by Maile Meloy
So that was how it began. The glorious kissing—which they had done more of, furtively—made her feel free and unconstricted, and she craved it. But it was followed by the suffering of the damned. And then she had her sister’s neglected child to deal with.
The boys were eight and ten, older than Abby, and she was shy about joining their games. They played progressive rummy on the living room floor, but one game was enough for all of them. Then the boys would go down the street to a friend’s house, and Abby would wander into the kitchen and fix Margot with her big, uncertain eyes. If Margot was on the phone with Dominick, she would quickly end the call. If she was making a list of reasons she should stop the “affair” at once, she would put the list down the garbage disposal and listen to the blades grind it up.
One day Margot took Abby to the mall and left her in the children’s section at Waldenbooks while she met Dominick in an empty restaurant and told him they should stop seeing each other. He was surprised and hurt. After half an hour of quiet arguing, she wiped her wet mascara off with a napkin, firmly said good-bye, and bought her niece two Black Stallion books and a translated Tintin.
Two painfully lonely days later, Dominick arrived at the house uninvited, and Margot had never been so happy to see anyone. Owen was at work, the boys were up the street, and Abby was reading on the porch swing in the backyard. Margot led her lover upstairs in the empty house, noticing from a distance that she was doing this unthinkable thing. It was the first time they had been truly alone together.
Dominick unbuttoned her blouse, slowly, and then they were both in a hurry. Margot managed to pull back the linen cover on the bed to keep it clean, but that was the last responsible thing she did before she had his long and slender erection in her hand.
When it was over, she was stricken by guilt again. She had just had her period and guessed she was safe, but all she could think about was taking a shower and stripping the bed and getting the sheets into the laundry. She asked Dominick to go, feeling shaky and miserable. The house was still empty, Abby still reading in the swing, but how did Margot know she hadn’t come in for a drink of water and heard something? Or she might have seen him come in, or crept upstairs. Margot grew hot with shame thinking about it, and at the end of the week she told Dominick she could never see him again. He tried to change her mind, but this time she meant it. He withdrew from the Jesuits, wrapped up his work for the parish, and moved away.
It was only when Margot thought her headache couldn’t get much worse that she worked up the nerve to flip through Abby’s book, looking for mentions of the older sister’s affair. It wasn’t there—the older sister had a beautiful house and was married to a kind and prosperous man who couldn’t make a salad, but those seemed to be the major likenesses. She was both faithful and childless.
Margot took courage and started reading from the beginning, and found herself sleeping with a dance instructor at fifteen and going to France to have a baby her mother raised as her own. It was a sad story, but it wasn’t Margot’s story, and she was so relieved that she didn’t even mind that she got a bad rap in the book, for making life hard for the younger sister. Her headache faded and she started to wonder what had ever happened to Dominick Jay.
50
WHEN ABBY FINALLY sent her the book in the mail, Clarissa read it with growing horror. How would people be able to separate what was real from what wasn’t? Wouldn’t they assume everything was real? How did Abby remember all these things, most of which Clarissa didn’t remember? And would people think she was such a bad mother? Would they think that she had a girlfriend who decorated cakes?
Abby had said in her note that it was fiction: that it wasn’t about her, and it wasn’t a letter to her. Clarissa understood that some of it might be fiction, but she couldn’t focus on anything but the selfishness of her character. That was an indictment, no matter how you looked at it. She wished suddenly that she hadn’t asked Del to move out. Del was always on Clarissa’s side.
Then the book came out and her friends started to call to congratulate her. They said Clarissa had done a wonderful thing in raising Abby; the book was a tribute to her. Her friend Rae came by with a copy for Abby to sign.
“I just don’t know how she could do that to us,” Clarissa said, putting the kettle on in the kitchen. “My dad was in the Marines. And I had a Buddhist boyfriend.”
“Did he meditate at the table with a water glass?” Rae asked.
“I can’t remember.”
Rae laughed happily. She had spiky gray hair and earrings all the way up her left ear. “Now you can,” she said. “That’s so great. Aren’t you glad Abby recorded it? Everything noisily going on in this kitchen, like it always does in your house, and this guy meditating at the table, focusing on his arm lifting and his throat swallowing and his arm setting down? And if it didn’t happen, it’s just as great.”
“I guess,” Clarissa said, trying to remember him doing that. She remembered other things about him. He liked her to wear matching lacy underwear. “Do you think my father will think I’m gay?”
“Because of the book?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Rae said, “do you think you are?”
“I don’t think he’ll read it,” Clarissa said. “I told you I’m taking this film class, and I have to make a movie. I might make it about coming out to my parents.”
Rae blinked and tugged on the ear with all the earrings. “I thought you were through with all that.”
“Maybe I just want to think I am, because it’s what my mother would want. The teacher wants us to make movies about things that terrify us.”
“But do you have to do things that would terrify you? Just for this class?”
“Maybe it’s an opportunity for me.”
