Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

  Tonight we bend over the cookies and focus on decorating. We pass around the different colors of frosting, try to stay within the lines of the cookies, and dot M&M’s where the rabbit’s nose and mouth should be.

  There is still laughter rising and falling out on the porch when my father and Uncle Travis come inside for more beer. “You guys sure do take your work seriously,” Dad says. He rests his hand on my shoulder as he leans over to inspect the cookies. Travis picks up the egg-shaped cookie Mary has just spent twenty minutes decorating and bites it in half.

  “Mmm,” he says, his mouth full. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

  “Right?” John says, and laughs with a sound of relief. He pushes his chair away from the table with his long arms and stands up. He seems to be shaking off the somberness of us girl-cousins and the faraway laughter on the porch. “Oh man,” he says, “I can’t take all this sitting still.”

  “I wanted to show that cookie to Gram,” Mary says, looking down at her hands. “That was my best one yet.”

  Uncle Travis, who is not a bad guy, just an insensitive drunk, shrugs. “Sorry, kiddo. Hey, Doc, any new ideas on my bad knee? It’s killing me these days.”

  “You need surgery.”

  “Nah. I’m looking for an option that doesn’t require a knife. I’m not the kind of wacko who signs up to have himself cut open, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “No? What kind of wacko are you?”

  Gracie hits me in the arm, but Uncle Travis just laughs. “You’re ballsy, girl.”

  John laughs, too, trying to wedge himself into the banter. “Hey, funny. Listen, Uncle Travis, how about if I have a beer? Just one? Mom won’t care.”

  My father’s hand presses down harder on my shoulder. Meggy and Theresa are close, meaning that Theresa lets Meggy boss her around on a daily basis. It also means that Travis has been the one steady man in John and Mary’s lives. He is almost a father to them, the emphasis on almost. My dad would like to step in here and tell John he can’t have a beer; I can feel that through the weight of his hand, but he can’t speak up because he has no right. He only sees John once or twice a year. He is a barely known uncle, and nothing more.

  “Sure, John, but just one.” Uncle Travis hands John a can with a wink.

  This is one of those moments when we are painfully, clearly, different. Different tastes, different manners, different socioeconomic classes. Everyone in the room feels it, and is uncomfortable. It is nearly impossible to believe that we belong to the same family, until we hear Gram’s voice at the door. The sound turns each of our heads, wraps us all together, puts us back into our proper places. Under the sound of her voice, we are again, simply and only, Catharine McLaughlin’s children, sons and daughters-in-law, grandchildren.

  “It’s getting cold out there,” Gram says. “Do you mind if I join you?”

  AND WITH THIS, the third and final phase of the family gathering begins. Gram’s children follow her into the house, and a chill has fallen over their clothes and faces. They have apparently left the childhood stories behind; perhaps one among them has already turned mean. The people who are going to get drunk are well on their way.

  We uncover the cold dinner the caterers left on the dining-room table: a cooked ham, fruit salad, macaroni salad, potato salad, loaves of bread, and miniature sandwiches. We put out large paper plates, with real utensils. Papa couldn’t stand to eat with a plastic fork and knife, and we still always use real utensils. With the plates loaded with food, we sit scattered around the living room and eat off our laps. I try to figure out who has been drinking too much, because that roster always changes. This time, I choose Mom first, because her cheeks are red, and she keeps looking up from her plate with a stupid grin. She gets emotional when she is drunk, and sentimental is always the first stop. My suspicion is confirmed when she crosses the room for another serving of macaroni salad and stops to squeeze Gracie’s shoulder and mine.

  “I just want to thank you girls for throwing such a wonderful party for the family,” she whispers, just loudly enough so that everyone hears her.

  Gracie and I smile and nod politely. Everyone knows we did not throw this party. We reluctantly agreed to let it take place here, and that was only because Gram asked. I just hope everyone knows that we know our true involvement and that we don’t think we’re any better than we are. I hope they know that I wanted this gathering to take place anywhere but here. I want that now more than ever because I have stumbled upon yet another unexpected negative. Watching the family sit where I have been living, breathe beer and wine into my air, crisscross my space, put my forks into their mouths, has made the usual identity crisis—the question of who am I this year with these people compared to who I was last year and how much do I have in common with these men and women who share my blood—even more acute. It does not help that Gracie has removed herself and left me alone. It also does not help to know that my memory will undoubtedly brand this day, and this sight, into my brain. I will not ever be able to walk into this house without thinking of this onslaught of McLaughlins and the shaky way it has made me feel. Thank God I am moving out. Thank God it is soon.

  “Ryan, why aren’t you eating?” Theresa asks.

  Ryan is sitting in his wheelchair with his hands folded, pointedly not touching his plate. “Nobody said grace. I refuse to eat food that has not been blessed. Something terrible is bound to happen.”

  This stops most of us, forks in the air, mouths full.

  “Goodness,” Gram says, “you’re right, Ryan. Please, someone say grace.”

  “Grace,” John says, and gives an open-mouthed laugh that falls off in the middle when he realizes no one else is amused. He follows up quickly with, “Dina was smoking out front.”

