The Transformation of Things

by Jillian Cantor

  “She’s your sister,” he said quietly.

  “I know,” I said, but I didn’t pick up the phone.

  Eighteen

  On Saturday morning, Will and I took the train down to the city, and then we walked the four blocks to Kat and Danny’s apartment. It was chilly outside, and Will and I hung on to each other’s arms for warmth. “This is going to be interesting,” I said as we walked up the steps to their historic-looking duplex.

  “Yes.” Will nodded, blowing into his hands to warm them. I rang the bell, and Sarah Lynne flung open the door, her almost three-year-old sister, Arabella, behind her, clinging to her skirt.

  “Hey there.” Will bent down to their level and patted each girl on the head. “Are we going to have a fun weekend?” Sarah Lynne shrugged. Arabella retreated further. Will reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two Hershey’s Kisses. He handed one to each girl. Their eyes looked back at him, wide with something, wonder maybe? And I wondered why I hadn’t thought to bring candy.

  “Girls,” Kat called out. “Don’t bother them, or they’ll change their minds.”

  She opened the door wider and ushered us inside. “No we won’t,” Will said, emphatically.

  Kat hugged him, then leaned in to hug me. “Are you sure about this? We don’t have to stay the night.”

  I pictured Grant’s hand on her arm. “Yes you do,” I said. “You have a good time, and don’t worry about us.”

  “I owe you.” She squeezed my hand.

  Danny walked out of their bedroom, a suitcase in tow. “The numbers are on the fridge. In case you need us.”

  “We won’t,” Will said. I nodded, in awe of the way he actually seemed comfortable in this situation, whereas I felt totally out of my element, trying to put on a show so Kat and Danny could get back to a good place. I knew it was silly, that the two things really weren’t connected, but still, I kept thinking if they could fix things, then Will and I could, too.

  “But if you do,” Kat echoed, “the numbers are there.”

  They leaned down and hugged and kissed the girls, and Kat immediately put her sunglasses on and looked away from me. She’s sad, I thought. She’s going to miss them.

  Three games of Candy Land, two hours of Barbies, and four episodes of The Wiggles later I was exhausted. During episode four of The Wiggles, Sarah Lynne dragged Will around the room, dancing and singing to all the songs, while Ara climbed up into my lap on the couch and started sucking her thumb. It was starting to get dark outside, and I knew it was almost time for dinner, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from him: Will hopping around, all six feet of him, wild and wacky like the crazy Australians on TV. Was this what parenthood was all about? I wondered. Acting like the Wiggles? If that’s what it was, then maybe Will was ready to be a father.

  Ara leaned into me, her warm little head against my chest. It was a strange feeling, the way she’d attached herself to me so easily, so quickly. I’d played with Caleb and Jack and Hannah before, but never alone, without Kelly, and never for more than half an hour at a time.

  Ara put her hand on my arm and twisted my watch—delicate and gold—a present from Will on a birthday a few years back, in what felt like another lifetime. “Aunt Jen,” she whispered. She leaned back and looked at me. “You’re so pretty. I like your curly hair.”

  I laughed. “Thank you,” I said.

  “I want to look just like you when I grow up.”

  I took a look at her straight red hair and her freckles, her tiny little pug nose, and her rosy cheeks, and I knew she was going to look mostly like Danny, with just a little smidgen of Kat. “Okay,” I told her, because I didn’t want to ruin it, that little-girl innocence that still allowed her to believe that anything was possible.

  Later that night, after pizza and baths for the girls and bedtime stories for both of them—The Berenstain Bears for Sarah Lynne, and The Cat in the Hat for Ara—Will and I moved around quietly in Kat and Danny’s guest room.

  Will lay down on the bed, his clothes still on. “I’m exhausted,” he whispered. “I don’t know how the Wiggles do it.”

  I laughed and sat down on the bed next to him. “You were great with them,” I said. He nodded. “How did you get to be so good with kids?”

  “I’m just a natural, I guess.” He paused. “Didn’t I ever tell you that I used to be a camp counselor when I was in high school?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I tried to remember if he had, and I knew that even if he had I’d tucked it away in the back of my mind, filed away under something I’d thought of as trivial, though now it seemed fairly important, who Will was, who he’d been.

