The Arrivals: A Novel

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “Washing machine is broken,” William said to Ginny. Stephen took a coffee cup from the cupboard and tipped the carafe from the coffeemaker hopefully, but nothing came out.

  “All gone,” said Ginny. “Give me a minute, I’ll make more.” To William she said, “Good Lord. That washing machine is brand-new! That’s not possible.”

  “I know. But it is possible, because it’s happening.”

  “Overuse, probably,” said Lillian cheerfully. William took the coffee carafe from Stephen, rinsed it, and began to measure grounds into the machine.

  Rachel said, “Don’t look at me. I haven’t done laundry in years.”

  “I’ll have a cup,” said Lillian, “as long as you’re making it.”

  Rachel said, “Me too. Or two cups.”

  Olivia went into the den and returned with the toy that had been singing. William saw now that it was a brightly colored dog with the names of the various colors written all over it.

  “Did you call anyone?” Ginny moved the Carter’s bag from the middle of the kitchen floor, where Olivia had dropped it, to the foyer.

  “Who,” William said deliberately, “would I call?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ginny. “The number on the sticker. There’s usually a sticker.”

  “Terrible timing,” said Lillian. “I’ve got buckets of clothes to do.”

  Olivia discarded the dog, who was still singing—he had moved onto “The Wheels on the Bus”—and stood in front of the refrigerator, rearranging all of the magnets she could reach.

  “Olivia,” said William sharply. “Stop fiddling with those.”

  She turned, sensing something unfamiliar in William’s tone.

  “Sorry,” he said. “But it’s noisy. I can’t think.”

  “It’s not noisy,” Olivia said. “It’s quiet.”

  In the car seat, Philip began to whimper. Lillian looked quickly at him but didn’t do anything. The whimper morphed into a cry. Ginny bent to unbuckle the straps and lifted him out. He regarded them, sucking on his fist.

  “That’s noisy,” said Olivia. “Not magnets.”

  “I didn’t check for a sticker,” said William to Ginny.

  “You didn’t?” said Ginny. “Shall I?” She was still holding Philip; she looked around for where to put him.

  “Here,” said Lillian, who had unpeeled a banana and broken a piece off for Olivia, leaving the peel on William’s clean counter. “Give him to me while you go look.”

  “I’ll look for the sticker,” said Stephen. He disappeared down the basement steps.

  Lillian kissed Philip on the nose. “You can’t be hungry,” she said. “Not already! I just fed you.”

  “Couple of hours ago,” said Ginny. “Wasn’t it?”

  “I guess. But he should be going longer stretches, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ginny.

  “Can I color?” asked Olivia.

  “In a minute,” said Ginny and Lillian together.

  “We’ve got to sort out this washing machine situation,” said William.

  “Pun intended? Or not?” asked Lillian, smiling at Philip.

  “Not,” said William sternly.

  “You,” Lillian said to the baby, “are getting cute. Finally.”

  Stephen returned with a paper towel on which he had written a series of numbers. “Here,” he said. “Serial number. One-eight-hundred number. Warranty number, whatever that is.” He held it in front of him like a banner. “Here,” he said again. “Who wants it?”

  “I’ll take it,” said William. He stalked out of the room and up the stairs to the bedroom. He looked for the bedroom phone, but it was not in its usual place on the bedside table. “Ginny!” he bellowed. No answer came from downstairs. “Ginny!”

  She came upstairs—not as quickly, he noted, as she might have, but still she came. She stood in the doorway. “What, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Where’s the phone?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t move it.”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know! But we’ve got three other extensions in the house. It isn’t the end of the world. What are you in such a mood about?”

  He lowered his voice. “I am not,” he said. “In a mood.” He sat on the armchair and bent to put on his shoes. He tied one, then looked at Ginny. “I’m just tired of—” He paused, and looked down at his shoes. He began to tie the other shoe, and he said, to the laces, “Tired of the mess.”

  “You! When were you ever bothered by a mess? In nearly forty years of marriage, I’ve never known you to comment on a mess.”

