by Jane Smiley
“Finally, on Saturday, I let Daniel convince me to go to the park, and so we put on our clothes very neatly, so that no one would know that we didn’t have any parents, and we started walking in a line to the park. I held Annie’s hand, and Daniel had Michael and Joe, one on each side. It was incredibly far, and lots of people were out shopping, and at one point Daniel and Michael ran up and said that Joe had broken away and disappeared, and he really was gone, for about three minutes I couldn’t see him anywhere, and I looked at Annie, and she was just taking it all in, sort of appalled. Then Joe appeared, he was looking at a store window, and we ran over and grabbed him. So Daniel said that we shouldn’t go to the park, it was too far, and he couldn’t handle Michael and Joe both, so we turned around and went home and ate biscuits.
“On Sunday I decided that I was going to empty the trash, and I was carrying the basket down the stairs of the apartment building when this woman came up to me that I’d seen in the lift once or twice, and she said, ‘You children are making a great deal of noise.’ So I apologized, and she said, ‘Your father should take you to the park and give the other residents some peace. Your father is that tall man, isn’t he?’ And then she paused and stared at me, and said, ‘I haven’t seen your father for days.’ And I said, just as cool as you please, ‘Well, really, he went to Holland and I don’t believe he’s coming back.’ And I walked away.”
She pauses, and there are things I could say, but I don’t know what they are. Where was I? Getting up in my barren apartment, walking into my clothes and out the door, writing Pat letters every day, begging him to bring home the children. By the end of winter he still hadn’t replied the first time.
“Monday morning she showed up at the door with a lady in a suit, who walked around the apartment and looked in the cupboards and the refrigerator and asked me some questions. I mean, I wasn’t an idiot. I had read Oliver Twist by that time, and I recognized a Mr. Bumble the Beadle when I saw her. I knew the boys would be in one building and Annie and I would be in another, and that our dolls and books would be taken away from us, and eventually we would be farmed out to gangs of street thieves.” She laughs suddenly, but she is the only one who does. “So all that day I cleaned, and made Daniel clean, too. In fact, we locked Michael and Joe in their room for five hours so that we could get the place looking decent, in case that would persuade the authorities that we could take care of ourselves. I pulled all the food in the cupboards out and rearranged it so it would look like more than it was.
“About noon the next day, this car pulls up outside with ‘South Kensington Christian Children’s Home’ written on the side, and I got Daniel and we put a chair in front of the door and ran into one of the bedrooms and hid. We told Annie and Michael and Joe that some people were coming to take us away—which was the literal truth, wasn’t it?—and made them be quiet, and we just sat there. There was a knock on the door, then silence, then another knock on the door, and then a key in the lock! And I couldn’t believe they had a key. I really thought we were doomed. So I crawl to the bedroom door and open it a crack, and Michael and Joe wiggle under the bed, and I see the front door open against the chair, and then it slams open and the chair falls out of the way, and there’s Daddy, with Mrs. Beadle behind him, and is he ever in a rage, yelling about state interference in family life, and socialized medicine and entrepreneurship, one of those trains of thought association Daddy goes into. Something about the atrophy of private initiative and the moribund path of English medical research. I mean, he walked in like he always does, opening windows for fresh air, calling out for us, taking off his tie all at the same time, and what were they going to do? What did I want him to do? I was thrilled to see him.”
“I’m sure,” says Joe, “that he thinks he was only gone for a night or two. I’m sure he thought it then. I mean, remember how he used to smack us and then say that we had just run into his fist?”
“Mmm,” says Michael.
