If the Body Allows It

by Megan Cummins

  It seemed unfair that her scoliosis would ruin more than just her spine. Since her diagnosis, her life hadn’t been easy; it hadn’t even been consistent, full of good years and bad years. Karen’s own waffling hadn’t helped. For so long, she enabled Venus, and now, at Warren’s insistence, she was toughening up. On the phone with Venus after Pie à la Road, Karen almost agreed to pick her up from the shelter in Merced a few days earlier than planned, but there was Warren, sitting in the den, shaking his head.

  “You kept him, right? The body?” Venus said. When Karen said nothing, she shouted, “Mom!”

  “How about a memorial service?”

  “Fine,” Venus said. “You know, the social workers think I shouldn’t be here.”

  Karen knew that meant Venus did not think she should be there when the river house had a basement room in which she could languish.

  Warren rolled his eyes when Karen hung up. For a psychologist, he did not do very well with people. At least not her people. She regretted that she often felt in his debt, because he paid for everything, even though she cooked and cleaned and kept the house running and had rescued him from loneliness.

  But Karen could understand his frustration. It was the same frustration she felt with her daughters, only without the love to alleviate it. Venus could do nothing right; Maille, nothing wrong. In her more honest moments—after a glass of wine or two—Karen admitted to herself that, while she loved them both equally, she preferred Venus to Maille. Maille had a temper when it came to the bad habits of others. Small, meaningless things, such as Karen forgetting to clean out the coffeepot, triggered something borderline venomous in Maille, as though Karen’s worth as a person was based on her ability to keep her kitchen clean.

  Maille’s own indulgences—which she did have, though it might not seem like it—she managed to justify, usually with meticulous research on the internet. The husband wasn’t the first time she’d come home with a surprise: a month after she moved to California, she returned from a trip to LA with breasts twice their former size, bought on a payment plan.

  When Venus saw them, she accused Maille of stealing her boobs. In the den of the river house she lined her sister up next to her. “See?” she exclaimed, turning Maille by the shoulders so Karen could view the profile. “C cup. Like me. Unfair.”

  But Maille worked at a café at the time, and the boob job had gotten her the extra shifts she wanted. And bigger tips.

  “I can’t avoid sexism in the workplace, so I might as well exploit it myself, at least until this country undergoes systemic change,” Maille had said.

  Karen was dumbstruck. There was something both wrong and right about what her daughter was saying.

  In her unkind moments, Karen also indulged the suspicion that the boob job had helped with the husband from the internet, who owned several lucrative avocado farms in San Diego, where he and Maille lived. Maille was soon doing math over the phone with Karen: net income per acre times total acres equaled her newfound fortune. Maille, never one to be an onlooker, kept the books for the business and filed the taxes, putting her accounting degree to use.

  The world did right by Maille, who, despite all she required from others, was loyal to the rafters. Friends of Maille’s were looked after. She’d convinced Laurel—a frazzled, nervous girl she had lived with in Michigan—to get her PhD in California. Maille claimed Laurel had once been really fun, but now she let her anxiety get the better of her. Laurel was always afraid people wouldn’t like her or wouldn’t think she was funny. Plus, she dated the wrong men. Maille was hopeful, though, that Laurel could change.

  Maille was friendly with each of her ex-boyfriends (except for one, who’d killed himself on Mother’s Day a few years back). She’d recently rescued a Chihuahua and nursed the dog through kennel cough. She never used her father’s death to receive pity from others. Mortality tested Maille, and Maille usually seemed to win.

  * * *

  Two days later, as Karen packed her purse to go to the shelter, she said to Warren, “You’ll be nice, won’t you? Don’t say anything snide about the cat.”

  There were more things she wanted to ask of her husband. They played in her mind as she drove: please don’t tell me I should stop eating and drinking at dinner, you know it embarrasses me; please don’t talk about how the detainees at Guantánamo deserve what they got, you know nobody agrees with you; please don’t make anyone go in the boat who doesn’t want to, you know that thing should be sunk. But she hadn’t said any of it. She drove away from the river and into the hills. The shadows of clouds fell in a patchwork pattern on the tussock grass. She passed into the farmland near Manteca, with its neat rows of grapevines and paddocks of grazing cattle. Of all the parts of California, she’d picked the one that reminded her most of the Midwest.

