The Birthdays

by Heidi Pitlor

“Nice is expensive and overrun with snotty Europeans,” he admitted.

  “We both sleep on our left sides, even now,” she offered.

  “Some things haven’t changed.”

  “A few, I suppose.”

  “I’m still the same person for the most part, just living inside a slightly less functional body.” He wasn’t certain he fully believed this downplaying of the accident, but maybe just speaking the words was some sort of progress.

  She made no expression, as if she too wasn’t convinced.

  “We both lost something in the middle of a street,” he said, and swallowed. It hadn’t come out the right way at all. Brenda’s eyes filled, and he moved closer to her bed and sandwiched her small hands in his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  She shrugged and took her hands back. Quietly, almost inaudibly, she said, “You’re forgiven.”

  He wanted to ask her if he’d heard her correctly, and if he had, to please say it again, again and again, but he worried she’d take it back or say he was pulling too much from two little words. Still, he began to let himself think that she forgave him more than just this one insensitive comment—his loathing of Tammy Ann Green and Morris Arnold, his sharpness with Vanessa, all of his bitterness and despair both before and after the accident. Indeed, he hadn’t changed all that much. She’d just gotten to know him better over the years.

  He looked at her, then out the window at the leafy ash trees, their branches bobbing in the wind. He thought of their friends’ newborn baby who was born breech and of the Korean baby that Evan and John were going to adopt. He thought of Lily and Maria, or was it Marie?—twins Brenda’s cousin recently had in London, and the photograph of the two dressed in tiny hot pink jumpers and holding on to two enormous teddy bears wearing matching jumpers. He thought of James Roger McDonald, who was born to Daniel’s agent Richard the year before. He was a handsome baby, with soft blond hair and round, liquid blue eyes and Daniel squirmed when Richard handed him the baby for the first time, as he had no idea how exactly to hold him. The boy weighed nothing in his hands, and his head rested in Daniel’s palm like a baseball. He looked up at Daniel, right into his eyes, and Daniel leaned over to kiss his forehead. He smelled of bananas, and Daniel reached down to kiss him again. It was amazing to him that this was a whole life in his hands, and that a life could weigh so little. Daniel was surprised he remembered the boy’s full name now. He was usually terrible with names.

  Brenda soon dropped off to sleep again, and Daniel dozed off too and was woken a while later by a nurse, who helped him onto the other bed, where the pillow was flat and the sheets smelled of mildew. He tried to make himself drift off again despite the too soft pillow and the smell. Brenda was now sleeping soundly. Or maybe she was just pretending. He’d done the same recently, when he heard her stirring in their bedroom, unable to find a comfortable position for her stomach. Now it seemed the worst sort of betrayal.

  He considered what it might be like to return home and to step inside their house for the first time without the baby and without a plan for what would come next. First he would call their counselor at the sperm bank and let her know. Then Brenda would phone her doctor and her family again. And then what? What to do when there was no one left to notify?

  Suddenly he remembered Freeman Corcoran’s work—his childlike paintings in electric primary colors of houses, happy little houses flying through the air or floating on the ocean, drifting past beneath the sun or the moon. Fish, boats, whales drawn in bloated, silly shapes. It was a crime, the acclaim Corcoran got for these blocky, simplistic scenes that any five-year-old could have painted. People paid a fortune for his work. Brenda had to be lying when she said to Vanessa that she loved it. She had to be—it was the sort of art they loved to hate. Obvious, pretty, infantile art created for the widest possible consumption. “Fun” art.

  He thought of Tammy Ann Green. And then it dawned on him. He would call the doctor she worked for when they got home, and Daniel would ask to meet him and hear more about his research on spinal cord injuries. Why hadn’t he thought to do this yet? He wouldn’t tell Tammy Ann, as she’d discourage him, so he’d do some research of his own and track down the doctor himself. Hell, he already knew the man’s name because Tammy Ann had mentioned it so often. It was a plan, and Daniel smiled to himself. Maybe he would walk again.

