Darling, All at Once (The Fairfields Book 1)

by Piper Lennox

  “...and he just doesn’t get it.” Viola’s eye-roll-and-sigh combo brings me back to the present. “Picky isn’t a bad thing, when you’re choosing someone to carry your child. He probably would have picked some girl right off the street, if I left it up to him.”

  Abigail fans her face with the discarded bed instructions. “Hmm,” she says, but I bristle: that one little utterance carries about as much sympathy as a slap.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” This might as well be the phrase “Let me explain” whenever it comes out of Abigail’s mouth.

  “It’s just that Juliet and I have already talked about that whole thing.” She looks at me, expecting me to nod. Fat chance; I’m memorizing every piece of fur on a teddy bear. “We came to the conclusion you don’t like any surrogates because you don’t really want somebody else carrying your baby. You only wanted Juliet because it was.... Shit, Jules, what’s the word? I forgot it again.”

  I cringe and close my eyes so I don’t have to meet Viola’s. “Vicarious?” I mumble.

  “Vicarious.” The snap of Abby’s fingers cracks the air.

  I hear Viola popping bubble wrap. “That true?”

  “Well...I mean, Abby’s the one who said it, not me, but....”

  “She also thinks you meant what you said in the clinic that day. About giving you and Marco her kid.”

  I sit up and throw a stuffed cow at Abby’s face; she deflects it, laughing. “Can you shut up? That’s not what happened.” This is the trouble with having more than one sister: if two have any kind of issue, it’s only a matter of time before all three of us get involved. I’m usually dragged into battle. Abby prefers to plant herself there.

  “I didn’t say that,” Viola tells her.

  “Okay, but you definitely implied it.”

  I bury my face in a floppy stuffed giraffe. “Can we please drop this?”

  “Look.” Viola holds up her hand like she’s casting a forcefield around Abby, directing her voice at me. “That was an off-the-cuff reaction in a very emotional time.” Her face softens as we make eye contact. “But…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

  My eyes sting. All I can do is nod, but she gets the message. Apology accepted.

  “Thank God,” Abby pipes up. “Not gonna lie, I was totally dreading my appearance on Maury: My Sister Stole My Other Sister’s Baby.”

  We all laugh. It never fails to amaze me how easily the three of us can go from arguments to laughter.

  Like Cohen always tried to do, I think, the weight returning to my shoulders.

  “I can’t believe you guys thought I’d ever ask something like that. That day at the clinic...I just went a little crazy, that’s all.”

  “Can you blame her? You’ve asked her for these huge, ridiculous favors practically your whole life.” Abby’s still laughing, but the tension in the room comes back with a vengeance. She barely glances my way when I hiss her name, instead counting off items on her fingers. “The car, the business class you dropped out of, that plane ticket to see that guy you met online—”

  “Abby.”

  “—the millions of clothes you’ve borrowed and never given back, the marketing class? Oh.” Her palms slap against the rocker’s armrests. “And we can’t forget the wedding.”

  I suck in a breath. Viola digs into the bubble wrap with her thumbnails. “The wedding?”

  “Yeah—the wedding where you treated her like a slave. Ring a bell?”

  It’s a good thing Abby’s pregnant too, or I’d slap her.

  No, actually. I wouldn’t. I can’t even yell at her to stop, proven by the fact I just sit here and stare at the floor until Abby’s done listing every damn thing I did for that wedding—every task I’d rant and rave to her about, only to turn around and do them with a smile, anyway.

  And that’s my problem: I can’t stand up for myself when it really matters. I’ve spent over a decade trying to make my sisters happy. When it comes to myself, I have no idea how to do it. How to just let things happen or work themselves out.

  “I’m sorry,” Viola says again, a whisper. She sounds like she’s about to weep. It annoys Abby, but practically breaks my heart.

  “It’s okay, Vi.” I slide down from the window seat and hug her. “I wanted to do most of those things. And the things I didn’t...I should have just been honest and said no. It’s my fault, too.”