  * * *

  Later, when Karen returned to the river house with her daughter, Venus retreated to the basement. Karen couldn’t tell which Venus wanted more: her family, or, having that, to shun them.

  Maille’s arrival later than evening couldn’t have been more different. She burst through the door. Under one arm was her Chihuahua, quivering, and under the other a crate of avocados. Neither slowed her down. Her friend Laurel followed her in, her arms crossed, and behind her a man whom Karen hadn’t met but who was pleasant looking. He had his hand on Laurel’s shoulder.

  “Mom,” Maille said, setting the Chihuahua and the crate down on the floor of the den. “Guess what? I’m pregnant!”

  The little dog scurried away. Karen stood and stared at her daughter, who spread her arms wide, though there was nothing to show. Maille was twenty-three years old. Of course she would be the one to have a child first.

  “Maille just told me in the car,” Laurel said to Karen, leaving her boyfriend unintroduced at the door. “I don’t want you to think I knew a long time before you.”

  Karen’s gaze followed Maille, who had gone after the dog. She glanced at Laurel and said, “You look good.”

  And it was true. At the girls’ graduation, Karen had been able to see Laurel’s clavicle and sternum under her skin. The cords that hung around her neck—summa cum laude, Maille boasted for Laurel—looked as though they could bring her down. She wasn’t anorexic, Maille had insisted on Laurel’s behalf, but was sick in some mysterious, undiagnosed way that baffled doctors. Now she was a little fuller, her cheeks rosy.

  “The doctor made me gain weight,” she said. “Oh, this is Lance.”

  Lance had moved from the door. He shook Karen’s hand and at the same time rubbed Laurel’s back in small circular movements.

  “Maille said there would be river otters?” Laurel said, moving away from Lance to look out the window. With her back to Karen, she said, “Let me know if you need help with dinner, okay?”

  Laurel, Karen thought, was turning out to be sort of boring. Karen had seen her once a year, during visits to Michigan, since the two girls had met. Laurel had always been quick and full of humor, but now she sounded dull, without any of her old enthusiasm. Though Laurel looked better than ever, it seemed as though the weight wasn’t so much adding to her as it was diluting what was already there. What had happened to the wry girl? California had been sweet on her; she was a candied rind of what she’d been.

  Maille, however, looked radiant. Upon closer look, she had a prenatal glow to her olive skin. She was like a walking blood orange, carrying that surprise inside of her.

  From the kitchen, something began to burn. Karen called for Warren, who’d promised to keep an eye on the carrots and brussels sprouts roasting in the oven. But only Venus stood over the stove, staring at the knobs. A thin haze of smoke floated in the air. “Why didn’t you turn off the heat?” Karen asked, nudging Venus out of the way. When her daughter said nothing, Karen continued, “Well, go get Warren. He might be changing the battery on the boat.”

  “I am not going in that boat,” Venus said. But she went outside anyway. Karen heard her yell, “Hey, Fake Dad!”

  Karen u
sed a spatula to flip the burned vegetables into the sink. She snapped the foil tent off the two roast chickens and carved uneven chunks, plopping them onto the platter. Everything besides the vegetables, she put on the table. When Venus reappeared, she shook her head. “No Fake Dad down there.”

  “Where’s Dad?” Maille asked. “He needs to hear the good news, too.”

  Karen couldn’t imagine how he’d be happy. He’d been against the marriage in the first place. She went to the phone and called him twice, but there was no answer. “Let’s just eat,” she said, motioning everyone over to the table and sitting down herself. “I’ll say grace. Thank you for all this food and family and friends, and for Maille’s fetus, and please let the river otters come out tonight so Laurel can see them. Amen.”

  “Mom,” Maille said. “That’s not a real grace.”

