“What is this?” her dad said.
“So it was nice of your work to give you time off,” her mom said.
“Yeah,” she said. They were under the impression that she worked for a lingerie company at a corporate level. She let this impression stick around.
“What do you do all day anyway?” Brita said.
“I don’t want to come home to talk about work,” Julia said. “I came home to not talk about work.”
“Why can’t you just work here?” her mom said. “What, we don’t have those kinds of jobs here?”
“Mom,” Julia said.
“Then what,” Brita said. “You’re too good for us now.”
“No.”
“Everything we have, New York can do better.”
“Can we just eat this?” her dad said.
After dinner she called Will, to prove to herself he existed.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said. She hated how this always worked, the sweetie stuff. It wasn’t supposed to work. She was supposed to be resistant to it, but instantly she felt happier. She told him about Simon, his joke about the porn.
He laughed, and she felt better. “So how are you doing, what have you been up to?” she said idly. She paced the bedroom she was sharing with Anni. She went through Anni’s stash of jewelry.
“Actually, I had a shit day.”
“What happened? Something with your students? Was it Tito again?”
“I don’t really want to go into it.” He had a nervous laugh, and he emitted it now.
“Oh, sure,” she said, but really she resented it, everything she didn’t know and would never know. They talked of other things, then. Nothing things. She was appalled to discover herself talking about the weather and carrying boxes in the cold. She was a bore to herself, but when she talked to him she became too nervous to say all of the interesting things. “Okay,” she said, finally, moodily.
“Okay what?”
“No, nothing. Never mind.”
“Hey, I’m listening,” he said, his voice soft now.
“I just—I want to know what’s going on with you. I’m calmer when I know what’s up with you.”
“Uh,” he said, “that’s weird. You really feel anxious? Really?”
“Well, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. They talked more and he was at least aware enough to try to fix it, but she had said it, and it was too late.
* * *
Four full days of packing later, they had made it to the upstairs rooms. Julia was valiantly tackling the basement all on her own, even though she realized she was tiring herself out on purpose. Mostly she was succeeding. Occasionally memories came to her—the wind tunnels beneath the bridge—and she would divert her mind away and go back to work. Only sometimes she faltered, and let herself see a night more fully, the memory of being lifted, and then she would wince in recalling it, how he was too smooth, the ugliness behind his suaveness in its implication of practice. But it was true that the intensity of the memories was fading. The demands of her family washed New York to the opacity of early strokes of watercolor, hardly there.
That night, trying to warm the blankets, Anni said, “When are you leaving?”
“I don’t know—when should I leave?” She was supposed to be back by the beginning of the following week, but she felt inclined to stay—or, rather, neither choice was preferable.
“I just want everyone home,” Anni said.
“Me, too,” Julia said automatically. She considered whether this was true.
“Julia,” she said, “do you think you’ll ever come back?”
“Never say never,” Julia said, because it seemed kind, but she thought, never. It was not the kind of thing you could go back on, she reflected. Now that she had seen the world, now that she had been in it—she could not go back. She tried to imagine it, for a minute, being like Brita or Nels, accepting life where you had babies and had babies, where she would have to marry some carpenter from Minnesota. Never, she thought, and she thought of Will, his apartment with exposed brick walls—small, yes, but his, and the place quiet and clean. The two futures were so dissimilar she was sure they did not exist on the same continent.
* * *
It was near midnight and the house was asleep except for Anni and Uppu, up doing homework. Julia put a movie on her laptop, a romantic comedy, because even if she knew better she liked the inevitability, knowing from the outset who would stick with whom, the comfort of narrative. The movie was almost over when Anni came into the room. Julia pushed the headphones down to her neck.
“I know what you’re doing,” Anni said, and rolled her eyes.
“Sorry,” Julia said quietly.
“What is it?”
“Something with a happy ending, you know,” she said, and Anni climbed into bed next to her. She started the movie again, and took out the headphones and turned down the volume, quiet but loud enough so they could both hear. They were still watching, wholly absorbed—Julia had long recognized the way people in her family stared at televisions, like third-world refugees—when Brita walked in, Nick on her hip.
Julia shut the laptop. Anni jerked up. Brita turned around as hard as she could, banging the door behind her.
“Shit,” Anni said, “shit,” and Julia saw that her face was red. Poor Anni, she thought, feeling sorry for her—Anni had always been stuck being the good church girl, the one whose job it was to not create a fuss, to the point that Anni had never gotten very much attention, had always floated by in the background of everyone’s attention.
Julia went to look for Brita, who was standing in the giant kitchen, looking out the big bay window, bouncing the wailing Nick.
“Listen,” Julia said, “that had nothing to do with her. She was being totally good about it. I just want you to know. Here, I’ll take him, you go make him a bottle.” She took Nick, and his body stiffened angrily. She patted his back. Brita turned on the faucet, waiting for the water to get warm.
“Why do you have to do that?” Brita asked.
“Do what?” Bouncing Nick was tiring, but he was quiet now.
“Why’d you let Anni,” she said. She scooped the formula and shook the bottle.
