by Merry Jones
TWENTY
ANNA REFUSED TO JOIN us for dinner; she stayed in the kitchen making lists and phone calls while we ate. Our meal began quietly. The brothers were subdued, on their best behavior. They used utensils properly, placed their napkins neatly on their laps. No elbows rested on the table; no one belched out loud. At first, conversation was careful, as if everyone feared that Anna might be monitoring us.
“Feeling better, Zoe?”
“Get a nap?”
And then, gradually, inevitably, attention turned to Bryce. Sam and Tony wanted to hear what happened.
“Mom?” Molly was confused. “Was somebody in an accident?”
I didn’t want to upset her, so I avoided her questions. “A friend. But it’s no big deal, Molls. Want another drumstick?”
Sam asked her what to send an elephant when he gets sick. “A get wellephant card.”
While he was still laughing, I asked how her sleepover was and her face brightened. “Oh, Mom, I almost forgot.” She beamed. “Guess what we did today?”
“What?”
Luke, lying on a comforter beside us, had been fussing, but suddenly he began to howl. I got up and brought him to the table, where Molly was in the middle of her answer.
…that pottery place—you know, where you can make ceramics?” Molly went on. “Susan took me and Emily.”
I positioned Luke on my shoulder, patting his back, trying to help him get rid of a bubble in his tummy. His cries drowned out Molly’s voice; I had to strain to hear her.
“…a kitten, but I made a dog …looks like Oliver.”
“Cool,” I managed over Luke’s wails.
“…plus I made something else.”
Sitting at the table wasn’t working. The baby was squirming and complaining. He was too loud, bothering everyone, and I couldn’t eat with him on my lap, anyhow. I stood to walk him up and down the hall.
“…surprise for Luke.”
I didn’t realize Molly had finished what she was saying, and she watched me, waiting for my response. As I left the table, Luke’s howls rattling my ears, I tried to figure out what to say. “Super, Molls!” I shouted so she could hear me, and I hoped that made sense.
“That’s great,” Nick offered. He was obviously trying to cover for me. “Are you going to tell us what it is?”
Her eyes remained on me, a fixed stare. “No. I’m not.”
Luke wailed.
“Sorry, Molly,” I apologized. “Can you tell me about it later?”
“Let me take him.” Nick started to stand.
“Zoe, sit down and eat. Have Anna hold him.” Sam stuffed a forkful of potatoes into his mouth.
“It’s okay.” I was already at the door. Seconds later, Luke burped and settled down. I came back and put him back onto the comforter, sitting with him for a moment to make sure he was calm. Finally, I sat at the table and finished dinner. The brothers had become more conversational, talking about car accidents they’d had, apparently competing for the Worst Judgment/Riskiest Behavior While Driving award. So far, Nick seemed to be winning, having, at age seventeen, spun his ‘65 Chevy Nova on the ice into a telephone pole, from which it ricocheted and slid into a ditch, and then, as he tried to back it up the steep incline onto the pavement, the ice gave way under it and it flipped completely over.
The men guffawed at their youthful luck and stupidity. They were so boisterous that it took a while to notice how quiet Molly was. In fact, for most of the meal, she hadn’t said a word. But just as Sam was starting a story involving his Mustang and an eighteen- wheeler, Anna appeared, cutting him off with her arms crossed and her eyes glaring.
Anna spouted orders, and the brothers jumped to action. She wouldn’t leave until the last dinner dishes had been loaded into the dishwasher and the last leftover stored in the refrigerator. And, before going, she handed a to-do list to each adult member of the household. Standing at the door, she reminded us again that we had only a very few days remaining until the most important event in Nick’s and my life and, despite dramatic intrusions of the outside world, we had better get ourselves on board with her plans or she would not be responsible for the outcome.
As she bullied, Nick and his brothers lowered their heads slightly, avoiding eye contact, and I wondered if Anna reminded them of their mother. Despite their muscular frames and macho demeanors, the three were easily cowed into submission by a woman who was barely five feet tall. Not one of them argued or answered back. They seemed well practiced in humble obedience to a diminutive female taskmaster, a fact I filed away for future reference.
At the door, Anna gave a final warning. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I expect that the items on your lists will have been attended to by then.”
