Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

  I remember every detail of that day, and no one ever told me about it. There is no one I could have gotten my information from. My sister was gone, my brother Pat would not be born for another week. For the only time in my life, for a few short days, for the wrong reasons, I was the only McLaughlin child. During that time no one spoke to me. My parents were so shocked and numb, they were not aware I was in the house with them. Willie shushed my tears. The deaths in my family, as well as the births, were occurrences that carried a warning with them. They all happened in slow motion, steeped in silence and disapproval. There was the sense that this should not be witnessed. And, if witnessed, should never be spoken of again. Birth and death were too common, too raw, for my self-made father and my properly raised mother. They were beneath our family; their messiness cheated us out of perfection. Death was of course the worse of the two, and it put a terrible pressure on those who survived to make up for what should not have happened.

  My sister’s death marked me, both with a sense of shame that I drew from my parents, and with an indelible memory. When she was a little girl, Lila used to wonder aloud who she might have gotten her memory from. I never spoke up and told her that it was me. I wanted to tell her, but somehow I couldn’t. It is a secret I have never shared with anyone, and it is also my curse. I watched with wonder and admiration as Lila grew up touting her memory as a great gift. She used it in school to get top grades. She used it in card games to beat her friends. She used her memory at every step of her life in order to be the best. Until I watched my daughter, it had never even occurred to me to utilize my memory to my own gain. It is something I have always worked to deny, push away, hide, ignore. My memory brings me pain, because everything reminds me of everything. Everything is connected. All it takes is a glimpse, a flash of color, a smell, and I am taken into the past.

  A fall day with the colorful leaves turning belly up to a stiff breeze reminds me of going clothes shopping with my mother. The six McLaughlin children would line up in age order (me carrying a list of what each child needed as well as their most recent measurements, Pat in charge of carrying pads of paper and crayons to entertain the smaller children) and we’d follow our mother through the department store until every last pair of pants, skirts, underwear, socks, and shoes had been bought.

  A glass of scotch reminds me of my father walking carefully into the dining room, his hands reaching for the walls for balance, starting in on Pat before he has even taken his seat.

  The first day of school each year reminds me of dropping Gracie off at kindergarten and her crying silently, tears running down her face, her small head bowed when I refuse to give her another hug good-bye.

  Bright blue winter skies remind me of the day I married Louis, and the way my hands shook as I walked down the aisle, dropping petals from my bouquet of white roses.

  Horses remind me of a teenaged Lila in competition, her jaw fixed, her face locked in an expression of such intensity that once the event ended, even if she’d won, it took time to relax.

  Many things remind me of the day my sister died. A toddler with white-blond hair. My mother’s strong hands, folded in her lap now or gripping her purse after years of raising, holding, bathing, carrying children. My brother Pat’s pale eyes. Lila bragging about her memory, which makes me think about mine, which leads me to think about my first memory. I have no choice but to remember.

  My sister’s crying woke me that morning. I watched her through the bars of my crib. She sat bolt upright in her bed a few feet from me, her hands cupping her throat as if she were trying to protect it from something. “Water,” she said. My mother appeared in the doorway, tying her robe around what was left of her waist since she was eight months pregnant. “Shush now. Your father is sleeping.” Mother looked angry, and my sister hid under her pillow. I went back to sleep. Later, after Father left for work, my sister was curled in a ball on the living-room couch. She whimpered, and my mother sat next to her, her hand on the child’s forehead. Give her water, I wanted to say, but I wasn’t able to speak in sentences yet. My sister looked very hot, and I knew that for some reason she could no longer speak for herself. “I can’t,” my mother said, as if she had heard my thought. “You have to let a fever burn itself out. No fluids. That’s what Dr. O’Malley said.”