  “I’m bothered now,” he said. “Nothing is where it’s supposed to be. It’s—” He searched for the word. “It’s disconcerting. I’m disconcerted.”

  She sat on the arm of his chair and regarded him. Her voice softened, and her face softened too. He could almost see the creases above her forehead and around her mouth relax. “But you were all for helping them. You said it was nice to have the house full up with life!”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Exact words. Full up with life. You said that to me when I was thinking what you are now!”

  “Maybe I did,” he said. “But I didn’t really think it through, I guess. I didn’t really think that all that life would be so—”

  “Messy?” Ginny offered.

  “That’s right. So messy. So… intrusive.”

  As if to punctuate the point, from the floor below came the sound of shattering glass. Then they heard Lillian screech, “Olivia! Stay where you are. Don’t move an inch. I’ll get a broom.” William stood halfway up, and Ginny said, “Don’t,” and pushed him gently back down onto the chair. “They can handle it themselves, whatever it is.”

  He studied her. “When did you become so reasonable?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Somewhere along the line I decided I didn’t have a choice.” She met his gaze squarely and then lifted her chin in a small gesture of courage or defiance. “I mean, William. They are our children. They need us. We should help them. Why wouldn’t we help them, if we can?”

  William thought of the check he had written and mailed to Rachel before she had appeared at the bus station. He hadn’t meant it to be in secret, exactly, but he noticed he hadn’t rushed to tell Ginny about it either. He thought of Rachel’s voice on the other end of the phone—thin, disembodied, nearly unrecognizable; emblematic, in many ways, of New York City as a whole.

  He opened his mouth to tell Ginny about it. It would be a relief, in some unnamable, mysterious way, to have her know about that.

  Then, from the kitchen, they heard Olivia begin to cry.

  “Olivia!” shouted Lillian. “I told you not to move!”

  “Heavens,” said Ginny. “That doesn’t sound promising.” She rapped William gently on the arm. “We should go,” she said. “They might need a hand after all. Or, you know what? I’ll go. You stay here. Enjoy the quiet. We’ll take care of the washing machine after.”

  William closed his mouth. He wouldn’t tell Ginny about Rachel’s money. He wouldn’t worry about Jane’s baby, nor would he worry about Stephen’s plans for fatherhood, nor would he worry about why Lillian was still here and when, in fact, she might take it upon herself to depart. He listened to Ginny clatter down the stairs, then listened to the ruckus in the kitchen. Stephen’s voice had now joined the rest of them.

  He closed his eyes. Ginny had shut the door behind her, and the sounds from downstairs were muted, distorted, the way sounds are when you hear them underwater.

  “More flowers,” said William. “These didn’t come in a vase. Shall I bring them right up to Jane?”

  “No,” said Lillian. “Let’s find a vase.”

  After she had settled the flowers in the vase William got her, and carried the vase into the dining room, and placed it in the center of the table, Lillian sat on the front steps and dialed Tom’s work number. She shielded the phone with her body as if to hide
the conversation from anyone who might pass by, but really it was unlikely that anyone would. Ginny and Stephen had taken Olivia and Philip to the playground at Oakledge. William had disappeared into the back garden with his weeding tools. Jane was in bed. Rachel had gone up to the shopping center for a pedicure.

  “No more flowers,” she said when Tom answered.

  “You’re very welcome. I’m glad you liked them.”

  That almost made her laugh—almost— but then a mental picture of Tom at work appeared, and that picture was quickly followed by an image of Nina sitting at her desk, sucking on a coffee drink and chomping on her gum, and those images together conspired to create inside Lillian a hot little ball of anger and indignity. “I mean it,” she said. “They’re expensive, and they’re pointless, and my father can get better cut flowers from his garden any day.”

  Tom said nothing. Lillian, to fill the silence, said, “I’m surprised your little friend didn’t answer the phone. What’s her name? Nanette?”

  “Nina,” said Tom. “And she doesn’t work here anymore.”

