this is a slumber party. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  I bite my tongue on the retort that it’s already too late and they’re the ones who made it that way, pasting a smile on my face and waving good-bye.

  When I close the door behind them, I turn and lean against it. Kat sits in her chair, feeding the kitten, but it’s me who has her full attention. All of the smiles and dimples have fled and her eyes smolder.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, sliding down to sit on the floor, right where I am, letting my eyelids close over my gritty eyes. “They can’t help themselves.”

  “Are you always rude like that, to your parents?”

  My eyelids fly open again. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “How can you talk to them like that? They are your parents.” Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes lasered in on me like weapons of mass destruction.

  My brain refuses to process. Kat is pissed. Not at my obtrusive, nosy, overbearing parents, but at me.

  “I don’t . . .”

  “The whole time they were waiting for you to come home, they talked about you. How smart you are. How much they love you. How proud they are of you. How bewildered they are that you have chosen to live across the country where they can never see you. And then you come in and are rude and disrespectful—”

  “Me?” I lever my protesting body upright. “I was rude? Look, I’m too tired for this. I’m going to get your pills and finish feeding the kittens, and then I’m going to sleep for a couple of hours before I have to wake up again.”

  I fumble for the key to my lockbox and count out an oxycodone and a sedative. I run a glass of water from the sink. But Kat won’t let it go.

  “Is this what you do when somebody calls you on your shit? Evade?”

  All of my suppressed anger flares, and I turn on her, my voice rising. “You don’t know thing one about me or my parents.”

  “They want you to succeed. They would pay for you to go back to school.”

  “I don’t want th
em to pay. I don’t want to go to school.”

  “Well, aren’t you a special snowflake princess.”

  “What the hell, Kat?”

  “You want to know how many student loans I have? No. You don’t. I put myself through college and graduate school. I have a freaking law degree. You know what my mother wants from me? Babies. Lots and lots of babies.”

  If one of the kittens morphed into a rabid dog and bit me, I couldn’t feel more ambushed.

  I feel myself about to explode. The big bang, emotional version, life of Rae. I can’t let this happen. I can’t say any of the things I suddenly want to say. Clenching my fists so tight I can feel my fingernails digging into my palms, I try to stop the apocalypse.

  “Take your pills, Katya. Go to bed.”

  Kat shoves my outstretched hand away. “Who made you my mother?”

  The glass slips from my fingers and shatters on the floor, water spilling everywhere.

  I take a huge breath and try to count to ten, but I manage to breathe in spit and have to stop for a coughing fit that renders me incapable of defending myself while she rampages on.

  “You’re enjoying this whole thing. You get off on it. Oh, look at Rae, the saintly martyr, taking in the emotional wreck—”

  “Right. It’s been a barrel of monkeys and a ton of laughs.”

  Every one of my instincts is to escape, but I have nowhere to go. If I flee into the bedroom and slam the door, I’ll be trapped in my own house. If I sit outside, the neighbors will be all full of questions. I can’t go to a hotel, because I’ve made myself responsible for this woman. I’d thought we had some deep and mystical bond, but I was wrong.

  “You want to know something? I chose you and your car. You had that same insufferable look on your face as you’re wearing now—poor, misunderstood Rae. You have freaking everything and don’t even know it.”

  “Oh, pardon me—I hadn’t realized that all the sadness in the world belongs to you. You want to talk selfish? You couldn’t even kill yourself without dragging somebody else in with you.”

  My words hit her like a mortar. I see the shock of contact in the way her face stills as her body tenses. She sets the kitten down, gently, on the arm of the chair. Hoists herself up with the walker. Pain pinches her lips tight together, and her breath hisses between her teeth.

  “Kat . . .”

  “You think you have some sort of market cornered on grief. You haven’t got a clue.”

  My feet have grown roots. I don’t follow her as she works her way into the bedroom, don’t try to stop her. Only after the door closes behind her do I take a shuddering breath, and then another, sick with the realization of what I should have seen all along. I feel like I’m emerging from under a spell.

  There is a strange woman in my house. Sharing my space, breathing my air, sleeping in my bed. No wonder Cole was against the idea of me bringing her home. I stand in the middle of what was once my exclusive living space, dazed and stupefied, grounding myself in small details.

  Two water glasses and a teacup on the coffee table. Five kittens asleep in a pile. My blanket perfectly folded by my mother, my pillow on the floor. A shattered glass in a puddle of water.

  Unfamiliar currents of energy swirl around me on the outside, unnamed emotions gurgle like swamp gas within. My brain wants to sort what happened here tonight, but I’m too exhausted and numb. I get a trash bag and a towel and start picking up the biggest shards of glass. The fragments are sharp-edged and dangerous, not the harmless pebbles of a safety glass. One of them slips in my hand and slices the pad of my finger. Blood wells up in a vivid crimson line.

  Cursing myself for a clumsy idiot, I wash the cut at the bathroom sink, pour peroxide over it, and wrap it in a Band-Aid. It hurts, but I figure that serves me right for being careless. I sweep all the rest of the mess up with a broom and dustpan, water and all, and dump it into the kitchen trash.

