At Kate’s they play Connect 4, Monopoly, Clue, backgammon, Dungeons & Dragons. They read books (Half Magic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Book of Three, The Phoenix and the Carpet) and lie in the sun on the back patio, ants crossing the pages like the black letters come to life and walking impatiently away. They go around the yard with Kate’s father’s magnifying glass. They make a geyser with Mentos and bottled diet soda. They put soap in the microwave and watch it blow up into gigantic crispy bubbles. They fry eggs on the sidewalk. They see movies, comedies with Eddie Murphy and Rodney Dangerfield and Tom Cruise. Kate’s father mixes up the titles on purpose, to tease them. “Trading Money,” he says. “Easy Business. Risky Places.” They play Freezing Han Solo, a game of their own invention that entails placing Topher’s Han Solo figure in a butter dish filled with water and storing the butter dish in the freezer.
At Topher’s they entertain themselves with the basketball hoop, the gigantic television, Atari, and glimpses of his brothers beating off in the second-floor bathroom. A new lock has been added to the door, the old one taken off, but the hole the old lock once occupied still needs filling and sealing. All four older brothers visit the bathroom (which Kate tries to avoid actually using) at regular intervals: Nick, Bobby, Sebastian, and Rudy, one after the other, stealing away with their father’s Playboy or their mother’s Cosmopolitan, the latter of which they then return to the stack on the coffee table. Nick and Bobby and Sebastian prefer to face the sink, and so the lock hole offers a limited but satisfactory profile view of the action. Rudy, however, provides Topher and Kate with a full frontal, leaning back against the stacked washer-dryer, his pants open, free hand clutching the magazine. The creased skin of his testicles runs to dark gray, almost black—its texture recalls that of the copper beech in Kate’s front yard. Kate notes how he moves not just his hand against his thing but the skin along with the hand. He twists, at intervals, around the top, as if opening a jar—opening and opening, and eventually the substance inside spurts out, thick pale fluid accommodating a flight of ambitious creatures.
Watching, Kate wants to jump in, like with the wrestling, just to be included. “Let me try,” she says at the Atari, shoving Rudy aside. And he kindly lets her. She wants to beat him at that and here, also, she wants to. She feels sorry for him. It seems such a struggle. And besides Topher, she likes Rudy best of all the brothers. He is consistently thoughtful and gentle with her. Years ago, he came to her rescue on the playground when a group of older kids ran off with her winter hat. And the other day: Ella sent him over to Kate’s with cinnamon buns and he found Kate in the basement, doing laundry. Her mother, though she still does Miles’s laundry, is encouraging Kate to learn to do her own. So far she has shrunk her favorite jeans and dyed all her whites pink. Rudy knocked on the wall at the top of the stairs and called down to Kate, as if to a rare and excitable house pet. “Hey,” she called back. “Here.” She piled her basket with clean, dry laundry and stood at the bottom of the rickety wood steps. He descended, trailing one forearm against the drywall.
“My mom made something for your mom. I put it in the kitchen. On the table.”
“What is it?”
“Cinnamon buns.”
“Buns!” She laughed. A pair of newly pink underpants shook loose onto the floor. Topher would have teased. But, solemnly, Rudy picked them up and placed them on the top of her pile.
Like his mother, he enjoys cooking, and spends hours looking through her issues of Gourmet, the fact of which regularly sends Kate into hysterics.
“Will you make this!?” She points to a recipe for Raspberry Chicken.
“Or this!” Shrimp Curry.
“Or this!” Dilled Blanquette de Veau.
“Maybe. Maybe, maybe.”