“I mean, she’s not a little kid anymore, Brita, I don’t know—”
“I mean, I expect that from Tiina—Tiina would do that. But you, I mean—” She took Nick from Julia, gave him the bottle.
“Me what?”
“You—you didn’t use to be like this, Julia. You used to be—you used to be—”
“What?”
“You don’t do things like Tiina, right? You don’t, like, drink and stuff? I mean, you’ve always been—you were always good. Tiina was always in trouble, she was always sneaking out, but you were good. You were good in high school. I made you Paulie’s godmother, once upon a time.”
“I’m still Paulie’s godmother,” Julia said, but it stung.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I don’t believe anymore.”
“Why not? Why can’t you?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t know how to say, I don’t want to.
“What are you going to do? Are you going to get married? Are you going to—what—just have, like, two kids or something?”
“I don’t know, Brita, I don’t know any of these things.”
“I don’t want you holding my baby anymore,” Brita said softly.
“Brita—” They were both talking quietly, so as not to bother Nick.
“Just leave me alone,” she said.
“Brita, don’t say that.”
“You already have Tiina and you already have Simon, and you can’t start taking the little kids, you can’t take anyone else, you can’t have Anni, too.”
“It doesn’t work like that—”
“It does work like that. There are sides, Julia.”
“No—”
“And don’t you ever, ever think you are doing that to my boys. They are always, always—” sh
e said, her voice breaking.
“I’m your sister,” Julia said, but Brita just walked into the living room and sat down at the leather couch.
* * *
It was Christmas before Julia faced the prospect of going home again. Not going at Thanksgiving had been as retaliatory as she could be. She’d spent it with Will, in total and utter misery. His family had gone to the movies on Thanksgiving—to the movies!—and they’d served fake whipped cream and there were decorations in the house, turkey candleholders. His siblings were uninterested in her presence. They seemed to anticipate that she wouldn’t be around for long. She knew they were right. Three times she’d been sure she would never see him again and each time she’d run into him somewhere, a bar, a party, and then there was the pressure of his hand on the small of her back. There was his air of indifference against a sudden interest in her. It was nearly Christmas, and she was figuring out what kind of gift you gave to someone to prove you didn’t love him, when Simon called to tell her that Christopher had been hit by a drunk driver. Not wearing his seat belt, he had been flung from the window. For a few days he lingered, paralyzed, then died.
The funeral was out in Boston, and she said he didn’t have to come but Will said he would come. She could feel the obligation she put on him, but she took it, and sitting next to him on the Chinatown bus, his hand in hers, she was happy to look like a couple to outside eyes, to have this excuse to make them a real couple at last. At the church, Simon sat in the front row, holding hands with Christopher’s mother. He shook so hard Julia wondered if he should be given something, some kind of medication. Her parents had not come. Brita had not come. The little girls had not come. Nels had come at the last minute, though, flying in from Minneapolis. He wore a suit and looked strangely adult. He had left his wife and kids at home.
“Everyone,” Julia said, “this is Will,” and he shook hands with Tiina and Nels and looked like a model boyfriend. When he sat down at the pew, he held his tie to his chest; during the service, he squeezed her hand. The minister, some cheesy, springy fellow, talked about Christopher and his love of design—Christopher had just started a position at a firm that specialized in luxury penthouses—and with every specific mention of something Christopher had done Simon heaved, and Julia, overcome with more emotions than she could catalog, began to cry and, encouraged by her own tears, cried more. When Christopher’s parents went up to talk about how much they had loved Christopher, and how much he had taught them to change, she began finally to cry in earnest, crying about Christopher, and for Simon, and about Will, and for herself.
“Simon,” Nels said, after the service was over. It was funny to see them together, the two brothers who had never behaved fully like brothers, who had always been so overrun by a family led by and filled with women. “I’m sorry.”
Simon fell apart again, leaning over the closed casket until Nels and Will helped him stand. Watching Will at the front of the church, she thought about marrying him. But that would never happen. And if she ever married anyone, she knew, it couldn’t be in a church. It would have to be like Tiina’s—outdoors, a Hindu ceremony even though her husband was also not Hindu, each tradition entirely invented and lacking in gravitas and therefore not traditional at all; therefore nothing like a wedding at all. And it wasn’t like they couldn’t see the divorce coming—he, too, had not shown up for the funeral. Thinking about this nearly made Julia cry again.
After it was all over—the burial, the good-byes to Christopher’s family, who they had only just met—they went to Simon’s apartment, where Tiina said damn it all she was downing a bottle of wine, even if Nels was there, and Nels looked away. Simon sat on the couch, pressing his suit jacket to his eyes. Julia cried more, because she couldn’t stand to see Simon cry, and then Tiina cried. Will looked a little tired of it all, and this made her cry harder.
Three glasses later Tiina said she hated their parents for not coming. “I can’t fucking believe it,” she said. “I always expected more of them. I always thought they’d rise above their own bullshit.”
“Did you ever tell them that?” Will asked drily.
“We don’t talk about that stuff with them.” She looked at Will dismissively.
“You can’t expect people to change if you never ask them to,” Will said. He shrugged.