  “She most certainly was not,” Meggy says, without even looking at her daughter.

  “That’s right,” Dina says, reeking of Marlboro Lights.

  “I’ll say grace,” Pat says.

  Everyone sits up straight. Mom points her goofy grin right at him and I watch her eyes fill with tears.

  “Lord, please bless this food and bless this family. Amen.”

  “That’s my brother, man of few words,” Johnny says, and I put him on the drunk list, too. I imagine that with all the antidepressants he’s on, he probably doesn’t have to do much imbibing to get a buzz.

  “Pat said all that needed to be said,” Gram says. “Son, you do remind me of your father.”

  Gram spoke with a gentle air of apology, but Pat still took the comment hard. No one else would have been able to tell, but our years of family gatherings have boiled down to hours of studying one another locked in either awkward silence or awkward conversation. We all watch Pat’s shoulders draw back. We know he will leave soon. The party is just about over.

  Gram puts her plate down on the floor beside her foot. She has seen the sign, too. She’d better say what she has to say before her audience disperses. “While you all finish your meal, and before we eat the lovely cookies my grandchildren have made, I’d like to say a few words.” She folds her hands in her lap. “I want to thank each of you for coming. It has been a few years since we’ve all been together as a complete group, and this gathering was important to me. I think it is important for us as a family. Since Patrick died our family has drifted—”

  With the mention of Papa’s name, whatever is frozen in Pat freezes a little deeper. Perched on the folding chair, he looks as if you’d have to use an ice pick to get at anything living inside him. This unnerves me, because I suddenly realize that I have this tendency in myself. I know I have looked like Pat does right now, frozen and locked away, unreachable. I know that deep in there he probably feels smug and safe. But he’s wrong. He’s not safe; he’s dead. I don’t want to look like that. I don’t want to be sitting like a Popsicle on a folding chair in the middle of this family when I am fifty, completely alone, with no kids and no husbands who stick.

  “Are you all right?” Gracie whispers.

 
; I look down and see that my knees are shaking. My legs look like they want to dance. I shake my head, neither affirmative nor negative.

  Gram says, “I want that drifting to stop. If I have to continue to force you all to come together like I did this time, I will. But there will come a time when I won’t be here, and you’ll have to gather, or disband, on your own.”

  “I knew Mom was sick,” Theresa says in a shrill voice.

  “You don’t need to talk like this, Mother,” Mom says, but whereas Theresa sounded scared, Mom sounds annoyed.

  I stare at my knees. I watch them shake, and wonder what I should do to make them stop.

  “I am not sick,” Gram says. “But I am an old woman. I have been fortunate to live for as long as I have. I’m not trying to upset you children. I just need to tell you what it is that I want.”

  “What do you want, Mother?” Ryan looks prepared to get up out of his wheelchair and give it to her.

  “I want this family to come back together. I want us to know each other, and to help each other. I think it is very important, especially now that we have a new baby on the way.”

  This stops my knees from dancing. I look up. I feel the ripple of wonder and curiosity pass around the room, from folding chair to folding chair. Gracie’s fingernails bite into my arm.

  The mood in the room changes. Everyone looks—gradually, unbelievably—hopeful. Mom’s grin lurks around the corners of her mouth. Pat’s eyes are blue again; there has been a slight thaw. Theresa balances herself on the edge of the couch. Dina has lost her bored smirk. I see the McLaughlins’ thinking, collectively, with wonder, A new baby.

  Gram goes on. “This child is a second chance for us as a family. I want to get together every holiday from now on, and maybe once a month as well. If that seems like too much, then perhaps once a season would suffice.”

  No one is listening to Gram. All they care about now is if she spoke the truth. She doesn’t sound like herself—did the car accident knock her into senility? Who could be pregnant?

  Eyes dart from face to face. I can practically hear their thoughts. Kelly is too old, it can’t be her. Meggy? She is forty-six, so it is possible, but very unlikely. Theresa and Angel are only forty-one, though. If Angel is the one who is pregnant, it will be a miracle. In fact, it is common knowledge that she and Johnny have recently, finally, given up trying to have a baby.

  Along the lines of this heart-pounding, eyes-darting reasoning, Theresa seems to be the most likely candidate. But Theresa is nearly single. Uncle Jack is a traveling salesman and is almost never home. No one in the family has seen him for over a year, and even Meggy is not sure when he last slept in his own bed, because Theresa lies about him. She makes up romantic dinners that never happened, and nights spent together as a family: just her, Jack, and the two kids playing Scrabble. No one, not even Meggy, has the heart to ask Mary and John to corroborate their mother’s stories.

  The aunts’ and uncles’ knowing nods turn to puzzled looks. There is no one else it could be. The new baby, the first McLaughlin born in fourteen years, seems less and less possible. They don’t even think to look to the next generation. None of us are married. As far as our parents and aunts and uncles are concerned, we are still teenagers. We haven’t earned adulthood. My mother and her brothers and sisters don’t notice that Gracie’s cheeks have flushed red and that there is sweat on her forehead and that she is holding on to me like a boat passenger who suddenly believes the ship is about to go down. They don’t, even in the backs of their minds, even in their wildest thoughts, even in their least Catholic moments, think that it could possibly be one of the cousins, one of the next generation, one of the children.