  —

  “Did you buy any books?” Ellen asked Hilary when the three returned from Books & Beans.

  “She bought something about parenting,” Liz announced, and smirked at Hilary. The two were in cahoots over something, Ellen thought disdainfully, and rose from the couch. If they wanted to have fun during this sad time, let them. “It’s late and it’s been such a long day. I’m going to bed,” she declared, and Joe followed her into the green bedroom.

  “What are they up to?” she asked. The curtains swayed.

  “Boys.”

  “What?” Ellen went to open the window a little more, and breathed in the scent of the ocean, briny and pungent.

  “Liz wanted Hilary to see some guy she met earlier.”

  It was some sort of breakthrough; Joe never paid attention to incidents such as these, and certainly never reported back about them. “She mentioned someone to me earlier, I think.”

  “I couldn’t tell his age. But he looked younger than Hil. Anyway, it was unsuccessful. She decided against it at the last minute.”

  “It? What ‘it’?”

  “I’m not sure, frankly,” he said, lifting his shirt above his head. “I wasn’t about to ask.”

  “I suppose not,” she said. She pulled her nightgown from beneath her pillow and slid off her skirt, and realized that for the first time in hours she was not thinking about Daniel or Brenda or, for that matter, MacNeil. “Did she tell you who the father of the baby is?”

  “No.”

  “You’d tell me if she did, right?”

  “Ellen.”

  “Well?”

  “Of course I would, but she won’t, and you should stop letting it nag at you.”

  She tried to pull back a little. “It’ll be good for Hilary move back home.”

  “It will. We can help her with the baby when she needs it.”

  “Just don’t leave all the hard work to me,” she said, apropos of nothing, for when the children were small, Joe actually did help more than the other young fathers they knew. He was an expert at changing diapers and bathing babies. His greatest contentment was seeing the kids in their pajamas first thing in the morning, rubbing sleep from their eyes, gathering around the table for breakfast and filling the room with noise.

  Ellen lifted the sheet and blanket on her bed and slid beneath. Joe switched off the lamp between them and took a deep breath. He would be fast asleep in seconds, but she wasn’t tired yet. Her mind spun. Hilary and a baby alone—it was still hard to fathom. She replayed the conversation she’d had with her daughter earlier. Why not research archaeology, learn about the best people in the field living in Boston and bring Hilary to them? Once the baby was a little older, she’d have time. She’d need a job. Why not try to find one she liked? Joe could help. He loved research, the hunt for attainable answers.

  But Daniel and Brenda needed her and Joe more right now, at least more urgently. Her primary focus over the next several weeks would be filling their house with art and color and life. Improving their immediate surroundings—beautifying their world. Once Isabella’s young son and later her husband died, she threw herself into the building of the museum, the collecting, the details. It was only then, after so much tragedy, that she became a true curator. Two great sorrows, in the end, had prompted her toward such happiness.

  *

  The next morning she stretched her arms, sore from her sleeping in the same position all night, and tiptoed out of the room. Apparently she was the first one up. The living room had flooded with the early morning sun, the strongest sun since they’d arrived, she thought as she stepped out onto the back porch.
Her cotton nightgown billowed in a cool breeze, and she felt almost naked, standing outside like this. She hurried to one of the Adirondack chairs and sat, tucking her gown beneath her legs.

  Mornings were always her clearest time, and once in a while, just to think, she stayed in bed well past the time that Joe had woken and fixed himself coffee. Whether spent in bed or puttering around the kitchen, mornings gave her a sense of freshness, of newness and perspective. And after the rain and then the thick humidity, this particular morning was a relief with its dry, warm air, the quiet of the house and the rhythmic wash of the ocean before her, pushing and pulling its tide from the shore. Not one person could be seen on the beach, and she felt it was all hers for the moment, the great, wide Atlantic, all its fish and plants, its tides. And how perfect, how kind that the sun had chosen to shine like this today, on Joe’s birthday. Was it the sunlight, not the time of day, that gave her this rush of contentment in the face of everything? Either way, she felt more optimistic than she had in a while, and she began to plan what she would buy at the grocery store for Joe’s birthday. She’d convinced Liz and Jake to allow her to buy this, at least. She decided she would cook flank steak, baked stuffed potatoes, Caesar salad, biscuits. It would be an unhealthy meal, full of fat and grease, but she would not let herself think about it, as these were Joe’s favorite foods.