Rudy throws down the Cosmo or the Playboy and mops himself off and Kate and Topher rush to Topher’s room, wait a bit, then find and scour the magazine of choice. Topher pays special attention to the Playboys, while Kate skims through the provocatively titled Cosmo articles: “Twenty Things He Wishes You’d Do,” “Fifty Nifty Sex Tips,” “How to Touch Him Where It Counts,” “Dirty Games to Play After Dark.” On a weekend, if they are patient and attentive, they might listen outside closed doors to Nick pounding away at his girlfriend, Suzy Brenner, Bobby at Marion Ross, Sebastian at Allison Bell, or even Mr. Anderson at Mrs. Anderson. Ella Anderson chats throughout the activity—the boys’ soccer practice is mentioned, the dry cleaning, the dishwasher, as if the sex act naturally recalls other domestic concerns. Allison Bell whispers: “Like that,” “Not yet,” and “Fuck me.” Marion giggles. Suzy Brenner shouts, “Give it to me, baby! Give it to me! Give it to me!” Suzy Brenner has long straight blond hair. If Kate and Topher climb out onto the sloped roof of the kitchen addition they can see right into Nick’s bedroom. They can see Nick and Suzy kissing and taking each other’s clothes off on the bed, then Suzy doing something energetic to Nick’s crotch under the covers. They can see her hanging backward off the bed—they can see her on her hands and knees, Nick slamming against her from behind, a fist around the beautiful hair.
Back in Topher’s room Topher does a little dance of what appears to be victory. “That’s gonna be you someday. You know it, baby!”
“My hair is dark,” Kate says, coldly.
“Well, you better chop that hair, Rapunzel, if you don’t want—”
“Shut up. Shut. Up.”
THE PHYSICS DEPARTMENT HOLDS a holiday party, which Kate and Miles and their mother attend along with Kate’s father. Afterward, along with the head of the department and two other tenured professors and one graduate student and his girlfriend, they dine at the Q Club. Kate ends up next to the graduate student, Jack Auerbach. His shaggy dark hair intimidates her, as does the gap between his two front teeth. She sees that underneath the tablecloth he keeps a hand on the girlfriend’s leg, as if afraid of misplacing her.
“So, you dating yet?” he asks Kate.
“Jack,” the girlfriend says. “Really?”
A waiter brings bread and sweet cold butter in the shape of a star. They order their food. The adults go through several bottles of wine. Kate’s father puts a roll on the end of his fork. He hits the tines with his fist and the bread flies across the restaurant, onto another table. The professors laugh. He flips more rolls. “Every trajectory,” he says, in Kate’s direction, “is an orbit interrupted.”
Eventually, the waiter comes over.
“Kate,” her father says. “You hear the man?”
Kate puts her nose into her Shirley Temple. Everyone looks at her. Jack says, “Quite the arm for a little girl.” He places the last roll on his fork and shoots it down the table right into Kate’s father’s Bordeaux.
In the car, on the way home, her father driving quite drunkenly, Kate’s mother objects. “Why must you bully her like that?”
“Who? Like what?”
“Kate. Blaming her for the bread.”
“Relax, Edie.”
“I understand that you were teasing, but I think you embarrassed her.”
“No! He didn’t!” Kate cries. To have her embarrassment discovered and discussed would only add to it. “I didn’t mind!”
Her mother twists in her seat. “Really, Katie? Because you seemed like you did.”
“I didn’t. I liked it.”
“I don’t believe you, Katie.”
“It was funny. I’m going to do it in the cafeteria.”
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“Listen to your mother,” Kate’s father says.
Kate’s mother asks, “What’s Miles doing?”
“Sleeping,” Kate says.
“I heard the most horrible story on the news today,” her mother says. “This poor girl got on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle, went riding without a helmet, poor dumb thing; they ran into the back of a truck; she split her head right open.”
“And?” Kate’s father asks.
“Dead.”
“The boy?”
/>
“No helmet either. But okay. Just this and that. Kate,” her mother asks, turning again, “are you wearing your seat belt?”
“Yes.”
“Is Miles wearing his seat belt?”
“Yes.”
“Any daughter of mine,” Kate’s father says, “went riding on the back of a motorcycle with no helmet, I’d crack her head open.”
“Oh, Dennis!”
“What.”
“Dennis, what a horrible, horrible thing to say.”
“Well, aren’t you the shrinking violet.”
“Like you didn’t ride your motorcycle without a helmet every day from Los Alamos to Santa Fe when you were twenty …”
“Kate, my darling. Light of my life. Don’t follow my bad example.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“As a matter of fact, stay away from bikes altogether. And the guys who ride ’em.” He turns onto Livingston Street.
“That Jack is a nice fellow,” Edie says.
