The Last Romantics

by Tara Conklin

  Will. Thank goodness for Will. After three months of dating, we moved in together. He tolerated my aimless walking, my obsessive list making. Sometimes he walked with me, wending our way to the Cloisters or over and up to the boat basin on the West Side. The High Line had recently opened, and it was often crowded, but we began early in the morning and occasionally had the path to ourselves. I showed him the Lasts, which now sounded something like poems, and he read them and smiled and said, “Well done, Fiona, these are beautiful.” I still worked at ClimateSenseNow!, where I had steadily advanced in title and position. After Caroline’s outburst that day, I had thought about my job. Why was I there? What was I doing? I no longer called in late. I took only my allotted vacation time. Improbably, I was becoming an expert on the slow-moving disaster of global warming.

  “We are watching it happen, day by day,” I would say in the talks I gave to classrooms and boardrooms. “We all see the signs. What can be done, you ask? It is a conundrum so overwhelming in size and scope that no one can bear to acknowledge it. Around the globe I hear only a startled silence. A nervous, cowardly hush. But we must acknowledge it. We have no choice but to face it head-on.”

  * * *

  On the day before Nathan’s party, the twins woke with fevers. They weren’t truly sick—no vomiting, temperatures hovering at 101—but cranky, achy, and demanding, with raw, rough coughs and watery eyes. Caroline saw no choice but to keep them home from school.

  Today was not a good day for sick children. Caroline had the party preparations to contend with, and today—of all days—Noni was stopping by with her friend Danette on their way to the airport. Noni was going to Europe.

  “Juice!” Beatrix yelled from her bedroom. Caroline was downstairs in the kitchen.

  “Water for me!” That was Lily. The two shared a room, the large west-facing bedroom where once long ago an orange tabby had birthed ten kittens.

  “What’s the magic word!” Caroline called back up to them, and a chorus of pleases came down.

  Dutifully Caroline brought the drinks. After Beatrix drained the last of the juice and handed the glass back to Caroline, she said, sniffling, “Thank you, Mommy.” Caroline looked down at Beatrix’s pink face, and for a moment she was overcome by a spasm of love so pure that she couldn’t see, and she nearly dropped the glass.

  “You’re welcome,” Caroline said, and pulled the covers up under Beatrix’s chin and kissed her on the forehead where the skin was hot and tender. Then Caroline crossed over to Lily’s bed and leaned over to kiss her, too, and cup her palm around Lily’s puffy face. Lily opened her eyes and emitted a small sigh. Lily was six minutes younger than her sister, a span of time that she wore like a stamp on her forehead. Always she trailed after Beatrix, who was bossy but gentle, and Caroline often wondered what would happen when her daughters split into separate bedrooms, separate lives. Perhaps they would always stay close. She hoped that they would, but there were no guarantees. Once she had believed her relationships with her sisters would never falter, but look at them now.

  A car door slammed, and then Caroline heard the unmistakable sound of Noni tipping a cabbie: “Thank you so much. Good luck with your surgery, Oscar. You take care, now.”

  Caroline removed her hand from Lily’s face. Both girls had closed their eyes, and her mind shifted from this obligation—tending to the girls, bringing them water, loving them—to the next: our mother.

  Caroline headed downstairs. Already they were standing on the porch, waving at her from behind the screen door: Noni and her friend Danette, a woman Noni met the previous year at the grief support group. Danette had lost her only child, a teenage daughter, seven years earlier. Car accident. Somehow the girl had ended up in a lake, the car submerged for three months and four days before the police found her. “Can you imagine?” Noni had asked Caroline over the phone last night. “Not knowing all that time?” “No,” Caroline had answered. “I cannot imagine.”

  Danette’s husband was an airline pilot, and consequently Danette traveled free of charge to any destination. “What adventure!” Noni had said. “What freedom!” Last month Danette had invited Noni to join her on a tour of Europe’s great cities: London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Madrid.

  “I’ve never even been to Europe,” Noni told Caroline in the hushed tone of a confession, although Caroline knew as much; Caroline had never been there either.