The door closed. No one spoke for a minute. Then Sam started, mimicking Anna, barking orders, criticizing the quality of his work: “What’s this on the counter? Water stains? You left water stains on the counter?” He sounded surprisingly like her. He even stood like she did, gestured the same way.
“Water stains? What the hell’s wrong with you? Slob. Moron. Incompetent screwup.” Tony’s falsetto sounded more like Anna than Anna did.
The two of them kept it up. “You—Nick’s brother. What’s your name? If you want to be in this wedding, you’ll need a haircut—”
“—An eyebrow wax—”
“—A chest wax.”
“—Botox. You can’t be in a wedding with that face. It doesn’t go with the centerpiece.”
Nick didn’t join in. He got up, stretched and walked over behind me, rubbing my shoulders. “You all right, Zoe?”
Before I could answer, he’d absently planted a kiss on my cheek and moved on to get a beer, and his brothers trailed him, leaving Molly and me alone with Luke, who was gumming a fold of blanket. Molly remained oddly quiet as she plopped onto the blanket beside him, lay down and covered him with her arm.
“Lukie, Lukie.” Her affection was strained. “Sweet Little Lukie.” She rolled him onto his back, tickling his tummy a little too energetically.
“Molly. Be gentle.”
She continued to tickle him, her voice a little louder, sharper.
“Stop tickling, Molly. Just cuddle him.” Not that he seemed bothered. Luke stared at his big sister with delighted, adoring eyes. But something about Molly wasn’t right. Her smile was off-balance, distorted. “Molly? What’s going on?”
She didn’t answer. She revved it up a notch. “Tickle tickle, Lukie. Tickle tickle.”
“Molls?”
“Tickle tickle tickle.” Her eyes gleamed, and her tickles became jabs.
“Molly, stop.”
But Molly didn’t stop. She escalated. “Tickle tickle tickle tickle.” The pitch of her voice rose, became cloying, and her hands formed little claws, fingers stiff and wriggling.
“I said stop.” I grabbed her arm, but she pulled it away and went after Luke again
“Lukie, Lukie—” Defying me, she pawed at his belly. Luke looked confused and, predictably, dissolved into tears.
“Molly. Cut it out.” In a one movement, I swooped at her, yanking her by the arm away from Luke and up into the air. She screamed, a window-rattling, nerve-piercing sound. I caught her, tried to hold on to her, but she squirmed away and bolted out of the room, cradling her arm, wailing, and Nick came running in, leading the herd of Stiles brothers, asking, “What happened? What the hell’s going on?”
By then, Luke was howling. Upstairs, Molly slammed her bedroom door. In the dining room, Nick, Sam and Tony gaped at me, asking questions. My head throbbed. I wanted to cry or scream, to disappear altogether. Instead, I picked Luke up, cuddling him so he’d quiet down. “It’s okay. It’s nothing.”
I couldn’t tell Nick that Molly had tried to hurt our son, couldn’t quite believe it myself. In all of her six years, I’d never seen Molly be mean to anyone, much less a smaller child. In fact, Molly and I had never before had a really angry, let alone a violent, moment. But, suddenly, poof. For no appare
nt reason, she’d snapped and attacked a baby. And I might have dislocated her shoulder.
“What’s with Molly?” Nick wasn’t going away. “She having a tantrum?”
I rocked Luke. “You could say so.”
Nick nodded at the baby. “Because of him?”
I blinked, absorbing the question. “Why?”
“She’s been too cool about having a baby brother.”
She had?
“I mean you’d expect her to be a little jealous, wouldn’t you?”
How would I know? I didn’t know much about siblings.
“You were jealous, growing up.” Sam grinned, punched Tony’s ear.
“Apparently, you still are.” Annoyed, Tony swatted Sam’s belly.
Nick smirked. “Both of them have always been jealous of me. I was the oldest and Dad’s favorite.”
“You?” Sam’s mouth dropped. “In your dreams.”
“If anyone was jealous, Nick, it was you. Who used to whine that Mom never got mad at me?”
“Well, she never did. It was pitiful.” Sam’s eyes weren’t laughing. He was only partly joking. “’No matter what you did, you never got in trouble. Poor little Tony has the sniffles. ‘Let me fix you a hot cocoa, Tony.’ Or how about, ‘Tony, let Mom buy you a new car’?”
“Oh, cut it out. You guys got cars, too.”
