Every Last One

by Anna Quindlen

  "Aaarrrggh!" Kiernan shouts in a pirate's voice. "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest. Dude, is that right? Fifteen? Sixteen?" He is brandishing a long plastic sword. He pokes Max in the front of his robot box. "How many men on a dead man's chest?"

  I put the trash at the side of the house and come back and touch his arm. "Shiver me timbers!" Kiernan says.

  "And yours," I reply. "How's school?"

  "It's all right," he says.

  "How's your grandmother?"

  "Kind of crazy. Whoops, sorry, I'm not allowed to say that. She's the same." Eric and Sarah come outside. "Ahoy, mateys!" Kiernan calls.

  Suddenly like the sound of a door closing, we have run out of conversation. All the years I've known this boy, and now there is nothing for us to talk about that is not dangerous: his mother, his future, his father, his feelings, my daughter.

  "Did you eat?" I say. This is what mothers say when they don't know what to say: Did you eat?

  "Nah, I'm not really hungry. I'm going out later. I just wanted to stop by. You can't fool around with tradition. I told Max I think I've been coming to this party from the beginning." Almost, but not quite. The year of the first Halloween party, Kiernan and his mother were still living elsewhere. Nancy told me she heard afterward that during those years he had had night terrors and begun to wet the bed. I remembered he had once told me that what was so difficult was knowing that his former life was so close by and yet so far from him. At least now he can drive.

  "I'm working on a big, big project," Kiernan says.

  "What's the subject?"

  He puts his finger dramatically to his lips, and leans toward me. Suddenly I realize that he's drunk. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. "Top secret," he says.

  Night is beginning to fall, and someone inside turns on the backyard lights. Illuminated, Kiernan looks thin and bony, more skeleton than pirate. Ginger lumbers over and he scratches her ears.

  The back door slams sharply, and Ruby scans the yard, her hair wild around her face, no newsboy now. She finally finds us with her eyes, sets her jaw, and strides over.

  "Honey--" I say, but she interrupts, shaking her fist in Kiernan's face. She flattens out her hand suddenly, like a slap without hitting, and there is the ring with its lopsided hearts. I look from one of them to the other.

  "Stay ... out ... of ... my ... room," she says so loudly that everyone in the yard stops talking.

  Kiernan blinks behind the mask. "What?" he says.

  "Don't play innocent with me. I've tried to be nice about this, but now you're making it impossible. I come out of school, you're standing on the sidewalk. I leave Sarah's house, you're across the street."

  "It's a free country," Kiernan says. Ginger whines and bumps against his leg.

  "You're right, it is. So you can be anyplace you want if you just want me to get madder and madder and madder. But you can't go into my room. I've tried to be nice about this, but I'm done."

  "You've tried to be nice? Like I'm some charity case--oh, poor Kiernan, I have to be nice to him?"

  "Kiernan, just leave me in peace. We used to be together. Now we're not. I wanted to be friends. Now I don't." Even I flinch. Ruby pushes her open hand toward him. "Take it," she says. "It's not mine."

  "It's yours."

  "Dude," says Eric. He and Sarah are standing behind Ruby now.

  "Yeah, whatever, I'm leaving." Kiernan taps the plastic sword against his leg.

  "You need to get on with your life," Ruby says, turning her back on him. Slowly, he raises the sword in the air and points it at her, narrowing his eyes.

  "Dude," Eric says again.

  "I'm sorry, Kiernan," I say. "I think you need to leave now."

  "She needs to watch how she treats people," he says.

  "You need to leave her alone. I'm sorry."

  "You don't know sorry," he says with a sharp snarl, and I step back. Then he disappears into the darkness.

  Next morning when I go to wake Ruby, the photograph of her hands is gone from above her bed. In the center of the wall is a brighter rectangle of paint, and a nail. The boys come down to breakfast before she does. Max has had to cut a chunk of hair off to free himself of a lollipop that somehow wound up on his pillow. "You were sleeping on a lollipop?" Alex says.

  "Is Kiernan bothering Ruby at school?" I ask.

