Bertrand Court

by Michelle Brafman

  Amy accepted the bottle and put it on the ground. “No thanks.”

  “What’s got into you? Our Amy would put a dent in the bottle,” Becca said.

  “And get so snockered that I’d have to drive her home, but first . . .” Hannah waved her index finger in the air. “She’d make me drop her off at a hipster bar to meet up with her hipster friends.”

  “Maybe I’m not the Amy you know,” Amy said quietly.

  “Since when?” Hannah demanded.

  “Since I’m the one driving your drunk butt home tonight.” Maggie and Robin lived on Bertrand Court, but Hannah lived one suburb over.

  “Well okay, then.” Robin changed the subject. “What’s this game of yours, Bec?”

  “It’s called Two Truths and a Lie. You have to tell three things about yourself, and two of them have to be true, but one is a lie, and we have to guess which.”

  “We play this at our retreats all the time.” Maggie squared her shoulders, channelling her diversity-trainer affectation. “It’s a highly effective way to force a vulnerability that creates community.”

  Amy reminded herself that Maggie only acted like an ass when she was nervous, her episodic sanctimoniousness making her an easy mark for the family gossipers. It didn’t help that she was abnormally pretty.

  “How true do these truths have to be?” Robin asked. “True true or embarrassing true?”

  Amy wanted out of this forced fun. The light from the flames flattered the women, who sat with their hands in their laps as if they were meditating or praying. They gazed into the fire, perhaps scouring their pasts for truths and lies. Dating Leon had made Amy realize that she was exhausted from the truths of her life. Exhausted from making booty calls to hot, noncommittal men and working sixty-hour weeks. Exhausted from the adrenaline highs that fueled her, followed by the crashes, during which she’d escape to Hannah’s for a warm meal and movie night with Goldie and Jane, whom she adored. Hannah would send Amy home with Tupperware containers of hearty stews. But now Leon cooked for Amy, and last Sunday, after a long morning in bed, she made him a quiche. She burned the frozen crust she’d bought at the Safeway, but it was a start.

  “Okay, you begin, Becca.” Hannah took an enormous swig of wine straight from the bottle. “This is your show.”

  “Well, all right.” Becca stood and placed her hands on her ample hips. “Number one,” she said, snapping the waistband of her flowing skirt, “I go commando every day.

  “Number two, I got poison ivy in my hoo-ha after eating shrooms and galloping around naked in the woods at the summer camp where Adam and I met.”

  “Honey, you might regret this tomorrow,” Robin said gently.

  Becca ignored Robin. “Three, I flushed Isaac’s betta down the toilet, but I think it was still alive.”

  Hannah blurted, “You do so wear panties, Becca. The commando thing is the lie.”

  The women turned toward Hannah. Her elbow slipped off the wide arm of the Adirondack chair, and she tried to relocate it. “What? We do hot yoga together,” she said, inciting a round of laughter. “I’ve seen the panties. I’ve seen the hoo-ha too.”

  “I’m cutting you off.” Amy reached for Hannah’s bottle, but her sister clutched it to her body. Amy was more startled by Hannah’s drunkenness than she was by Becca’s statements about her lower regions. Becca was a seeker, and over the years she’d persuaded Hannah to study Kabbalah and irrigate her colon, and she was already planning their fortieth-birthday trek to Nepal, even though the milestone was three years off.

  “Your turn, Robin,” Becca said.

  Robin stood and unraveled herself from her Pashmina, a muted amber that matched her hair. “Past my bedtime.”

  “Wimp!” Hannah bellowed.

  “I’ve got a patient coming in at seven tomorrow morning,” Robin said.

  Without Robin, Amy thought, things are going to get a little wild and mean. The scent of the smoke in the air was beginning to feel cloying.

  “We’ll fill you in on everyone’s dirt.” Hannah leaned back in her chair and held out her arms to Robin.

  Robin kissed each of the women on the cheek and then walked over to Hannah, squatted down, and placed her palm on Hannah’s cheek. “Happy birthday, sweetie.” She turned to Amy. “Will you make sure she gets home?”

  “Of course.” The role of the responsible sibling felt like the puffy down coat her mother had bought her last year for Hanukkah —matronly, but deliciously warm on those cold January walks to the Metro.

  “Your turn, Hannah,” Becca said.