“What? A ‘74 Pacer? Nick and I got a pile of rusted scrap metal on wheels. But not baby Tony. Little Tony got a brand-new Toyota—”
“I saved for that—”
“You paid, what? A hundred bucks?”
“Face it, Tony.” Nick folded his arms. “Mom spoiled you rotten.”
“Well, why not?” Tony shrugged, a smug grin spreading across his face. “I was the baby—”
“Actually,” Nick interrupted, “you were the baby. But Eli was her favorite.”
“Eli? She was always pissed at Eli. She grounded him ninety percent of his childhood—”
“Because she expected him to be perfect. She had her eye on him always. No, for sure. It was Eli. I was Dad’s favorite, and Eli was Mom’s.”
“No way.”
“You’re full of crap.”
Tony pouted. Sam snorted. Nick snickered.
Sibling rivalry, I guessed, was as common as siblings. I’d read about it, studied it in family psychology courses. I should have recognized it, prepared Molly better for it. But having been raised alone, I’d been insensitive to sibling issues, and now I’d let Molly down. Her world—the world she and I alone had shared—had been invaded, turned upside down by a little alien. And only six years old, she couldn’t know why she felt the way she did, couldn’t be expected to deal with her conflicted feelings. Molly was understandably jealous: Luke was tiny and cute and grabbing all kinds of attention that would otherwise have been hers. And I had been completely oblivious, not anticipating the feelings of my own daughter.
“Here.” I handed the baby to Nick, left the brothers to their squabbling and hurried upstairs to Molly. I wasn’t sure what to say. Nick and his brothers would be better qualified to explain this phenomenon than I was. But at least I could reassure her, remind her how much I loved her and how incredible a person she was. But, as it turned out, words didn’t really matter.
Molly must have heard my steps in the hallway, because before I got to her door she burst out of her room and ran into my arms, clutching onto me, sobbing. “I’m sorry, Mommy. Don’t be mad. I’m sorry.”
TWENTY-ONE
AFTER WE FINISHED HUGGING and drying tears, the rest of the night was just us girls. First, we tackled her school project, which turned out to be, aptly, to make a family tree. We got markers, old photographs and poster board and traced her ancestry as far back as we knew, which was only two generations back. We talked about family as we worked, and I asked how she felt about having a brother.
“It’ll get better.” She was probably assuring herself. “We’ll have more fun when he can do stuff. Now he just cries and sleeps.”
“And he takes a lot of my attention.”
“It’ll get better, Mom. He’s not going to stay a baby forever.” Now, she was reassuring me. She concentrated on drawing a line connecting Nick’s name to Sam’s.
“Molls, do you ever miss the times before he was born? You know, when it was just us?”
Molly looked up from her work. “Not really.” Her eyes were solemn. “I’m bigger now. It’s Luke’s turn to be the baby.”
Oh dear. Once again, Molly’s thoughts went deeper than I’d imagined. We pasted on pictures of our family members, admiring our design.
“But how do I finish it?” Molly frowned.
I didn’t know what she meant. “It isn’t finished?” We didn’t have photos of Nick’s parents or my mother, but we’d made silhouettes for them. The thing looked done to me.
“No. What about my other family?”
Her other family? Oh God. How could I have been so insensitive and obtuse? Molly was adopted. She had a whole other biological family.
“Aren’t I supposed to make them a tree, too?”
Oh dear. “I suppose, except we don’t know their names.”
“Right.” She stared at the poster, and I thought she seemed sad. “Maybe I can do that some other day.”
Molly had her bath, then, and we blew her hair dry and painted our finger- and toenails. When they were dry, we went through my jewelry box and I gave Molly a locket I’d worn as a child. We cuddled up and read books we hadn’t looked at in years, her favorite picture books from her early childhood, Where the Wild Things Are and Goodnight Moon. We snuggled on her bed until she was about to fall asleep. Then I put my mouth to her ear and whispered, “I’ll always love you, Molly. No matter what.”
“I know.”
“You were my first baby. You always will be special to me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can always talk to me if you feel unhappy. Or jealous. Or mad.”
“Okay.”
“There’s no one else like you. You’re beautiful. And smart. And funny. And kind. And cuddly and huggy. And—”
“I get it, Mom.”
She did?
