The Most Fun We Ever Had

by Claire Lombardo

  This was why the next day Wendy called her attorney and asked whether he knew any private investigators, money no object, someone who could circumvent sealed adoption records.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “It’s kind of sad, isn’t it?” Marilyn asked, beside him on the back stairs, voice barely audible beneath the whir of chainsaws. One of the biggest branches fell from the ginkgo, and David flinched.

  He studied the atrophied bark, the familiar patch of grass beneath it. So odd, how well acquainted you could become with the physical details of your life without even realizing. If you’d asked him to recall, from a distance, the pattern of the exposed roots and the paltry sprinkling of tulips that encircled the trunk, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you, but staring at it now was like looking at the complicated map of veins on his own hand, a visual memory that made his eyes well up.

  It wasn’t quite melancholy, what he was feeling. It was more mathematical than that, more of an itemization of intangible things, his life with his wife, the ground they’d covered together, how he still felt a little like he had when they’d lain beneath the ginkgo on that cold night in December: astonished by the fact of her presence alongside him.

  “You okay?” she asked him, leaning her head against his shoulder. She’d been like this since the heart attack, constantly aware of how close they’d come to losing this life they’d built. It pained him a little to see the way she looked at him lately—the way all of them looked at him, like he could expire at any moment. Old Tenterhooks, he’d called her, jokingly, last week, but she hadn’t found it funny. Astonishing, also: the fact that he was still here to be beside her, watching the tree come down.

  He wrapped his arm around her. “I’m very much okay, kid.”

  Between their two sets of parents, only his father had grown old enough to contemplate his impending obsolescence. What would Marilyn’s dad think if he could see them here, weatherworn, the two kids he’d caught in flagrante now older than he’d ever been? He thought of making a joke—the Dago prevails or some such—but it struck him as unkind, and plus—he remembered—of course she wasn’t following the train of thought inside his head, at least not to that degree of specificity. The landscapers were going at the trunk now, notching it deeply in specific areas so it would fall where there was only flat lawn. He felt Marilyn tense beneath his arm, then relax, angling her head more snugly against him, closing her eyes to the show before them, like when they’d be carrying in the girls from the car and they’d tuck their sleeping eyes away from the light.

  His best friend, the most wonderful surprise life had ever lobbed his way.

  “I am so unspeakably glad you’re here with me,” she said, and her breath warmed his chest, and his eyes filled, because the statement was not, upon reflection, so very different from his train of thought after all.

  * * *

  —

  Violet couldn’t recall a time when she’d actually, formally apologized to her sister. It wasn’t how they operated. She was professionally averse to linguistically accepting blame, and it seemed as though it had never occurred to Wendy to say she was sorry for anything. In the elevator on her way up to the thirty-sixth floor, Violet nursed a renewed anger over this, anger tinged with envy, because going through life unburdened by guilt actually sounded pretty nice. They hadn’t spoken, not really, since their phone call after Wendy had kicked Jonah out. They’d both thawed slightly when their father was in the hospital, but only for the purposes of civility, of not further upsetting their mother, of bonding, on some level, in order to karmically encourage David’s recovery. It had been Matt who’d convinced her that she needed to make things right, who’d reminded her that Wendy was as much a part of things as she or Jonah; who’d acknowledged—setting aside his own reservations about her sister—that the only way she or Wendy would ever be able to truly move forward was if they cleared the air. She’d almost turned around a dozen times on her way, and she considered it once more as the elevator dinged open, but Wendy was already waiting in her doorway.

  “Speak of the sacred,” she said, “and she shall appear.”

  Violet could not assess her sister’s level of levity. “You were talking about me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then how did you—”

  “Jesus, the doorman buzzed me.” Wendy ushered her inside. “Come in, I guess. Though it behooves me to point out that if I ever showed up at your house uninvited you’d have me tasered.”

  “Is now a bad time?”

  “Not in the grand scheme.”

  She was half-annoyed and half-relieved that her sister had adopted this tonal affectation, speaking theatrically like some kind of genie. “I figured—you know, it was about time we talked about some things. Cleared the air.”

  “Great,” Wendy said. “I love entertaining the emotionally maligned.”