  “Noni, you should go,” she said, feeling a tremor of envy. “You can’t not go. It’s Europe.”

  And so Noni had said yes.

  “Hello, Caroline!” Noni called, and hugged her on the doorstep. Caroline felt her breath leave her body and wondered when her mother had become a hugger.

  “Caroline, it is so wonderful to finally meet you,” Danette said, and then she, too, leaned in and hugged Caroline fiercely, pinning her arms to her sides so that Caroline could return only an approximation of a hug, more a light slapping of Danette’s torso with her hands. Danette stepped back, gripping Caroline’s shoulders. “You are the image of your mother,” she said, looking from Noni to Caroline. “The very picture. Thank you so much for inviting me to your lovely home.”

  The force of Danette momentarily paralyzed Caroline. She’d been expecting someone sadder, older, more beaten down. Noni and her new friend were joined by grief, members of the worst possible club. But Danette looked easily ten years younger than Noni. She was African-American, her hair sprung up in a high Afro, pinned away from her face with a multicolored band. Everything about her was a study in contrast: dark skin, white teeth, long skirt, sleeveless tank, a battered pink suitcase resting beside an expensive-looking black leather handbag. And Noni, rather than fading away in comparison to Danette, seemed herself more vibrant, the lucky recipient of Danette’s reflected glow. Noni wore traveling clothes in earthy colors and wick-away fabrics, but her hair was longer and her face made up, a tint of lipstick that looked good.

  “Hi, Noni,” Caroline said. “You look great.” Noni smiled but said nothing in return; she stepped past Caroline and into the house.

  “Sorry it’s a little chaotic in here,” Caroline said. “We’re getting ready for Nathan’s party tomorrow.” Stacked lawn chairs crowded the entryway and living room; they’d been delivered that morning, but Caroline hadn’t been ready for them out back.

  When Noni gave her a puzzled look, Caroline added, “His promotion? I told you about it last week. We’re having a party to celebrate.”

  “Congratulations!” Noni said. “I’m so pleased for Nathan. How nice of him to host his own party.”

  Caroline felt her pulse elevate. “We’ve both been working very hard for this,” she said, and then she excused herself from the room.

  The kitchen was full of the insistent smell of a cooked quiche. Caroline pulled it from the oven, and her index finger slid past the pot holder and touched the hot metal of the pan. She yelped in shock, dropped the pan onto the stove top with a clatter.

  “Are you okay?” her mother called from the dining room. Caroline heard a murmured comment from Danette. “Can we help?” Noni added.

  “I’m fine!” Caroline called back. She sucked on her finger, the burned spot raw and tender in her mouth, and she began to cry in a hot, childish way. Why had she let her mother come here today? She should have told her to eat lunch at the airport. She should have ordered food from Pepe’s.

  Danette appeared in the doorway. “Caroline, what happened?”

  “I’m fine,” Caroline said. “Just a little burn.”

  “Oh, dear. What a shame,” said Danette, and she reached to examine the finger. She said nothing about the tears but abruptly enveloped Caroline in another paralyzing hug, this one longer and fuller than the one bestowed at the door. This embrace went on and on, and Caroline breathed in Danette’s scent (gardenia? or was it lily?), felt the tangy, sweaty heat of her, and found it all strangely and deeply comforting. This near suffocation by her mother’s unknown friend was the most comfort she’d accepted in years.
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  Danette at last released her, and Caroline stepped back. “I’ll be right in with the quiche,” Caroline said, wiping at her eyes.

  “No, let me,” said Danette, and she carried the dish into the dining room.

  * * *

  They ate lunch. Danette and Noni told Caroline about their plans, the hotels they’d be staying at, the sights they’d see. After clearing the quiche away, Caroline checked on the girls (still sleeping) and made coffee. Another half hour remained until she needed to pick up the table linens. She returned to the dining room with the coffee pot and mugs on a tray.