“I get that you love me.” She yawned, repositioned her head on her pillow so she could look at my eyes. “It’s just that—don’t take this the wrong way, but you always pay more attention to Luke. Don’t deny it. You send me off to play with Emily or to the zoo with Uncle Sam, but you take Luke for walks and you’re always holding him, and when I want to tell you something you’re either taking a nap or Luke’s hungry or crying, so I can’t even talk to you. I know he can’t help it because he’s just a little baby but sometimes he makes me mad.”
I kissed her forehead, smelled vanilla shampoo. I couldn’t argue with her. She was being honest, and it was all true.
“Here’s what I’d like to do, Molls.” I took her hand. “I’d like us to make special time for just us.”
“You mean like make play dates?”
“Kind of. More like ladies only dates.”
She grinned. “No boys allowed dates?”
“Exactly. Mom and Molly dates. Once a week. Okay?”
“Okay.” She held up a pinkie. I linked mine around hers, a pinkie swear, more binding than a signature. I kissed her good night and started for the door. “Mom?” Her voice was sleepy. “It’s a piggy bank. I made Luke a ceramic piggy bank. For when he’s bigger.”
“He’ll love it.”
She didn’t answer. I think she was already asleep.
TWENTY-TWO
NICK WAS WAITING IN the hall with Luke, who was hungry again.
“Everything okay?”
I nodded, taking the baby. “She’s asleep.”
Nick followed me into the bedroom, asking about Molly, waiting while I positioned myself and Luke began nursing. Nick sat beside us and I felt a wave of tenderness. The moment was precious and intimate, with just the three of us in the bedroom. No brothers. I realized that, except to sleep, I had
n’t been alone with Nick since Sam or Tony had arrived. Nick and I hadn’t really talked, hadn’t taken time to connect with each other. Everything was for Tony or Sam, Sam or Tony. Nothing was for us.
“Tony wants to use your office to do some work. Okay?”
Naturally, the first time we were alone in days, Nick’s first words would be about one of his brothers. But I was confused. Sam and Tony had both been using my office all week, and no one had asked my permission before. Why now? “I guess.”
“Thanks for being so patient, Zoe.”
“They’re family.” I wanted to feel that way, realized I was having my own brand of sibling rivalry.
“But I know it’s a lot for you, all at once.”
Nick sat beside me, kissed my neck. “I called the hospital.” He began massaging my shoulders. “No news on Edmond.”
No news. Well, at least that meant he was still alive. I closed my eyes, letting a small moan escape as Nick worked away the tightness at the base of my neck. Actually, my whole body felt sore. The tenderness in my milk-swelled breasts melded with that in my shoulders and back; a single ache spread over me from the bump on my head to the bruises on my hip where I’d landed after Bryce shoved me. Nick’s touch was soothing, and I wished he’d keep it up, move his strong fingers down my back, my calves and ankles and feet. But he stopped at my shoulders, whispering, “I’ll be downstairs.”
Slowly, I opened my eyes, saw Nick’s shadow passing outside the bedroom door. Luke purred and gurgled, happily drawing nutrition out of my body. And I lay back on the pillows, miserable.
I told myself that I had good reasons to feel that way. In fact, I listed them. I was still dealing with the double shocks of the murder and the hit-and-run, plus the minor injuries I’d sustained in the latter, plus I had fluctuating levels of postpartum and milk- making hormones, and probably some postpartum depression. Not to mention nerves about getting married. As if those items weren’t enough, there was the matter of my home. My house wasn’t a private domain anymore. Anna and Ivy worked there, rearranging stuff, putting it where I’d never find it. And police still appeared on the patio, and so did the press. That morning, Sam had caught a guy peeking over the back fence, taking pictures of the yellow tape surrounding the bloodstained deck. And speaking of Sam, he and Tony were everywhere. I’d found Tony moving furniture in the living room, looking in desk drawers in my office. And even though Sam had a suite at the Four Seasons, I doubted he’d spent ten minutes there since he’d arrived in town. The brothers were always underfoot. Their toiletries and dirty socks or shirts were everywhere. No used bath towel went un- dropped. No toothpaste glob got rinsed from the sink, no dirty dish got put into the dishwasher, unless, of course, the dishes in it were clean, in which case they’d unerringly mix clean and dirty together—
