Whenever I am in my car I go out of my way to drive down Main Street. I pass the hardware store at a slow crawl and look up at Weber’s apartment. During the daytime it is difficult for me to tell if he’s home because the sun is so bright that he has to be standing directly in front of his window for me to be sure. I can check to see if his truck is parked in back, and sometimes I do, but that isn’t a foolproof method of detection. Weber often walks to the firehouse, plus he has this ridiculous habit of lending his truck to anyone who asks to borrow it.
At night it is easier. I just have to look for a light in the window. I have to hope he is in there alone. I know he might not be. After all, he picked me up at the Green Trolley and brought me home even though he disliked me at the time. Now he dislikes me again, so why wouldn’t he bring home a new girl? Is he saying “Waka waka” into someone else’s ear? I know that he hates sleeping alone. When he wakes up in the middle of the night, he automatically starts talking, and he likes to have someone there to listen.
I have wondered, sitting in my car parked on the side of Main Street, if seeing me for who I really was depressed Weber. I wondered if he cared enough to feel that intensely about me. I can’t be sure that I made that much of an impact on him. Weber is so sure and complete in himself, with his crazy ideas and his beliefs and his enjoyment of life. I think that to him I was just company, sex, and a sparring partner. He grew more sure of himself, more pleased with himself, less needful of anyone else, in the face of my relative cynicism.
Besides, there’s another reason he could not possibly have cared as much as it turned out I did. The trick is that I don’t have a choice. Since the fire, I have cared more every minute. There is no escaping my memory, and now I know that I was right all those years to avoid anything verging on a relationship, to push the boys away before there was even a chance of one getting close. Because now, with Weber, I remember word for word every conversation we had. I remember everywhere we went, every street we drove down. I remember each time we made love and how the sheets rubbed against my skin and how warm or cold the air was. I remember exactly how it felt when he touched me here, and there, and the goose bumps it gave me when he kissed me in that place. I remember the light in his face after the fire. Every second, every moment is tattooed into my brain.
I need to restart my life and try to experience it this time around. I need to figure out what makes my face light up, and then try to make money doing it. The catch is that I am not good at the here and now. I tried to get out of my car and walk up to Weber’s apartment and approach him, but I couldn’t. It took me two weeks to come up with the idea of sending him the shower invitation with Gram’s return address. I can only hope there aren’t disastrous results.
I TRAIL through my parents’ house wishing there was something for me to do. Something to keep me occupied until Weber either does or does not show up. I spot a crumpled-up napkin under the kitchen table and make a dive for it. I squeeze it in the palm of my hand while I cross the room. I smile at myself, because this level of excitement over this small a task is pathetic. I stop by the garbage pail and drop the napkin into the bag. Even the garbage bins are empty in this house.
“Mom?” I yell. I heard the shower water turn off a few minutes earlier.
“Yes?” Her voice comes from upstairs at the far end of the hall. “Is someone here already? It’s too early!”
“No one’s here. Is there anything I can do to help get ready?”
“To help?” Her voice is closer now. She appears in the kitchen doorway. She is wearing a polka-dot sundress with a belted waist. It’s a dress I haven’t seen before. It looks like a dress from a past era. Occasionally, like now, the sight of my mother is a surprise. I forget that she is in her fifties. I can see the blueprint for her face as an old woman etched in the lines around her eyes and mouth. Someday it will be my responsibility to take care of her in the same way she is now taking care of Gram.
She glances over the kitchen. She looks distracted. “There must be something you can do. Why not take out the cheese platter, so the cheese can soften.”
I go to the refrigerator and take out the plastic catering tray. I take off the lid and place it on the counter. Then my mother and I are left staring at each other again. I can’t think of anything safe to talk about. I have no intention of telling her about medical school today. I won’t drop that bombshell until I have a new life plan to present at the same time.
“Where’s Dad?”
“Buying ice at the supermarket.” Mom gives a small half-smile and says, “Do you know what today is?”
It is August 2, which is her and my father’s wedding anniversary, but I’m sure she isn’t referring to that. My parents haven’t done much to acknowledge or celebrate their anniversary the last few years, and from the way I’ve seen them treat each other lately, I doubt this is the year they’d choose to draw attention to the event. My mother is probably thinking of something corny, like it is the first day in our family’s relationship with the new baby. She has been on a sappy streak since she told me about this shower and asked me to help. She has tears in her eyes right now.
She says, “It’s your father’s and my anniversary.”
“Happy Anniversary,” I say. I wait to see if there’s more.
She sighs heavily, as if I am trying her patience. “I want today to go really well. Can you please help me make that happen?”
That’s what I want, too. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll try.”
GRAM AND Nurse Ballen arrive first. It is strange to see Gram make her way across the lawn with a walker. It is slow, unsteady work, and Nurse Ballen keeps her hand on the small of Gram’s back. It occurs to me that this is part of what I didn’t like about medicine. I don’t want to put my hand on a stranger’s back. I don’t want to ease a patient through a slow recovery or a slow descent. I am not interested in slow, period.
