All of Us and Everything (21 page)

“We have
that
in common,” Ru said.

Atty tweeted,
I come from a vast family of Princesses who hated peas.
“But it doesn't answer the question,” Atty said. “Did you
like
each other?”

It was quiet.

“In rehab,” Liv said, “other people's siblings showed up and people seemed happy to see them, more or less. I think the problem is that we've never done anything for each other.”

“Well, that's because Mom always provided for us,” Esme said. “She's overcompensated for a lack of a father. As a result, we never needed each other as sisters. I can call her and get an update on both of you. She's the center of the wheel. We're just spokes. It's her fault.”

“She's going to die one day,” Atty said.

“True,” Liv said, and she remembered, viscerally, what it was like to stick her body half out of the apartment window at the Caledonia. That was a twisted moment, the rain-wet cement beneath her. “We're all mortal.”

“Maybe we should do some things together, bond a little,” Ru said, “and then maybe we'll learn to like each other.”

“At this moment in our lives with our father downstairs, we've decided that we finally
need
each other,” Liv said.

“Maybe that's the lesson,” Esme said.

“Yes,” Liv said. “But we should help our father on his path to wholeness too. I mean, he is completely indebted to us. In AA terms, he should make amends. And in practical terms, his moment of profound weakness should not be squandered. This is something you two have never fully comprehended. We're Buddhist lessons for each other, you know?”

“He should pay,” Esme said.

“I already got a ton from him and had no idea, but I'm in it because
we
need this,” Liv said. “I mean, look at our fucked-up lives!”

“My life isn't that fucked up,” Ru said. It was. She knew it was. Her sisters knew it was without even knowing how exactly fucked up it was.

“I think the old man should stay here,” Esme said. “He shouldn't be allowed to leave until we figure out what to do with him. Each of us. Not what
he
wants to do for us. And not what
Augusta
wants him to do. But
us.
”

“Yes,” Ru said. “Exactly.”

“Don't you have to get back to Cliff?” Liv said to Ru.

“He's swamped right now,” Ru said. “I don't have anywhere to go immediately. Esme, don't you have to get back to the…”

“Boarding school we were kicked out of?” Atty said. “I think that ship has sailed.”

“What about you, Liv?” Esme asked. “Don't you have…”

“I'm between places, as they say.”

Esme reached out and grabbed Liv's hand and then Ru's. “This has to be about us. Whatever happens.”

“Agreed,” Ru said.

“Maybe what we lost is each other,” Liv said. “Maybe if we reclaim that, we won't be lost anymore.”

“I don't have any sisters,” Atty said.

“That's okay,” Ru said. She reached out and grabbed hold of her niece's hand. “We'll be like your sisters. Right, Liv?”

“I've already taken Atty under my wing,” Liv said, and she swung her arm wide and held on to Atty's hand too.

“No,” Atty said, “I meant like
thank God I don't have any sisters.
”

“Oh,” Ru said.

Heads touching and holding hands, they stared up at the ceiling, marbled with water stains and fine fissures.

“But we loved each other,” Liv whispered. “We didn't ever like each other, but we loved each other as kids.”

“Olive Pedestro?” Augusta said. “You entrusted the safety of our family to
Olive
Pedestro.
”

Nick was rubbing the knotty bones of Ingmar's head with both hands. “Well, I had to—”

“And her
deranged
son. He's deranged, you know. He's been on house arrest before, with an ankle bracelet.”

Nick fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his nose. “He wasn't part of the deal.”

“And she's
visited
you? In
Egg Harbor
? Where you have a
shih tzu
? And how dare you name a dog Tobias! How dare you!” It had been his first pick for a boy's name had they ever had a son.

He stretched his arms open, a supplication. His cheeks were so ruddy that she worried for a moment about his high blood pressure. How high was it?

But she couldn't let up either. “I bet you gave that dog your last name. Finally, a Flemming, a child of your own!”

“Dogs don't have last names.”

She looked down at her knit hands. “Why did you interfere?”

“You knew I was there.”

“I didn't.”

“You've always known.”

He was right. At certain events, she'd feel a surge and catch herself searching the audience before reining herself in. “I thought I was just trying to conjure you up,” she said.

“Once, I sat just behind you so close I smelled your perfume.”

“Orchestra?”

“Our third-chair clarinetist.” He nodded. “It was never over, for me.”