And I don’t say anything. Can she really remember so much detail? But that doesn’t matter, anyway, does it? I don’t ask if that ten-year-old ever thought of her mother, was ever tempted to call me across the ocean on the phone. There is a perfect logic in her story, the practical acceptance of losing first one parent, then the other, of being handed a set of impossible tasks. It is fairy tale logic, the one sort of logic a ten-year-old understands perfectly. I don’t say, “Incredible! Unbelievable!” although I would never have thought it possible for Pat to leave them alone for six days in London. I do believe. I believe because Joe and Michael are so matter-of-fact. I believe, in fact, because Ellen’s story is so specific. I believe because this supplies a large, perfectly fitting piece in the puzzle of her adult life, the piece with the eyes on it, you might say, the eyes that keep a careful lookout for Diane and Tracy and Jerry and me. Vigilance is her full-time job. I believe because, although I am shocked, I am not surprised. Pat was always unrestrained, sudden, passionate, single-minded. The children could as easily be out of his focus as in it. And I am not surprised because my deepest fear is realized. The three-year-old stepping onto the wrong elevator, the wrong train, losing grip of your hand just for the moment when the doors slam shut. Watching the crowded train shoot off toward Saint Louis, Chicago, San Francisco. The six-year-old, even the ten-year-old, lost in the crowd, and the crowd parts and she has vanished. It is a fear greater than the fear of their deaths. An eagle dives down and sweeps the child from your arms, the water rises and wrenches her away. The lost, living child, bobbing on the waves of its own resourcefulness. I am punished indeed. The others go on talking, unsurprised by their father. I can’t speak. Ellen casts me a couple of looks, then says, “I think I’ll check on the girls, just to see if they’re sleeping yet.” She knows she has amply repaid me for my candor, but her expression is ruthless. I suspect there won’t be much comfort here for a while. Sometime later we go home.
Joe drives, Michael rides in front, I sit deep in the back seat, out of the glare of passing streetlights. They talk about Pat, and I listen. Joe says, “Do you think Jenny was the one with the breasts? Remember that, when we were all sitting around the breakfast table, and he started kissing that girl, and then he took off her blouse and kissed her breasts, with us sitting right there?”
“And you dumped your oatmeal on his pants?” They laugh. Michael says, “That was later, I think. We were at least seven for that. I can’t remember if that was when you were living with us or just visiting.”
“Well, it all sort of melts together in a merciful blur, thank God.”
They drive in silence.
Michael says, soberly, “Well, he was the worst to Daniel, that’s for sure.”
“Remember that time I went to the Grand Canyon with you? How long was that for, a month? And everything that went wrong he blamed on Daniel. I mean, even when he had some kind of fight with Tatty, the next morning he said over breakfast that Daniel had talked in his sleep and wakened her up, and that the real problem was that she couldn’t stand to be with Daniel and she took it out on Daddy, and why was Daniel so disagreeable and hard to get along with, was he intent on breaking up Daddy’s second marriage, too? I remember that distinctly.”
“I remember thinking, So that’s what happened with Mom, Daniel did it.”
“Me, too.”
“Daniel, too, I’ll bet.” They sigh. But their tones are matter-of-fact, as if they have plowed this ground before. And another thing is true—they have forgotten about me in that twinlike way.
What they say creates a vast and complicated but vividly articulated new object in my mind, the history of my children in my absence, at the mercy of their father. Didn’t I know he was like this, unrestrained and blind to the potential consequences of his own actions? Before we got married, he would make love to me anywhere—in the kitchen, against the refrigerator, with the possibility that his roommate would walk in at any time, often in his car, sometimes right beside the highway, where he had pulled over in the middle of the tri
p, more than once on the floor of his lab, with the door unlocked. He was passionate. I didn’t protest. I thought I was irresistible. After we had children, I said over and over, always laughing, “Come on. People don’t make love when the children are around.” I still thought I was irresistible, though. Angry, his language was always unrestrained, eloquent, a rococo tirade against the object of his anger (even a child, even a secretary) and everything it represented, appalling, astonishing, frightening, delicious. His fists clenched, but until the end he never hit me.
I can say, Well, he did it, not me. What I thought about was that when they were with me, their lives were orderly and low-key. I hardly ever got mad at them as I had when we were all a family. Most of what they did was fine with me. Away from Pat, I was without anger, without that grating supervision, the constant call for my attention and response. I was no longer the pivot between the boss and the peons, responsible to everyone, the miraculous fragmenting woman, pulled apart every day only to be knitted together every night so that she could be pulled apart again in the morning.
I never really probed into how he treated them, or even imagined it, beyond remembering how he had been. That was the realistic course of action, wasn’t it?