“And talented.” Dennis pulls up to the house and kills the engine. “I’ve got my eye on him.”
3
OLIN TOOK THE POSITION in Stamford and they bought a Cherokee with thirty thousand miles on it and rented an apartment in Bridgeport, a one-bedroom on the first floor of a teal blue three-family house reminiscent of the Livingston Street house: the white walls, the plaster, the dark oak trim, a china closet with iron latticework. Their first night in the new place they slept on the pullout in the living room, and Colin wanted to call his mother but Kate wouldn’t let him. Darcy found a new roommate and applied to MFA programs. Like a traveling circus, the wedding hoopla moved on to someone, somewhere else. Colin and Kate were alone, surrounded by dozens and dozens of glass bowls.
A month or so into their marriage, they took a belated honeymoon to Eastern Europe, stopping on the way in London to visit Colin’s sister, Moira. On the plane they were separated—overbooking, a situation with a mother and baby. This seemed like a bad sign to both of them. Colin spoke with a flight attendant, then tapped the shoulder of the man Kate had ended up next to, a courteous bearded Indian fellow. “Wonder if you’d mind switching seats with me. So that we could … so that I could sit next to my wife. It’s our first trip together,” he explained.
The man agreeably moved from his window seat. Later, waiting for the bathroom at the back of the plane, Kate spotted him squeezed between a sprawling teenager and a heavyset older man. She wished Colin had refrained from requesting the favor, feeling uneasily that much had been given to them already—their being young and well-off and lucky to have found each other and in love and lucky to be going on this adventure together. But she went back to her seat beside Colin (he the aisle, she the window) and held hands with him when the plane landed.
They took a cab to Maida Vale, where Moira and her husband, Paul, lived with their new baby boy. Moira opened the gate, holding the baby, and offered tea. She directed them to their room. They unpacked, showered, lay down on the bed. Kate rolled on top of Colin and unzipped his fly. “We’d better wait,” he said. “We just got here.” They went down to the kitchen where Moira moved around from sink to counter to stove, rinsing and chopping and cooking. She wore a long skirt with a ruffle and a white button-down shirt. Her shape, post-partum, seemed barely recognizable as female, distended in all the wrong directions, as though she had put herself through the dryer on the highest, hottest cycle.
Didn’t she care? Did she?
“Want help?” Kate asked. She pointed to the stove.
“Don’t worry. Sit.” Moira set a bottle of white Burgundy and three glasses on the scuffed wood table. They sat. They drank the wine. The baby lay on his back under a mirrored contraption and kicked his legs and arms.
“Liam’s in his office,” Paul said.
Liam, Kate observed, at five months had not yet grown into his looks—in fact, he struck her as the ugliest baby she’d ever encountered. He had pale red hair and demonically bright blue eyes and a squashed face. His fat little hands grabbed at anything and everything—Colin’s nose, Kate’s earrings, his mother’s bosom, his own tiny package.
“I’m making biryani,” Moira said. “Lamb. Kate, you’re not a vegetarian, are you? I should have asked.”
“Nope. Not me.”
“She barely eats anyway,” Colin said. “Look at her.”
Liam kicked on the mat and began to cry. Moira swept him up and sat at the table and took out her breast. Gigantic blurred purple veins led from the base to the nipple, which disappeared suddenly, mercifully, under the baby’s head. Sucking sounds commenced. Kate drank the wine rapidly, feeling squirmy. She recalled her mother bringing Miles home from the hospital and sitting up in the parental bed, nursing him.
Moira put Liam against her shoulder and patted his back and put him down and returned to the stove, bordered prettily by blue-and-white tile. An earthenware jug held cooking utensils. A bouquet of drying herbs hung from the iron pot rack. An empty dog bed occupied the corner by the back door. “Where’s the dog?” Kate asked. “What kind?”
“We had a Great Dane. Alice. But then we had Liam. And she was too much work so we gave her away.” Moira shrugged and made a regretful face. “It’s ready,” she said.
They ate and finished the wine. Paul went to put the baby to bed and Colin and Moira and Kate cleared up. Kate took to the wooden cutting board with a sponge and soap and Moira came up behind her and removed it from her hands. “Never use soap on wood,” Moira said.
