The Birthdays

by Heidi Pitlor

  “Look at us,” Hilary laughed, grabbing one of the cards. “Look at me! My hair is so blond it’s green!”

  “God,” Jake mumbled, burping into his fist, “I must have been ten pounds fatter there.”

  Daniel took a card and saw that indeed his brother was rounder then, before he’d met Liz, before he’d grown more disciplined about himself and his life. And his mother’s hair was a little less gray. His father stood on the far right, his shoulder touching hers. He wore a faint smirk, an expression hard to read, and one of his eyes was just slightly closed. Daniel himself appeared in the middle of the group wearing an old sweatshirt, still faintly tan from the summer. His hair was longer then, and fell just over his eyes. He stood with his legs apart, his hands on his hips. He’d just met Brenda and would soon bring her home to meet them, once he’d finally told her he loved her, he remembered thinking now.

  Brenda ran her hands through her hair. She was so pretty, he thought as he looked at her, an objectively beautiful woman. But so much about her had changed and continued to change, or was it even she who was different now? Maybe it was more the way the air circulated when they were in a room together—maybe it was only this that had changed. Whatever it was, she was gradually stepping away from him in order to save herself. This much was obvious. His heart seemed to grow thick in his chest.

  —

  Persistent thoughts about Brenda’s miscarriage (was it a stillborn? At six months it seemed closer to that than a miscarriage), and the conversation with MacNeil, and Hilary and Jake’s argument suddenly vanished, and Ellen found herself merely buoyed by feelings of kindness and gratitude toward the improved weather and the smell of the ocean, toward her children and Joe. “Oh, it’s good to have my five kids here with me tonight,” she said. She now sensed that choosing a photo of just the blood family for the cards might have been a little exclusionary, but at the time it seemed more a fond nod to the past than any statement about the present.

  She leaned back in the soft chair and thought of Vera. Maybe in fact she was here right now, a part of the air. Maybe she and Ellen’s parents and grandmothers were in the room with her and her family, watching them. It was a comforting thought, that the dead never truly left.

  Daniel, Joe and Jake chatted about taxes. Liz muttered to Hilary, “You’ll stay here. Jake will be fine, just leave it to me,” and although Hilary seemed reluctant, the two did begin to discuss the logistics of living here. Brenda looked on, listening to their conversations. None of them were alone here. In this moment, no one Ellen loved was truly alone.

  MacNeil had recently stumbled across a new biography of Isabella, one considerably less laudatory than the other he’d given her. In the end, he’d told Ellen, after her young son and later her husband had died, Isabella became the sole proprietor of her house. It was her one motivating force, building the museum and gathering art and filling its walls (this part was common knowledge), but before long she became quite a dictator in this quest. Though she had one of the first phones in Boston, she used it only to summon others, and refused to take any incoming calls. She ordered the architects and landscapers around mercilessly, and after the museum was up and running, she was known to bark at visitors if they overstepped their bounds. “Jesus Christ, madam,” she said to a woman touching everything she saw. “This is no menagerie.” Those paying attention developed a panorama of views about her, and not all were positive. Bostonians thought her greedy and showy. Henry James, across the ocean, had written in his journal, “The negation of work, of literature, the swelling, roaring crowds, the ‘where are you going,’ the age of Mrs. Jack, the figure of Mrs. Jack, the American, the nightmare—the individual consciousness—the mad, ghastly climax … The Americans looming up—dim, vast, portentous—in their millions —like gathering waves—the barbarians of the Roman Empire.” Ellen had almost laughed when MacNeil first read her these words. They sat in his living room, dissonant jazz clamoring from the stereo. MacNeil called it free-form.

  “Such drama,” she said. “How can you fault someone for wanting to surround themselves with beauty?”

  “It’s the trying so hard, the need to outdo everyone else,” MacNeil said. “It’s such an American thing, really, wanting to be the best, no, to have the best and the most beautiful.”