She hit him, the flat of her fist to his shoulder, not angry but not joking either.

“C'mon,” he said, “do it. Hit me. Really do it. Like you used to.”

“No,” she said, as if denying him sex.

“I miss the way you used to really lay into me, beating my arms and my chest, sometimes in bed, you know, after.”

“I had to.”

“I should have gotten worried when you stopped getting angry at me.”

Augusta knew the last time she'd hit him. She'd never forget it. He told her someone had been murdered—the oldest son of a colleague. It was Nick's greatest fear. He was trying to tell her that he'd made the right choice. “You'd have drowned me,” she said. “I couldn't keep holding you up. We'd been through so much.”

“I wish you'd just kept punishing me, but letting me back in. I needed you all so much, more than you ever needed me.”

“You'll never know how much we needed you.”

And then there was a cough.

They looked up.

There stood their granddaughter.

One knee cocked inward, her forearms crossed to hide her stomach that was a little pudgy, something she'd probably grow out of this summer. There was something undeniably raw and vulnerable about Atty. Augusta saw it for the first time, but it was so plain she was shocked she hadn't noticed it before.

Atty stared at them as if she weren't sure she knew them at all.

She and Nick had never been interrupted in the middle of an intimate moment by a child. The shame Augusta felt was familiar only because she'd felt it in her teen years—her mother walking out onto the porch and nearly catching her holding hands with her date.

“What is it, Atty?” Augusta said.

Atty looked at her dog, who was resting his chin on Nick's thigh, completely smitten. She felt jealous but also a little intimidated by her grandfather's magnetism. “I'm supposed to tell you that your daughters want him to stay until they've figured out what to do with him.”

“What do they have in mind?” Nick said.

“I think they want you to make amends. I think there's going to be a process of some sort.”

Nick looked at Augusta.

“They should have cleared this with me first,” Augusta said.

“You're getting blamed up there too, if I can be frank with you,” Atty said.

“Me? Are you kidding?”

“No, I'm not kidding,” Atty told her. “But I've heard people say that mothers always get blamed for everything so you probably don't have to take it personally.”

“Augusta?” Nick said. “What do you say to this?”

She drew a deep breath and looked at an ancient ancestor's portrait on the wall—a pale man with a bulbous nose and flowering white ascot. She didn't know what to say.

“I think this could help you take your grief for a walk around the block,” Atty told her. “Remember? That's what you wanted, right?”

Augusta looked at the girl. “One day,” she said, “you'll be a pair of eyes gazing at some new generation sitting in this very room. You'll be a portrait just hanging there, gazing away. This is how time marches on.”

She didn't mean it as a threat but it might have come across that way because Atty looked at the paintings and gripped her own arms more tightly. “I think they want a yes or a no.”

“Freud,” she said, “I blame him on behalf of all mothers.” She waved her hand over her head. “Fine! Fine! Like I ever had a choice.”

By 10
P.M.,
Nick Flemming—father and husband—was lying on a cot in the large room on the third floor of the Victorian, under the row of windows where, once upon a time, Augusta had taught the girls to conduct a storm. He'd driven back to the retirement village, packed a bag, and returned. His shih tzu, Toby—after being thoroughly sniffed by Ingmar and given a little growl—was asleep at his side. The room was now used for storage, and he wondered if he was being stored there too. Was he some relic of the past, still obdurately drawing air, or was he really home, for the first time in his life?

On the second floor, Ru was sharing a double bed with Liv, who'd taken a sleeping pill. Liv was dreaming of Easter eggs, one of which was Technicolored, and she knew it held a demon rabbit. She was snoring lightly and wouldn't recall the dream in the morning. She never did when she took sleeping pills.

Ru got up, grabbed her phone, and walked down the hall to the bathroom. She locked the door. The bathroom felt large and echoey, and she didn't like how she still felt exposed. So she pulled back the curtain on the old clawfoot tub, stepped into it, and drew the curtain closed. This was better, more like a safe cubicle. She remembered for a moment loving the language lab in high school because it had little dividers between stations and headphones that made everyone else disappear.

She had to call Cliff.

Sitting down in the dry tub, she stared at her phone.

She was afraid he'd be angry at her, though he'd shown no signs in the letters he sent following the breakup. He'd never even really asked for more explanation, and he certainly didn't ask her to reconsider, which she had to respect.