  “My parents were friends with the owners of the camp,” he said. “I had the five-year-old bunk. Two summers.” He paused. “There you have it, my child care résumé.”

  “It’s more impressive than mine,” I said. I wondered what might have happened if Will’s parents hadn’t died, if he might’ve kept at advertising or kept up at the camp and decided to become a teacher or something. I wondered if maybe the law hadn’t really defined who he was at all, but only in the ways he’d let it, in the ways he’d needed it to, to allow himself to grieve.

  “Jen,” he whispered, reaching for me, pulling me close to him. “You were great with them. Ara loved you. Sarah Lynne renamed one of her Barbies after you.” His voice drifted off, and I could tell he was falling asleep, just like that, with his arm around me. I shifted onto my side, and I snuggled into him, the way Kelly had into Dave in my dream. And I had the notion that I should feel happy, and yet, as I closed my eyes, I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread.

  I was standing outside, on the back patio, the cool wind whipping against my cheeks. I held up my camera, and I zoomed in on the lilacs against the snow. Pale purple and white, a swirl of cream and light.

  I heard banging on the window, and I looked up and saw Caleb and Jack, their little faces pressed to the glass. I waved and blew them a kiss, but the banging continued. Where the hell was Dave?

  I focused the camera on the flower, turning, turning, turning the lens until the shot was perfect, until the petal of the lilac hung just the right way against the snow. This is the January shot, I thought. The perfect photograph to stare at during the bleakest month—cold, yet hopeful. And just as I was about to press the button, the boys burst through the patio door, shouting my name, calling for me. I put the camera down and closed my eyes. If I could just have five minutes. Five minutes.

  “Wake up.” I heard Ara’s small voice, felt her body jump next to me on the bed.

  “Five minutes,” I whispered, my voice, my head, thick with Kelly, Kelly feeling overwhelmed.

  “I have to go potty,” she announced. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock: seven-fifteen. I looked at Will, lying on his back, breathing evenly.

  “Okay,” I whispered, and I dragged my tired and aching body out of bed, and helped her find her way to the bathroom.

  Ara stomped on the tile floor, doing a little dance before she sat on the toilet, which promptly awakened Sarah Lynne, who also really had to use the bathroom, and screamed for Ara to hurry up. “I’m going as fast as I can,” Ara yelled.

  “Why don’t you use the other bathroom?” I suggested to Sarah Lynne.

  She folded her arms and shook her head. “No. I’m going to use my bathroom.”

  “It’s my bathroom, too,” Ara protested.

  “Come on, Ara,” I prodded. “Can you go a little faster?”

  She sighed deeply in a way that reminded me so much of Kat that it startled me. “Fine.”

  I felt my hands shaking. I was sweating, not sure what to do or what to say to hurry her up, nervous that Sarah Lynne was going to pee on the hardwood floor. But after a few minutes, Ara got up, and Sarah Lynne promptly ran to the toilet.

  I took a deep breath. “Should we get dressed?”

  Sarah Lynne shook her head. “We have to brush our teeth first.”

  After ten mi
nutes of fighting over the tube of toothpaste, I found some clothes and managed to get them on the girls, despite both of them deciding they wanted to have a spontaneous dance party. Ara didn’t like the outfit I picked out at first and started crying, until I let her wear red pants with a red sweater, despite my protests that they didn’t match. “They do,” she said. “Red and red.”

  “Don’t even try to argue,” Sarah Lynne informed me.

  So I didn’t. But I wondered where she’d gone, sweet Ara who wanted to look like me, and how she’d turned into this whiny little creature. I’d had a moment, leaning into Will last night, when I’d believed him, when I’d actually believed that maybe I could do this. I closed my eyes and thought about the perfection of the lilac on the snow, and then the chaos that broke the moment. And last night, with Will, felt very far away.

  I heard footsteps, and I watched Will stumble out of the guest room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He was still in his clothes from yesterday, and his hair was sticking up and uncombed. He looked almost handsome in the way he seemed to have come undone, defenseless in a way.

