The Whole Thing Together

by Ann Brashares

  “I’d like that too.”

  They fell to silence for a few moments, a companionable silence.

  Why was it there were some things you could have multiples of, like daughters and sisters, and other things you didn’t, like fathers and husbands?

  “Hey, Mattie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I respect that you are not looking for another father. And I am not looking for a daughter. But I am open to friendship if you are. Now that we’ve gotten everything on the table. I’d perfectly understand if not. But I’d like to know you if you’d like to be known, if you’d like to know me. No pressure. No obligations, no labels.”

  She studied him. She wasn’t mad at him anymore. She liked him. He did have large feet. “I think that sounds good,” she said.

  —

  When Ray saw the orange kalanchoe plant he wanted to hug it. He felt kind of fatherly toward it. He could see it from where he lay down on the bed and he found himself worrying for its well-being.

  When he couldn’t sleep he wrote to Sasha:

  I’ve sort of got the hang of waking up in the morning, but it’s not easy. I fight with falling asleep at night. Some nights it feels impossible.

  If I could hold you again, I think I could do it.

  Awake in her room in New York, Sasha wanted to say something clever, to add something important. But mostly she just wanted to cry.

  If I could hold you again, I think I could sleep too.

  —

  “Where are you?” Emma asked into her phone.

  “I’m on Carroll Street. Right outside your house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have ice cream. Only Chubby Hubby and chocolate chip cookie dough, though.”

  “Jamie.”

  “I know. But I have here a person who loves you and some ice cream. So why should I stay away?”

  “Because I told you to.”

  “Well, that’s true. But you need me a little, at least. And ice cream.”

  She missed him so much her ribs ached. What could she do? “Oh, fine.”

  Once inside, they sat on the floor of the living room with two spoons and ate ice cream directly out of the cartons. She got him to tell the story of his departure from Califax Capital.

  “Some of the partners were pretty pissed,” he explained. “At my exit meeting, they threatened to claw back money and enforce a noncompete so I couldn’t work in the industry for the next three years.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s what you get for being indispensable. That sucks. If you’d done a worse job they would have packed you off no problem.”

  “But wait. The story gets better. Because then your dad heard about it from my direct boss, Gary. Gary was not happy either. Your dad called a meeting of the partners. He came in for it on Monday. According to Gary he roared like a lion. He said you always stay loyal to the hard workers. If you’re good to them when they leave, they may come back. If you retaliate, they’ll only want to crush you. He told them to lay off me—no claw backs, no noncompetes—and he himself would pen a stellar letter of recommendation.”

  Emma laughed. “I am sure he will. I’d like to get a look at that letter.”

  “He didn’t tell you about all that?”

  “No.”

  Jamie breathed out. “Your dad is an amazing person.”

  “I know. He is.” She laughed. “If it doesn’t work out with us, I think you and my dad should get married.”

  It seemed to Sasha they had all entered the afterlife. They had somehow snuck through in disguise, in altered versions of themselves, searching for her. Trying to be worthy of her.

  We would do anything to find you, Quinn.

  Her father would not only countenance Lila, Quinn’s mother, but embrace her. He would stand next to her, waist-deep in the cold autumn pond, as the eight of them scattered Quinn’s ashes. Who else understood the love and the pain of it?

  Of course Sasha’s eyes had gone to Ray. Who else understood? It was good, it was miraculous, that someone did.

  They would all stand in the water, holding hands in a circle, as though they’d never done things any other way. Evie holding Lila’s hand, Robert between Lila and Adam. Robert, her father, would wear the kurta Quinn had bought him years ago, looking like a proper Bengali gentleman. Mattie would tuck a sprig of sweet jasmine above her ear, just like Quinn had worn on her last day. They would cry.

  We are with you, a little bit, Quinn, aren’t we?

  Quinn would have loved it. That was the best and the worst part. The best, that it had happened. The worst, that it had happened without her.

  But you are here, aren’t you? I know you are. This is because of you.

  Quinn’s magic was at its high mark. Strange and undeniable. Their tanks had gone empty, but she’d left them the means to help each other fill up.

  Did you do this? Is this what you wanted to happen?

  No one loved harmony and wholeness as Quinn did. No one suffered more from the discord. But she didn’t turn away from it. She embraced it and endured it. That was her particular courage.

  Sasha’s heart was as full as it had ever been as she lay in her bed replaying all the pictures of the day, watching for the moon to cross the exact center of the skylight.

  How could you even think the thought of Lila and Robert, Adam and Evie, sleeping under the roof of this house together? Up until August 9 it would have been purely unimaginable, as so many things these last few weeks had been, and mostly for the horror of them. But this was something different. She imagined all eight of them wide-eyed in their beds at the strangeness of this night.

  And then she imagined they were all still suspended in the pond together, reaching slowly through strange valences of feeling, like pockets of warm and cold water. It was a quiet and rapturous suspense. But eventually you had to climb out.

