“But why should a boy like Ryan give a shit about Cyrano? Maybe I should find something grittier, more—”
“What? Relevant? Just in case Ryan forgets his cousin got shot in the head? That’s not going to happen. And poor old Cyrano’s so far from his experience, it could be what the kid needs right now. Steve Martin might make him laugh.”
Elizabeth was a wise and experienced teacher who, despite her diminutive size, could manage a classroom full of hard cases, and her opinions mattered to Roxanne. It was such a relief to be talking about Ryan, not holding his story inside where there was already so much piled up, unresolved.
“Rox, when you strip away all the fancy language, isn’t Cyrano just a play about low self-esteem and learning to speak up for yourself?”
“You’re saying it’s perfect for eighth graders.”
“My own brilliance blinds me.”
They listened to the noise of kids at the outdoor lunch tables where they ate on all but rainy days. Elizabeth asked about the weekend at Huntington Lake, and Roxanne shared the grisly details until her cell phone rang from the depths of her purse. Hoping it was Ty, she checked it fast, but when she saw the caller ID she let it ring through and listened to the message.
“That was Merell. She wants me to ask the principal if I can leave work early. Simone’s fired the nanny.” Roxanne laid her forehead on the desktop. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Even if she wanted to be responsible for the Duran family—which she didn’t—there was no way she could do it without risking her marriage.
Despite Elizabeth’s often repeated conviction that they happened every day, Roxanne was skeptical about miracles. Elizabeth believed in so many things that made no sense. Auras and directed dreaming, angels and spirit guides, and extraordinary and unlikely events brought about by planetary alignment or the hand of an unseen god. Roxanne could laugh at most of these, but miraculous was the only way she could explain Ty and the great good luck of their meeting: two very different people who somehow, against all odds, met and discovered they were perfectly suited. An everyday miracle. Forced to choose between her sister and a miracle, she had to choose Ty. To do otherwise would be to turn her back on the future, on hope and laughter and all good things. But at the lake she had seen how stretched thin and perilous Simone’s family situation was, and it was unthinkable that she would abandon her sister and nieces when their need was so great. She would have to find a way to satisfy everyone.
She remembered Merell’s excited conversation on the plane, her breathless tour of the compound and the way she stood up on her bike pedals and bounced along the swamped road.
“She’s such a needy kid.”
“Heads up, Rox, they’re all needy.” Elizabeth stood, brushing crumbs off the front of her denim skirt. “But it’s your life. You can decide if you want to jump into that suck hole or stay away. Whatever you decide, I’ve got your six.”
Your six. The one who watches your back. The military figure of speech reminded Roxanne that Elizabeth had troubles of her own. Her husband, Eddie, had been in Afghanistan for months. “I must be the worst friend in the world, Lizzie.”
“Nah. I think Dick Cheney’s got that honor. You never tried to shoot me.”
“What do you hear?”
“Same as ever. Nothing. I got a call from his friend Calvin last night. He said Eddie wanted me to know he was safe but he couldn’t get to a phone or a computer.” She stared down at Roxanne’s desktop. “I just realized. Eddie’s the opposite of these kids, Merell and all. They all need to be noticed and Eddie’s life depends on staying out of sight.”
Roxanne left school soon after the closing bell, parked her car at the side of Simone’s house, and walked around back, where she was surprised to see Johnny down at the pool with the twins. She waved to him and walked into the house, where she came upon Simone standing in the center of the family room.
She said, “I knew you’d come.”
“You fired Franny and then you called Johnny away from work? You’re out of your mind, Simone. I swear to God. Bonkers.”
“He’ll call the agency and find someone else.”
“Save him the trouble. You call Franny right now, I’ll dial the number. Apologize and give her a bonus.”
“Why should I? I didn’t do anything wrong.” Simone hurried Roxanne out of the family room and across the entry to her study adjoining Johnny’s. “I need to talk to you about something else right now.”