Rae said nothing and nodded. The kettle made rumbling noises. Then Rae smiled a wondering smile. “So do you think Abby had an affair with your little brother?”
Clarissa shook her head. “No.”
“Where do you think that came from, then?”
“I don’t know,” Clarissa said. “They’ve always been close.”
“Huh,” Rae said.
“I just can’t get over it. She made me seem so selfish in it.”
“Clar,” Rae said, squeezing her arm across the table, “try to let her have this, and be happy for her.”
The kettle started to whistle, so Clarissa didn’t have to say anything. She got up to take it off the stove.
51
PETER HAD SET UP a desk for Abby, a rectangular table pushed against the living room wall, and she was working on a new novel that wasn’t going anywhere. When he went to the library to work on his dissertation, she wandered around his apartment, or around the tree-lined neighborhood. She hadn’t heard from her family and dreaded what they were going to say. She rented out her father’s house and hired Maricruz—who had hurt her back lifting other people’s children—to take care of it and bring in people to fix things.
One afternoon, Peter came in flipping through the mail and handed over a postcard. “Love letter from Italy,” he said.
“Carissima,”the postcard began.
How are you? I am here in my country and life is not what one expects. My wife finds it terrible here, she fights with my mother and sister, she is bored and delusa. She expects things to be grand, always, and this is a simple place in that way. She cannot understand the ways it is not simple.
I write this because you told me, we cannot choose in love this way. I will find what to do next. There is no baby yet, thanks God. I think of you.
Tanti baci—
xx
Gianni
“Are you going to be stolen away?” Peter asked.
“Only if you keep reading my mail.”
He laughed. “I only skimmed. You have one from your mother, too.”
Abby opened the envelope and read the letter aloud:
Thank you for the book. It has always been so interesting to watch you grow. I saw
a talk in Berkeley once, about writing family memoirs, and someone said it was O.K. to do while people were alive if you did it out of love. Someone else asked, what if you don’t love your family? I was fascinated by the talk, but I had no idea, then, what you were writing.
I really tried, Abby, to be the best mother I could, at the time.
I’ve been doing a lot of yoga again, so at first when I was very upset, I rested in savasana to the sound of Tibetan gongs, and that helped.
With love from,
Your Mom
Abby handed the letter to Peter, and he read it.
“She thinks it’s a memoir?” he asked.
“Or a letter to her.”
“At least she has the Tibetan gongs. I had the sense that you weren’t that hard on her.”
“No one in the book gets off easier than my mother, except maybe the Catholic Church.”
“Wait till you get the letter from them.”
“How can she think it’s a memoir ?”
“Well, it’s not science fiction. Should you call her?”
“I can’t until I hear from Yvette and know if I’m disowned.”
“Do you want my advice?”
“Okay.”
“Call Yvette right now and get it over with. I’ll be in the other room.”
He left the room, and she thought he must want to get it over with—he couldn’t live with her like this anymore. Then she had dialed and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Yvette answered and said, “I got your book. It’s very hard for me to read.”
“I’m sorry,” Abby said.
“My father’s death was very hard for me. I know we laugh when Jamie tells that bootlegging story, but I loved my father, and it was hard.”
“I know.”
“And I know Jamie teases me about my relationship with my God, but it’s the most important thing in my life. It’s what lets me be a good person.”
“I understand that.”
“The book is very hard for me to read, because I keep thinking, That didn’t happen! ”
“I’m sorry,” Abby said.
“I’m not that woman in the book,” Yvette said. “I never would have done those things.”
“I know.”
“I know your parents’ divorce was hard on you, and I’ve always worried about how it would affect you later. I wish I could have done something, then.”
Abby waited.
“We try so hard, as parents, honey,” Yvette said. “We try to do better than our own parents did. But we carry those hurts with us, you know?”
When she got off the phone, Abby went into the bedroom, where Peter was sitting in the chair by the window. He pulled her into his lap. “Did she forgive you?”
“I think so. I feel terrible. I feel sick.”
Peter kept his arms around her waist and didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, “Czeslaw Milosz said that when a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “They aren’t going anywhere. They’re still there.”
52
DO YOU HAVE A fantasy that the family would be finished?” Dr. Tirrett asked.
She had left the university for her own practice, so she could raise her rates and keep her house, and she had a new office in a high building with a view of Mission Bay.
Abby stared out the window rather than make eye contact. “Being disowned would be very restful,” she finally said.
“It seems like they’re responding better than you hoped.”
Abby nodded.
“Have you talked to Jamie?”
Abby shook her head. “He’s busy with Katya and the kid.” She didn’t say anything for a while, and then she made eye contact suddenly. “Did you like Peter, when you met him?” she asked.
Leila hesitated. “I don’t want to influence you. But yes, I did. He’s older than you are, isn’t he?”
“He’s younger than Jamie.”
Leila smiled. “It’s wonderful to have an affair with your uncle for comparison, isn’t it?” she said. “The rest all come out pretty well.”