  Could they stay in it for a while longer, though? Could they make breakfast together as they had dinner last night—all careful and overpolite but agreeable? Would her dad put on an apron again and find something to put on the grill? Would he and Lila reminisce again, haltingly at first but not discordantly, about the snowy night Quinn was born in their bed?

  Would Lila squeeze Sasha’s hand out of the blue again and say, “You remind me so much of my girls I feel like I know you.”

  Would her dad and Ray take another look at the faulty air compressor together, nodding their heads in a manly way, her father standing up a little straighter again?

  Would she and Ray continue their glazed looks across the table, trying to make it appear that they were lightest of acquaintances, while she yearned to grab him and touch him and feel how all his parts felt against hers?

  Would Emma say, clueless, to the two of them, “You know, I actually think you guys might get along”?

  It was strange water they were spinning in.

  The only problem was Ray sleeping in an unfamiliar room at the other end of the hallway. She felt half of her was missing, wandering around the house like a zombie.

  She’d offered to take the guest room, but he’d insisted as a gentleman that he’d do it. She hated that on such a night she got to be here and he didn’t. She didn’t want to be zero-sum anymore. She wanted to be together.

  —

  There would be no sleep on this bed tonight. It was hard enough to surrender to sleep as it was, but now there was Sasha less than fifty feet away.

  There was the invincible strangeness and sweetness of the day. And in honor of Quinn he tried to welcome it all in: the bad and the good, the puzzling, the weird.

  Still. This was the opposite of where he wanted to be. This generic, unlived-in room with its scratchy carpet smelled like Union Street Cleaners. The bedspread was stiff and covered with stupid blue flowers. It didn’t smell at all like Sasha. He hated that about it.

  He might as well have been at a Holiday Inn while miracles were taking place under the roof
of his own house.

  He got up and marched around on the carpet. His feet were nearly healed. His feet were less grudging than the rest of him. Yesterday he’d left his nearly new party shoes in the Goodwill box at the church.

  He would rather sleep on the couch in the den than in this horrible room.

  He’d rather sleep in the grass out back.

  He’d probably rather sleep on the gravel in Grandpa Harrison’s old dog run.

  He’d really, really rather sleep in his bed. In Sasha’s bed. In their bed. Their bed. With a view of the moon and their kalanchoe plant.

  They were in the same house! They were in the same place at the same time. At night! That wasn’t supposed to be possible.

  Sasha is in my bed and I’m not. It was unbearable.

  He stared out the window at darkness. There were faint solar lights dotting the entrance to the dock. As he looked longer he saw other dots of light, moving sparking light, and of course they were fireflies.

  He crept out of the Holiday Inn and past the big room across the hall where Robert and Evie slept. That room had not been occupied a single night that he’d been in the house. He’d barely ever walked in it; it was a foreign country. It was like the Vatican City inside Rome, the sole part of the house that belonged exclusively to “the other family.” He turned the bend in the hall back into the familiarity of home. He passed Emma’s and Mattie’s rooms. At Quinn’s door he made himself stop and take a breath.

  Let it all in, he told himself. That was what Quinn would do. Feel everything.

  He walked past the door of the bedroom where his parents slept. He hadn’t bothered to wonder before why his parents got the master bedroom and Robert and Evie didn’t. He approached the door of his room. Sasha’s room.

  There was suddenly something captivating about his otherwise ordinary door: it wasn’t shut. It was very slightly open.

  Was she really in there? It seemed fantastical. He wasn’t in there, which did lend credence to the idea.

  Had she left it open a little on purpose? His breathing got very shallow very quickly. He tried to settle down, annoyed at himself. What are you, twelve?

  Could he knock? Should he? No, someone else would hear. Not Robert, unless he had bionic ears, and not Adam, because he was slightly deaf, but very possibly Lila.

  His palms were sweating. His almost-healed feet were sweating. He pushed a little on the door and it opened. He pushed most of his body through, not sure if he meant to or not.

  Now he was this far. Was this a good idea? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t not do it.

  He pushed the door shut behind him. Holding his breath, he turned to look at the bed. The room was dark, but faint moonlight poured through the skylight and onto her, as it had done onto him so many nights. She was there as though he’d dreamed her. She was even wearing the silky nightgown kind of thing he’d smelled an embarrassing number of times.

  He took a step closer. He was so transfixed by the sight of her that he forgot for a moment that he was there. And then her eyes popped open and she was staring at him. So he was there, that meant.

  She sat up.

  How would he explain this? Was it too late to ask if he could come in? He felt so tenderly toward her. He could barely hold himself together. “There’s a girl sleeping in my bed,” he whispered. He lifted his hands in wonder. “How did you get here?”

  She laughed. She didn’t look mad or sorry. She pushed over to the side of the bed.

  “Come,” she said. She made room for him.

  It was only right and fitting that it happen here, in their bed. One bed for two people turned two people into one: breathing, pulsing, folding together, and finally complete. He saw his expressions in her face, felt her desire in his chest, heard his emotions in her voice. All of it mixed up, shared around. He couldn’t distinguish himself from her and didn’t want to.