  “Laurie loved, I mean loved, linzer torte,” Danette was saying. “I have to tell you, Antonia, that’s really why I put Vienna on our list. I mean, it is a beautiful city, you will just adore it, but we are going to eat us some serious amounts of linzer torte.”

  “Joe’s cake is more cinnamon,” Noni said. “He never really liked sweet sweet, but my God, he could have eaten that cake breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The first time I made it for him, he ate nearly half the thing in one sitting.”

  Both Noni and Danette were smiling, talking about their dead children in an easy way that made Caroline uncomfortable. It was like talking about God, like talking about love: you needed to do it with a certain amount of reverence, in hushed tones, or on your knees. Caroline didn’t care for her mother’s breeziness. Plus, Noni was wrong.

  “I made that cake the first time,” Caroline said. “Remember? That Christmas, I wanted to make something new?”

  Noni tilted, then shook her head. “It was Easter 1984. Joe was ten years old. You were eleven then—I don’t remember you being a baker at that age.”

  “I was. I was always a baker—I always made cakes,” Caroline said, feeling irritated and righteous. “I started when I was . . . I must have been seven or eight.” Caroline began to bake during the Pause, following the recipes printed on the backs of yeast packets and sacks of flour. Renee would prepare all the family meals, but she said that dessert was too much work. Memories of scorched cookies and undercooked cakes came back to Caroline, blistered fingers, struggles to reach the oven knob. “Noni, you weren’t there when I first started,” she said. “You wouldn’t remember.”

  Noni narrowed her eyes and gazed at Caroline as though she were a distant figure whom Noni was trying in vain to identify. “No, Caroline,” she said finally. “I think you’re remembering wrong. It was Easter. I made the cake.”

  There was a beat of silence, and then Danette remarked with great good cheer, “Well, whoever made it, it must have been a doozy of a cake. I need to get down that recipe. Laurie was never much of a baker herself, though she did like to eat the results. That girl had a sweet tooth, just like her mother.” Danette spooned sugar into her coffee, looking to Noni with raised eyebrows. And Noni nodded once, a short downward clip of her chin, and a look of understanding passed between them.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Noni said, and left the room.

  “I did make it,” Caroline said weakly to Danette. “I did.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You both made it,” Danette replied. “You all made it, really. You all made that cake for Joe.”

  Danette’s tone was soothing, and Caroline wondered if Danette would hug her again, which she both longed for and feared. But no, Danette stayed where she was, gazing at Caroline across the crumby tablecloth with a look of frank pity. “Your mother’s told me that you’ve taken it the worst. Joe’s death.”

  Caroline bristled. “Me? I think Fiona’s still a wreck.”

  “You know, I don’t have any other children,” said Danette. “Laurie was it. As much as her father and I hated that—I mean, we lost everything when we lost her—I did think it was easier, in a way. Her father and I took it all. We didn’t have to worry about anybody else. Your mother, she’s got to get on without Joe, and she’s got to watch you and your sisters get on without Joe.”

  Caroline had never looked at it this way before. She had always thought of us as Noni’s greatest consolation; Noni had lost her son, but at least she still had three daughters. And Caroline was taking care of Noni. Ever since Joe’s accident, Caroline had grouped Noni alongside Louis, Beatrix, and Lily, the four of them crammed into a sack that Caroline slung over her shoulder and carried around. It was heavy, but there was no safe place to put it down.

  “Caroline. Listen to me. You have to decide what you love,” Danette said. “Joe wasn’t the only one. You have to decide now and hold on. Start small. Begin with the small things and work up from there.”

  Noni’s soft-soled shoes entered the room with a small sucking noise. “Is Danette telling you about the place we’re staying in Paris?” Noni asked, still standing in the doorway. “It’s got a view of the island, that tiny one? Caroline, we will have to go next time. Next time I’m taking you to Europe.”