“Why are you whispering?”
Simone’s study was a suffocatingly feminine room, a flurry of florals and stripes in pastel blues and pinks in which Roxanne would have found it difficult to accomplish anything constructive. Simone closed and locked the door, took a deep, audible breath and stepped behind her ladylike desk—too small to be useful to anyone who really had work to do. She began sorting absently through a pile of unopened mail.
“Look at me, Simone. What’s going on? Why did you fire her?”
“I got sick of the way she acted like she knew my own family better than I did. And she treated me like I’m an invalid. And an idiot.” Simone looked up from the mail and her sudden grin swept years from her face. “I climbed a tree last week so don’t fuck with me.”
“You could climb a mountain and you still wouldn’t have that girl’s talent for kids.” Roxanne recognized the grandiosity that often accompanied Simone’s bursts of mania. There was no telling where her mood would go next. She could swing from helpless to unrealistically confident to abysmally miserable in a matter of minutes. Under such circumstances Roxanne would normally tread carefully, but on this day she couldn’t be bothered. “You can’t get along without her.”
“When was the last time anyone gave me a chance?”
“She was the best nanny in the world. She was golden. Who’ll take care of your kids?”
And who will take care of you? Roxanne was afraid she knew the answer to that question.
Simone reached into her purse and handed Roxanne a photograph, an ultrasound image, speckled and blurred as if taken through a windshield on a snowy day. Roxanne isolated the bud of a retroussé nose, a prominent forehead, an arm.
“If you’re looking for the ding-dong,” Simone said, “don’t waste your time. It’s another girl and you know what that means. Once she’s born, I have to go through the whole fucking thing again.”
Simone’s moods were mercurial; she could be cunning and she was often secretive, but in some ways she was predictable. Swearing was always a bad sign.
“Quit complaining and have your tubes tied, use birth control.”
“I have another plan.” Simone grabbed the photo and dropped it in the wastepaper basket beside the desk. “That’s why I told Merell to call you. You’ve been so snotty lately—”
“I just spent the whole weekend with you!”
“—I didn’t think you’d come if I called.”
“What kind of a plan?”
“Today, when I was having it out with Franny, I got this feeling. I can’t explain how it works, but it’s like knowing something without having to think about it. The feeling just comes into me and I know what I have to do. I know.”
This isn’t good.
“What does this have to do with Franny?”
“You don’t get it, Rox, because everything works for you. You’ve got the world all figured out, lined up and alphabetized. You always have.” Simone’s mouth tightened into a line. “Just imagine what it’s like for someone like me who doesn’t have anything figured out. Then all of a sudden I get this click in my head and I understand something perfectly. I know.”
After a weekend swinging between extremes of mania and depression, Simone had settled in a position of unassailable certainty it was pointless to argue with.
“Starting today, everything changes.” Spots of red bloomed in her cheeks. “The first thing I’m going to do is tell Johnny that I am not having another damn baby. I didn’t want to do it until you got here. J
ust in case he decides to kill me.” She laughed.
Nervously, Roxanne thought.
“The second thing is, I called a clinic and made an appointment. For an abortion.” She looked as pleased as a child displaying an A exam after weeks of failing grades. “I have to talk to a counselor first so tomorrow morning I need you to drive me there and then bring me home. I can’t take a taxi. I need your moral support. Then after it’s all over I’ll tell Johnny I miscarried again, and he’ll never know.”
She looked at Roxanne expectantly.
“And I’m going on the pill.” She laughed again. Electric, dangerous. “I’ll say they’re vitamins. For my hair.” More laughter.
“How far along are you?”
“I don’t know. The picture came out so good, the doctor says he thinks we might have miscalculated.”
“Five months?”
“Something like that.”
“Did you tell them that on the phone?”
“Who?”
“The clinic.”
Simone pouted. “You don’t want me to do it.”