  She relaxed at this. She wasn’t going to have to apologize. She would allow Wendy the same courtesy. There was a relief in this stuntedness, the pleasant familiarity of your same old fucked-up family of origin.

  “I’ve actually stopped drinking during the week, but the notion of being trapped alone in a room with you sober makes me want to decapitate myself,” Wendy said. “No offense.”

  She poured them both wine and they went out onto the patio, Violet curling up Indian-style on the loveseat and looking out over the city, the swoosh of cars down Delaware and the arresting glitter of the lake. “How’ve you been?” she asked.

  Wendy eyed her coolly. “Magnificent.”

  “Me too,” she said, when Wendy didn’t ask. “Things are actually really good.”

  “That’s fucking great for you. A return to form.”

  “Wendy, I’m trying.”

  “Trying to what?”

  “To—I don’t know, to talk to you. To fix things.”

  “What does that even mean? Look how easy it was for you to just write me out of your life. We’ve never been fixed. I’ve resented you since you were born and you’re perpetually high on the fact that your life’s like a hundred thousand times better than mine.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You’re also perpetually in denial about anything that doesn’t look how you want it to.”

  “Jesus, Wendy, aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be angry?” She had never felt fully entitled to her emotions, not alongside her sister, who wore them proudly and impulsively. “Aren’t you the one who fucked things up bringing Jonah back into the picture unannounced? Then kicking him out?”

  “I fucked up one thing with him,” Wendy said. “You fucked him over from day one.”

  This, of course, was what Matt knew she’d be facing if she tried to clean things up. Wendy had always been able to cut right to the heart, but she knew she had to steel herself against it now, to withstand her sister’s venom in order to inhabit the new level ground she and Matt had decided to exist on. “That’s really an awful thing to—”

  “I ran into Aaron Bhargava when Dad was in the hospital. He said to say hi to you.”

  She nearly choked. She felt as she had on the beach on Mercer Island, gut-punched. Not now. She had never expected anything less than she’d expected this, not even when she’d shown up at the restaurant last spring and seen the back of Jonah’s head.

  “Jonah got his eyes.”

  She opened her mouth to say something but managed only a sharp intake of breath.

  “The hypocrisy,” Wendy said. “Jesus.”

  “I didn’t— I was going to—”

  “Is that what you’re supposed to do to your sisters? Fuck their exes and then let them host you in their homes while you gestate and put the resulting children up for adoption?”

  “We were so young,” Violet said. It had been another lifetime, that time, truly, regardless of how much it sounded like a line. They’d be
en different people, young and untarnished and stupid. She as much wanted to lay that era to rest as she genuinely couldn’t remember it, couldn’t recall what it had felt like to be the person she’d been.

  “We weren’t that fucking young. Jesus Christ. It’s not like you took my fucking lipstick. You let me be there for you and you didn’t even have the decency to be honest with me. And then you didn’t even— God, I’ve been so royally fucked, Violet, and you didn’t—”

  “It’s not like I knew what things were going to happen to you. And things going well for me has nothing to do with how they turned out for—”

  “You didn’t ever show up when I needed you, is what I was going to say, actually,” Wendy said. Her voice was level and unadorned.

  “Wendy, that’s not—” But it was true. “You know, it’s funny; I— Mom always used to tell me what a little caretaker I was when I was a kid.”

  “I remember,” Wendy said. “It was super fucking irritating.”

  “I’m not sure what happened to me.” Her voice wobbled. “I think I—I guess I just sort of shut down, when Jonah was born. I didn’t have anything left to give.”

  “That’s a cop-out,” Wendy said. “It’s not like they hand out little baggies of compassion at the outset and you have to ration it over the course of your life. You have to will yourself through the shit, Violet. Take one for the team on occasion. Like, for instance, when you’ve just lost a child and you’re forced to put on a brave face for your little sister’s wedding.”

  “It wasn’t— God, Wendy, almost a year had gone by.”

  “Or,” Wendy continued, sipping her wine, “when your sister’s found out that you fucked her ex-boyfriend and he sired the baby you gave away, and she confronts you about that massive betrayal, and you muster up the strength to not be a total asshole who splits hairs about how closely on the heels of her stillbirth you decided to plan your wedding. That would be another example of taking one for the team.”