  Finally Meggy interrupts Gram, who has continued to expound on the symbolism of this new baby, and Easter, and a rebirth for the McLaughlins.

  “Ma,” Meggy says, “who’s having a baby?”

  Gracie’s fingernails have now passed through my skin and my flesh and are burrowing into my very bones. I try to think of a way to help, but between my still-weak knees and my sister’s hold on me, I have been pulled to the edge of the cliff with her. I feel lucky I can breathe. I just want to make it out of this room alive, away from my burning-hot sister and my frozen uncle and the rest of these strange characters who share my history and my holidays and my genes. But I know that the odds of any of us making it out of this moment unscathed are slim. This moment is going to roll this family over on its back like a helpless animal, arms and legs waving in the air.

  Gram looks at Meggy as if she is slow. As if she should know the answer to this question already. As if we all should. “Why,” she says, in her familiar, nuts-and-bolts voice, “it’s Gracie.”

  Part Two

  GRACIE

  I stand in front of the mirror and look at my swollen belly, pushed out with five months of life, and try to picture my grandmother like this. Gram still has the same blue eyes, the same straight spine and haughty chin, but the young woman I conjure also has strong bones, smooth cheeks, and my mother or one of my aunts or uncles curled up inside of her. Gram looks happy in my mirror, confident and sure. She appears to belong to her body. There is a sense of a full life in her, so much so that it spills out beyond the lines of her skin, her eyes, her belly. I look behind her expecting to see my grandfather walk up with a question or a complaint, or to see one of her small children bump into her knees. But no one appears. My grandmother stands alone, her hands cup her stomach, her eyes meet mine.

  When I try to measure up to Gram, I am left staring at my own reflection. My body looks small, and the bulge in my front ridiculous. I see only deficiencies: skin too pale, no sexuality in this body; it has been sapped away. There is not a drop of moisture, of saliva, of juice. I have spent the last two months drying out. The doctor says I haven’t gained enough weight, but my hips and butt have widened until I don’t recognize them as my own.

  Easter night, after my family left with my mother crying, her head averted so she would not have to see me, I wanted so badly to go to the Green Trolley. It was all I could think about. Lila had left, too, and she stayed out all night. I was completely alone in the house. The quiet around me rang with the earlier silence and the looks, the question of, Who did this to you? I heard my cousin John tell Dina that he’d heard I got around. Meggy murmured that this family became less with every generation. Pat pretended he hadn’t heard anything; he just kissed Gram on the cheek and walked out of the house. Mary was praying silently on one side of the room while Ryan prayed loudly on the other. Gram appeared confused by the tumult, and then increasingly unhappy and tired as she measured everyone else’s reactions against her own. Mom and Dad looked sick to their stomachs, their mouths loose as they tried to figure out what to say.

  All I’d wanted was to feel a man’s hands on me. I wanted lips on mine and skin that I could reach and follow and own. I wanted that kind of oblivion, the delicious kind, the powerful kind. I wanted it so badly my entire body ached. But the general announcement of my condition seemed to make that impossible. For the first time, it occurred to me that I might be physically undesirable. I had never considered the idea that being pregnant might affect my sex life. But what would a man think when a woman who had even the faintest mound to her belly came on to him? He would wonder if I was looking for a husband and father, not a lover. My body would suggest more than I wanted it to. There would be questions, concerns, emotions—nothing I had ever asked for when I stepped up to the bar and checked out the room.

  I didn’t go to the Green Trolley Easter night, and I haven’t gone there since. I haven’t had sex, or anything even approaching sex, in over two months. That is the longest I have been celibate since I was sixteen years old. I don’t know what this dearth is doing to me. I feel like my only option is to wait and see. Wait and see what happens, wait and see how it all turns out. I am waiting, specifically, for someone to tell me what to do. I am hoping someone will say, This is how you will make everything right.

 
; I have been keeping quiet and staying in the house. I have given myself over to the ebb and flow of everyone else’s reaction to my situation. That is how I tell time now. I have lost track of hours, mealtimes, and days of the week. I am listening too hard, waiting too intently, to pay attention to those kinds of logistics. Instead, several soft, quiet days will blur together into one, into waking and eating and going through letters looking for people who are worse off than me.

  I had one phone conversation with my mother about my situation, and since then she has left a few breezy “I’m on my way out the door, just checking in to make sure you’re okay” messages on the answering machine when she guessed or hoped I wouldn’t be home.

  The one real conversation we had was very short, and as with all of my worst conversations with my mother, it twisted and poked and yanked at every nerve in my body.

  She called me clearly in tears. There was a big, watery gulp before there were any words, and then she said, “Do you think this is my fault, Gracie? Is it something I did or didn’t do?”

  “No, Mom. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Of course it does, don’t say that. I didn’t even know you were involved with that young man . . . Joel. Can I ask—”