  “But you yourself love the finest art. You love superlatives—and you love the Gardner Museum as much as I do.”

  “I do, is the funny thing. Even Henry James, once he came to visit, fell in love with the place.”

  “So how do you reconcile this, your scorn and your admiration? How do you reconcile your being an American with your European heritage?” Ellen had only been to Europe once, and that was many years ago. She and Joe had gone to Italy to tour Tuscany and then the museums of Florence. On their second day Joe’s wallet had been stolen, and on their last day Ellen was struck by a stomach flu. In the end they saw far less than they’d planned. Joe liked his domestic vacations: the Grand Canyon, Niagara. He always said what’s the point of traveling so far when you haven’t seen everything in your own country yet?

  “I don’t know if you ever can,” MacNeil admitted. “Maybe Isabella made do by cramming so much of Europe into her Boston house. Outside was the gray weather, the naysayers, all the jealous people. Inside was her real life.”

  “I am American and happy to be,” Ellen said, and straightened her posture. “My grandmothers struggled in order to get here and build a life for their families.”

  MacNeil nodded and smiled, bemused. “My parents did too, you know.”

  “I think the only difference between Americans and Europeans is that Americans are more open about their longings. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

  “I suppose it’s the lack of subtlety, the inherent gaudiness of it.”

  “Everyone experiences desire,” she said.

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “What does it matter, then, how we show it?”

  He shrugged, and before she realized it, he’d changed the subject.

  This was the last time she saw him before he left for San Francisco, and she drove away from his house thinking that perhaps he had a point in the end. Everyone in her family was so clumsy in their desires, fumbling aimlessly and openly toward that which they could never fully achieve. Joe groped about for knowledge, bargains, the most efficient, the best this, the fastest that. Brenda and Daniel wanted a child so blindly they’d bought a stranger’s sperm. And now, remembering this conversation, she reluctantly added another to the list: in her ill-informed search for companionship, Hilary had fallen into motherhood.

  But no, Ellen decided, MacNeil just could not see the sheer liberation that came from admitting one’s true desire. Without the confession of this desire to another and without attempting to act upon these longings, one was truly alone in the end. A widower in a sparkling, sanitized house. A shrinking old woman in a cavernous museum, who let her stockings split with holes and her dresses grow thinner as she desperately conserved her money for the endowment of the museum. One night close to the end of her life, a servant found Isabella wandering the second floor in her nightgown, approaching a window. The servant gingerly led her back to her bedroom. No one ever discovered whether she had been sleepwalking or what her true motivation had been this night, if there had been one. Ellen liked to think that Isabella had just been having a sleepless night and gotten up for a stroll to admire her paintings, that the woman, despite everything, had found her favorite things in life and merely wanted to be beside them. The alternative thought was too much, that so much could come to nothing in the end.

  Joe was listening to Daniel talk about his work. Her husband was a man who could hear what a person was really saying and really meaning better than anyone she knew. It was, she thought, a rare talent.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the voices of those she loved pool around her.

  —

  “I’m just warning you that the weather here is terrible in th
e winter. All those nor’easters, and snow like you’ve never seen it. And if you’re thinking about buying here one day, the property taxes are outrageous,” Jake said to Hilary, not that she’d ever be organized enough to buy a house here or anywhere else, for that matter. He couldn’t believe that he’d let Liz talk him back into this just now. (“She needs this from you,” she had said, and in the moment, it seemed like the noble thing to do.) Hilary’s eyes drifted around the room as he spoke. Facts and practical advice merely bored her. He wanted to tell her that over a hundred people heeded his advice every day at work. “You’re really going to do this, move here?” he finally asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Our kids will be able to see their cousin a lot,” Liz said quietly.

  “I know, I thought of that too,” Hilary said. She had responded more to Liz than to him this whole weekend. “And since I doubt they’ll have brothers or sisters, I think that’ll be important.”