  “I think we allow ourselves to hurt the people we love the most because we know they won’t abandon us.” She couldn’t help, sometimes, speaking in platitudes. They existed for a reason. And they came to her with more ease than anything else.

  But Wendy, of course, wasn’t having it. “Ah, tell me, please; what’s the socioemotional wellness podcast du jour that you yanked that one from?”

  “I’m just saying that when you’ve loved each other forever,” she said, “like, literally, your whole life, you know it’s harder to burn that bridge than it is to shore up the foundations.”

  “Christ, are you coming on to me? Also, I don’t think that’s, like, architecturally true.” Wendy paused. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “Yes, actually,” Violet said. “Someday.”

  “Are you ever going to tell Jonah?”

  “I haven’t gotten—quite that far yet.”

  “What if I were to tell him?”

  She looked up. “Wendy. Please. That’s not— You wouldn’t—”

  “I’m fucking with you,” Wendy said. “I actually like that kid a whole lot. I wouldn’t traumatize him just to piss you off. He asked me about his dad when he was first staying with me. And I thought it was that sketchy Salad Fingers guy from Wesleyan. I still didn’t tell him any specific details.” Wendy paused. “Out of respect for you, because at the time I didn’t realize you’d fucked my boyfriend.”

  “It was the worst thing I’d ever done,” Violet said. “That’s why I—I think part of me was trying to punish myself. By having the baby.”

  “You should’ve just gotten shitfaced and said a few Hail Marys like the rest of us. But if you had, I guess the little sensei wouldn’t be here, so, you know.”

  She looked up at Wendy, hearing the surprising kindness in her voice.

  “I honestly don’t even— It’s less about the fact that you slept with him and more, like, I more just think it’s weird and shitty that you never told me,” Wendy said. “I’m not even that angry. We’d been broken up for forever at that point; it’s not like I— Aaron wasn’t the person I was meant to be with. I knew that the minute I met Miles.”

  She saw, then, that Wendy’s insertion of her husband into every conversation, no matter how seemingly irrelevant, had less to do with martyrdom than it did with love, with her sister’s end-all, infinite love for the man she’d lost. That Wendy was, of course, in a great deal of pain, and probably always would be. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that before,” Wendy said.

  Her constant companion, guilty of everything and nothing. Matt had been correct in his assessment that both of them would be better off if they aired their grievances. To air culpability, to exchange apologies, to own up, together, to what they’d set into motion.

  Wendy rose to get the bottle of wine. “You know what I’ve always wondered?” She topped off their glasses. “Do you think I was in the room when you were conceived?”

  She met Wendy’s eyes and she felt such wild relief at the mirth she found behind them.

  “I could’ve been in their bed, even,” Wendy said. “Have you ever thought about that?”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  Wendy dropped beside her onto the couch and brought her glass to her lips, smiling wickedly. “It’s totally plausible. I wouldn’t put anything past the two of them. They’re probably at it right now.”

  “Stop it,” she said, laughing. But then she remembered how Wendy had opened their conversation. “You’ve resented me since I was born?”

  “You usurped my throne.”

  “But I mean it’s not like I asked to be— I mean, God, don’t you feel lucky that we got to grow up together? It hasn’t been easy for me to not have you in my life, Wendy. I’ve missed you.” She was reasonably certain she’d never said those words to her sister, either, and she was sadistically pleased to see that Wendy looked startled. “Have you—missed me?”

  Wendy met her gaze evenly. “Sure,” she said. “Sometimes.”

  She knew she wasn’t going to get more than that, and also that getting it was monumental, coming from Wendy.

  “I’d like to have you in my life again,” Violet said. “If you’d like to be in it.”

  “Christ, you’re dramatic.”

  “I’m sorry there have been times I wasn’t there for you. I’ve been—having a hard time. Lately, and—for a while, I guess. I don’t know. I put a lot of pressure on myself, Wendy, and it—it’s harder than it looks, all right?”

  “You’ve said that before. Do you realize how fucking sanctimonious that sounds?”