  Lillian gave a little shout of laughter. “Doesn’t she? That’s a lovely little detail.”

  “Come on, Lilly. You left in June. It’s August. Don’t you think this is getting a little ridiculous?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

  “What do you want?” said Tom. “You don’t want flowers. You don’t want apologies. You don’t want me to come up there. You don’t want to come home. What do you want?”

  Lillian didn’t know. She looked out at the street, at the sun beating down on the asphalt; you could almost see the drops of humidity in the air. Finally she said, “I want to turn the clock back. I want you not to have done it.”

  “We all wish that.”

  “Even Nanette?”

  “Nina.”

  “Nina. Even she wishes that?”

  “I don’t know. Lillian! I don’t know. I don’t talk to her. I won’t talk to her. I don’t want to talk to her. You have to believe me on that. But I can’t undo it. We can just move forward. Aren’t you getting tired of all of this?”

  She was. She was tired of digging through a suitcase to find her extra nursing bras. She was tired of getting in trouble when she didn’t clean up after herself in the kitchen. Trouble! At age thirty-six! “I am,” she said at last. “I’m tired of all of this. But mostly I’m just tired.”

  Rachel woke to find a stricken Olivia standing by the air mattress. She had been having a dream that featured both Marcus and Tess. Marcus was reading for a part in the film that Rachel had been supposed to cast, and which had surely been given over to the obsequious Stacy by this point. In the dream, Marcus was sitting at a long table with seven women, all beautiful, all greyhound-thin and each with one odd and arresting feature—big lips, high forehead, three-dimensional cheekbones—all fawning over Marcus, while Tess and Rachel sat somewhere off to the side, writing on a giant piece of paper with a green marker.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I had an accident,” said Olivia. “I wet the bed.”

  “Oh, honey,” said Rachel. She pulled herself up through the fog of the dream, as if up a giant rubber ladder, then hauled herself, commando-style, over to the nightstand to switch on the light.

  “See?” said Olivia, turning to show Rachel her pajamas, with a darkened semicircle spreading across the back.

  “Oh dear,” said Rachel. “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Olivia, and a sob erupted from her small body.

  Rachel cast about frantically for a plan of action. Sheets first, or clean pajamas? Where were Olivia’s pajamas? Where were the clean sheets?

  “Oh, Olivia. Don’t cry,” she said. “I’ll go get Mommy.”

  But that only made Olivia cry harder, great, heaving sobs that seemed to come from the very soles of her feet. “No,” said Olivia. “No, don’t get her. You take care of me.”

  “Okay,” said Rachel. She peeled the wet pajamas off of Olivia, then the underwear, then the wet sheets from the bed. She put the whole soggy mess in a pile outside the bedroom door. She opened the dresser drawers and began to look through the clothes. “There aren’t any pajamas in here,” she said.

  “I know,” said Olivia sadly. “Everything’s dirty. The washing machine’s broken.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Rachel. She pulled out a pair of shorts. “You can wear these! With a T-shirt.”

  “No.” Olivia shook her head. “I need real pajamas. I can’t sleep in shorts.”

  Rachel pulled out a dress. “How about this?”

  “A dress?” Olivia brightened visibly. “That’s fancy.”

  “I know,” said Rachel anxiously. “That will be fun, right? To wear a dress to sleep? Like a princess.” Olivia nodded, and pulled the dress over her head. Rachel helped her work her arms through the holes.

  When her head emerged Olivia said, “Do princesses wear dresses to bed?”

  “Definitely,” said Rachel. Then she said, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get clean sheets.” She padded down the hallway and opened the door to the linen closet: no sheets. “No sheets,” she reported to Olivia. “I can’t remake your bed.”

  “What do we do?”

  Rachel looked around the room, as though by looking she could produce clean sheets. Her gaze settled finally on the air mattress.

  “Here,” she said. “Climb in with me.”

  “With you?”

  “Yes, with me. Or I can bring you down to sleep with Mommy.”