  Her tears are contagious. I have to blink a minute as we pull apart, before I can go on. “I guess I just wanted to make things easier for you.”

  “What, the wedding?”

  “Everything. For both of you.” I spread my hands. “I thought, if I did all the things Mom should have done, you guys wouldn’t miss her as much. I know it sounds stupid, but I’ve always done it.”

  “That’s not stupid,” Vi assures me. “But you know what? Mom didn’t even do that stuff to begin with. When you and Dad talk about how she was, before we were born? We have, like, no concept of that at all. Her having ‘good weeks’ and ‘bad weeks.’ By the time we came along, it was…pretty much all bad.”

  Abby picks up the decals for the toddler bed: pink princess castles and fluffy kittens wearing crowns. “Things seemed more normal, after she died. We missed her, but it wasn’t like she laid out our clothes every morning, or cooked us dinner.... The normal mom stuff didn’t really happen until you did it.”

  “It wasn’t fair to you, though,” Viola adds.

  “I really did want to do those things. Most of them, at least. It was just, when the favors got bigger and harder to do...I wasn’t sure how to tell you no, anymore.”

  “We’ve both taken advantage of you before,” Viola says. Abby starts to contest this, but Vi’s glare shuts her up. “We’re sorry.”

  Abby rocks a moment, then nods. “She’s right. I’m sorry, Jules.”

  “Thank you.” I dab my nose with the back of my hand. “And I’m sorry I never said anything before now.”

  The room goes silent, save for Viola and me sniffling. Abby might be near tears, too, but she’s determined to hide it.

  “So.” Viola blinks and runs her hand over the screws scattered on the carpet. “We were talking about Cohen.”

  “Oh, right,” I say, and we all laugh again. I can live to be a hundred, and I’ll never understand this ability of ours to make each other laugh, cry, and laugh again, with nothing but a few seconds between one and the other.

  24

  The Wallman anniversary starts in two hours, and I can’t find Levi.

  “This is fantastic. My first day back at work, first job totally on my own, and he decides to go MIA.”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Andres hefts the runner into the van. “You know he’d just micromanage the shit out of everything you do.”

  “That’s my point.” I mark the runner off my list. “After all the hell he gave me over this, rescheduling his vacation—he’s not even going to show up and double-check the vans? That’s not like him.”

  Andres nods and grabs the mimosa fountain, encased in enough bubble wrap to safely jettison it off a cliff. “That it for this one?”

  I scan the list again. “Can you fit the rope partitions in?”

  “It’ll be tight.”

  “My van’s got the wrap sign. They’re using it for photos, so I don’t want to pack anything else and risk it getting ruined.”

  Andres leans on the bumper and sticks a cigarette in his mouth. “Nervous, huh?”

  “Not at all,” I sigh. I’m beginning to understand why Levi gets so many headaches. Even my strange love for the chaos of this business didn’t prepare me. Being in charge amps things up to an entirely new level.

  It doesn’t help that I’ve barely slept this week. I’m back to sketching Juliet’s Facebook and masturbating like a loser. That night in the car is the only memory I relive almost as often as the night of our fight.

  “If anything goes wrong,” Andres says, slapping my shoulder before rounding t
he building, the click of his lighter following, “blame the temps.”

  “Blame the what, now?” Chris and Dylan pop their heads out of my van. For the first time in days, I manage to laugh.

  When the vans are packed and idling in front of the warehouse, I lock up and check my phone. No calls or texts from Levi. None from Juliet, either. The stupid part is, I really expected to see something from her.

  That was our whole problem, from the start: I’m an optimist, she’s a pessimist, and yet both of us think we’re realists.

  Maybe she was right, about it being better that things end now. If we were doomed to break up, the least painful option is before the baby’s born, not after.

  Too bad “least painful” still means “really fucking painful.”

  “You okay?” Chris asks, as we pull up to the service entrance of the Acre. “You’ve been out of it all day.”