  My mother left us to straighten up the bedrooms and wash the breakfast dishes. While she was gone I watched my sister and her fever burn themselves out. I sat on the floor penned by a square of wooden posts. I ignored my toys. For one minute my close attention paid off— my sister made a face at me. She stuck out her tongue and waggled her hands by her ears and I laughed. This was our own private game, a secret from Mother and Father. Some nights she and I did not go to sleep when we were supposed to. My sister would turn on the light and stand on her bed and make her funny faces while I giggled in my crib.

  But after that one face my sister didn’t look at me anymore. Her eyes closed and her face swelled up and she began to make a strange cough in the back of her throat. Mother came back into the room, wiping her hands on her apron, saw my sister, and said, “Dear Lord.” She ran over to the couch. I had never seen my mother run before, and being as pregnant as she was, it was a worrying sight. She gathered my sister up in her arms, turned toward me, and yelled, “Willie.” I had never heard my mother yell before, either. Willie didn’t appear, and my mother ran across the room to me, my sister quiet in her arms. With difficulty, Mother leaned over the fence, and I put my arms out to be picked up. My mother hesitated, then said, “Not now, Kelly. Be good for Mother.” Then she and my sister left the room, the garage door slammed, and the house roared with silence. I waited, perfectly still, for a monster to come and eat me, because that seemed like a completely viable end to this strange morning.

  But instead Willie came back, and when she saw me in my cage all alone, she began to bawl, which made me bawl, too. After Willie fed me lunch, my mother and sister came home, which made me cry again, this time with relief, because I thought they had left me for good. But my sister’s skin was bluish now and she was even more swelled up, and when I called her name, she didn’t hear me. My mother took her into our bedroom, so I couldn’t see what was going on. My father came home in the middle of the day and he ran, too, from the kitchen to the bedroom. Then Dr. O’Malley arrived with his black bag in his hand. No one paid any attention to me. I sat in my cage and banged and rattled my toys until they were taken away.

  Late in the afternoon it got dark in the house, but it was a long time before anyone thought to turn on the lights. My parents stopped running. Everything grew still and silent. They must have taken my sister out through the front door, because I never saw her again. My father walked in and sat down in his leather chair. He sobbed loudly while he drank a big glass of a liquid the same color as his tears. I thought that was what he was doing, drinking his own tears. The tears seemed to refill the glass as fast as he could gulp them down, and as hard as he could cry. And nobody told me, not my father with his glass of tears, not my mother with her hand on her swollen stomach, that in that afternoon I had become an only child.

  This is my first memory. I have wondered, from time to time, what Lila’s first memory is. I wonder how early her remembered life began. It is a comfort to me to know it could not have been anything nearly as unpleasant as mine. My daughters have experienced very little death. They grew up in a happy family, with two stable parents. They had all the clothes and food and money they needed and then some. They did not have to deal with alcoholism or child abuse, or any tragic events. I have managed to give my daughters much more than my parents gave me. And I have spared them a lot, too. Any fights Louis and I had while Gracie and Lila lived at home took place after they were asleep. When the girls fought, I steered them away from each other. When they upset me, I told them so, and then we moved on.

  I do not understand why, after this placid and pleasant upbringing, my daughters are angry at me. How can they be so unfair? Do they not recognize everythin
g I’ve given them? I’m not asking them to thank me, for God’s sake. I just want them to be something more than civil. I want to know why I am their enemy and their father is their friend. I want them to be my friends, now that I don’t have to parent them anymore. Now that they’ve grown up.

  AFTER MY mother’s car accident I called Lila and Gracie, but no one answered the phone. I left a message on Gracie’s machine. It has been three days now and no one has returned my call. This fact is just one more thing that makes a shitty afternoon at work even worse. A little voice in my head says, Just get out of here. So I do, I leave work early. Sarah asks if I am feeling okay, and Giles just stares. God, it makes me feel good, marching out of there with my briefcase, making my own rules. I am the boss, after all. I don’t act like it often enough. I chain myself to my desk because I know I can’t trust anyone to do the work as well as I can.