  “I’m not ready.” Hannah was watching the fire as if she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

  Becca pointed from Amy to Maggie until she stopped triumphantly at Maggie.

  “No, I’m going last,” Maggie said.

  “All right, I’ll go,” Amy said. “Give me one second.” She wanted a cigarette. She thought about revealing that since her father died she couldn’t shake the image of him standing behind her, guiding her through the motion of throwing a baseball. The memory of his hand cupping hers barely loosened the tight knot of tears that she would not, could not, release.

  Amy adjusted her glasses. Here’s the truth she wanted to say: Since their father’s death, she awakened every day feeling freer than ever before. She looked directly at Hannah and opened her mouth.

  “I don’t floss every day.”

  “Don’t let Robin hear you say that, Amy,” Maggie said.

  “Not after all the free cleanings.” Hannah chimed in.

  Becca tapped Amy on the knee. “You can do better, Amy. I told you about my hoo-ha.”

  Amy opened up her mouth to confess: She had a new lover, and he was sweet and solid, and this monogamy thing was kind of nice. Instead: “Two, in high school, I hid my weed in the basement, in one of Hannah’s ice skates.”

  Becca rose from her chair and picked up a poker from behind the pit. She stoked the fire until it spit out a fresh wave of flames.

  “I’ve known that for years, Amy,” Hannah said. “You’re giving us nothing. Nada.”

  The hell with them. She’ll tell them about Leon. That the sex was quiet but deeply satisfying. That they laughed over nothing. “Three, I’m in love with a widower who owns a WeedWacker.”

  “A widower who owns a WeedWacker! Sounds like the punch line to a joke,” Hannah said.

  Amy glared at Hannah.

  Hannah fake-glared back and imitated Amy folding her arms across her chest. “Prunella.”

  Prunella the witch. Amy cringed at the nickname their father used whenever she used to throw a tantrum or gave the stink eye to a relative she didn’t like.

  “The not flossing is the lie,” Becca said. “Has to be.”

  “Amy never used to floss. It’s the WeedWacker boyfriend,” Hannah said.

  “I floss plenty,” Amy muttered.

  Hannah nodded knowingly. “You’d eat WeedWacker man alive.”

  Eat him alive, Hannah? Nice. Real nice. The Solonskys made a sport out of teasing Amy, and she no longer wanted to serve as their chew toy. “Whatever.”

  Hannah cleared her throat loudly. She removed a rubber band from her wrist and put her hair in a messy bun. “I’m ready. Number one—”

  Amy cut her off by clapping her hands. “Number one. Hannah ate a cherry tomato in the grocery store without paying for it.” She laughed, but the sound that came out of her was sharply edged, not her bleat that everyone said was contagious. Hannah gave her sister one of her bemused smiles. “Are you done?” Okay, now they’d safely resumed their assigned places at the family dinner table of life.

  “Not yet, angel.” Amy reached into her bag and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. Nobody smoked in this zip code. Leon hated it when she lit up. She tweezed out a cigarette and tapped it against the arm of the chair. “Number two, Hannah removed the tag from her new mattress.” Amy noticed Becca and Maggie looking at each other with “There she goes again” expressions. Yeah, there she goes, right to the fire. Am
y got up and leaned into the pit, the heat fogging her glasses as she brought her cigarette to the tip of a flame and breathed in.

  “Jesus, Amy,” Becca said. “You’re going to burn your face off.”

  Amy took a long drag. “That’s Hannah. Boring, boring, boring,” she said as she exhaled, blowing smoke up toward the moon.

  “Okay, time to give your sister a turn, Amy,” Becca said as if she’d just settled a squabble over who got to ride shotgun in the Solonsky family car. Hannah always rode in front despite the fact that Eric was older and Amy was the only one in the family with a sense of direction.

  “You’ll have to forgive Amy,” Hannah said.

  “Now, that’s a line we’ve never heard before.” Amy flicked ash on the grass.

  “Number one.” Hannah put her bottle down on the grass. “I gave my in-laws food poisoning the first time I cooked Thanksgiving dinner.”

  Lie. Amy yawned. The dinner turned out perfectly, of course. She was there.

  “Number two, I had a crush on a Wiggle.”

  “Ew, she did. It was Murray.” Amy took one last drag on her cigarette and tossed the butt into the fire.

  “Don’t interrupt, Amy. That’s cheating,” Maggie said.