“Don’t be wise,” Julia said. She was drunk and at the point where the only good idea seemed to be to get more drunk. She hated Will at that moment, Will and his aphorisms and his ease. “Fine,” she said, “I’m going to tell them. I’m going to tell them they can’t treat Simon like this.” She felt delirious.
“Everyone calm down,” Nels said.
Will looked mildly entertained by the unfolding scene.
“Call,” Tiina said, “call them.” Simon lay nearly asleep now, on the couch.
Julia found her phone and called and, to her surprise, someone picked up, right away, her mother.
“Why aren’t you guys here?” Julia said.
“Is everything okay? Honey?”
“Why aren’t you here? Why do you have to be such sanctimonious assholes?” Her voice was tired from crying, and the insult came out in a dramatic, rent fashion.
“I’m hanging up.”
“Six years,” Julia said, shouting, “how much longer did they have to be together for you to take them seriously? When would it count?”
“We love Simon,” her mother said simply, “of course we were so sorry to hear about his loss.”
“Your loss,” Julia said.
“It is never my job to make you feel comfortable about your lifestyle choices,” her mother said. “We’re here to remind you of what is right. We know you know in your hearts what the right thing is, of course we know you know that—”
“Assholes!” Julia screamed. She hung up and they sat around, exhausted.
“What a shit show,” Will said. He rubbed at his eyes. “Where’s Nels?”
Julia got up and looked around. “Shit,” she said, “he’s gone,” and she ran out of the apartment, down the stairs, tripping. She didn’t have her shoes on. She didn’t have her coat on. She didn’t see him. She stood and let people walking by stare at her as she rubbed at her arms.
She went upstairs. Will was carrying Simon to bed. Together they took off his shoes and gave him a pillow. His shirt and pants were still on, and he looked as if he, too, were suddenly dead.
Julia sat on the edge of the bed. She petted at his hair, fine and blond and stuck by sweat or tears to his head. It’s o-kay, she tried to sing, it’s o-kay, it’s o-kay, my ba-by.
RUPTURE
BRITA WAITED. SHE knew if she turned her head she could watch the ultrasound, see the baby flex his legs and move his arms, but she kept her eyes on the ceiling. As a rule she dealt with pregnancy by not dealing with it at all. She never looked at her belly, never admired her profile in a mirror. This late in the game you could almost see the baby through the scar, Jimmy said, but she never checked. At least Dr. Schwartz was gentle, spreading the gel slowly on her stomach, and he knew to get things over with quickly. Over coffee she always recommended him to other church moms—she liked the sheepish jut of his teeth, the way he removed his glove before he helped her sit up from the exam table.
“Well?” she said. She knew she was blushing, but she willed herself to seem calm, in control. People always thought they were brainwashed—and, worse, irresponsible—so it was important to seem like she’d always understood what she was getting into. Don’t you know they invented something to fix that? the neighbor lady had said to her. Even going to the pediatrician was humiliating. Nod so I know you understand, the doctor had said, like Brita was a child. But Dr. Schwartz always behaved as if having as many children as God gave wasn’t worth questioning. It was why she went back to him for all six of the boys’ births, even though they had moved and it was a long drive now.
At the sink he washed his hands, and his wrists and his forearms.
“Brita,” he said, “
we’ve known each other a long time.” She rearranged the folds of her gown. “The other day—” He paused. “I looked it up. The world record for C-sections is eleven. In a way that makes me feel better, but still, seven … it makes me nervous.” He turned back to her, drying his hands one finger at a time. “We’ll do another amnio next week, and with any luck we can push it early. In the meantime, do as little as possible. No housework.”
“Well, I have to teach,” she said.
“Teach?”
“Piano lessons. Sitting down, of course.”
“I didn’t know you did piano,” he said.
“For years,” she said, which wasn’t strictly true. Two Christmases ago a neighbor had come by from next door with cookies and Brita had been balancing pennies on Paulie’s wrist at the keyboard, and within six months she’d been teaching half the neighborhood kids.
“You wouldn’t want to teach Jenna, would you?” he said. “We’ve got this nice piano but no one plays it—and she just sits on the computer all day. I’ve been meaning to for a while. You know.” Brita tried to sit up straight and look professional, but in the gown it was impossible.
All night she wanted to tell Jimmy about the teaching but she had to do prayers alone, standing at the door to the boys’ room with her hands folded over her belly, listening to their Finnish, showing them how to soften their consonants and accent the first syllable. Isän, Pojan, ja Pyhän Hengen nimeen, they said in turn. Through the window Brita could see the moon, high and slim in the sky. Always she felt as if Jimmy would hear the prayers and come home—when she was little her mother would say, “Dad will smell the spaghetti and come home,” and sometimes Dad did—but Jimmy didn’t come. When he finally made it into the bedroom and showered he still smelled of paint beneath the soap, the industrial-citrus combination she had smelled even on their wedding night, a brassy cleanness.
On her side, her hip killing her as it always did this late in the pregnancy, she said, “Dr. Schwartz wants me to teach his daughter.”
“Yeah?” he said. He got into bed. He rolled up behind her, put a hand beneath her loose T-shirt. She could feel his hand avoiding the scar, moving near it but never touching it. “Who’s going to watch them when you’re gone?”
We Sinners Page 12