“I’m saying, Simone, you’re pretty far along.” Outside the study window Roxanne saw the sparkle of sunlight on water drops as sprinklers rainbowed the lawn, flashing like the aura of a migraine. “It’s going to make a difference.”
“Five months is nothing.”
“It’s fingers and toes, Simone.”
“You believe in the right to choose. I know you, Rox, you give money to Planned Parenthood.”
“That’s true, but you’re not eighteen years old and unmarried.” And Johnny wasn’t an abuser, a cheater, or a deadbeat. He loved his wife, and his four little girls were precious to him. “He has to be part of this decision. And the counselor’s going to say the same thing.”
“I told her I was single. Divorced.”
“He has a right—”
“What about me? Why don’t you talk about my rights? Roxanne, he’ll never let me do it.” Her voice rose, shattering between them like glass. “Abortion’s murder to him.”
“That may be so but you still can’t ignore—”
The doorknob rattled. “Simone? What’s going on in there?”
“I’m your sister,” Simone hissed as she went to the door and unlocked it. “You owe me this.”
Simone’s study wasn’t large and Johnny was a big man. Three long strides took him into the middle of the room. “You ought to be getting dressed, Simone. Have you forgotten we’re going out tonight?” His eyebrows dug a crevasse between his eyes. “You chose a great day to fire Franny. I bet you didn’t even think about getting a babysitter.”
Simone blinked, looked at Roxanne and back at Johnny. “You can go without me.”
“Jesus, Simone, it’s the Judge Roy Price Dinner. We’re at the mayor’s table.”
“He’ll never miss me,” she said, her hands fluttering up. “It’s you they all like so much.”
“That may be true but after what Merell did I want you beside me so the gossip machine doesn’t start.”
“I don’t feel good.”
“So what? You never feel good.”
Roxanne grabbed her purse and headed for the door. Johnny put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.
“Could you help us out here, Rox? We’ll be home by eleven, tops.”
“Ask Mom.”
“It’d be a real treat for the kids. Get Ty over here too. There’s great steaks in the freezer. You want me to pay you? Hey, you’re a professional, I get it.”
“Don’t insult me, Johnny.”
Stunned by her tone, then hurt, he looked down. Roxanne saw the exact moment when his eyes focused on the ultrasound image in the basket near his feet.
He picked it out and squinted at the image. As if he couldn’t believe the evidence before him, he brought it closer to his face. “You went to the doctor? Without telling me?”
Simone clutched her hands behind her back and stood straighter, holding her shoulders so high they almost touched her ears.
“It’s a girl, isn’t it?” For a fraction of a second Johnny looked disappointed and then he laughed. “I don’t think you know how to make a boy, Simone.”
“Sperm determine the sex of the child,” Roxanne said. “She has nothing to do with it.”
“No kidding. Really?”
“It’s been that way for some time.”
“So I’m like my dad, right?” He appeared pleased by this news. “It took him seven girls to get me. We’ve already got four so after this one”—he flapped the ultrasound picture—“there’s only a couple more to go. Right? Eight’s the magic number.”
Roxanne’s throat tightened like the first day of the worst cold she would ever have.
Simone rushed into the silence, her words tumbling over each other in a dash to have them said. “I don’t want another baby right now. I’ve decided to have an abortion.”
The word sat in the middle of the room.
Roxanne watched Johnny, saw the word register, and waited. Her neck tightened in anticipation of his explosion. The sprinkler clicked from side to side.
He put his hands on Simone’s shoulders and turned her so she faced the silver-framed mirror between the bookcases. She winced under the pressure of his fingers.
“What do you see?” he asked.
Roxanne’s neck ached with the strain.
“Answer me.”
“I see me, Johnny.” Simone spoke in her little girl’s voice, the one that wheedled and begged and cajoled so well. “And I see you too. I see us.”
“What d’you see, Rox?”
“Let it be, Johnny.”
“You know what I see? I see a murderer.”
Simone’s face spasmed. Roxanne moved closer to Johnny.