  “Not like I was interrupted or anything,” Amy muttered under her breath.

  “It’s okay.” Hannah sighed deeply. She shrugged off the Pashmina. She and Amy had inherited their mother’s lovely collarbones, but now Hannah’s protruded out of her body like wings.

  Amy snorted. “Drum roll please.”

  “Number three.” Hannah spoke so softly that the women leaned toward her.

  “Number three, I stole a sterling silver baby spoon from my dead Aunt Sylvia.”

  Hannah’s truth hung suspended in the air, like a wrecking ball in repose.

  Amy was the first to speak. “What spoon? Why?”

  “For another time, Amy.” Hannah continued to stare into the fire, and Maggie and Becca glanced at each other but said nothing.

  Only Amy looked at Hannah. “You robbed the dead?” she whispered.

  Hannah rubbed her eyes with her fists, like a baby, and when she removed her hands, a mascara-stained tear ran down her left cheekbone.

  “Holy shit, Hannah,” Amy said.

  “Yeah, holy shit,” Hannah said.

  Becca stood up. “Game’s over, ladies.”

  Amy watched from her chair while Hannah and Maggie silently folded their shawls into neat squares, handed them back to Becca, and walked through the dewy grass to the kitchen and their sullied serving dishes. Amy had no platter to claim, so she stayed outside by the fire, wondering what the hell was happening to the Solonskys. Their mother, a stoic German Jew, was weeping into Hannah’s phone eight times a day, Eric the atheist had joined a synagogue where he said kaddish every morning before work, and Amy was burning quiches for a love interest. How well did Amy know her family? How well did she know herself? How well do you know anyone until you’ve seen them grieve?

  The flames faded while the cicadas whined and an airplane passed over Bertrand Court. Amy eased herself out of her chair. A shovel lay behind the fire pit. She grabbed it, scooped up the embers, and spread the ashes evenly before she sprinkled them with the last few drops of Hannah’s wine. It was time to take her sister home.

  SYLVIA’S SPOON

  Hannah Solonsky, June 1992

  I steal a sterling silver baby spoon from my great-aunt Sylvia while her body, barely cold, rests under a blanket of disheveled earth at the Beth Shalom Cemetery. I do it in her kitchen, on impulse, while I’m looking for a teaspoon to stir my chamomile, seconds before my family begins reciting the mourner’s kaddish in my aunt’s living room. Yisgadal ve yiskadash shema rabah, amen.

  My mother, loud and tone-deaf, can’t even finish the prayer she’s so weepy. We all are. She enters the kitchen to put a handful of used Kleenex into the trash, and I slide the spoon further into my pocket. I run my fingers around the tiny bowl and up along the skinny handle to the tip, which is inscribed with the Hebrew letter hey. My name, Hannah Solonsky, begins with a hey; this piece of flatware is my destiny. Besides, finders keepers.

  I imagine that this spoon has survived pogroms and a long passage to Ellis Island, and I want to siphon its fortitude for my baby. I’m thirteen weeks pregnant, my new record for not miscarrying. Every morning I pray from The Jewish Women’s Guide to Fertility, a book I would have snickered at two years ago. I suffer the indignity of progesterone suppositories — the added hormones make me throw up in my office trash can — and I avoid foods I ate and clothes I wore while unsuccessfully carrying babies one through three. I take pregnancy yoga classes to manage the stress from keeping it all straight.

  Danny can’t win. If he’s enthusiastic about the baby, I tell him not to jinx things. If he’s cautious, I interrogate him — a man of reason, not instinct — about his “true gut” on this pregnancy. My parents are no help; my mother worries so much that I end up comforting her, and my father changes the subject but then emails me the cell phone numbers of his old med school buddies who specialize in fertility. My siblings have always leaned on me, and they wouldn’t get it anyway. Eric is trying to mate, and Amy is consumed with being Amy. Most of my friends are reveling in their fecundity. I cling to this spoon and the hope that my dead aunt is taking care of my baby somewhere out there in the ether.

  On the flight home from the funeral, I watch the Milwaukee homes, adorned with pink flamingos and aboveground swimming pools, disappear into a puff of clouds, and I sip lukewarm orange juice out of a plastic cup. I like the way my aunt’s spoon rests against my thigh. Aunt Sylvia used to laugh at my knock-knock jokes and hang my art projects on her fridge and look the other way when I pinched pieces of meringue from the top of her icebox cake. I feel more hopeful than I have in weeks.

