“I thought it might be nice for him,” Violet said. “To spend some time in the city.”
“Well, River North’s not exactly the city, is it?” David asked. She felt a surging of love for him. “He’ll not exactly be slumming it, will he, being taken by Wendy’s driver from the nicest part of the city to one of the most comfortable suburbs in the tristate—”
“What he’s saying is why not have him living where school is within walking distance? With people who have actually—people who know how—people who understand that—”
“She offered,” Violet said helplessly, and Marilyn felt a momentary empathy for her daughter; she had been known to cave to Wendy similarly, to the particular slant in her eldest’s eyebrows, the specific downward bow of her mouth. “Mom, she’s really— Anyone can see that Wendy hasn’t been having the greatest time since…I think that if she had an extra person in her house she might start to look at the world differently.” Violet set her lips in a firm line like David sometimes did. “I think we can all agree that children change our perspective on life.”
And what a smug little trump card it was—parent to parent from the girl who’d once complained that her lack of Gap jeans was inhibiting her social progress, from the baby she’d carried around in a sling on her chest while helping Wendy learn to walk.
David forged ahead before Marilyn could emote. “Of course they do,” he said. His hand again on her thigh. “You really think that this is what’s best for him now?” David, so open and credulous and respectful. She could have killed him.
“Honestly, I have no idea,” Violet said. “But she’s willing and he’s desperate and I—I’m desperate and I want to give her a chance, if she feels like this is something that she can—”
“Why don’t we all calm down,” David said. He followed with the question Marilyn should have asked first, the question that had been so far from her mind, pushed aside by her indignation: “Can you tell us what he’s like?”
She hadn’t even thought to ask what color his eyes were.
Maternal Blunder Number 429. She set the count back to zero at the start of each year.
* * *
—
“We failed them,” Marilyn said. Violet had left and they were sitting together on the back stairs, splitting a bottle of wine and watching the sunset as Loomis was being taunted by a squirrel in one of the oak trees.
“We didn’t—”
“All the things we’ve worried about, and this never would have even— Lord.”
He put his arm around her, though he wasn’t feeling particularly comforting at the moment. He had in his mind a nagging miniature memory of a conversation he’d had with Wendy at Violet’s wedding. Nearly a decade ago, his daughter had mentioned something nonsensical, but of course he’d disregarded it, dismissed it out of hand. Because Wendy was unpredictable. Because she’d been drunk at the time, and grieving, and had seemed determined all day to overshadow Violet’s joy. Because he’d never quite understood the ironclad bond between his two eldest girls—their Irish twins, the double helix—except that it was fueled by equal parts love and envy, and made them behave in unpredictable ways toward each other. He’d always assumed it was one of those mysteries of womanhood that he’d simply never be able to comprehend.
“I just don’t understand it,” she said. “How she— I mean, God, why she…”
It was nice, in a way, to have his wife’s company in this bubble of ignorance, a space where he was so frequently alone.
“I guess the important thing is that he’s safe and healthy,” he said. “Despite—you know. And Violet—she’ll be okay, right? She’s always found her way.”
“I think that might be part of the problem, though,” she said. “It’s not always such a good thing to be so resilient.”
“Well, I don’t—”
“God, we have a grandchild we’ve never met.”
Loomis trotted over, as though to remind them that they also had a dog that they had met. Marilyn scratched his ears and David his hindquarters.
“Doesn’t it feel like we should’ve known?” she said. “Like if we were doing what we were supposed to, we would’ve been aware of this somehow?”
“We were doing what we were supposed to,” he said gently. “We were living our lives. Doing our jobs. Raising four children.”
She was quiet for a long time. “Do you ever think that we didn’t focus on them enough?” Her body was tense beneath his arm. “Were we focusing too hard on each other?”
“No,” he said, disagreeing with both statements.
“What are we supposed to do with this?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Just—keep on, I guess.”
She smiled faintly. “You and your stubborn peasant stock.”
“The girls have it too.”
“Uh-huh.” She let her head rest on his shoulder. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
1976–1977
“Are you sure this is okay?” he asked.
Both of them half-naked under the ginkgo tree in her father’s backyard: the house on Fair Oaks, mid-December, the leaves mostly shed but a few dangling due to a late first frost, creating shadows on the lawn that made David jump every time he noticed the movement in his peripheral vision. Their current activity was a scandal by his standards, if not by hers, but her bar would always be slightly higher.
“Would you relax,” she said—her voice startling him anew—and the hand she spread across his chest was cold only at the fingertips. She worked her way to his nipple, kneading. She was tucked against his side. He could feel the movement of her smile against his arm. “Look who’s worked himself into a state.”
“Coyotes,” he said.
“Yes, here we are”—her hand moved downward—“watching the death toll rise.”
He still couldn’t get over the fact that she was now a fixed part of his life. That when they were apart, he could close his eyes and conjure the smell of the crook of her neck, citrus shampoo spiked with a salty humanness. That he sometimes imagined the way he would describe their first meeting—Yeah, I just found her on some stairs—jokingly, to future friends, to their future children? He was aware of the fact that his fantasies outpaced the normal course of events. They’d yet to sleep together. A shock, still, the warmth of her next to him.