  He craved another glass of wine but there was no more, and anyway, he supposed he’d had enough. “Maybe you’ll meet some great man and get a great job and have some great life here. You never know what kind of things could pop up along the road, the path or whatever of life when it comes to our futures.” He’d meant to sound positive and inspirational, not drunk.

  Hilary shrugged.

  Liz set her hand on Hilary’s knee and said, “There’s always Alex,” and Hilary shook her head and said, “How about the cake?”

  The two rushed off to the kitchen. Would they become good friends, his wife and sister? Would they share their secrets or even talk about him to each other? He shuddered. And who was this Alex? He supposed it wouldn’t be so completely terrible if Liz and his sister became friends. If nothing else, it might make Hilary like him a little more.

  Jake turned his attention to Daniel and his father’s discussion of tax laws and was happy to correct them when they bemoaned the new deductions. “No, they haven’t disappeared,” Jake said, and explained the restructuring of the laws, the rationale for the government to withhold a slightly higher percentage on income taxes, but offer breaks on other deductions. “It’s actually pretty progressive,” he explained. As he continued, he sensed they weren’t quite following what he was saying.

  Liz returned to the living room and handed him a glass of water. “Drink this,” she whispered. “No more wine, okay?” His mother sat across from him with a faint grin on her face, her eyes closed. And in the other easy chair, Brenda looked through him, an almost ghostly expression on her face. Jake rose to find a blanket or a magazine, something, anything, to give her.

  “I’m thinking of hiring an accountant this year,” Daniel explained, mentioning someone their friends had used who’d saved them thousands the year before. Just as Jake opened his mouth to suggest his own accountant, the lights in the room dimmed and Liz and Hilary drifted in from the kitchen carrying a large white cake ablaze with a ring of candles. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” and his mother added the harmony as always. Brenda didn’t open her mouth, and Daniel barely made a sound, and at the end of the song, the women stood in a cluster before his father. Everyone watched Joe gather air into his lungs and blow the breath from his body, flattening the tiny flames and turning them to dark strings of smoke.

  Jake reached forward and plucked the candles from the cake. He walked into the kitchen and stood against the counter for a moment, willing away a sudden rise of melancholy. He counted to three and thought of happy sights—his bright green lawn, Liz’s sleeping face on the pillow next to his each morning. He closed his eyes and grew a little dizzy, so he opened them, and after the dizziness had abated, after the sadness had ebbed, he walked back into the living room to rejoin his family.

  Liz was cutting the cake and Hilary handed each person a slice. Jake imagined this room full of them and their twins and Hilary’s child, three generations of Millers all together. It was a welcome image, a room brimming with energy and chatter, the excitement and bustle of children.

  *

  The light outside gradually began to dim, and after they brought their plates into the kitchen and Liz made coffee, Jake led everyone out to the back porch. The seven barely fit here—he would have it extended farther out so it could accommodate them, as well as the twins and Hilary’s child and whoever else might join the family someday. Daniel’s chair occupied at least half of the porch. Liz awkwardly perched on one arm of his chair (For God’s sake, be careful! Jake almost said. We don’t need any more accidents in this family!) and Hilary sat on the floor on the other side of him. They began a game of fish, the only game everyone knew how to play. Joe dealt the cards and Ellen reminded them of the simple rules.

  As they played, Jake kept his eyes on the low waves rolling onto the beach, the rocks tossing in the water and spilling onto the sand. The sun had dipped into the horizon, but some measure of light remained, a muted shade of apricot that seemed almost to rise from the ground. For a short while longer, they could stay out here and still see each other’s expressions—for a short while longer, it would be neither day nor night.

  The cards sat in a messy pile on the small wooden table and at one point a few of them lifted into a breeze. Jake stood to grab them before they flew too far. “Ha, got you,” he said. “Now my family’s going nowhere. I’ve got you in my hand.” He slammed the cards down on the table too hard, and the glass top of the table shook a little.