I watch the sluggish course of Gram and her nurse with something that feels like regret in the pit of my stomach. “Go help them,” my mother hisses. We are both standing awkwardly at the door. Gram has not been here since before her fall, since she was well and able to walk briskly on her own. This is a new sight for us.
“They don’t need my help,” I say, and go back in the house. I am sure Gram doesn’t want my mother and me watching as she maneuvers the three front steps.
I kiss Gram on the cheek once she is safely inside. “What’s up with you?” I say.
She smiles at my informal speech, as I knew she would. Then she looks me over. I haven’t been to see her for a few weeks. She nods at my sundress, then turns her attention to my face. Her eyes scour mine. This is the kind of attention Gram used to show me on a regular basis, before she became preoccupied, first with Gracie’s baby and then with her own health after her fall. It makes me realize how much I have missed being truly seen.
I am not surprised when her response to the once-over is to ask, “How’s school?”
“School’s school,” I say.
“And your classes at the hospital with Gracie?”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“I miss being in the hospital on a daily basis,” Nurse Ballen says. “The hustle and bustle.”
Gram nods in Nurse Ballen’s direction. She says, “You’ll be back there soon enough.”
Her tone is light, and strangely intimate, as if she and this nurse already have inside jokes and shared inferences. Could Gram possibly be joking about her death? All of this seems unlikely, as Gram isn’t a joker and it’s not like her to take the time to get to know someone outside of the family. Even within the family, she has her favorites, her own hierarchy of those deserving attention.
As if she hears my thoughts, Gram says, “I’m so glad you are doing this for your sister, Lila. She’s always needed more help than you.”
I know I made it look that way. But it wasn’t true. It isn’t true.
My mother’s voice rings out from the kitchen. “Lila, did you a
sk everyone what they would like to drink? Tell them we have wine, lemonade, iced tea, Crystal Light, and sodas.”
I look at Gram and Nurse Ballen. Gram is seated in the big armchair that used to be Papa’s. Nurse Ballen and I are both standing. I say, “We have wine, lemonade, iced tea, Crystal Light, and sodas.”
They both request lemonade, and I head into the kitchen. By the time I walk back out, Meggy and Angel are here. Then, a moment later, Theresa and Mary pull up. I watch each of the women bend down over the sides of the old armchair and kiss Gram. My aunts have dark circles under their eyes and the look of women who only had time to blow-dry part of their hair that morning. I walk to and from the window and watch the street outside.
Meggy says, “Dina was sorry she couldn’t make it today.”
Mary arranges herself into a cross-legged position on the couch and then gives an uncharacteristic laugh. “Yeah, she’d rather be here than in Sunday double detention.”
I look my cousin over. There is something different about her appearance, but it takes me a minute to pick out what it is. She is only wearing one tiny cross instead of her usual three heavy ones. I wonder if Mary is lightening up.
Theresa says, “Has anyone talked to Ryan today? We should stop in and visit him on the way home.”
“That place is crawling with weirdos,” Meggy says. “There was an old man who introduced himself as Dr. Kevorkian when I visited. It’s not somewhere I want to spend a lot of time.”
“Your brother is getting help there,” Gram says. “He’s making friends, which is something he never had, not even as a little boy. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
This shuts everyone up. I swipe a carrot stick through the onion dip and stick it in my mouth. I watch Mary untangle herself from her cross-legged position on the couch. She puts a cracker, some cheese, and a few olives on a napkin and then curls back up in her corner.
My mother calls out from the kitchen, “Gracie should be here any minute.”
Meggy says, “You let her drive here by herself? Shouldn’t someone have picked her up? It’s not exactly safe to be behind the wheel in your ninth month.”
“That’s true,” Angel says. “The belly is too close to the steering wheel at that stage.”
Theresa says, “Jack never let me drive when I was pregnant. He forbade it.”
“Sure, when he was home,” Meggy says. “But what about when he was out God knows where doing God knows what and you had to get to the supermarket?”
“Careful with the name of the Lord,” Gram says.
“Don’t say those things in front of Mary,” Theresa says.
“Mary is old enough to hear the truth.”
Mary looks as if she might have something to say for herself, but my mother cuts her off. Her voice is a combination of flustered and defensive. “Gracie is twenty-nine years old. I can’t forbid her to do anything. What do you expect me to do, be her chauffeur?”
She looks at Meggy nervously, as if she half-expects the answer to be yes.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Gracie’s not coming here alone. Grayson’s with her, so he’ll probably drive.”
There is a muffled hum in the room as the women absorb this piece of news.
“Were men invited to the shower?”
“Is Gracie dating?”
“Someone other than the baby’s father?”
I almost speak up to explain that Grayson is simply Gracie’s boss and friend. But there seems to be little point in jumping in. I need to save my energy, and Gracie can handle the aunts’ questions when she gets here. I no longer doubt that she can. Gram is wrong; my sister does not need my help. She is stronger than she looks.
“Stuffed mushrooms?” A heavy platter is balanced on my mother’s hands. She glares at me. I am not being what she considers helpful.
“I hope this baby comes soon,” Gram says. She is sitting in the corner, but her presence there has made it the center of the group. Except for Mary, we are clustered around Gram, some standing, some sitting. Nurse Ballen is standing beside her chair. She seems vaguely uncomfortable. She has the look of someone who is trying to pretend that she is not in the room, and certainly not listening. She emanates: I am on duty, and nothing more.