  "She's a bitch," Max mumbles.

  "Hey!" Glen shouts. "That's it. No more of that."

  "He's a psycho," Alex says around a mouthful of cereal.

  "Maxie, you can't let him into your sister's room," I say.

  "What's going on?" says Glen.

  My mother and her husband, Stan, are visiting us for the entire Thanksgiving week this year, with Alice and little Liam arriving from New York on Thursday for dinner and staying until Sunday morning. I am trying not to feel overwhelmed with comings and goings, shopping and meals, displacements and undercurrents. To accommodate my mother, Alex has moved into Max's new room, giving up his new double bed for four days. He is only mildly annoyed. My mother and Stan are coming early because Alex is playing in a big tournament soccer match. We are all going to the game together. Alex and Ben are the only freshmen on the team, and Alex is the only one who plays.

  "Can you get Max to come to the game?" Ruby asked me.

  "Does Alex want him to come?"

  "I heard Alex and Ben talking about it, and Alex said Nana and Poppa were coming, and then Ben asked about Max, and Alex really sounded like he wanted Max to come."

  "What, exactly, did Alex say?"

  "Mom, trust me. He wants him to come."

  So I went to Alex and asked, "Do you want Max to go to the tournament game?"

  "If he wants to."

  And then I asked Max, who said, "You think Alex wants me to go? No way."

  The night before, Glen said offhandedly, "So we'll all go together to the soccer game."

  "Of course," Ruby said.

  "I guess," Max said.

  "Cool," said Alex.

  "This is just terrific," says Stan, sitting in the bleachers at the high school, his big hairy hands on his knees. He and my mother have been married for almost twenty years, longer than she was married to my father, but he still has the perpetual good humor of one who knows he will always be a newcomer.

  "Bleachers are very uncomfortable," my mother says.

  It's hard to know if we are nicer to Stan than his children are to my mother. I hear only my mother's side. Stan's daughter has told my mother she is not emotive enough.

  "I'm not sure that's even a word," my mother had said, sitting across from me in the living room, which we use only for uncomfortable company. Nancy, for example, has never sat in my living room, nor I in hers. Occasionally, I step inside it to change the stacks of magazines on the end tables. From time to time, Glen grabs a stack and takes the magazines to the office for his patients.

  "Why in the world would she say that to you?" I asked. It is true, of course, but it's like telling someone they have a stutter, likely only to make the condition worse.

  "She read a book." My mother the retired English teacher spit this out as though nothing could be more useless than reading a book. "One of those self-help books. She says you have to verbalize your feelings. Why do I have to verbalize my feelings? Especially if I suspect that she won't like my feelings?"

  "Max is seeing a therapist," I blurted. Why do I always do this? When my mother was talking about the need to establish myself professionally I told her Glen and I were getting married. When she told me we needed to live frugally until he got a practice up and running, I cut her off to tell her I was pregnant.

  "The eating again?" my mother replied.

  "God, no. Boys don't do that."

  She shook her head authoritatively. "I saw a program on television. Boys do it now." She narrowed her eyes. "He looks thin."

  "So does Alex, Mom. They shot up overnight. They'll fill out."

  "So what's the problem?"

  "He's depressed."

>   "What does he have to be depressed about, for Christ's sake?" It is my father-in-law's voice in my head. We are seeing him at Christmas. "He needs a haircut," he will say of Max. "I still have the clippers in the basement."

  Instead, my mother said, "It's probably a phase. But better safe than sorry."

  I blinked. "I'm not opposed to therapy," she added. "I think people should spend less time moping over their own problems. But you can afford it. It's fine." That's my mother's judgment on most things: It's fine. Stan thinks everything is terrific. I suppose between the two of them they reach a happy medium.

  "I think he has to verbalize his feelings," I said.

  "Ha," my mother said. "Very funny."

  Alex has always been her favorite. He is like my brother, Richard, but without the burden of responsibility that made my brother so aged so early. At the soccer game, my mother leans forward and scans the field intently. Her eyes follow Alex. Max is sitting with his knees apart, his head down, his arms wrapped around his midsection. He is wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up. I think it makes him look like a terrorist.