  When I finally collapse on the couch, my blanket smells like Kat, my pillow like Dad’s liniment. As my eyes drift closed and my brain gives up the battle, my last conscious thought is that enough is enough. I’m taking Kat to the crisis house tomorrow.

  A cool hand on my forehead. A whiff of soap and shampoo. Two soft-spoken words.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The world blurs through sleep-graveled eyes. Kat stands beside my couch, leaning on her walker. Her hair is damp and loose on her shoulders.

  Memories shift and slide, sorting themselves into waking and dreaming. My throat feels as dry as a two-day-old chicken bone.

  I push myself up to sitting, scrub at my eyes, try to line up my thoughts. Dim morning light straggles in around the window shade. There should have been another kitten feeding last night, but I don’t remember doing it. Panic that they’ve all died of neglect rises on a wave of adrenaline, but they are sound asleep.

  “What time is it?”

  “Don’t worry, I fed them,” she says, following my gaze. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Kat sinks down onto the couch beside me, glances at me sideways, and then away. Her hands twist in her lap. “You’ll probably want me to go away.”

  “I don’t . . . I can’t . . . I don’t understand.” My brain feels groggy and stupid. The only comprehensible thoughts it latches onto are coffee and bathroom. But I can’t get myself coordinated enough to move in any one direction.

  “Jealousy,” she says. “Pure and simple. I wanted what you have, and I was ugly. I can’t say how much I’m sorry.”

  “You were right.” My words sound thick and heavy. I scrub my hands over my scalp. “Snowflake princess. That’s me.”

  “I said I was sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Me, either. Give me a minute.”

  I shove myself up off the couch. Load the coffeemaker. Go to the bathroom. Splash cold water over my face. My eyes in the mirror are bloodshot, and there are dark circles under them. I’m not sure I recognize myself.

  Kat is still sitting on the couch when I come out, and the coffeepot is gurgling. I pour us each a cup. She accepts hers without making eye contact, blowing on it while I go ahead and start drinking. If it burns my tongue, maybe that will help me wake up from whatever dream I’ve slipped into.

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic,” I say, after the caffeine starts connecting my synapses. “A lot of what you said was true. Probably. I’m still processing.”

  “Shades of truth,” she murmurs. “I put a dark, dark spin on it. You’re a good person. And you were right, too. I don’t know anything about your childhood or why you are this way with your parents.”

  “Maybe we got swapped at birth. You and my parents seemed to hit it off better in one evening than the three of us have in thirty years.”

  And there it is, my own little ugly, jagged spear of jealousy.

  “Swapped?” Kat’s lips curve into a hint of a smile. “You wanted to have lots and lots of babies?”

  “More than I want to be a doctor.”

  She sets down the coffee mug and digs something out of her pocket. “I wanted to show you. This is my mother. Education for girls wasn’t high on her priority list.” The photograph is old and bent. There’s a white line down the center as if it’s been folded. A strongly built woman with a hard face, a kerchief tied around her hair, stands at the center of a brood of five solemn children. Her hands rest on a heavily pregnant belly.

  I survey the faces of the children—one girl, and four boys. The girl has a serious face, her long hair covered by a scarf. She doesn’t look at all like Kat.

  “Is that you?”

  She taps the pregnant belly. “I’m the baby.”

  “Where’s your father?”

  “He died a month after she emigrated. Two months before I was born.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugs. “I never knew him. My oldest brother was more father than anything.”

  I try to place Kat in this family. Her precise English, her degrees, the tiny tattoo on her left
ankle. And then I try to imagine growing up with a sister. Sharing a room. Girl talk at night, clothes, boys.

  All of it is alien and foreign and strange.

  “Do they know where you are? That you’re okay?”

  “I’m not up to them right now.”

  “Because of the baby expectations?”

  “Because they disapprove of me. My husband. My education. My clothing. And yes, my inability to produce a living baby. When they hear about the . . . about what I tried to do, that will be the final straw for them. Russian women are strong. They have babies. Life is like that. God will condemn me to hell.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  She shrugs, takes a sip of coffee. “What I believe, what I don’t believe. All a muddle, and does it really matter?”

  “Of course it matters. It has to matter.”

  “And if it doesn’t? That’s what I keep coming back to. I’m no use to anybody, not like this. I want to believe in God, but I can’t. When I try to pray, there’s just a . . . an emptiness where God should be. If I believed there was a purpose or a plan, it would be different. But I don’t. I can’t. Life sucks and then you die.”

  I don’t know what to say to this. Sitting here beside her, the world feels dark and gray and cold. What if she’s right? What if there is no purpose, no point, no hope? Death, the sooner the better, seems like an obvious conclusion.

  “There are always kittens,” I whisper, more to myself than to her.

  “You can’t heal the world with kittens, Rae,” she says. And for the first time in my life, I am afraid that I can’t heal the world at all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Neither one of us is anywhere close to ready for the day when a knock comes at the door.

  Kat is settled in the armchair with the TV tray in front of her, drinking tea and pretending to eat the oatmeal and fruit I made for her. I’m at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal and milk. Both of us stare at the door like the grim reaper is on the other side.