  I rub my face, cursing under my breath when I notice I forgot to shave. In the bogged-down daze of waking up alone, I probably forgot deodorant, too. “Yeah,” I tell him. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Uncle Tim is waiting for us in the ballroom. “Your first event!” he grins, and slaps my back hard enough to knock the folder from my hands.

  “Not my first event,” I correct politely. “Just the first where I’m in charge.” I rearrange the papers into the folder. “Let’s hope I can avoid total disaster.”

  “Oh, come on. Where’s that Fairfield confidence?”

  Must have left it at home.

  While I help Andres with the signage, Chris and Dylan set up the fountains. The caterer’s running late, which messes us up: we agreed to operate the fountains with Chris and Dylan as servers, but the caterer the Wallmans chose is supposed to provide ingredients. Imported chocolate from Europe, Mrs. Wallman’s favorite, and “real” champagne. Whatever the hell that means.

  Tim waves my concern away. “It’s only four—they’ll get here on time.” His phone buzzes from his belt. “That’s probably Jeannie; I should go get ready. You know Lupé, right? He’ll be here soon. Maybe he can help.”

  Oh, God: Lupé. As the Acre’s Event Coordinator, he’s my boss for the evening. The man boasts more years in the business than I’ve been alive, and his attention to detail is practically legendary. He’s also a legendary pain in my ass, more critical than ten Levis put together.

  That…and I’m not entirely sure he’s forgiven us for wrecking Caitlin-Anne’s Sweet Sixteen party.

  But he does get results, I’ll give him that. There are worse things than having him triple-check my work tonight. If I’m going to mess up, at least I know Lupé will point it out long before a guest can notice.

  An hour later, I’m considerably calmer. We’ve set up all our rentals without incident, from the easels for every letter-board the Acre has, to the balloons spelling out “To Another 50” over the dessert table. The caterer arrived in a flurry of apologies, and now our fountains are running smoothly. Lupé even gave me one silent nod, after his inspection. The place looks great.

  The star of the ballroom, though, is the photo backdrop.

  The sign itself is ours: three huge pieces of wood, attached with hinges to form a triptych, and braced at the back so it stands upright. Levi painted the whole thing in chalkboard paint. Usually, we hire someone to write stuff on it in fancy script: kids’ birthdays, weddings—even one prom, at a tiny school in the sticks.

  The Wallmans, of course, didn’t want chalkboard; shabby-chic doesn’t quite mesh with the Acre’s extravagance. So tonight, it’s wrapped in three customized vinyl signs: deep burgundy background, shining gold cursive. It lists every milestone of the Wallmans’ lives together.

  First meeting: Brown University, 1960.

  First kiss: Screening of The Alamo, 1960.

  Engaged: Wallman Family Farm, 1965.

  Married: The Acre Hotel, 1967.

  I read them all. The day they bought a house, the year they expanded their businesses. The year they had their first child.

  If Juliet and I had a sign, it’d be the size of a grocery list. April: they meet. May: she’s pregnant.

  July: it’s over.

  “There’s always something to lose, even if you can’t see it until it’s too late.”

  I hate being mad at her. I hate missing her.

  I hate that every time I start to call or text her, like now, I can’t think of what to say. The words exist—I know they do, because they’re all I hear when I wake up in the middle of the night and remember she’s not beside me. But in the daylight, they fade.

  “I like you,” I’d told her, the night we started our arrangement, “but I’m not going to fall for someone who isn’t interested.”

  I’m a big, fucking liar.

  25

  Dad is always in one of three places.

  I check the basement first, the most probable spot. The smell of damp brick and all that latent gunpowder rushes into my sinuses. The light over his work table is on, but the chair’s empty.

  Next, I check the shed out back. Nothing but fruit, his stills, and empty glass bottles, waiting to be filled.

  An ache spreads behind my eyes as I turn to the house. I know where he is, and what it means.

  “Dad?” I keep my voice low outside his bedroom door. Papers shuffle. His throat clears.

  “That you, Julie? You can come in, I’m just....”