  Olivia considered Rachel. She worked her thumb into her mouth and pulled at a piece of her hair. “With you,” she said finally.

  Rachel pulled back the sheets on the air mattress, and Olivia climbed in, then Rachel slid in beside her. She had to get up again to switch off the light and when she returned Olivia was already asleep, one arm spread across Rachel’s spot on the mattress. Rachel moved the arm carefully and regained her place, but she found that, owing to the slippery nature of the air mattress and her precarious position on it, she had to grip onto Olivia fairly tightly. Olivia moved toward Rachel, thrusting her body into her, breathing deeply, contentedly, and Rachel, though unable, for a long time, to fall asleep, was content herself, thinking that this was one thing she’d never before experienced, the sweet, wholesome weight of a child’s body against hers, and that this, in fact, was worth abandoning the independent film, was worth fleeing the city, because it gave her a taste of what the future might hold, and also let her know that she wasn’t ready for that future. She had thought that this was what she was missing, but it wasn’t. Not yet.

  “Polly is sick,” said Olivia.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said William. He was on his way out to the garden; he wore his old green shorts and his Red Sox hat.

  “Shoes on outside,” said Ginny from the kitchen, where she was unloading the dishwasher. “I vacuumed up dirt all day yesterday.”

  “Got it,” said William, holding both sneakers in one hand, winking at Olivia. “Hey,” he said. “Do you want to come help Grandpa? I could show you which ones are weeds, and you could help me pull them up.”

  “No thank you,” said Olivia formally.

  “We could make a giant pile of weeds,” said William.

  “Why don’t you go with Grandpa?” said Lillian.

  Olivia sighed. “I can’t. I have to take care of Polly. I can’t leave her alone when she’s sick.”

  “Who’s this Polly?” asked William. “I’m not sure we’ve met.”

  “Polly is my friend,” said Olivia.

  “Her doll,” interjected Lillian. She was organizing the children’s clothes in the den. There was a small stack of pink underwear on the arm of the sofa.

  “I’m going to put her to bed,” said Olivia. “She’s really sick.”

  Lillian said, to nobody in particular, “These baby socks are impossible to keep track of. What’s the point of them?”

/>   Philip, who was sitting in his bouncy chair and batting at a small stuffed bear, cooed.

  “Oh, you think so, do you?” said Lillian.

  “Be right back,” said Olivia. She left the room and returned with a pink crocheted blanket, which she laid reverently over Polly.

  “Shhh,” she said imperiously. “Polly’s sleeping.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” said Lillian. She shook out one of Olivia’s T-shirts and began to fold it in thirds.

  “Shhh.”

  In the kitchen, Ginny clattered silverware into the drawer.

  “Polly’s sleeping, Grandma,” said Olivia. “Quiet.”

  “Sorry,” sang Ginny. “But the dishwasher doesn’t unload itself, and if it did, it wouldn’t do so silently.”

  Lillian loaded the clothes into a laundry basket and sat down on the couch.

  “That’s Polly’s bed.”

  “I thought her bed was on the floor.”

  “No, here,” said Olivia. “On the couch.”

  “Fine,” said Lillian, moving to the chair. She regarded Olivia. She wore pink shorts and a green and pink tank top; the tank top was decorated all over with pictures of fruit. Bananas, pears, apples, cherries, in an alternating pattern. Why was it okay for children to wear pictures of fruit or animals on their clothes but not for adults? Lillian would like to wear a fruit shirt.

  Olivia touched the back of her hand to Polly’s forehead. “Fever,” she said.

  “My land,” said Ginny, coming into the den. “She’s having a time of it.”

  There was a clatter in the hallway as the mail fell through the slot.

  “Want to be the postman?” Ginny asked Olivia. Olivia shook her head. She was looking at Polly with an expression of bewilderment and consternation. “I think,” she said slowly, “Polly needs medicine.”

  “Really?” said Lillian. She lifted Philip out of the bouncy chair and propped him on her lap. “Sounds serious.”

  “Yes,” whispered Olivia. “It is.”