She thought about what Esme had said, that whatever happened it had to be about them. They were reclaiming their sisterhood. Ru had felt it in the moment—a surge of love—but now she was uneasy. It was hypocritical of her to make that kind of promise without telling them the truth about her engagement. Why hadn't she already come clean? Jesus. Why was she holding back?

She thought about the writing tip of holding on to a secret—the power of the unspoken to charge a scene. She wondered if she was doing that, subconsciously, and if Liv was right. Had she invited Teddy just to play out some old story line or start a new one?

Maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe she thought that Cliff would convince her she was wrong. She'd seen him convince so many people of so many things as a producer. He was so winning, so vital. It was like other people just wanted to live in his het-up heartbeat and so they said yes, even when they knew they shouldn't. Maybe she thought she was wrong and it wasn't really over so why tell her sisters one thing when she'd just have to circle back?

She hit Cliff's name in her contacts. He was probably on Pacific Time so she wasn't worried about waking him up.

She hoped for voice mail. “Please, please, please.”

But he answered. “Hello? Ru?”

“Hi.”

“You're back safe and sound. Hold on, let me excuse myself.” She imagined him at a restaurant or a party. She heard him telling people he'd be right back. There was a hoot of laughter, some music.

In a few seconds, she heard a siren. She assumed he was outside now.

“Welcome back to the US,” he said genially.

“Thanks.”

“How are things?”

She was sitting in a bathtub in her childhood home and her father was with them; her family was, for once, all sleeping under one roof. Things were…reverting, upended, normalizing in a ridiculous way? “Good,” she said. “How are you?”

“Pretty good. We got a first-look deal. Did you hear?”

She hadn't. She'd always wanted a first-look deal. “What studio?”

“Sony.”

“How's Terry taking it?” Terry was his producing partner who'd had a Sony issue a few years back.

“Water under the bridge. He's happy.”

“You sound really good.”

The line went quiet. He was somewhere windy. She could hear the rippling fuzz. She wondered if he was choked up. “Just let me save face.”

“Of course.” He was asking her not to push him on how he was taking this.

“I'm in the city.” He'd been born and raised in Manhattan. The city would always be New York City no matter how long he lived in L.A.

“I'll come in.” What would that be like? Would there suddenly be passion? Would they end up having sex? What did people who used to be engaged feel for each other?

“Where are you?”

“At my mom's.”

“Good. I'll come there.”

This made her panic. “Why here? I mean, we're all here—my mom, my sisters, Atty…” She'd told him all about her father, but she couldn't mention him without opening up too much.

“I never got to see your people or where you came from. I want it to make sense.”

“You want what to make sense? Me?”

“Why you gave up on us.”

“I don't think it'll help,” she said, tapping the shower liner and sticking her big toe up the faucet. She'd known her mother and sisters and this place she'd come from all her life, and it hadn't helped her make sense of anything.

“I feel like the negotiating power is tilted my way,” he said. “My mother started smoking again. My father suggested suing you.”

“On what grounds?”

“Whatever grounds. It's just where he goes, emotionally.”

Ru wondered where Cliff had gone, emotionally. Did she really know him? She hadn't ever let him know her—not completely. She'd held back in tiny ways and then she'd broken up—in a letter from another country like a coward. “Okay. Come here. Do whatever you have to do.”

“How about Saturday? I'll have to clear some things, but will you be around?”

Ru agreed and gave him her mother's address. They set a time midafternoon. But she thought of Amanda, Teddy Whistler's ex; Amanda should be allowed to stick with her plans, marry who she wanted—right or wrong. Teddy should disappear, let her go.

“See you then,” Ru said.

“Remember when we used to make fun of married people?” Cliff asked.

“Yes.”

“That seems like a long time ago now.”

“It does.”

“I refuse to miss you,” he said and it was the most intimate thing he'd ever said to her. Then he hung up.

Ru slid down the tub's curved back and stared at the ceiling, spotted with mold. She thought of Teddy Whistler's face. It appeared in her mind in full color—the way he looked at her as she recited what he'd said on the plane.

Teddy was back. Her father was back. Cliff was coming. It was like an attack of men. What did it mean?

She didn't want to think of men. She wanted something soothing, something simple.