  “At least for now,” his father said, and Ellen grinned at Jake with a strange mix of pride and bewilderment.

  Brenda, seated in an Adirondack chair, lifted her knees to her chin. She carefully plucked a card from her hand and set it on the discard pile. Jake watched her face and was struck by the sudden sensation that he might not see her again. He wanted desperately to say something that would endear him to her, as well as to the rest of them. He thought of mentioning the way Daniel first described her after they’d met as “young but only in looks, and funny, and incredibly smart,” or how his own parents had met, how his father had sold his mother’s parents a car just to get to know her, or how he and Liz often talked about wanting to fly the whole family to Disney World one day. But he didn’t know Brenda well enough to sense what would win her over. She’d always remained quietly by Daniel’s side, a little unsure of where or even whether she fit into this family. Perhaps it was her age or her nationality that made her always seem almost like a stranger among them. Or perhaps it was just her desire to remain at a distance from the center of things. Whatever it was, it was a desire Jake didn’t understand at all.

  The evening grew darker and it became difficult to see the cards in the waning light. After Daniel had won (Jake had secretly slipped him the strongest hand when it was his turn to deal), everyone headed back inside. But Liz stayed to gather the cards and straighten the chairs, and Jake helped her.

  “How’re you feeling?” he asked. He reached out his hand.

  Liz took it, moved closer to him and pressed her cheek against his.

  Her face felt cool and plush, and he smelled the frosting on her breath. “I love it here,” he said. Without thinking, he reached his hand around her back and pulled her even closer, then slipped his fingers up her shirt and touched the side of her breast. She didn’t wince or swat him away. “This is okay?” he whispered, and she nodded. He wanted no more than this right now. He didn’t want anything more from her at all, and for this he was grateful.

  The two stood silently until they could no longer see the ocean and the sky had gone black. Then they turned and went inside.

  —

  They’d all said good night to each other and gone off to bed, and now Hilary found herself staring up at the ceiling of her room. Her pillow was too soft. She’d grown sweaty beneath the sheets, but once she tossed them on the floor, she became chilly. After a while she stood and wandered down the hallway and through the living room, where Daniel and Brenda lay on the fold-out sofa. Jake and Liz had insisted they take their bed, but Daniel had said the bigger ro
om would be easier for him to navigate. Hilary looked down at them and wondered whether either was really asleep right now.

  She crept past them, carefully pushed open the front door and closed it as quietly as she could behind her. The night was cool but not cold, and she could hear the distant buzz of an airplane as she stood on the front steps in her pajama pants and old T-shirt. After the buzz faded, the only sound she could hear was the waves pushing again and again onto the sand. She made her way down the driveway, cursing to herself as the sharp gravel dug into her feet. Across the street, she found a tree stump shaped like a chair. She eased herself onto it, shifting over a forked ridge near the side, and remembered the many times she ran away as a kid, when she sat high above her house in those trees. What was it that sent her away in the first place? She looked back at Jake’s dark house, everyone in their beds inside. It had always been the smallest things: her mother’s insistence that she clean her room before going to a friend’s house, Jake’s refusal to let her borrow his calculator. Each no seemed an infringement. She supposed she hadn’t changed all that much. Nothing riled her more than a boss asking her to complete a project differently than she had, or a boyfriend wanting her to drive slower. Such minor requests made her feel sewed inside a tight sheet, and now she wondered why.

  A bird squawked down by the shore, and she looked around. The road was a rich auburn, the sky the darkest maroon—everything had taken on warm colors. If a night here could be so hospitable, she thought, if people could leave their cars unlocked, if this Vanessa person was so interesting and welcoming, then this island would indeed make a good home.

  She saw a car’s headlights in the distance, and as it approached, she wondered if for some reason it was Alex. But why did she keep thinking of this person who undoubtedly had a girlfriend, or maybe a few? Soon enough he would become just another part of her past. Her future was the baby, herself and an entirely new life.