“Calm down,” she said. “For God’s sake.” There was a light on in the kitchen of her father’s house, the pale bulb over the sink. She squirmed, easing her weight onto his left side, and produced a graying husk of milk thistle from behind her back.
“Woman of the wilderness.” But in fact this part of her scared him: the part of her that seemed to derive a thrill from clandestine exhibitionism.
“He’s not going to come out here,” she said.
“Denying the possibility makes it all the more likely.”
“Oh, this logician, all of the sudden.” Her breath stirred the hair on his chest. “If you were really that scared, you’d be wearing a shirt.”
“You’re the one who took it off.”
“The martyred saint.” Then, more softly: “Hey. Come on.” She took his hand and rolled onto her back. “Come keep me warm.”
Being with Marilyn felt a little bit like standing in a rainstorm. But like it was with rainstorms—if you had nowhere to be, nobody to whom you had to present your dry form—it was not the least bit unpleasant. He wanted to disintegrate to the sound of her voice. He’d begun to see by then that with her you got a package deal, not only the woman herself but an entire caravan, boxcars full of her love and disdain and expectation. He would not understand the magnitude of this for another year or so—would never fully understand it, if he was being honest—but at that moment, beside her on the ground beneath the ginkgo tree, he had never wanted anything more. He moved tentatively over her, and she lifted her face t
o kiss him.
“Relax,” she said. “You won’t crush me.”
He almost asked her how can you be sure, but he remembered, as he opened his mouth, that he knew how, and that to bring it up would only remind him of her experience, and her of his lack thereof. He eased his weight further. “Still fine?”
“Mm.” She kissed him again, wrapped her legs around his thighs. “See? Isn’t this nice?”
He was unsure of the next expected move—was he supposed to continue to undress himself? To undress her? Was this how it was going to happen, outdoors, under a tree? But she seemed unconcerned with making anything happen, anything beyond what they were currently doing, which he had to admit felt pretty great—the heat of her against his chest, the feline familiarity of her tongue, the vise grip of her legs, her hips bucking slightly against his. She guided his hand downward. She was wearing a skirt, and she wriggled her nylons to her ankles. Her underpants were damp, and then, beyond them, a surprising slickness.
“Am I—should I—” It seemed ludicrous that you weren’t allowed to stop and ask questions. It had always been his biggest fear that when this moment finally arrived his instincts wouldn’t take over—that he would just flop like a fish, show his hand of cards, activate the woman’s maternal instinct so she’d walk him through it like a docent at a museum: Feel this? This is the clitoris. His face burned, and he was distracted, as ever, by his thoughts, by the thought that if he lost her he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
“Hey.” She pressed his hand there, squeezed it once with her fingers, and then left it, like a child at kindergarten, to entertain itself. “You’re doing great. My fate is in your hands.” She pressed herself against his hand. “A little faster, if you don’t mind.”
He complied, and he felt her breathing begin to quicken. He opened his mouth to inquire about his progress, but decided to try to trust himself. She didn’t seem uncomfortable. She seemed, frankly, ecstatic, head tilted back exposing her throat, eyes closed, a smile playing on her lips. He kissed her, still working, and she reached to squeeze his buttocks. She whimpered.
“Okay,” she said, “okay, now you just— Good; I’m— Here, take off your—” She made quick work of his pants. “Here, roll over. I’ll be on top.”
He realized later that she was doing him a favor, that this position required the least blind navigation on his part. She straddled him, and when she’d gotten comfortable she smiled down at him for just a second, eyes glinting in the dark like a wolf’s.
“Feel okay?” she asked him, and he nodded, and she lowered herself onto him—her weight no longer avian but muscular and confident. She kissed him: his chest, his neck.
Neither heard the telltale rusted scree of the back door. Neither, despite his earlier vigilance, clocked the footsteps down the worn wooden stairs, the crunch of the frosted grass.
“For cripes’ sake.”
Marilyn yelped. She clung to David’s chest, her legs pressing down on his crotch. “Stay calm, all right?” she whispered to David. Then: “Dad,” she said. “This isn’t—”
“I thought there was a goddamn animal out here. Oh for— Oh, if your mother could see you like this. Who the hell’s there?”
“Hi, sir.” He scrambled for his pants, pitied Marilyn for having to navigate her nylons. “It’s David, sir.” He rose slowly. “Sorenson, sir.”
“He’s not a soldier,” Marilyn said. “You don’t have to talk to him like—”
“This is my goddamn house,” Marilyn’s father said, and as he lurched forward, David could see that he was drunk. Marilyn had mentioned, idly, that he’d begun to drink much more since her mother died, but he somehow hadn’t been expecting this. “You think you can just have my daughter on my goddamn lawn like you’re some kind of—”
“Daddy.” Marilyn had forgone her nylons and was taking hold of her father’s arm. “Daddy, everything’s fine. We’ll talk about this in the morning, all right?”