  Caroline looked from Noni to Danette and then pushed herself away from the table. It was as though a deep, dark secret, the secret of her life, had been suddenly revealed to all, the curtain pulled, and Caroline stood there alone, naked and shivering. She recognized what was happening here, and she was exhausted by it. Maybe Danette was telling her the secret to overcoming one’s grief. Maybe Danette’s own acute suffering (every time Caroline began to think of that girl in the car, she shuddered and shook her head and sang a little song to clear away the image) made her wise, and she was sharing this wisdom with Caroline, the most precious gift Caroline would ever receive. Yet even if that were the case, Caroline could not muster the strength to focus. To file away Danette’s words in some empty drawer of her socked-out brain for later reference. The little things? What did that even mean? Everything was big. Everything was monumental.

  Caroline left the dining room and stood, dazed, in the center of the kitchen. Dirty dishes filled the sink; her phone was ringing on the counter; someone knocked at the front door. She listened for the girls, to discern their small voices from amid the din, but no, they were quiet. The girls were okay. The girls were sleeping. Caroline could leave, and so she walked out the back door and into the yard. Eight round black metal tables filled the back lawn, looking ugly and industrial without tablecloths or chairs. A long, narrow folding table backed against the west-facing flower bed; this was where the caterer would lay out the buffet of poached salmon, Swedish potato salad, grilled asparagus, arugula salad with balsamic dressing, a cheese plate, a Meyer lemon cake that Caroline had almost baked herself, almost, but decided at the last moment to pay someone else to make.

  Noni and Danette remained inside. Caroline heard the delicate sounds of silverware and dishes pinging against one another, the barely detectable suck of the refrigerator door opening and closing. They were cleaning up after the meal, Caroline realized. Good.

  She noticed then heaps of new compost that dotted the flower beds, deposited there yesterday by the gardener, who said she would return this morning to finish, but where was she? The backyard, Caroline realized, was a mess. The gardener late, the caterers waiting for her to confirm final numbers, the flowers probably wilting in the back of the florist’s van.

  Caroline didn’t care. Nathan’s party. It didn’t matter.

  Start small.

  A plastic Coke bottle lay on its side in the grass. She picked it up. A flattened buzzing noise emanated from the bottle’s open neck: inside, a furious bee bumped against the sides. The plastic interior was dotted with condensation, moist and slippery, and the bee moved urgently but ponderously, as though this were a fight it had been waging for many days, so long that it had already given itself up for dead, but instinct drove it still to make the motions of escape.

  Holding it carefully, Caroline carried the bottle down the back slope to where the lawn stretched out, a bit rougher and more ragged than the area closer to the house. They hadn’t landscaped this part yet, though every spring she and Nathan talked about doing it up. In truth Caroline liked the wildness, the sparse grass stretching to a row of towering firs that darkened the pro
perty line, separating them from those horrid Littletons next door, the boy who played tuba and the anti-vaccination wife. Here dandelions poked up from the grass, fearless or just oblivious to the anti-dandelion campaign Nathan waged every spring on the upper lawn with his fork-tongued extractor.

  It was here among the wayward dandelions that Caroline tipped the bottle and tapped it gently once, then again. The bee stopped its buzzing and crawled toward the neck, emerging after a brief rest at the bottle’s lip, as if saying a quick, fervent prayer for its resurrection, and then flying off in a boozy, looping route away from Caroline and the site of its imprisonment. Caroline watched it circle up toward the house in the direction of the tower. How she loved that tower! From the moment she’d first seen the house, nothing had mattered but that. The romance of its delicate spire and mysterious curved window. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. A grown woman falling for a fairy tale.

  Caroline snorted. She headed back to the house and dumped the bottle into the green recycling bin by the back door. For a moment she paused to listen, like an interloper, to the soft murmur of voices from inside: Noni and Danette, perhaps bent together over a map or compiling a list of the sights of Vienna. She should go inside to them; she should assure them that she would be fine, she was just having a bad day, temporarily overwhelmed by the myriad imperatives of sick girls and a party.

  Perhaps it was Noni who first made that cake for Joe. Caroline rarely thought of what Noni had done for them, only what she hadn’t.