The Birthdays

by Heidi Pitlor

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, as if he sensed what she was thinking.

  Liz had bought silver ribbon to wrap around blue silk napkins, and went to the deck to get two bouquets of daisies—and where and when had she gotten these? Hilary wondered as she stood to help. Liz stepped back into the living room and handed Hilary a handful of tiny plastic silver stars to sprinkle around the table. “Yes, I know, I go overboard,” Liz said, but Hilary replied, “Nah, it’s nice.” And it was, and Hilary was glad someone was guiding the day back to the reason they were all here—her father. She held the stars in one palm and they felt like sand in her fingers as she sprinkled them across the white tablecloth. They glinted in the day’s sunlight. Liz wrapped the napkins in the ribbons and carefully set them equidistant from each other—Hilary thought she noticed Liz’s eyes move in even paces between seats—and then went to the freezer for the chilled glasses.

  With the three babies on the way, they would celebrate so many birthdays in the coming years. Hilary thought of Daniel and Brenda in some clinic on this island, then of the first time she saw Daniel in the hospital after his accident, his legs absolutely still beneath the thin blanket. She focused on the table before her and the hundreds of tiny silver stars and thought of her own baby, how she would celebrate its first birthday here on the island with a roomful of new friends and neighbors, maybe even Alex, though maybe not. Probably not.

  Liz turned on Hank Williams, one of Joe’s favorites, and asked her if she wanted anything to drink. Leaning against the kitchen counter, the two sipped glasses of lemonade, and Hilary asked Liz what she thought of the island as a place to live year-round, how many families lived here and what were the schools like. Liz looked at her sideways and asked what she was getting at, and when Hilary told her confidentially of her new plan, Liz clapped her hands and said it was the best idea she’d heard in years. “You can live here and be our caretaker,” Liz said happily. “And maybe when things get serious with that guy at the bookstore, he can move in.”

  “Liz.”

  “Yes?”

  “He has nothing to do with my idea to move here.”

  “Okay,” Liz said.

  “I’ve only known him for two days.”

  “Okay, okay,” Liz said. “I promise not to bother you about him anymore.”

  “Thank God.”

  “But promise me something. That when something more does happen with him, you’ll tell me about it.”

  “Why are you so fascinated by this subject?” Hilary asked.

  “What’s more fascinating than sex? What’s more interesting than pure physical attraction?”

  Her words were laced with an uneasy combination of judgment and titillation and maybe something more that Hilary didn’t particularly want to consider. She shouldn’t have told her about any of this. “I can think of plenty of things,” she finally said.

  *

  Hilary watched her mother touch her father’s arm (acting, she must have been, completely and utterly lying to them all) as he took his seat at the head of the table. And here they were, most of a family gathered to usher in their father’s seventy-fifth year. It was four o’clock, too early to be eating dinner, and Hilary felt suddenly alone amid the two couples, this group that despite everything continued to expand.

  9

  Gregory Peacock in Flight

  Daniel and Brenda waited for Dr. Waller to come to their room, hand them their discharge forms and say goodbye. Earlier she had decided she wanted go to Jake’s house for Joe’s birthday after all. She’d have to see them eventually, and she and Daniel already made the trip here, and had Joe’s present. They’d go for a couple of hours and then head home, she’d said defeatedly. Now she sat on the end of the bed, flipping through pamphlets about pregnancy loss and stillbirths, and Daniel looked out the window at the cloudless sky. He tried to listen for the sound of the ocean, which couldn’t have been far, as the island was so small, but he was unable to hear it.

  He began to want to stay here in this clinic on this island. Not that he particularly liked the clinic, of course, or even Great Salt, which he’d seen virtually nothing of since he was a child. But he found himself wanting to keep Brenda and his family close to him, and in a place separate from the rest of the world. He and Brenda used to dream of living on an island someday. For their honeymoon, they’d flown to Athens, then sailed to Rhodes and then Lipsos, a tiny Dodecanese island closer to Turkey than to Greece, where Brenda’s friend had recommended they go if they wanted privacy. To the dismay of their parents, they’d gotten married at City Hall in New York. They had neither the money nor the desire for all the trappings of a wedding, and were far more interested in spending what they did have on the honeymoon. Lipsos rose from the ocean, hilly and electric green, brightened by the azure of the sky, and the colors there later inspired entirely new palettes in his work. They stayed on the top floor of the only inn on the island, and in the afternoons lounged in bed, trying to find markings they’d never seen before on each other’s body—Daniel found a tiny fan-shaped birthmark beneath Brenda’s left breast, and she found a faded old scar to the left of one of his ankles. They made love in the bed and on the floor and in the shower, where Daniel now remembered lifting Brenda against the cool blue tiles and feeling the plush inside of her body, the exact center of her, he’d thought. Then they fell into the deepest sleeps, woke, and made love again. They were the only guests of the innkeeper, a squat old woman with soft white fur around her mouth. She spent her days by the water, screaming at the fishermen as they pulled in their nets. By Daniel and Brenda’s third day there, everyone on the island recognized them as the newlyweds. One man knocked on their bedroom door and, bowing, presented them with a bouquet of orchids and a bottle of ouzo. Another sat with them as they ate breakfast at the inn and told them, in broken English, of his title and record as best diver on the island. Brenda was charmed. Daniel was too at first, but soon grew irritated by the lack of privacy (he would later tell Brenda’s friend about this), and all the strangers who approached them and pointed, smiling, toward their hearts. By the blowsy old man with feathering eyebrows who fell at their feet and crooned a song about—Daniel gathered—love.