But when I stepped out from between father and children, not knowing, but not not knowing, either, I left them to their own devices, didn’t I? Whoever did it, they were damaged, weren’t they? Here is something I remember about Ed. A year went by, and I fell out of love with him, and another year went by, and another, and finally he moved away. In those three years I saw him from time to time, and every time I saw him I became nothing again. Even after I realized that he had intended none of this, that his cruelty was compounded of fear and shame, not disapproval and antagonism, his presence negated me. Damaged, he damaged me. A small thing. Smaller, by far, than the damage I did to Pat, than the damage we did to our children. “Is that a sigh?” says Joe from the front seat.
“The deepest,” I say.
“Here we are,” he says, turning in the driveway. “We survived, Mom,” he says.
“What?” I say.
“What?”
“What did we survive?”
Michael opens his door and the overhead light goes on, revealing Joe turned in his seat, looking at me. He says, “Everything so far.” His smile is lovely and rueful.
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Michael. He closes the door and the light goes off. I can see Joe’s profile, his gaze intent upon his twin. All I can see of Michael is the back of his head framed in the windshield, his right hand stroking the wheel for a moment, then dropping.
“What?” says Joe, a single, tender syllable.
Michael clears his throat. “You knew I got engaged.” Joe nods. “Then she broke it off.” Joe nods again.
“I didn’t know that,” I exclaim.
Michael looks at me.
“I thought Joe would tell you, Mom. I kept meaning to write and tell you about Margaret, who is Scottish, very—” He glances around the car, hunting for the words, I think, then stares at me for a second before saying, “She’s perky. No, she’s dauntless, and sort of legendarily good. Anyway, there was another part. I don’t think I mentioned, um, Lucie, even to Joe. She was the school director’s wife. She’s French, about thirty-five. They have four children.” He turns and looks at me. “Nothing about this was pretty, Mom.”
“Probably not.”
“As soon as Margaret and I announced our engagement, Lucie began to flirt with me.” He coughs. “She was seductive and experienced and all that, but the fact was that she was also quite fragile, and I knew it. She hated India, and I knew it. There was something about Margaret she didn’t like. But, however much she wanted to try me out, or to put Margaret down, or to have fun, about a million times more than that, I wanted her. Every time I was with Margaret, and we had a happy, rollicking time, joking, talking, eating, laughing in bed, all these good things that I’ve been looking for for years, I couldn’t wait to find Lucie. What I wanted to do with Lucie was to penetrate her beyond the possibility of penetration. I wanted to penetrate her organs and cells and atoms. She wanted that, too, after she saw what was possible. We had this pity for what we were doing to each other that was so piercing. We cried a lot. Margaret started crying, too, when she found out, but I always thought, She’ll take care of herself. There was no way that Margaret, whom I loved, could pierce me, and no way that Lucie, whom I didn’t love, could fail to pierce me. I asked Margaret to give me a month. I thought I could teach myself to flip the switch. On would be Margaret. Off would be Lucie. I would just drill myself into it. I would get things right, and then we would follow our plan to leave and travel and just be together. But Lucie turned out to be pregnant. She hadn’t slept with her husband in a long time, so it looked like there would be quite a scandal. Margaret broke off with me.”
“Well,” says Joe.
“How long ago was this?” I say.
“Not very.”
“What about the baby?”
“Lucie had an abortion. Margaret took her, since she was the only person who knew about the baby besides me.”
“When was that?” says Joe.
“About ten days ago.”
“Oh, boy,” says Joe.
I realize as he speaks that I have sensed something beyond his fatigue and disorientation that obviously must be grief. But beyond that, like mountains beyond mountains, I recognize the settled darkness of expectation that grows from such desperate events. I recognize a possession of mine that I’d hoped my children would never claim.