  Another breeze pushed against her legs. She tried to imagine what a weekend here with just Joe and MacNeil and Vera might have been like. Joe and MacNeil weren’t great friends but they seemed to respect each other. When Vera had been alive and the four had dinner, the men discussed sports and politics, predictably, but mostly they shadowed the women’s conversation, adding only incidental comments here and there. While the women chatted about Vera’s travels and growing art collection, Ellen’s children at school and the movies they’d seen recently, the men nodded and inserted words of support—“It was the coldest, the absolute worst weather to be in Venice,” MacNeil would add to his wife’s description of their Italian vacation; “He really is a little hellion,” would be Joe’s confirmation of Ellen’s story. Undeniably Vera had been the force that brought them together, the one who arranged the dinners in Lincoln, the trips to the museums, the one who got the conversations about love or sex or politics or art up and running and the one who kept them going, really, through the wee hours of the night. Vera had been the most charismatic of them all. Ellen considered the past few weeks. Whatever the deeper motivation to be with MacNeil was—a longing for a different life? envy of his financial and spiritual ease?—now seemed laced by a simple sort of pity, a draw to take care of this man in the aftermath of death. He needed her comforting words and her endless listening. Even now, so many months later.

  Liz appeared behind her, her face puffy and her eyes pink. “The sun,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten it existed.”

  “You’re up early,” Ellen said, and looked back at her. “What’s it like to have two? What does it feel like? Maybe it’s a little too soon to really feel them?”

  Liz’s face brightened. “I’m constantly hungry, but as soon as I eat anything, I feel full and bloated. I’m tired a lot,” she said, and looked at Ellen. “But excited. It’s still so amazing to me that I’m carrying two babies right now. Sometimes I feel afraid that something will go wrong,” she said, and worried her fingers before her mouth as if she hadn’t meant to allow herself these words, at least not in Ellen’s presence. Liz smoothed her sweatpants against her legs and looked out at the ocean. “How was Daniel yesterday?”

  “All right,” Ellen said. “Well, not really. I expect he’s not fully equipped for this, though who would be? You keep thinking the worst has already happened—and then comes something else and you just wish it could’ve been you instead. You’ll see, when the babies come, that you’d be willing to experience their tragedies for them. You honestly would be.” Ellen stopped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t go on like this.”

  “No,” Liz said. “Don’t apologize.”

  “You two will be natural parents. Jake will work himself to the bone taking care of the babies. He was born to be a father.”

  Liz smiled. “It’s true. He too would experience everything bad for the people he loves if he could. He works himself into a frenzy over other people’s problems. He gets so worried when things don’t go just as planned, or when he can’t fix something. He loses his mind.”

  “He can’t help it,” Ellen said.

  “I know. I guess not.” Liz ran her hands through her hair, smiled sweetly and headed inside.

  A large cloud swam in front of the sun and Ellen watched the shadow of her hand fade from the arm of the chair. She remembered leaving MacNeil’s house after their first tea. She’d gone home and struggled with a piercing headache, and every thought she’d had for the remainder of the day had been of MacNeil, now alone. He had cataloged to her all that needed to be done—box Vera’s clothes, cancel her subscriptions—and she’d offered to take care of the clothes, the subscriptions and whatever else needed to be done. And now, when she thought of it, when she remembered the continual headaches and lethargy, the hollowness as if she’d lost a significant part of her interior, she resented MacNeil’s so easily giving away what he should have kept for himself. The next time she saw him he was a little brighter, a little less preoccupied, and even talked of subscribing to an experimental theater Vera had always mocked. Ellen had felt glad initially—she was successfully helping him through this difficult time, though later that afternoon came a creeping melancholy as she thought about Vera’s traditional taste in theater. Ellen realized now that it’d stung her, even insulted her—yes, that was the sensation—when MacNeil said flatly the other day that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to revive the garden, and that he’d probably just let it go. Unless, of course, she wanted to take care of it.