  “Uncle Will,” Ara cried. “Look at my outfit.”

  “And mine, too,” Sarah Lynne said.

  He gave them the thumbs-up. “Very nice,” he said. “Who wants to watch the Wiggles?”

  “I do, I do,” the girls chorused. They ran toward the living room.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” Will called after them. He turned to me. “I didn’t hear them get up.” He offered a meek smile.

  I shrugged, not willing to admit that I’d been feeling overwhelmed. “You looked comfortable. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I was comfortable,” he said, reaching up to tuck a stray hair behind my ear, and it occurred to me that I was also undone, my hair uncombed, my face unwashed, my teeth un-brushed.

  “I’m a mess,” I said.

  He shook his head and reached his thumb up to stroke my cheek. “No you’re not.”

  “Uncle Will,” Sarah Lynne screamed from the other room.

  “You’d better go,” I whispered. “I’ll make some breakfast.”

  After lunch, Sarah Lynne and Ara fell asleep on the couch, and then Will and I sat at the table, reading the Sunday paper. I made an attempt at the Times puzzle, but my brain felt too foggy to get more than a few clues. “Need some help?” Will asked, when he saw me put the pencil down.

  I shook my head. “I’m too tired to think.”

  “Me too,” he said, but even as he said it his eyes had a certain twinkle to them, so I knew he’d enjoyed this. Will was cut out to be a father. He grabbed my hand across the table. “Jen,” he said, and I swallowed a lump in my throat, knowing what was going to come next. I thought about the way he’d felt as I leaned against him last night, his body warm and entwined with mine in a way that I’d felt completely whole, completely safe. And why couldn’t that just be enough? “Jen, you’re good at this. We’re good at this.”

  I thought about a baby, about what it might be like to hold this small and perfect being, an entirely blank slate that we would be wholly responsible for. This thing, this innocent thing that would rely on us, that would need us. “Will, I …”

  “Oh my God,” Kat said. I hadn’t heard her come in, but I turned toward the sound of her voice, grateful for the interruption. Her face looked radiant, aglow with something I hadn’t seen from her in years. “The girls are both asleep.”

  “Will wore them out,” I said.

  I smiled at him, and he nodded; a flash of disappointment crossed his face, which he quickly turned into a smile for Kat. “Your girls are a lot of fun,” he said.

  “Well, whatever you two did, you need to sell it and bottle it to parents everywhere.”

  “You had a nice time?” I asked.

  “Fucking fantastic,” she said.

  “I second that,” said Danny, who walked in behind her, put his arms around her, and kissed her shoulder.

  Nineteen

  It was after six by the time we got off the train and into my SUV. Will put the key in the ignition and turned to look at me before turning on the car. “Let me take you out to dinner.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, dreading the possibility of finding our way back to that baby conversation again. “I’m exhausted.”

  “You owe me a dinner, remember?”

  I had promised him a rain check the night of the auction, and I realized I was starving, so I agreed.

  “Great.” He paused. “Where do we go?”

  It had been years since we’d gone to dinner anywhere but the club. And before that, in the city, we’d dined at the fancy restaurants that I reviewed, compliments of the magazine.

  I tried to remember where’d I’d gone before I met Will, in college even. There was a bar named Henry’s not too far from my father’s old house, and there was a little diner just south of there where I’d gone with my friends in high school. “Where do other people go?” Will wondered out loud.

  I thought of Lisa, Bethany, and Amber, the club; Kat, the city. Then I tried to remember where Kelly went. “You know, I think Kelly and Dave and the kids like Applebee’s,” I said. I knew there was one not too far from their house, at the edge of a little strip mall, across the street from Acme. I’d met Kelly and the kids there for lunch once.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I just saw their commercial the other day.”

  We looked at each other and we both started laughing, this crazy, giddy, tired laughter. What kind of couple didn’t know where to go to dinner? Kelly had made fun of me on more than one occasion for not dining anywhere but the club. My God, you’re like freakin’ Barbie and Ken, she’d retort with a dry laugh. Actually, according to Sarah Lynne, I was freakin’ Barbie, I thought now. So there, Kel, take that.