  “I liked it,” Venus said, reaching over Lance to grab the basket of rolls.

  “I do want to see the river otters,” Laurel added.

  Karen put an artichoke on Maille’s plate and removed her wineglass. “If I’d known, I would have gotten some sparkling juice for you.”

  “I can have a little bit,” Maille said, taking back her wineglass. “Don’t be so American, Mom.”

  “I am American,” Karen said, frowning.

  They all picked at their food. Downriver, the dam’s lights popped on—bright and sudden, as though searching for something that shouldn’t be there. The neighbors’ German shepherds began to bark. Karen went to the phone and dialed her husband’s number again.

  “Goddamn it, Charlie!” she cried.

  The mistake startled her. The whole table looked up, and a pregnant glance passed between Venus and Maille. Karen noticed that poor Lance looked confused. He would get used to them eventually, if he ended up staying around. “I’m sorry,” Karen said. Silently, she apologized to her dead husband, who had done nothing wrong but who was still only a slip of the tongue away from blame.

  * * *

  Warren walked in during dinner with a pet carrier, inside of which was a kitten.

  “Oh, Warren,” Karen said. “We didn’t want another one.”

  Warren seemed not to hear her. Everyone except Karen and Laurel stopped eating and went to the carrier, poking their fingers through the bars. Warren opened the latch and the little animal crawled out, only to be pummeled by the Chihuahua, who was fascinated by the only thing in the world smaller than itself.

  “There are stray dogs everywhere in California,” Laurel said, rising to join the crowd around the stunned and hissing kitten. “They made you pay an adoption fee, Maille? You could have just gone outside and found one.”

  “Laurel,” Maille said, scowling, “every pet you’ve ever had has died. Who are you to talk? You thought the hamster I bought you would survive for three days in a hot car while you drove to California.”

  Laurel grew quiet.

  Karen looked over at the two girls. Adults now, they were beginning to do things that couldn’t be undone. Maybe they hadn’t recognized it yet, hadn’t accumulated enough of the briny feeling of guilt, regret. Karen stood and took a few plates with her. In the kitchen, she ran some dishwater.

  A pregnant daughter, a homeless one, and Laurel, a girl who wasn’t her child but seemed rather lost. Karen had always liked Laurel, had always worried about her. She was smart but now seemed to take direction so easily, and Maille could be so pushy.

  And then there was clueless Lance, who stood alone and awkward by the window, drawn to this group of misfits as though by static cling.

  “Wash those later, Karen. It’s boat time.” Warren snapped the door shut on the carrier. “We should go before the mountain lions come out.”

  Down at the dock, Warren prepped the boat. He’d gutted the inside years ago, when the cushioned seats started to mold. Folding chairs with missing belts had replaced them. The whole thing looked ravaged, already sunk, but Maille climbed in anyway, followed by Venus, despite her earlier promise.

  “Charlie, right? I’m Lance.” Lance held out his hand. He smiled a big, unknowing smile.

  Warren’s face locked up.

  “Warren, actually,” he said, taking Lance’s hand and pulling him down into the boat.

  Karen sighed, but she couldn’t blame Lance, who didn’t know any better. She got in the boat herself and sat in the nose, away from her husband, who gave her a look as though this were all somehow her fault: Maille’s mopey friend and her know-nothing boyfriend, Venus’s homelessness, the fact that Warren resented a dead man for the place he’d had—and still had—in Karen’s life.

  The boat sputtered to life. Venus turned to Laurel, who was looking up at the hills, and said, “Don’t worry about the mountain lions. The neighbors’ dogs keep them away. They can swim, though.” Venus looked away, lost in her own thoughts.

  The house next door looked like a fortress. Warren’s was a cottage in comparison. A balcony with balustrades swung out over the hill. Two German shepherds sat on cushioned armchairs, looking lazily down at them. The rest of the grounds had been sculpted with cement paths and benches, big urns that held wide-winged ferns.

  “They’re German, the people who live there, and they have German shepherds,” Venus said.

  “Germans love concrete,” Laurel said.