  She’d never much had to comfort Joe about anything, even through the worst of times—what had happened this weekend, even, or Daniel’s accident, or earlier, Joe’s car lot going bankrupt, his bypass four years back. He withdrew, he grew a little testy, but he kept it to himself for the most part. He’d always been the one to comfort others, even in the face of his own struggles. He’d never expected her to absorb any of his sadness.

  *

  While the others woke and took showers and read the paper, Ellen and Hilary walked down the street to a small market. A couple of cars blew past them and startled Ellen. “It’s easy to imagine what this place might have looked like a hundred years ago,” she said, “before the cars and people took over.”

  “Sure, just a little piece of land in the middle of the ocean.”

  “It must have been beautiful.”

  “It still is, if you look between these huge houses.” Hilary gestured to the massive wooden skeleton and backhoe on their left. Just past it, the land carpeted in tall grass sloped down to the water.

  “Mm, true,” Ellen murmured.

  They reached the market and Ellen found a plastic basket at the front. As they strolled past bins of soft tomatoes and hairy onions, she asked Hilary about the details of her move—had she hired a mover yet? (No.) Had she telephoned doctors in Boston yet? (No.) Hilary grew quieter and quieter until she mumbled, “I’ll go get the meat,” and hurried toward the butcher’s section.

  Ellen let her go, not wanting to force her way into whatever it was that was irritating her daughter, and resumed gathering groceries.

  They reunited at the checkout line. Hilary rubbed her fingers together vigorously and looked up at the ceiling. “Something bothering you, honey?” Ellen asked.

  “No, Mom.”

  Ellen thought of last night’s mysterious trip to the bookstore. “Is it a man? Is it this man, you know, the father, that’s on your mind?”

  “God, would you drop it?” Hilary’s nose ring shifted as she spoke.

  “It’s fine, you know, if you don’t want to start a new relationship right now,” Ellen said, only then realizing that she probably was
n’t supposed to know about last night.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She swallowed. “Dad told me about that person at the store.”

  “Oh. Well, it was nothing. I hope he told you that part.”

  “You’ll meet the right one someday,” she said.

  Hilary shrugged, a sour expression on her face. The cashier waved them forward, and Hilary began placing items in front of him. If only she stood straighter, wore a touch of makeup now and then and got rid of the hideous nose ring and tattoos. She had the loveliest face, really, the most beautiful hazel eyes.

  The cashier pulled a sack of potatoes toward him. He was an attractive young man with shaggy brown hair, heavy eyebrows and dark eyes, and Hilary seemed to be avoiding eye contact with him. Ellen wondered if he resembled the one they’d gone looking for the night before. Did she find this young man attractive? Sometimes Hilary seemed fundamentally lost, floating through life aimlessly, trying, in vain, to find love just like so many other people, while at the same time resenting the world for expecting her to.

  —

  Jake stepped away from the tide as it approached his sandals. He had been walking on the beach with his father for a while now and chatting about his hometown, where Joe and Ellen still lived in the same small house on the same small street they always had. Real estate prices there had soared, and a new community had suddenly sprouted up a few streets over. Its houses were enormous, ridiculous hotel-like structures for small families, sometimes even childless couples, his father said. “They have wrought-iron gates and bushes shaved into globes,” Joe lamented. “Their cars are all fat and blocky. Everything they own seems to be huge. Their dogs, their cars, even the doors and windows of their houses. Your mother and I sometimes go for walks there and try to imagine what’s going on inside.”

  “I hope you’re not bothering anyone. Everyone likes their privacy, Dad.”

  “We’re just going for walks. We’re not committing any crimes.”