  In the parking lot I close my briefcase in the trunk and put the top down on my BMW. It’s not quite warm out, but the sky is blue and with the heater on I am fine. I decide to take the long way home, winding aimlessly across Ramsey until it occurs to me to visit my daughters. It’s not something I normally do, but I know that my mother used to drop by Gracie’s house and even Lila’s dorm room whenever she felt like it. Maybe I’ve been hanging back too much in my relationship with the girls; perhaps it’s time for me to be more aggressive. I resist calling ahead. After all, I’m their mother. I can just show up, can’t I? The idea makes me smile into the wind.

  I turn up the radio. The Beach Boys come on with “California Girls.” I know all the words, and sing along. I feel light, carefree, young. It is so rare for my mind to unclench, for the worrying to stop. I am grateful when it does; I appreciate these moments. I don’t want the song to end. I pass Ramsey High School, the post office, my gynecologist’s office. I pass the road that leads to the Municipal Building, and beyond that, to my brother Ryan’s apartment. I sing loudly right up until I pull into Holly Court and into Gracie’s driveway. When the Beach Boys’ harmony dies away, I turn off the car engine and take off my sunglasses. I look up, and Gracie is standing in front of the car, her arms loose at her sides. She must have just gotten home. She looks beautiful, so grown up.

  “Gracie,” I say, laughing, “don’t squint like that. It makes you look like an old lady.”

  “What’s wrong? Is it Gram?”

  I get out of the car with difficulty. I love my BMW, but it is so low to the ground that it’s a challenge to get out and still be ladylike. I keep smiling, but I heard the chill in my daughter’s voice, and now I have to work at it. “Nothing’s wrong. Can’t a mother stop by and visit her kids?”

  Gracie’s face relaxes a little. “Of course. It’s just that you never do.”

  “Well, perhaps I should have called first. God knows I hate it when people just show up at my house.” We are standing facing each other.

  “Yours and Dad’s.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “It’s not just your house. It’s yours and Dad’s.”

  My shoulders drop. I can’t win.

  “I’m sorry,” Gracie says. “I’m just having this really weird day and then you scared me showing up like that.”

  I try not to sound affronted. “I certainly didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Please don’t be overdramatic. I’d like to go inside and change. Do you mind?”

  I think, I can fix this. I say, “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you keep that lovely suit on? You could put on nicer shoes and then we could all go out to dinner—you, me, and Lila. What do you think about that idea?” I touch her arm lightly, then bend down. Something has caught my eye. “What is that on your pants? Is that chocolate? What in the world—How did you get melted candy on yourself?” I scrape at the fabric with my thumbnail.

  “Mother!” Gracie takes a long step away from me.

  I straighten up. “You should soak those pants in cool water and take them to the dry cleaners first thing tomorrow morning. I bought you that suit, you’ll remember. You need to take better care of it.”

  Gracie is hugging her waist. Her jacket bunches in the shoulders. She looks small and pale and, with the chocolate stain on her knee, like a child wearing grown-up’s clothes. She shakes her head. “How is Gram? Have you seen her since the accident?”

  “I went to visit her the other day. She seems fine. A little quiet, maybe, but I think she was still shaken up. She asked me to pick up Ryan and bring him to Easter. Normally she would have brought him with her. But it’s understandable that she would feel less comfortable driving now.”

  “She said she feels uncomfortable driving?”

  “Not in so many words. But I’d be happy to know she was off of the road. She’s getting too old, Gracie, and her balance is shaky at best. Her giving up driving is the next logical step.”

  “Toward what?”

  “We’ll get her a driver when she needs to go somewhere, and they have a shuttle that runs into town every afternoon at the assisted-living center. It’ll be fine. She’ll be safe.”

  “She’ll die.”

  I sigh. “Nobody’s talking about dying. Your grandmother will outlive us all.”