  Lance and Venus laughed, but Maille frowned.

  “Laurel, the things you say don’t even make sense,” she scolded.

  Maille had begun to address everyone specifically. Karen couldn’t remember when, exactly, this had started, but she had never heard their names said aloud so frequently, never realized they could be so weighty with criticism. Laurel, Venus, Mom.

  Warren didn’t seem to notice any of this. He brooded back by the engine. Lance looked confused. The three girls stared off into the reeds. The boat passed near a clump of cattails, and Venus grabbed one by the spike and pulled.

  Warren sped up. “Don’t do that,” he said. “This is protected wildlife.”

  “Don’t go too fast,” Venus said. “Maille’s with child.”

  Warren turned to Maille, his hand still on the tiller. “Glad I paid off those student loans.”

  Laurel laughed, though no one else did. Karen was starting to see that Laurel had more in common with Venus than Maille. To Venus, her life was like a broken plate: once cracked, it couldn’t look the same again, so why bother?

  Warren turned the boat sharply toward the mouth of the dam. Water churned at the dam’s base, as though it were racking its brain for something. The little boat was pushed back, but Warren kept revving.

  “Dad, you’re going to burn out the motor again,” Maille said.

  “There are oars.”

  “You promised,” Karen said, sighing.

  “I’d rather swim than row,” Venus said.

  When the motor sputtered out, and the boat was pushed away from the dam, Venus kept her word: she jumped out and swam. Karen took an oar, and so did Warren. They followed closely behind Venus in case she got too tired.

  * * *

  Venus pulled herself onto the dock and climbed up to the house without waiting for the rest of them. Her wet clothes clung tightly to her body. It had gotten dark. The cats’ eyes glowed around the house. Warren tied up the boat, everyone quiet except for Laurel, who said, “That was really fun, actually, even without river otters.”

  Up at the house, the porch light snapped up insects. Karen felt useless when Venus asked Maille to drop her off at the shelter on her way back to San Diego in the morning, two days earlier than she’d planned.

  The next day, with all the shuffling of bags and leftovers, the wrangling of the Chihuahua and the hands on Maille’s stomach, no one noticed that Warren’s new kitten had slipped out of the house and into the early morning.

  * * *

  It was Maille’s mother-in-law who demanded a wedding ceremony. She had not had one herself, and if Maille were going to make the same mistakes she had, then they might as well get a party out of it.
Karen liked the idea, and she offered the river house for the ceremony. Her own disapproval stopped far short of Judy’s, who called Maille regularly during her first trimester, reminding her the clock was ticking at Planned Parenthood.

  Maille, however, was unfazed. “I keep the baby, and Judy pays for the wedding,” she told Karen. “It’s a win win for me.” She invited everyone she liked. The postage alone for the save the dates, invitations, and RSVPs cost nearly $350—the only thing Judy refused to pay for, as though she both wanted a ceremony and desperately abhorred its actually happening.

  Karen watched her daughters the day of the wedding. Maille’s abdomen was a small hiccup. She ate granola bars as Judy fussed over her. Venus wandered around, smoking cigarettes, which shook in her tremoring hand. The smoke rose and mingled with the white lace and white flowers. She settled in the back row of folding chairs, lying across four of them. Karen wondered what new drug she was taking or what new secret she had. This was Venus’s life. She might not ever change.

  And then there was Laurel, who joined Venus in the back row of chairs. Maille had given Laurel a bundle of tulle but hadn’t told her what to do with it. She didn’t really have a need for either Venus or Laurel today.

  There was no Lance, which concerned Karen. Or maybe Laurel was better off without him. Karen needed to think of these girls as women, as people on their own in the world, but she worried for them. Or maybe Karen wanted Laurel to be a train wreck. By comparison her own daughters would look better. But thinking so was unkind, and out of guilt Karen felt the need to go to Laurel and say something nice. She even called Laurel’s name. Laurel looked up, the bundle of tulle in her arms, and said, “Yes?” But Karen found she couldn’t think of anything.