  The plane is hovering over the Potomac when I kiss Danny’s cheek, breathing in the familiar scent of Dial soap. “Let’s name our baby Sylvia.” As soon as these words leave my lips, I want them back.

  Danny gives me the wan smile he’s cultivated. “Let’s just see what happens.” He strokes my arm.

  “Oh God, Danny. Don’t tell me you’re too superstitious to name the baby,” I say, when in fact I cling to superstition like Velcro. I lean my head back and close my eyes, signaling that the conversation is over. My hand rests on my mildly distended belly as I daydream about my little Sylvia. It will be a warm spring day, and she’ll sit on my lap licking vanilla icing off a cupcake, wiping her sticky fingers on my knees. She’ll smell like baby sweat and sugar. I’ll smooth her tangle of ringlets — auburn like Danny’s — away from her eyes. I can practically hear her giggle. Fear forms in the back of my throat and swells into my esophagus like a hive, as it always does when I allow myself to hope that this baby will survive.

  Later that night, shortly after eleven, I feel like someone is yanking my abdomen shut with a drawstring. Shit. Cramps turn into nausea, and I beg my baby to stay put. Danny pages the obstetrician while I stumble to the bathroom, clutching the spoon. Talisman in hand, I negotiate with God. No deal. Before the sun rises, I deliver my baby.

  I rest my head against the side of the toilet and gaze at the emptied contents of my womb. I try to capture the clump of blood and tissue with my aunt’s spoon, but my efforts only loosen it into a spray of red and greenish gray that dissolves into the bowl. I let my fingers linger in the cold red water before I close the lid. Aunt Sylvia appears to me: the slightly bulging gray eyes and the lisp and the sad smile pasted on soft, pink lips.

  Danny mops my forehead with a washcloth. I stand up slowly and rinse off the spoon, turning the faucet on full blast in a futile attempt to drown out the sound of the flushing toilet.

  One week later, Danny lounges on our bed staring slack-jawed at ESPN, as he has done for each of the past six nights. Who gives a damn about the Cardinals?

  I forage in our pantry for Tylenol. We’re out of cereal. A jar of homemade raspberry jam, our annual
holiday gift from Robin, sits next to a bottle of capers; the colors remind me that I did get to see my actual baby, instead of just a black sonogram screen devoid of the pulsing light the size of a thumbtack. We disposed of those babies during tidy office visits followed by written instructions to call if there was too much blood. There’s always too much blood.

  I dump four tablespoons of jam and eight capers into a bowl and then retrieve the spoon from my purse; I use it to mix the concoction and ladle it into a small Ziploc baggie. Sylvia.

  By the time I return to Danny, baggie and spoon in hand, he’s asleep on our bed, his face bathed in the blue TV light, his mile-long eyelashes, blond at the tips, fanning the tender skin beneath his eyes. He looks like he’s eleven years old. A fresh soul. The foot rubs and the phone calls from the office aren’t working, but at least he’s trying. I can’t muster up the energy to comfort him. Before the miscarriages, I would have cheered him up by taking him bowling or seducing him or renting a Monty Python movie; we’d sit in front of the television drinking cheap beer and eating potato chips, laughing — Danny at John Cleese’s ridiculousness, me at Danny — until we could barely breathe.

  It’s hot for June, and the breeze from the air-conditioning vent chills my toes. I turn off the light, pull my T-shirt over my head, and crawl into bed beside him, cradling his smooth back against my breasts. He mumbles something and reaches over to grab my hip. I move slightly, and he rolls over and runs his hands through my dirty hair. We don’t make love — too raw, too soon. Sleep finds me still clutching the baggie of raspberry jam and capers and Aunt Sylvia’s spoon.

  The next morning, I cancel my nine o’clock staff meeting. I was scheduled to fly to Boston the day after I miscarried, so now the whole office knows what happened, compromising my status as den mother of our “little nonprofit that could.” I’m going to have to face my coworkers. Best to get it over with, so at noon I stop by the office to pick up some files, and they treat me like I’ve got a raging case of pinkeye, except for Valerie, the stripper turned receptionist, who has a six-year-old son. She greets me with a homemade loaf of banana bread she’s been keeping in her desk drawer for me. I almost cry.