In the kitchen Joe makes another pot of coffee. Michael pulls out one of those little cigars tied with red thread and begins to smoke it, standing next to the screen door, and letting the smoke waft out into the night. He leans against the jamb, his knee bent, his foot on the wall, like a man against a lamppost, and the beam of the single light above the sink drenches him with just that loneliness. Joe is taking cups out of the cabinet. Two. His hand pauses for an instant before reaching for the third one. I say, “I’ve been up since five myself. I guess I should go to bed.” I am happy enough to vacate at this late hour, and there is undoubtedly some brotherly, twinly, comfort or companionship that only Joe can offer. Surely that is what an identical twin is for, after all. My own mood is suspended, floating.
I turn and go out of the room, but, I admit it, I pause in the dark hallway, where they can’t see me, and watch them. Joe sets the cups down beside the coffeemaker and starts to pour the coffee. Michael pinches the end of the cigar, then tosses it out the door. Everything about his demeanor contrasts with Joe’s. I can’t believe I haven’t recognized it before now. He did use to share Joe’s nervousness, but now he is hard and knowing. Composed in spite of his utter weariness. His head swings round and he regards his brother.
He opens his mouth to speak, but just then Joe looks up and smiles, and he says nothing. What he wants to say is something that he can’t say while Joe is looking at him. He licks his lips. Joe goes to the refrigerator for the milk. When he disappears behind the door, Michael says, “Before I left India, I signed a contract to go to Korea. Another two-year contract, teaching math.” I step just the littlest bit farther out of their range—Michael’s tone is as intimate as a lover’s and as full of the knowledge that he is giving more pain than he is feeling. Joe closes the refrigerator and stands up without the milk. He looks at Michael. Michael continues, “The thing is, the school year starts in early September. The tenth.”
It strikes me that my mother must have seen this composure in me, too, just before she died, when I knew where the children were but didn’t know if I was ever going to see them again. I wonder if, as I am now, she was stricken, yet distantly relieved that her child had attained the end of inexperience.
“Is that the tenth our time?” says Joe.
“No, that’s the ninth our time.”
“Just tell me when you signed it.”
“End of May.”
“O
ur time?”
“Our time.”
“You’ve written me five letters and never told me any of this.”
“I guess, yeah.”
“All that time I was writing about looking for an apartment for you and Margaret.”
“Yeah.”
“Before I sent you that course catalogue.”
“I told you I wasn’t that interested in graduate school. That’s much more up your alley.”
“Well, I guess I don’t know what’s up your alley anymore, do I?”
Michael inhales deeply and tips his head back against the wall.
Finally, Joe says, “Do you WANT to go?”
“Yeah.”
Joe’s voice rises a little. “Do you want to fall in love with some Korean woman, and have kids, and live there forever? That’s what you’re going to do, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, I know. Yeah, I do. I do want to.” They stare at each other. Michael says, “Hey, I’m going outside, all right? Just for some air. All right?”
“Who’s stopping you?”
Michael pivots out the door and it slaps behind him. Joe pulls out a chair and sits at the table, staring fixedly at the door. Maybe it is the talk of Ed, the thoughts of Pat, many people leaving, many people left, but I know exactly what he is feeling, as if no time at all had passed, as if shock and pain could rush out of the memory as well as into it, scarify the nerves all over again. It is as if, in our family, the one necessary presence that each of us fixes on is the one presence each of us cannot have.
I back away, toward the stairway, as silently as possible. If Joe cries I don’t want to know it.
Pat loved dinnertime. Although he didn’t believe in God, he always said the Catholic grace, all the way down to “May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.” Then he took a deep breath, grinned, and surveyed the table—five stair-step heads, me wiping my hands on a dish towel as I sat down, the dogs, shiny black and alert, watching the spoon in his hand as he dished up the food. If there were relatives visiting, so much the better. If, temporarily, we had household help, they would be sitting at the table with us. If I was pregnant, he would call out to the unborn child, “Green beans tonight! You’re going to like green beans someday! And here’s corn on the cob!” He was such a young man, so handsome and smart. His enthusiasm for family life was the passion, I see now, of a true egomaniac, whose wife and children and dogs are the limbs of his own body. “Rachel?” he would say. “Rachel, are you listening? Ellen, tell her again.” His eyes would probe mine until I couldn’t return his gaze. Looking back, it is hard to sort out what I knew then from what I learned later. Certainly I had no intentions, only appetites.