“I loved Jamie. I still do.”
“Of course you do,” Leila said. “He’s your favorite uncle. Tell me about Peter.”
Abby looked down at the wadded Kleenex in her lap. “You know he was my TA. And he helped me with the book, he gave me notes on it. I couldn’t have finished without him.”
Leila said nothing.
“I know you don’t approve,” Abby said.
“It doesn’t matter if I approve,” Leila said impatiently. “And I didn’t say I don’t. Are you in love with him?”
Abby separated the two layers of a piece of Kleenex, then rolled them together.
“You don’t know,” Leila said. “Because no one ever modeled love for you.”
Abby glared out the window, looking annoyed.
“We have to stop,” Leila said, “but I want at some point to talk about where your anger is.”
“I’m not angry at Jamie. I was part of what happened, too.”
“Okay. Do you need more Kleenex?”
“No,” Abby said, and she picked up her bag. “Thanks.” Her eyes and nose were red, and she put on her sunglasses before going out.
Leila checked her voice mail to see if her daughter had called, or her patients. To her ex-husband she spoke only through the lawyers. The computer voice said there were no new messages. She had wanted a clean break from her husband, but it was like Abby’s fantasy of being disowned: it was restful, but restful lasted only a few days and then it was desolate. She checked the messages again to be sure there were none, watching the blue surface of the water and the bright, flat San Diego day.
53
MARGOT HAD A COMPUTER at home, and her son Bennett had shown her how to use Google to look things up: recipes, and the websites of museums, and lecture series.
She had not stopped thinking about Dominick Jay since reading Abby’s book. He had probably married and had children; he was certainly not thinking of her. But she wanted to know. So she sat down at the computer one afternoon and typed “Dominick Jay” in the empty box. She hesitated a moment before clicking Search.
Six hundred and thirty-seven matches came up in 1.1 seconds. Some were about Ricky Jay, the card magician. Some were lists of names in genealogies. Some were entries about one person named Jay and another named Dominick.
She changed her search to “Dominick Jay, attorney,” and got, along with the chaff, a law firm in Santa Barbara: Cassidy, Herrera, and Jay. She clicked a link to a newspaper article, and her computer slowly downloaded a photograph with the caption “Dominick Jay honored by Rotarians for community service.” The story was dated three years before. Then the photo finished downloading, and there he was. His hairline had receded and started to go gray. His dark eyes were set back further in his head. But he was still the man who had kissed her in the Whistler exhibition and made her feel that all rules in the world had been suspended, and she was free.
She sat staring at the photograph for a minute, and then she shut down the computer and rose to make dinner. Her headache was starting again.
54
ABBY ENROLLED IN school in the fall, and Peter thought it was good: she was going through the motions of a normal life. It reminded him of a program he’d seen about an injured man relearning to walk on a treadmill in a tank of water, though he didn’t tell Abby that. She would be offended by the analogy, because she didn’t think she was injured.
And lately she didn’t seem to be. She was taking an astronomy class for the breadth requirement, which seemed to diminish her feeling of having any effect on the universe, and she pretended to be jealous of Peter’s girl students, which he found unconvincing but winning. He thought sometimes how glad he was that the ombudsman had been wrong.
One morning he left Abby in his apartment reading about black holes, and walked to campus to teach a section for an English lit survey cla
ss. As he walked, four boys in safety goggles were shooting each other with pellet guns, hiding behind cars and fences, and then jumping out and firing. They ran back and forth across the quiet street, in baggy clothes and big tennis shoes to look like gang-bangers. Professors’ kids, who rode in station wagons withWORLD PEACE stickers on them but still wanted to shoot at each other.
The trailer he was teaching in was stuffy and warm, so he opened the windows. Students wandered in, and he marked them off his list.
“I loved that article we read,” Debbie Serrano said. She always sat on his side of the room, six inches too close, and seemed embarrassed by the abundance of her breasts.
“You mean short story,” he said.
“Short story,” Debbie said. “Whatever. I loved it.”
A tall girl named Robin Jennet came in, wearing jeans and a red leather jacket. He guessed she was over six feet, but she didn’t slouch like a tall girl.
“Hey, was Abby Collins one of your students?” Robin asked.
He pretended to be absorbed by the attendance list. “Sure.”
“Someone told me that,” Robin said. “I read her novel this weekend.”
“Oh?”
“I’m French Canadian, too. She’s French Canadian, right?”
He shrugged, as if he didn’t know.
“Did you read the book?” Robin asked.
“Yes.”
“You know what I thought?” She slid the leather jacket off, with no embarrassment about her breasts, which were shaped like cocktail umbrellas. “I thought there should have been more sex.”
Peter said nothing.
“And there should have been more about the husband’s family, the pilot’s,” Robin said. “It was like he didn’t even have a family. That was kind of weird.”
“Doesn’t he have a grandfather who dies?”
“Yeah, but nothing else,” the girl said. “Hey, is Abby related to Jackie Collins?”