  "You look like a terrorist," my mother says. She pulls the hood down and says, "You look good with longer hair. It could use a little shaping, that's all." Max mumbles something and pushes his hair around with his hand in a way that does it no good. I have a fantasy, that we will go to the pharmacy and buy some pills and it will be as it was when he had those terrible ear infections: overnight, a miracle--no pain, back to normal.

  "I try to get parents to understand that medication is not necessarily a panacea," Dr. Vagelos had said kindly, as though he could read my mind but was not judgmental about its contents.

  "This is terrific," says Stan again. "This is a perfect fall day."

  "I'm freezing," says my mother.

  Glen gives her a sweatshirt we brought with us. She puts it on, puts her hood up, and gives Max a level look. He grins, and suddenly I love her. She has made my Maxie smile. I put an arm around her shoulder and hug. It is like hugging a mannequin. She's not a toucher. Stan's daughter has told her that, too. But she turns to me and says in a voice only I can hear above a scream from the crowd, "Everything will be fine."

  I walk behind the bleachers where Olivia is standing with her hands in her pockets as Luke, her youngest, plays with sticks. She hands me a cookie and chews on one herself.

  "I haven't seen you in weeks," I say. "I keep meaning to stop by with pictures from Halloween. The time just gets away from me." Olivia is wearing one of those waxed jackets and big rubber boots, and I think how very English she looks, with her pink cheeks and outdoor gear. Her fair hair is held back with a tortoiseshell band.

  "I know," she says. "I have four different school runs now. High school, middle school, elementary, nursery. Sometimes I can't say whether I'm coming or going. And this little man is driving me mad."

  "Such a great age," I say, watching Luke try to drive a stick into the ground. I think he's four, or maybe five.

  "Really?" Olivia replies with a particularly skeptical lilt.

  "Oh, come on."

  "Notice the shirt." It is a long-sleeved red polo shirt.

  "He must be freezing," I say.

  "He's been wearing that shirt for a month. He absolutely refuses to wear anything else. I managed to suss out a duplicate, and now I steal away after he's in bed and wash one and leave the other in its place. Occasionally, he will sniff it suspiciously."

  "Ruby wore a tutu for two months."

  "I'm certain you managed it better than I have."

  "No, I didn't." I remember for a moment how it enraged me to see my tiny girl in what soon became a graying rag, the netting torn, a network of tiny pills all over the bodice.

  "And in the end?" says Olivia, who stops to speak sternly to Luke, now trying to poke his stick through the bleachers into the shins of spectators.

  "One day she came downstairs in purple corduroy overalls. I kept my mouth shut because I was convinced that if I said anything she would tromp back up and put the tutu on again. But when Glen got home he said right away, 'Ruby, what happened to your tutu?' And she said, 'I threw it away. It was yucky and I didn't like it anymore.'"

  "From your mouth to God's ear."

  "How's Aidan? Ben said he was sick."

  "Strep," says Olivia dismissively "Antibiotics, done and done."

  I look at her staring off, abstracted, over the ragged gray fields of winter weeds and add, "You must miss home sometimes, especially during the holidays."

  "I've actually finally begun to think of this as home, now that I live with a houseful of American citizens," she says. "Although I have yet to be persuaded of the charms of turkey. And it would be useful if people would stop remarking on my accent."

  "What accent?" I say.

  "Bless you," Olivia says, and then her voice disappears in the screams of the crowd. "We'd better go back," she shouts. "Maybe the coach will play Ben for a few minutes." She reaches for Luke's hand. "If Alex were to make a goal, and you not there--disaster!"

  "I'd say I had been," I reply.

  "Terrific game," Stan says.

  "Where were you?" says Glen.

  "I'm hungry," says Max, and I hand him a sandwich and put my head on his shoulder. All normal activity gives me hope: eating, sleeping, speaking. It is as though Max is a baby again, and I am charting his milestones.

  "I love you, Maxie mine," I say.

  "Love you, too, Mom," he says, letting his side go just a little softer. Behind his back I smile at Ruby, and she smiles at me.