  She set the pamphlets on the bed now.

  “Should I go look for Dr. Waller?”

  “No, let’s give him a few more minutes.”

  Eventually this weekend would become a part of her past, a distant turning point—though toward what, Daniel wondered. It was in her nature to fully recuperate after setbacks, large or small. For him, though, such events had unfolded differently, of course. Calamity had stuck to him—he found himself unable to ever completely shed it. It warped his moods, it soured his outlook. It stayed imprinted on his memory. He knew that years later he would still vividly recall the details of their stay in this clinic: the sight of the two daisies on the shiny floor, Dr. Waller’s mustache, the one-eyed Raggedy Ann doll in the waiting area. He would always remember the sting of the earring in his palm as he lay in a small bed beside his wife who’d just lost her baby.

  He could try not to dwell on just the hard times. He could remember the Sundays they’d lie in bed into the evenings, the dinner parties in Brooklyn with their friends, the many trips they used to take. What was your favorite thing about Lipsos? he could ask her now to help distract her. What do you remember most clearly? He wanted to tell her that he would be a better husband from now on because he finally understood that he was fundamentally the same person he’d always been. The accident hadn’t changed who he was, just how he functioned.

  But he looked at her in her blue linen maternity dress sitting at the edge of the bed, her hands cupped together, her eyes on her feet, and he thought these words would sound too tidy to be believed and come much too late to even be relevant to her. What would he say, I’m better now? This wouldn’t resurrect anything. In fact, it would undoubtedly make matters worse.

  Dr. Waller finally appeared in the doorway, a pen in his mouth. “
You’ll need to take it easy on yourself. No exercise or heavy lifting for a couple of weeks,” he said to her. He told her which pain relievers to take and how much rest she’d need. She should wait three months before starting to try again. She might consider wearing a firm bra, he said, to help suppress the milk that would come. Pads instead of tampons for the vaginal bleeding. Daniel imagined him scanning down a checklist in his mind. “Anything else?” he finally said, and when Brenda asked, he told them they could pick up the ashes outside the nursery. The crematorium had done a rush job, given the fact that Daniel and Brenda were only here a short while. A nurse would be waiting in the nursery to assist them.

  *

  They sat in the back of a cab, the heavy plastic cylinder with the ashes now inside the suitcase. Retrieving them outside the nursery had been a conspicuously unceremonial event, and Brenda had tucked them away between her clothes before he could come up with a better idea.

  He had not definitively told his family that he and Brenda would attend his father’s birthday dinner, for he wanted to maintain the option of backing out if she wanted to. Then, as they were leaving the clinic, he’d decided that this would be his real present to his father: their attendance. Her attendance. They’d brought him several armchair travel books about Europe, but this, their coming when Brenda had such mixed feelings about it, would be their real gift. They’d surprise everyone by just showing up in a cab. One of the nurses had looked up Jake’s address in the phone book.

  The cab’s brakes squealed as they rounded a corner. “You sure you’re still game? This might be our last chance to turn back,” Daniel said, and she answered, “We’ll go for a while and then it’ll be done and we can head home.”

  She had never completely taken to his family. Her closeness with her own family would always make them somewhat unnecessary to her, little more than a duty.

  Daniel stared out the window. The sun beat down through tall oaks and maples that lined the road, and moments later they passed several shops. The island drifted past him and he took in sights he hadn’t seen two days ago: a café where several women in loose, brightly colored dresses milled and chatted with each other; a store called Books & Beans, small tables lining the sidewalk outside it; a restaurant called the Mermaid’s Table; a small ice cream stand—typical touristy sights. The road dipped down close to the shore, and the ocean appeared to their left in countless shades of blue. Gulls bobbed near the water, and no one lay in the sun on the rocky beach that separated the ocean from the road.

  Jake’s house was big for a summer home, but also understated, its shingles weathered gray and the front door a muted blue. Rosebushes bloomed in front, and the lawn was striped diagonally from being recently mowed. Daniel still couldn’t believe his younger brother—who used to cry at the drop of a hat as a child and seemed to fail at everything he tried, every sport, every friendship, every girl he had a crush on—was now able to afford two houses and had married someone as likable as Liz. Daniel wondered how Liz felt about their new money, whether she was comfortable with it or whether, at times, she found it strange suddenly being able to afford so much after a lifetime of less. Her eccentric parents had raised her in some shack in Oregon, he recalled. Or was it a commune?

  They paid the driver, who helped them with the chair and their bags. Their small suitcase on his lap, Daniel wheeled himself over the sharp gravel and watched Brenda walk in front of him to the door. Jake had laid out several long pieces of plywood as a ramp. He was nothing if not considerate of Daniel’s needs now. Brenda, on the other hand, didn’t look back once to see whether he was still behind her, whether he was having a difficult time with their bag and pushing the chair over the gravel.