  The door creaks as I push it open. He’s placing the photo albums back into the storage container. One at a time, slowly, like they’re made of glass.

  I sit on their bed and pick up the one he forgot: my baby book.

  “Been, uh...been thinking about her more than usual, I guess.” Dad slips his reading glasses into their case and forces a smile. His brave face.

  “Yeah. Fourth of July was hard, this year. I don’t know why.”

  “Hormones.”

  I throw a pillow at him. “Then what’s your excuse?”

  Leaning hard on the bedpost, he stands, stumbling. “This old leg, I suppose. Damn thing keeps me up all night. I’m beat.”

  “Still haven’t gone to the doctor, have you?”

  “I’ll have you know,” he says pompously, “I went yesterday morning. Arthritis. Told me to get some weird drink, try hydrotherapy.” He sneers, but it’s not genuine. I just know he was on some arthritis forum all night, learning everything he could.

  “Maybe you should get a pool.”

  Dad shakes his head, but I see the idea clicking. Maintaining a pool is basically one big hobby. No way he can resist.

  “So.” He lets out a breath as he sits in the armchair by the window, covered with laundry. “What brings you by?”

  I look at the album in my lap, its pastry-pink cover. “It’s funny you were looking at all the old photos today,” I tell him, “because that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  On the first page is my baby bracelet, the plastic yellowed and cracking. BABY GIRL BROOKS.

  “About your mom, you mean.”

  I nod.

  “Sure.”

  “When she got bad,” I begin, but the phrase sounds too harsh. It doesn’t match what’s in front of me: her handwriting indented into the page, labeling so carefully these pieces of my life I can’t even remember.

  I start again. “After I was born, and she got depressed, why.... How did you stay?”

  Dad shifts in the chair, rubbing his knee. “Well, first of all, her depression didn’t start when you were born.”

  “No, I know,” I sigh. Dad will quibble over details until the cows come home—and then he’ll argue over what kind of cows they are. “It didn’t get, like, really bad until the girls were born, but—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he says, chuckling to himself, before his face gets serious. “Wait, did you really think it started when you came along? You didn’t know she already had it?”

  “I....” I look down at the book again, as though it’s proof. Mom’s illness was a fuse. I
was that very first spark.

  “Julie.” Dad tilts his head with this weird, sad stare. “You thought it was you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He looks like I’ve slapped him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I thought you knew—she’d always had it.”

  It should be a relief. I didn’t cause it. She had it all along. And there’s a chance now, a really great one, that I won’t end up like her, after all.

  But all I can do is pick apart his words and try to find the place he made an error, panic gripping my chest like I’m drowning. Because as far back as I can remember, I’ve anchored myself to this one undeniable fact: my existence doomed my mother’s.

  “It did get worse, after each of you girls were born,” he continues, “but it wasn’t new.” He sits back against the chair and taps his foot, the rhythm ricocheting across the floor to the bedpost, to the mattress, and to me. “I didn’t really know she had depression until you all came along. I didn’t think of it as having a name, really. It was just how she was, from the day I met her. Good days and bad, like anyone else. But I did always know hers were...different.”

  “But why’d you start dating her, then? Why’d you get married and start a family?” I think of my mother in the form I remember most: unshowered, tangled hair, that fraying bathrobe weighted in dirt. What could make a man like my father, who loved the little things in life and big explosions in the sky, sign on for that kind of marriage?

  “Because of the good days,” he answers simply, and smiles again.

  I turn another page in the baby book. There’s no way those minutes of normalcy, of happiness, were enough.

  “Julie,” he says, and waits until I look at him to go on. “You were young—you saw the worst of it. I knew her before all that. And I guess...that’s what got me through the rest. Remembering the good parts. Waiting for the next ones, hoping they’d eventually come back for good.”

  I think of that conversation in Stella’s room again, with my sisters: the mile-long list of reasons men drove us crazy. If anyone heard them out of context, they’d think we hated our partners. Why would we stay, if they were so infuriating—so immature?