And suddenly she thought of the baby born in the longhouse where she'd spent the last nine months. The baby was a girl named Chau, and the family had let Ru hold her and walk her along the dirt road for long stretches every day. The baby had full cheeks, a slick of dark hair, and shiny eyes. Ru missed the baby's smell, her gummy smile, even her sharp cry. Ru understood why her mother had three babies with Nick Flemming. Her love for Nick must have been incredibly complicated, but the love you feel for a baby is pure and simple and visceral. Once you have one, you must just want another. The question wasn't why her mother had gone on to have three kids with someone she couldn't be with. Ru decided that maybe having three babies was an effort to counterbalance a complex, distant love with one that was primal, intimate, and close.

Atty and Esme were in the bedroom next door, the trundle pulled out from under Esme's canopy bed. Esme was wide awake and clear on one thing. Her bastard of a father would track down Darwin Webber, apologize, and retract any threats. She felt flushed with courage. She had sisters. It was their journey now.

But then again, it was her sisters—not just the idea of sisterhood—and she wasn't convinced that her sisters were trustworthy. Liv was a drug addict, for shit's sake, and Ru was a writer who, like a bottom feeder, relied on other people for characters. Liv ignored the facts of her addiction and only talked about her time in rehab like it was an extended spa stay, and Ru hadn't even invited her fiancé over to meet them. Was she embarrassed of Cliff or of them? Probably them.

(And of course Esme had looked up Rob Parks of Parks Cabinetry and there were no photos of him on the Internet. Who could avoid that these days—and still be an entrepreneur?)

Still, Esme was the one with an urgent need, and so she wanted Liv and Ru to get on board with the Darwin Webber mission. Would she bring Atty? Esme was worried about her. In telling her rendition of the musket incident, she hadn't made any connection to her father's abandonment. Esme wasn't sure how to approach the subject. She preferred not to talk about Doug herself.

“Atty,” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

Esme wasn't sure what she'd say to her. Maybe she'd just ask her what she thought about the evening, help her process some of this. It could segue naturally to a discussion of Atty's father, couldn't it?

“Atty?”

Atty was awake but she didn't say a word. She'd tweeted as many one-liners as she could.

Do synchronized swimmers sometimes practice out of water? #someolympicsportsareBS

Being manipulative is different from being likable. #butbarely

If you're lucky, you'll wind up an oil portrait staring into a room for eternity. #avoidpainters

She'd gotten a few retweets and favorites, but nothing from anyone at the boarding school who mattered, and certainly not Lionel Chang. He never retweeted or favorited. In fact, sometimes he went months without tweeting even a single peep.

She was turned away from her mother. She'd been crying, silently. She wasn't sure why, but it had to do with dying and being reduced to some portrait hung on a wall, doomed to stare out at the dining room; this is how she'd felt at boarding school all those years—a lonesome witness. She was lonesome.

There was also her ever-growing love–hate relationship with Nancy Drew and some unattainable version of self. Of course, Liv had told her to know how to cry on a dime but to never let anyone see her crying for real. Liv had told her many things—her guns, as they put it—but none of them seemed to help her in this situation: She didn't want to talk to her mother because she was trying to become someone else and her mother could never allow it.

Augusta was the only one who wasn't in bed. She was pacing her bedroom on the second floor, aware of her family, the house alive with them restlessly breathing all around her. She felt her parents' ghosts, batting around downstairs. Gulls—she remembered how, as a child with rheumatic fever, she'd hallucinated that their shrieking fights were gulls filling the house, all wings and noise.

“
Romantic
fever,” she whispered. “Like I ever had a choice.” She'd fallen in love and it was quick and deep and all-consuming. It overtook her body as the fever once had.

She could hear the snapping of the Rockwell flag out her open bedroom window. She dipped through the window—the air hot but gusty—and unhooked the flag from its post. She pulled it to her chest, ducked back in through the window, and stood there, holding the bundle like a baby.

At one point, before Ru was born, Nick wrote, “Let's at least try to live as husband and wife, let the kids have a father. I'm about to get three months of leave. We can rent a place. A lake house in Maine.”

She said yes. They rented a house on Damariscotta Lake and he showed up thin and weak. Ulcers were eating him up. She quickly understood that he'd been sent on leave so he wouldn't bleed to death.

The summer was beautiful—canoes and an outdoor shower, a fishing dock, a small island filled with blueberry bushes, distant campers singing songs that carried across the lake.