  Once he caught up to her, she shuffled on her feet after she rang the doorbell. He tried to imagine what was going through her mind right then—reluctance at having to face two pregnant women? Maybe she was cramping, her breasts swelling against her shirt with milk. He was about to ask her if everything was all right, when Liz threw open the door. Daniel was glad, even a little relieved, to see her freckles and overlapping teeth, her broad grin. She gathered them into a flurry of hugs and smiles and concern and chatter. Ellen squeezed his shoulder and ran her hand through his hair.

  “Do you want something to drink or eat?” Jake rushed over to them. “Or do you want to relax for a bit before dinner? Do you want a tour of the house—but no, of course, you must be exhausted—” and Daniel finally said, “Easy there.”

  “We just sat down for supper,” Ellen said, pushing her way back to Joe, who stood a few feet behind the others with Hilary. Pregnant, she was twice as big as Brenda had ever been. His sister was tall and healthy, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her and her expansive presence, even more expansive now. She exuded herself—she was the sort of person who hid nothing. She was flipping through a magazine as if she didn’t want to appear eager to see them or to participate in the flurry that was this family, and most likely she had no idea what to say to him or Brenda right now anyway. So Daniel said, “Hey there, Larry, you look like a different person.”

  “Danielle.” She nodded. They’d never used these names in front of the family—they’d made a pact ages ago to keep them secret, but right now Daniel didn’t care. He couldn’t help himself. She went to him and planted a firm kiss on his cheek, and did the same to Brenda, who smiled politely as she offered the side of her face. She was becoming well-behaved Brenda, the steely person no one could upset.

  Liz moved behind Daniel and helped him forward into the aggressively matching and overly designed house and he found himself at a table covered in tiny plastic silver stars, a napkin and utensils set in front of him, a plate of food before him. He glanced at Brenda, young and silent and tiny between Hilary and Liz, so tiny she looked as if she might suddenly shrink away to nothing. She kept her focus on the plate before her. “Do you want some lemonade?” he asked her, and her “no” was quick and muffled.

  No one spoke for a moment and Daniel heard the push of the ocean outside. There it was, all that water around them and beneath them. He wondered if Brenda heard it too, and he was about to say something about it when Jake insisted on getting her something to drink.

  —

  Ellen could relax now that everyone was here. She sliced her meat and savored the rare center. It was pink and would clog her heart but who cared? This was no time for discipline.

  MacNeil did not love her. He loved her care and sympathy, he loved her attention and the things she did for him, and this was, at least to him, a sort of love, but as for loving her and wanting her as a person. Well. She had for once offered him her sadness and he had done nothing but ramble on about Oscar Wilde and MoMA and all he and his daughter’s family had done together, how big his granddaughters had gotten, what a scenic neighborhood they lived in (“on the Pacific, I mean right on the Pacific”), as if he were chatting with their mother. No one in the world cared as deeply about your kids as you did—this was a fact Ellen had learned early on in parenthood. Clearly he didn’t know this, or more likely just didn’t care. She took a long sip of lemonade. He’d been talking about them more and more recently. “I think about living closer to them,” he said the other day, and she worried he was actually considering moving across the country, but he then said, “I just want them back here. Do you ever wonder why Hilary went so far away?”

  “No,” she’d said. They sat in his dining room over backgammon and Pinot Noir. “It made perfect sense to us that she chose to go to school out there, given the way she operates,” aware of the intrusion of the word “us.”

  “I find myself taking it personally. They grew up here in the East. We loved it, Vera loved it. We never wanted to live anywhere else.”

  “Everyone moves these days. It’s nothing to take personally.” She shook the dice in her fist.

  “We sound so old.”

  “We are,” she said, and smiled at him. She rolled the dice. “It’s all right that they’re gone.�
��

  “It is?”

  “It is,” she said, though she knew it wasn’t for him, especially without Vera. Still, today Ellen didn’t want to mourn with him. Today she wanted it to be just her in the room with him, just Ellen and MacNeil. “Do they like where they live?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well then.” She glanced down at the board—she’d just won the game.

  “Selfish or not, I still wish they were closer,” he said, and rose from the couch to go to the bathroom. It seemed an hour of silence—of worrying she had pushed him too far, that perhaps she was the one being selfish here—before he came back, turned on some Bach and showed Ellen a book he’d just bought of Klee, painting after painting of what looked to her like scratches from a cat’s claws against brash colors and bright shapes pressed together. She hadn’t known he liked Klee, whose name, MacNeil now said, meant “clover” in German—and what reaction should this have elicited? She simply said, “Oh,” and continued to glance down at the book, faintly dismayed. She felt these paintings excluded her. They knew something or lived somewhere that she did not. “Daniel loves Klee,” she said. “He could have been a real artist.”

  “He is a real artist,” MacNeil said.

  “In a way.”

  “I’m sure he’d say he is.”

  “You’re right, he would.” She nodded. “He is incredibly talented. He could draw so well even when he was small. He was a terror on the playground and not such a good student in school, but with crayons or paints he was an angel.” And now he lived his life in a wheelchair.