  It was a very quiet avalanche. It had to be quiet because all their parents were down the hall. Every one of the million moments he’d thought of her over these years, every molecule of her smell that he’d smelled in all that time seemed to amplify the force of it. The sheer momentum allowed for no stumbling.

  He didn’t know a body could undergo these extravagances. He marveled at the strange wonder of the whole enterprise. That he could feel like that. That she could be like that, look like that, move like that. Her body, the shapes, the smells, the taste of her. How could that even be?

  After the roar subsided and the calmer part set in, he felt the weight of her head on his bare chest, her damp body along his. She turned her face up to him and he had to look away for a moment. He didn’t want to leave any glimpse of her, any crumb of sensation, on the table, but he couldn’t take it. Too much pleasure. Too much ache curled alongside it. That was always how it would be, two sides of the same devotion.

  —

  Strange miracles abounded. Mattie and her mother and Evie baked a cake in the kitchen. Mattie’s throat swelled at their good-natured but cautious patter: the deference over sticks of butter, number of eggs, the robust agreement on the virtue of vanilla, the desire under their words to say more than they were saying. Adam was at his desk in the bedroom working on his book. Her dad was fishing on the dock. Emma walked on the beach where the cell service was best, telling Jamie about everything that happened. Ray and Sasha went together into town to get groceries. It was really something. What would Quinn have thought of this?

  You are here, aren’t you? What do you think?

  It all felt dazzlingly fragile, and she was afraid if she breathed too hard it would crumple and fly away like gold leaf. But then Mattie made herself breathe hard. What was there to be afraid of anymore?

  Today was Sunday, and tonight, after a final dinner to honor Quinn, they would all go back to their regular lives. Tomorrow they’d go back to school, back to work, back to the old week-to-week rotation.

  This might be the last time Mattie ever had both her parents in the house again. Amicable and generous as they were being, she didn’t expect they’d make a habit of it. The divisions would return. Of course they would. Grass would grow. Leaves would fall. Bills would fail to be paid.

  With a potent mix of thrill and disquiet she pictured Sasha and Ray walking toward the car together. Some things would be changed forever.

  She went out to keep her dad company.

  “Hi, sweetie,” he said. He wore his classic paisley print bathing suit, a peach cabled sweater, his signature Ray-Bans flipped up onto his head. His outfit glowed with tradition and optimism. His face was still a heartbreak.

  “Hi, Dad. Anything biting?” She peered into his hopeful bucket.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  She sat by him on the dock and dangled her feet in the water as she used to do so often when she was small. He leaned over and tousled her hair.

  The air was autumn cool. The trees around the pond pulsed with color.

  “I like having both my parents in this house,” she said. “I admit it. I love both of you. I love both my families. I love this house.” She felt it so strongly and gratefully, even with everything she knew.

  He nodded. His face didn’t forbid anything, so she kept going.

  “Have I ever had this before? Did you and Mom ever stay here together after I was born?” she asked. She wasn’t sure how much she was going for.

  “Not for long. Maybe two months. Just long enough for you to start to smile.”

  “Did I?”

  “Oh, yes. Gloriously. Always.” He smiled quite sincerely at the memory. “It’s what kept us all going.”

  “Really?”

  “On my hardest days, it still does.”

  She saw his tears. She wasn’t scared of them anymore. If anything, she was getting used to them. She put her chin down and cried too. Tears dotted her legs.

  She knew that this was a time of strange enchantment, when mysterious pathways hung open in the air. Soon they would close again. The old boundaries and restrictions wou
ld snap back into place. She needed to be brave and push through them while she could.

  “Was my being born enough to finally push you and Mom apart?” she asked.

  He looked at her, aghast. “No. That wasn’t it.”

  And more brave. “I didn’t look like the other babies. I know I didn’t. I still don’t. I know I’m different.” It was hard to say it.

  He took in her words. He realized what she meant. He put down his fishing rod. He regrouped. She saw it as it happened. She could almost hear him pushing into the reeds, getting out the machete, ready to combat the serious undergrowth. He was the brave one. Because of course he knew. He’d always known.

  He turned to her and took her hands, her white-pink hands in his brown ones. His gaze was unflinching. “You know that I was raised and loved by two people to whom I bore no physical resemblance. You know that, right?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve seen pictures of my dear mother, Matilda, for whom you are named.”

  She nodded again.

  “My mother and father gave me everything they had, everything I am.”

  She cried openly. She tried to keep her face from crumbling.

  “They loved me and cared for me, so they are my parents. There are no other parents. It is simply that way.”

  “Is it?”

  He pulled her toward him and hugged her. “I love you and I care for you. I always have and I always will.”

  —

  Jamie came up on the jitney late Sunday morning. Emma wanted him to see Brigadoon before it disappeared. She picked him up at the bus stop and they made a plan on the short drive to the house, which they decided to announce when they got there.

  “Get ready,” she prepared him.

  Because it really was like walking into a dream, seeing them all amicably settled around the kitchen table eating french toast. Jamie had the look of a man hallucinating.

  “Welcome,” Lila said, getting up, pulling more chairs over, as if she’d never been anything other than welcoming.