He was surprised that the man wasn’t putting up more of a fight. Marilyn was guiding him back to the house. David heard him mutter something about goddamn dago but he was allowing Marilyn to lead him inside without protest.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” Marilyn repeated, louder this time, apparently for David’s benefit, and she jerked her neck once in his direction, urging him down the path around the side of the house.
He was preoccupied, on the drive home to his father’s house in Albany Park, not with the fact that he’d just had sex for the first time, and not with the fact that—sex or no—he was reasonably certain he was in love with the woman who’d just taken his virginity, and not, even, with the fact that his girlfriend’s father had just erroneously identified him as Italian, but with the look on Marilyn’s face as she’d led the man inside. With the strange note in her voice when she’d whispered to him—stay calm, just slightly off-key. Not a voice he recognized, nothing of the devil-may-care amusement with which he usually saw her move through the world. And he realized, then, how silly it seemed that you could ever know another person—really know her—and how silly it was to think that he had any idea what it was like to be her, day after day after day.
* * *
—
He was accepted to medical school, conveniently, on a Friday when her father was out of town for the weekend. In her living room, in the house on Fair Oaks, he’d relayed his news—he’d gotten into the University of Iowa; he would be moving to Iowa City—and Marilyn had pushed all dark thoughts of separation from her head and gone immediately to her father’s liquor stash to find a room-temperature bottle of Veuve.
David was moving. Not far away, but far enough away that she would no longer have a person in her immediate vicinity who felt like home. On their first date, they’d swapped origin stories: his mother lost to lymphoma when he was five, hers to liver failure when she was fifteen.
“It’s a strange feeling to have as a kid, like you’re responsible for your parents’ happiness,” she’d said to him, surprising herself with how frankly she was able to describe the way it felt to be the daughter of her parents. He’d been an attentive audience. “Not that you’re the cause of it, but instead that there’s some obligation on your part to ensure it. I didn’t really realize until recently that that wasn’t normal.”
“Well, who’s to say what is normal, I guess,” David had said, and he’d shrugged.
“Look at the two of us,” she’d said, and they’d both glowed at the phrase, the two of us, “carrying around all of this emotional baggage.” And then, before she kissed him for the first time: “This is the most depressing date I’ve ever been on, David.”
Two motherless children; two young, fumbling people who’d somehow happened upon each other, and until he announced his impending move to Iowa, she’d felt safer than she ever had, sharing a little space on the earth with a person who felt like a necessary element of her being. By the time she returned to him in the living room she was on the verge of tears.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said, and immediately started weeping.
He pulled her close to him, stroked at her hair. “All right,” he murmured. “Hey.”
“I’m so happy,” she said, and they both laughed.
“I thought I’d see,” he said, “if you wanted to join me.”
She moved back from him, appraising.
He rose from the couch and went to where he’d draped his jacket over the rocking chair. He removed a small box from one of the pockets and then he sat down beside her. “So I,” he said, and then he took a breath. “I’m nervous.”
Unable to speak, she touched his arm.
“I love you,” he said. “I hope you know that. I know it’s not my—my strong suit. Telling you that. But I’m trying.” He shifted to face her, suddenly emboldened. “I think we make each other happy. Not always the same amount, and not always at the
same time, but I…”
“We do.”
“That’s what I thought.” A smile had found its way onto his face. “Good. That’s what I was thinking. So I got you this.” He handed her the box. “If you’ll have it.”
She opened it tentatively and then looked up at him.
“What do you say? Marry me?”
She kissed him, leaned in and kissed his mouth and the vulnerable curve of his left cheekbone and the asymmetrical slope of his right cheekbone, and then she passed the box back to him and offered him her hand.
PART TWO
SUMMER
CHAPTER FIVE
He’d come with a heartbreakingly meager amount of possessions, a garbage bag of clothes and a dirty JanSport and a Vera Bradley duffel—a castoff from his foster mother, Wendy guessed—which rattled when she carried it to the guest room; she entertained the possibility that it was full of artillery but then reminded herself that he was fifteen and his luggage most likely contained electronics, comic books, and porn. He didn’t look anything like the baby she remembered from that dark day over fifteen years ago—a blessing indeed, because the baby she remembered, despite whatever platitudes she’d soothed Violet with at the time, had looked like a cross between Dick Cheney and Gollum. But now, he looked like Violet. The resemblance was undeniable, especially with the two of them standing uncomfortably side by side in her foyer.
“We meet again,” she said, holding out her hand to Jonah. He’d been politely quiet the day she’d taken him to meet Violet at the restaurant. Idle chatter about social studies and martial arts. Now she felt her scalp prickling to attention. I was the first person to hold you, she thought. I saw you get born and I sang you a lullaby version of “Shoop” because it’s all that I could think of and I counted your toes because your mom couldn’t. This kid would never have any idea how much he’d incited, how much he’d done to them simply by being.
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