  “I just don’t feel like you’ve ever given me credit for how hard I try.”

  “Why am I responsible for giving you credit? Isn’t that what your husband is for?”

  “You’re my closest friend, Wendy.”

  At this, Wendy laughed, loudly, but she didn’t deny it.

  “Isn’t it okay to just call it? You’ve been the most important person in my life since I was born. We’re—reliant on each other, are we not?”

  Wendy didn’t answer her question, didn’t speak, in fact, until sometime later, and only then in order to respond to a comment that Violet made about how it felt like spring was finally coming; in the time between those things, the two of them sat, watching the dusky haze settle around them over the city, everything and nothing feeling like it might be okay, two lost girls watching the sky darken like they’d done on the roof of the house on Fair Oaks, sisters, Irish twins, contingent products of their parents, back before they realized that nobody ever had any idea what the fuck she was doing, just a couple of young women looking into the future, back in that nice soft space where they fit seamlessly together, way back before the world had grown so much larger than their grasp.

  THE MIDST OF LIFE

  De
cember 10, 2017

  Eight months later

  “Did you hear Mr. Calhoun died?”

  “Who?”

  “The black history teacher.”

  Marilyn listened from the doorway, her daughters united, ignited; everyone at the big table in the dining room, two leaves in the middle to accommodate them all.

  “He wasn’t the black history teacher.”

  “Yes he was.”

  “Oh my God, no he wasn’t. I think he taught debate.”

  She went over to Grace and pressed a kiss into the top of her head. “You make sure nobody kills anyone else, all right, Goose?” And Grace smiled up at her, tranquil and tolerant, like the little Buddhist baby she’d once been, lording over the dinner table in her high chair.

  It was almost mid-December, but it was the only time everyone had been available at once. Second Thanksgiving. She went back into the kitchen to tend to the turkey.

  * * *

  —

  “No,” Violet was saying. “He taught black history.”

  Wendy, who was only conservatively tipsy, was delighted to have regained the ability to fight with her sister in a way that wasn’t fraught or loaded, and she sat back, arms folded, and appraised Violet. “That’s racist,” she said, and in her peripheral vision she saw Liza roll her eyes.

  Violet scoffed. “How is that racist?”

  “Because he was black. Just because you’re black doesn’t mean you automatically teach black history.”

  “But he did. It’s not racist to say that if he actually was black and taught black history.”

  “Mr. Calhoun wasn’t black; Mr. Whiteman was black.”

  “Now who’s racist?”

  On bad days, and from a close vantage point, Wendy’s life could still be objectively described as jacked-up as all get-out, but she was trying, willfully, to stop letting the miasma take over. She’d never thought it would happen, but she found herself growing used to the oddity, letting it brand her benignly like a tattoo or a scar. Some people said it took a year for things to go back to normal. It had now, since Miles had died, been more than three, and she was beginning to accept that, for her, things would be indefinitely weird. She’d hosted Thanksgiving dinner for her parents and Gracie and Jonah at her place two weeks ago, when Liza was visiting Ryan’s weird wind farm with the baby and Violet was hosting her own in-laws; Wendy had made craft cocktails with bourbon in honor of her grandfather and ordered takeout for everyone from Tavern on Rush. There were worse fates. There were still pockets of potential in her life; she was aware of this now in a way that she hadn’t been previously. Shit got weird if she stopped to dwell on her capital-P Prospects: that she would never again find love like she’d found with Miles; that she didn’t even want to; that her lack of college education would limit her in terms of professional endeavors; that she refused to be one of those sad-sack old botoxed ladies who started college in their fifties; that your memories of people began to loosen with time, even if you’d loved those people more than anyone else on the planet; that Miles was sometimes a blur to her unless she looked at his picture and that she could no longer conjure the complete image of her daughter in her arms, but that she remembered her perfect tiny face, every centimeter of her features. Life was never going to be what she wanted it to be, and she’d decided to pragmatically lower her bar in a way that would have horrified her teenage self. She was working her way through Miles’s bookshelves, and she’d started taking Krav Maga three days a week at Jonah’s suggestion, and she’d booked a spring break trip to the Philippines that she planned to give him for his birthday.