  Something ripples across Gracie’s face. I notice again how pale she is. She has such nice skin. Lila had blemishes as a teenager, but Gracie’s skin was always smooth.

  “I don’t feel well, Mom. I think I caught some kind of bug. I need to go inside now. I’m sorry. Thanks for stopping by, though.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, can I help you? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  But Gracie is out of earshot before all the words are out of my mouth. She is half-jogging across the top of the driveway and then around the side of the house. She doesn’t glance back before she disappears. And I am very aware, as I get back into the BMW, that Gracie never, during the course of our conversation, either responded to my dinner invitation or invited me inside.

  WHEN I get home, Louis is not there. This is not a surprise. He is rarely home now. He has three shirts and a pair of his khakis hanging in the closet in the den. There are clean, rolled-up socks in the pants pockets. He comes upstairs only to shave and shower in the morning. In some way this situation didn’t seem real to me until last week when our housekeeper, Julia, said, “Mrs. Kelly, do you want me to put Mr. Louis’s clean shorts in the den, or upstairs in his drawer?”

  I was livid. How dare she? I simply pretended I didn’t hear her. I turned my back and waited until she left the room. She didn’t mention it again, and she put his shorts upstairs. But now I am nervous all the time. What if one of the girls or, God forbid, my mother stops by and Julia says something to them? This is no one’s business but mine and Louis’s.

  I need to do something to make Louis go back to the way he was before. For God’s sake, there is no reason he can’t sleep beside me in our king-sized bed while he goes through whatever he’s going through. All I want right now is some semblance of normal, the keeping up of appearances. The house feels cold and drafty at night, no matter how many blankets I pile on the bed. We continue to leave notes for each other on the kitchen table, but now those are nearly the only words that pass between us. I have not changed, but Louis has, and it is time for him to change back. He’s not keeping up his end of our deal, and he’s crazy if he thinks I’ll let him end our marriage. There are divorced women in my women’s reading group, and they are angry and bitter. I will not fail like they have. I have no intention of getting a divorce.

  It is the thought of my reading group that gives me a great idea.

  Since Louis seems unable to engage with me lately, perhaps he needs a friend. He might be more comfortable sharing his feelings with another man, one of his peers. I’m excited when I come up with this; I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me sooner. I’ve gotten so much out of talking to the women in my group, but Louis doesn’t have that kind of male support system in his life. He has lived his life with his two daughters and me. He’s been surrounded by
women. Male camaraderie is what’s missing from his life. That’s probably why he misses that young man so badly. A frank conversation with a friend will shake him out of the state he’s in.

  I drive to the mayor’s barbershop feeling very strong. I have found the answer. Now I just need to get the ball rolling.

  “Hi Vince,” I say as I walk through the door. “Do you cut women’s hair?”

  The mayor turns around in a slow circle, as if I’ve caught him deep in thought and it’s taking him a minute to come out of it. He is alone in the shop, cleaning his comb with a white cloth. His old Chow, who I somehow remember is named Chastity, is sleeping in the corner.

  “Kelly?” Vince gives a big smile. “How nice to see you! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  I have never been in this shop before, although I’ve driven by it, even walked by it, countless times. It is a single room with three barber chairs, three mirrors, and wood-paneled walls. There is a counter with an old-fashioned cash register. The entire scene looks dusty and dark, even though it’s a beautiful sunny day outside.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” I say. “But I need a trim, too, so I thought if I could do both at once, it would be the most efficient use of both of our time. If you cut women’s hair, that is.”

  I admit, I get a little charge from saying this. I’m making this up as I go along, and that is very unusual for me. I didn’t know I was going to ask for the haircut. For fifteen years I have had my hair styled at an upscale salon in Ridgewood by an Asian woman named Linda. And I’ve prided myself on never talking about what goes on in my family, outside of my family. Yet here I am, asking a barber to cut my hair, wanting to talk to him about my husband. It’s true, I tell myself, that desperate times call for desperate measures.