  Will turned the key and pulled out of the parking space, and then stopped the car. “Where the hell is it?” he asked.

  I started laughing again, and it took a few minutes for me to stop enough to give him directions.

  Applebee’s was oddly crowded for a Sunday night. Families and high school kids milled all around out front clinging to their plastic buzzers that the hostess told us would blink and sing when it was our turn. Will and I sat on a bench out front and waited. Will put his arm around me and I leaned into him, and let myself enjoy his warmth.

  After twenty minutes, Will jumped when our plastic buzzer buzzed and flashed red. And then we were led to a tiny booth near the back of the restaurant. “It’s happy hour,” Will said, sounding a little giddy as he picked up the menu. “I think I’ll get a drink.”

  I looked at the drink menu, and had an instant craving for a margarita, even though it had been years since I’d drunk anything but wine. “I’m going to have a margarita,” I announced. “On the rocks, with salt.”

  He nodded and smiled. “Perfect.” When the waiter came, we ordered two, and we let ourselves be talked into a plate of half-priced nachos and two chicken something-or-other combo plates.

  At the club, we drank only wine, and only red wine, Merlot or Cabernet: heart healthy, trendy, and a perfect pairing with filet mignon. Our appetizers were escargot or half-shell clams or shrimp cocktail.

  As I took the first sip of my margarita, the salty-sour taste burned my throat and warmed my brain. Then, as I started munching on a nacho, I started to feel this odd sensation of warmth that made me feel like I was glowing.

  Will drank his margarita quickly and I followed him, drinking it down too fast to enjoy the salty-sour combination and fast enough to feel a little dizzy. “Another round,” he told the young waiter when he popped back around to check on us.

  Will reached across the table for my hand, and underneath the dim Tiffany light fixture, his face hung in a shadow, so he looked only slightly familiar, like someone I’d once known a very, very long time ago. Like a man, a stranger, sitting at a half-circle booth in Il Romano, who I might have the possibility of falling in love with.

  The second round of margaritas
came, and we drank them more slowly through straws, one-handed, not letting go of each other across the table.

  “You look beautiful, Jen,” Will whispered, somewhere between the nachos and the chicken something-or-other.

  “That’s the margarita talking,” I whispered. Because I hadn’t taken a shower since yesterday morning or even had time to put on makeup today.

  “No.” He shook his head. “It’s not.” He paused. “Hey,” he said, taking another sip. “Tell me one thing you want.” The words rolled off his tongue, effortlessly, as if it was something he still said to me all the time, something easy.

  I paused for a minute, not knowing exactly what to say. Then I shrugged.

  “Just one thing,” he whispered.

  So I said the first word that popped into my head: “Love,” I whispered. I gently squeezed his hand, as if it was my lifeline, my safety. He squeezed back.

  Then the din of the crowded restaurant faded away, and there was nothing else but me and Will. Will and me.

  After dinner we walked around the strip mall until Will felt sober enough to drive home. I held on to his arm, as we walked slowly past the shops of Oak Glen, a T. J. Maxx, a PetSmart, a Hallmark store. “Let’s go in,” Will said when we got to the Hallmark. He opened the door before I could answer, so I followed him inside.

  In the front of the store there was a display of tiny ceramic figurines, anyone and everyone you could imagine molded and painted and looking like exact replicas—cats and dogs, teachers and doctors. I noticed a judge, and I suddenly felt dizzy and closed my eyes for a moment to try to regain my equilibrium.

  When I opened them, Will was holding something, a figurine, in his hand. “I’m going to buy this for you,” he said. He opened his palm and held it out so I could see it—a man with his arm around a woman holding a sleeping baby against her chest. The woman had her head turned, and she was looking up, smiling at the man who smiled back at her.

  “Will, don’t—”

  “Sssh.” He put his finger to my lips. He turned the figurine over. On the bottom, it had a price tag, and a name, “The Perfect Family.” “It is the perfect family,” he whispered. Then he handed the figurine to me.