“Heh, heh,” Colin said. “Wood.”
Upstairs, Liam wailed.
“Why do they have to cry?” Moira said. “I wish they didn’t. I’d take him into the bed if Paul was okay with it. But.” They followed her up the stairs. “Try to sleep.” Then, “So good to see you two!” She embraced them both. Kate leaned warily but curiously into her large, milky bosom. “Sweet dreams!”
Twenty minutes later they were occupied under the covers, pushing aside each other’s sleepwear (Kate’s a silk slip she’d gotten for her bridal shower, Colin’s a T-shirt and boxer shorts). He kissed her breasts; she made her way down his torso and put her face in his groin. Moira knocked on the door. “Sorry! Towels!”
“Wait, stop,” Colin whispered.
Kate opened her mouth on him, slid him down her throat.
“I have washcloths and hand towels and regular.”
How insufferable Moira was! How officious, how interfering!
Colin grabbed Kate’s head, conflicted. “Stop,” he said again.
She continued. What better way to render the competition irrelevant?
“Should I just leave them here?”
“Yes. Please.”
“We decided on the Globe Theatre tomorrow. What do you think? Colin?”
“Yes! Great!”
Moira retreated. Colin removed his hand from Kate’s head and reached down and pinched her behind. Teasingly, but hard. “Get thee to a nunnery.” He moved his hands in her hair. “But first, keep doing that.”
· · ·
IN THE MORNING she pulled on tight corduroys and a tighter T-shirt. Moira had a baby but Kate had a body. Colin snored on his back. She shook him. “Wake up.”
“Not now.”
“Resist the jet lag.”
They followed the smell of coffee downstairs. Moira stood again at the sink, washing a pacifier. She turned as they shuffled in. “Harold Eagleson died,” she said to Colin. “A heart attack, last night.” She looked at Kate. “He was like family. We grew up with his kids. Janie, Charlie, Meg.”
“The one who fucked the maid,” Colin said to Kate.
“Oh, Colin.” Moira shook out the pacifier and dropped it into the dish rack.
“I’ll get in touch.” Colin poured coffee for Kate, then for himself. He sat next to her at the table and put his hand on her leg.
“Such a shock.”
“How old was Harold?”
“Seventy-five. Give or take.”
“And a heart co
ndition. So. Not really a shock.”
“You’re being mean.” She looked at Kate. “He can be mean sometimes, you know.”
Paul walked in, holding Liam against his shoulder. Moira reached for the baby and unbuttoned her blouse.
“It’s too bad about Harold. Just not a shock.”
The purpose of this conversation, of most conversations managed by Moira, Kate had decided, or at least those that happened around Kate, was to point out Kate’s adjunct status in the family. The purpose of the whole visit, the whole detour to London, Kate suspected, was the exploration of this fascinating dynamic. Encounters, even the simplest ones, between Kate and Moira presented certain challenges and discomforts, yet also certain thrills. And Colin on some level seemed to enjoy pitting Kate and Moira against each other, throwing them in the ring like mud wrestlers in slick bikinis—his own sister!
“Well, the Globe’s out, I guess,” Moira said. “It’s raining, anyway.”
“Yep.” Colin reached for the newspaper.
“You should write them,” Moira said. “They wrote us when Dad died.”
“Can’t I just call?”
“A note is better.”
“Can I use your Mac then, later?”
“You should write it. With a pen and notepaper and your very own hand.”
“I’ll help you,” Kate said.
Colin took her hand and drew her onto his lap. He kissed her neck.
“You guys are too in love,” Paul said. “Can’t watch. Train wreck.”
Moira cooed at Liam. She stroked his pale head and guided him onto breast number two. Milk sprayed the kid’s face.
Kate read her book and Colin read his newspaper. She peered over his arm. He was deep into an article titled “After a Year, Santer Wins Friends, But Not Headlines.”
“I should really read the paper,” she said. “Who’s Santer?”
“You take it when I’m done.”
“I just always feel like I’m so behind already. Like it’s a class I’ve skipped all semester and there’s no way I can catch up. Like I just won’t understand what’s going on if I jump in now.”
Games to Play After Dark Page 3