  "You want half a sandwich, Nana?" Max asks.

  "I think I will," my mother says.

  Alice and I are sitting on the floor of the den, laughing loudly. Luckily, the house is laid out so that sound from the den barely carries to the master bedroom, where Glen has been sleeping for the past hour. I know this because of countless mornings when I have been told that the kids' friends stayed until past midnight, playing Uno or watching movies or just talking, mornings when the last thing I remember is turning out the light at 10 P.M. and the last sound I heard was the coo of a wood dove from the back lawn.

  "I can't believe we haven't heard any complaints from my son," says Alice, picking up her glass of wine. I raise mine to her. There are half-eaten turkey sandwiches on a plate between us. I love turkey sandwiches, but by the Saturday after Thanksgiving even I have grown tired of them.

  "Repeat after me: Liam is fine," I say. "Liam can sleep without me. He can even breathe without me."

  "All I can tell you is that at home he'd be out of his crib and into my bed," she says. "And don't tell me he's too old for a crib. I know he's too old for a crib."

  "He's discovered someone more interesting than you."

  "Impossible," says Alice, taking a drink.

  "Someday he's going to marry somebody he thinks is more interesting than you," I say.

  "Are you trying to make me feel bad, or have you had too much to drink?"

  "Both," I say.

  "I haven't had this much wine in years," she says.

  "You haven't actually had that much."

  "I know, but I hardly ever drink anymore. I picture having to go to the emergency room half-looped, or having the sitter smell something on my breath."

  "What about when Liam was with your parents?"

  "Worse," she says, staring into her glass. "I was convinced I was going to have to go get him in the middle of the night. My parents are both very casual about everything he does."

  I say nothing.

  "I am not one of those crazy older mothers. I'm a little type A, but you can't imagine what it's like to be the only one responsible. You have Glen. You even have the other kids. Look at how your boys were with Liam."

  Alice and Liam had arrived an hour before Thanksgiving dinner. We could hear the sound of Liam screaming as the car door opened. "Oh, goodness," my mother said as she turned from the stove. This is why I made certain to have well-behaved children: so that my mother w
ould not say those words in that tone.

  "Will you go help Aunt Alice?" I had asked the twins. "I've got to get this stuffing into the oven."

  Five minutes later there was silence, and Alice in the kitchen doorway, her cheeks pink and her long hair disheveled. Since we graduated from college, she has had many incarnations: business suit, cropped hair, leather jackets, enormous jewelry, stiletto heels. Now she looks much as she did when we were twenty--a big sweater, jeans, flat boots, long hair. She hugged my mother, then me. "Terrific to see you again, honey," said Stan. Glen handed her a tumbler of eggnog.

  "Max and Alex went off with Liam," she'd said, looking around at all of us. "He was crying, and Alex said 'little dude' in a deep voice, and he stopped crying and walked off with them. What happened to your sons? They're men."

  "That's an optical illusion," Glen said, picking at the turkey skin with his fingers.

  Alice had watched with amazement as her son sat quietly through Thanksgiving dinner, built with Legos compliantly in the den with Max, watched football while lying atop Ginger, and then went without a whimper to Max's room, where he was installed on a futon on the floor. The company futon, we call it, for when the beds are full. The plan had been for Liam to share Ruby's bed with Alice, while Ruby slept on the couch in the den, but Liam has thrown himself completely into the big-boy camp. "Are you sure, Meensie?" Alice had said. "Won't you be happier with Mommy? Mommy has a big, big bed."

  "I'm big," Liam replied.

  "He needs siblings," Alice says in the den, absently fitting some blocks together. "Should I adopt?"

  Alice is not going to adopt. Liam is not going to have siblings. This is simply one of those questions we ask one another so that our friends will say that everything will be fine.

  "He'll be fine," I say. "He is fine. He's so cute."

  "Your guys are wonderful. They're so grown-up. And they were so good with him. How many teenage boys would take that kind of trouble with a three-year-old?"

  I say nothing. I hate women who meet a compliment with a list of their children's shortcomings.