“Noreen, won’t you please sit down?” my mother says.
“I’m fine, thank you. I sit all day. It’s nice to be on my feet.”
I press my fingers against the pane of glass. I watch my father pull into the driveway in his truck. I watch Grayson’s black sedan parallel-park into the space between my aunts’ cars at the curb. I watch Grayson hold on to Gracie’s elbow as she and her round stomach bob slowly across the lawn.
The windowpane, which was at first cold to my touch, grows warm. Just before I take my hand away, my sister looks up, sees me, and waves. She thinks I am at the window for her, to greet her, to perpetuate her belief that she is the center of every story. She is a little selfish in that way. My story fits only in the margin, scrawled in poor handwriting around the typewritten, spell-checked account of her life. Mine is thrown together at the last minute, secured with tape and spit, while hers is as real and substantial as the hard, round belly she holds in front of her. She will soon have a child, but she has a job and a lot of support; I am a dropout struggling to get back together with someone I used to sleep with. I can’t believe it, but I am actually jealous of Gracie.
Gram says, “It didn’t used to be like this. There was a much smaller gap between generations. Women had more children, and they had them younger. Families didn’t have to wait so long between babies. It’s the waiting time that’s hard. You lose your hope, and you lose sight of the point, when there are no young ones.” Gram’s purse sits on her lap, and she rests her glass of lemonade on the leather bag. I can see a ring of wetness beginning to form on the fabric. In the past Gram never would have done something so untidy and careless. The bag will be ruined.
She says, “A family needs the old, the young, and the infants. When you only have two out of the three, it doesn’t work.” Gram nods at the cluster of daughters around her. “I know some of you girls have been fighting over this baby. We all have. But we don’t need to fight. You’ll see when the child is born.”
Gracie walks in then, with Grayson behind her. My sister is wearing a light blue maternity dress, and her hair is up in a ponytail. She looks like a pale young girl who has swallowed a basketball.
Everyone regards her. Mom puts the tray of stuffed mushrooms down on the coffee table so quickly, I wonder if she’s afraid she might drop it. I hear my father come in through the back door and take off his boots and place them on the tile floor.
“Sweet Jesus,” Meggy says. “That baby looks ready to come out.”
“I think we’re getting there,” Gracie says. Her voice is shy. She has been mostly alone or with me for the latter part of her pregnancy. I’m sure she is startled by the attention, and is unsure whether it’s friendly. I want to tell her that I’ve been charting the swing of moods and that I think the combination of Gram’s speech and her appearance have softened all of the McLaughlin women to the core. For the moment, anyway.
Mom sounds practically giddy when she says, “I read about a few shower games in a magazine, and we’re all going to start a pool on when we think the baby will be born. Hold on one minute, and I’ll go get the pieces of paper where you each have to write your guess for the date, time of birth, sex, and weight.”
“How much is the pot?” Meggy asks, but my mother is already gone.
“Grayson,” Theresa says in a polite, let’s-dig-for-dirt voice, “are you Gracie’s birth coach?”
“Yes,” Grayson says.
“Um, no,” Gracie says quickly.
“It’s probably the birth father,” Angel says in a low voice to Meggy, but everyone hears her.
“Lila is the coach,” Gracie says with an apologetic look at the man standing next to her. “I asked Lila weeks ago.”
“Really?” Mom is back in the r
oom, her hands filled with pieces of white paper.
“Isn’t that lovely?” Gram says.
Confusion clouds Grayson’s face. He turns to Gracie. “I should be the coach. I can’t be your husband waiting outside in the hall with the rest of your family. I need to be in the delivery room.”
The air leaves the room then, as effectively as if Grayson had used the last bit up. My aunts gape like fish. My mother says, “Your husband?”
“You’re marrying him?” I say. I can’t believe what I’ve heard. I can’t believe I’m finding out something this big at the same time as Mom.
Meggy says, “Isn’t this interesting.”
Mary gives her second laugh of the afternoon, then claps her hands over her mouth.
Gram says, “Gracie?”
Gracie gives Grayson a look that makes it clear that the timing of the announcement did not go according to plan. At least not according to her plan.
“We’re getting married,” Gracie says in a reluctant voice.
“On Thursday, at the Hackensack courthouse. You’re all invited.” Grayson is as pale as Gracie now. He’s not used to surprises. He likes to be prepared. I wonder how well he is going to fare making a life with my sister.
My father appears at the doorway to the living room then, clearly having heard this last part. His appearance is so sudden that he frightens Nurse Ballen, who visibly flinches.
My mother looks as if she’s afraid she’s going to drop the pieces of paper. She grips them so hard, I see her knuckles turn white. But she is the first to speak. Her voice tilts toward excited and gets faster as she goes along. “You’re going to be married,” she says. “What a surprise! Grayson, you’re the editor of the Bergen Record, aren’t you? Louis, you knew Grayson’s father. Remember?”
“Yes,” my father says. “I remember.” He looks stunned in a bad way, as if he has now had one more shock than he could take.
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