“Leave her alone.”
“I see a baby-killer.”
“You son of a bitch.” Roxanne slapped him so hard that she felt the blow vibrate up through her arm and into her shoulder. For the thinnest, razor-cut sliver of a fraction of a second, she thought he would slap her back.
Simone rushed between them.
“He was just talking. He says things but he doesn’t really mean them. You’re sorry, Rox. I know you are. You didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“Are you deaf, Simone? Did you hear what he called you?” Did his tone of voice even register?
“It’s only words, that’s all. I don’t care about words.” Simone waved her hand between them as if she could that easily erase the scene. “But I love you both so much, I can’t stand it if you fight.” She spoke rapidly in her sweetest voice, the voice Roxanne remembered hearing all her life when things went wrong. “I need you. Both.”
Light-headed, Roxanne moved toward the door.
Simone grabbed her arm. “Everything’s fine. Honest to God, none of this matters. Really. Don’t leave me again.”
Sometimes, just when Roxanne thought she had seen every one of Simone’s performances, the curtain went up on something outrageously new. First: Simone strong and determined, taking charge of her life. Knowing. Independence. Abortion. The pill. And now: mewling and needy. Everything’s fine. Don’t leave me again.
Again? When have I ever really left you, Simone?
“You said you’d take care of the girls.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t promise anything.”
“We’re counting on you,” Johnny said, and slipped his arm around his wife’s waist.
Roxanne was living in a movie where reality shifted from frame to frame.
“Just answer me, Simone. Did you hear what Johnny said to you?”
“Oh, of course I heard him.” She dipped her head with what Roxanne knew some might see as a beguiling femininity. “He didn’t mean it, Rox. You know Johnny. He gets upset, that’s all.” She elbowed him gently in the ribs. “Isn’t that right? Say you’re sorry for being so mean.”
“I was way out of line, Roxanne. I get mad, I say things….” He rubbed his cheek. “You’ve got a
hell of a right cross there. Married people have these… flare-ups. You’re practically a newlywed. You’ll know what I mean in a few years.”
“Are you telling me you don’t want to terminate this pregnancy, Simone?”
“The ultrasound was a shock, that’s all. I just got a little loopy.” Simone made a corkscrew gesture beside her head and leaned into the protection of Johnny’s arm, a posture that seemed both voluptuous and childlike at the same time.
It came to Roxanne how little she actually knew about her sister’s marriage. Maybe Simone’s plan to end her pregnancy had been a hormonal outburst or an excuse to make a scene. That business about knowing something was just more talk. All she really wanted was a bit of drama to punish Johnny for giving her another daughter or to provide him with a reason to rant at her for firing Franny and get it out of his system. Maybe he was hiding his anger now or maybe Simone’s two-step and sashay had worked, he’d lost his temper and that was that. Behind closed doors his name-calling might be nothing out of the ordinary. All Roxanne knew was that in some way to which she was not privy, a bargain had been struck between husband and wife. Theirs was a marriage that permitted scenes like the one she’d just witnessed. Perhaps required them.
Chapter 10
Ellen Vadis’s earliest memory was of the sweaty summer afternoon she was attacked by yellow jackets.
It was too hot for a nap. Wearing seersucker shorts with a torn pocket and a cut-off, no-sleeve white T-shirt inherited from her father, she crept barefoot down the narrow back stairs for a drink of cold water and a sugar cookie; but when she heard them arguing she changed her mind, her stomach suddenly heavy. Sometimes she threw up when her mother and grandmother had fights.
Instead of going into the kitchen she tiptoed along the back hall, through the laundry room, and out the screen door, into the ripe summer heat. Wet sheets hung on the carousel clothesline, and from across the grass she smelled the bleach her mother used to make them white. She thought she might find her father in the shed where he sometimes fixed things like the rusty plow he told her was a beautiful antique. It looked plain old to Ellen, but she believed what her father said because he was a soldier.
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