Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (12 page)

When he saw Jane, Sawyer hugged her, breathing in belittling intervals into her neck. How did he love her all of a sudden? He didn't let her go until Jane pushed him.
It's enough,
said Jane, thinking she probably only existed in this world as something people felt obliged to tend to, no less paltry than an errand.

Now three people loved her. Claudio, Sawyer, and Otis. But Otis didn't love her anymore. Sawyer only just started loving her. And Claudio's attention throughout the years had been so erratic, it seemed like he loved her only when he remembered to. What about yesterday? What if nobody at all loved her yesterday?

She wanted to go back home and sit on Otis's lap, where he smacked her in a way that made her feel reprehensible in everyone else's world but roasting with bliss in her own. She wanted him to market his sunglasses or whatever it was he claimed to sell in the daytime, and she could polish herself all day while thinking about him hurting her for kicks, thumb through magazines in the backyard about celebrities, and eat M&M's microwaved for thirty-eight seconds so they were hard on the outside and melted on the inside. One time, Otis created the no-chair policy, which meant that Jane only could use his lap. How much fun had that been?

Before Claudio came for her, the day everything changed, she'd told Otis that she was marrying another man. Otis had laughed at her—one of those temperamental and elemental belly laughs.

She didn't know what to do. When he hit her or when he screwed her, she was all his: his centrifuge. But when he laughed at her, she didn't know what she was, except for maybe something that was funny. Barely something. If only Jane could be unfunny! Now that she wouldn't be around anymore, Jane wondered who would take out Otis's garbage. She'd been good at that. Otis didn't know what he was losing. Jane took out the garbage, washed dishes, and mopped his floors until they were elegant enough to be eaten off of, sometimes using her own spit to make them shinier.

As Jane married Sawyer, Otis waited outside the whole time, banging on City Hall's doors, telling Jane the minute she was married he was going to kill her. Chop her into pieces, throw
her in the Dumpster. She wondered why nobody else was saying anything. Otis was so loud you could hear him from outer space! Sawyer was smiling and adjusting his tie. He looked more like a celebrity than her fiancé. Claudio kept holding her hand.

Maybe it was just happening in her world: Otis waiting patiently to take Jane outside and stab her. He had his floozies with him, all of them, twenty or sixty-eight or something, and they were all laughing at her. They laughed like wood chippers. What was so funny? Was it how disarmingly familiar she smelled? Still of the stink Otis had on her, some sly combination of bourbon and burgers and his abundance of other women.

The ceremony wasn't even half over, and Jane felt shattered tears slipping down, changing her face.
Isn't that sweet,
Claudio whispered to Sawyer, and Jane knew that in their own way, they were laughing at her too.

T
he afternoon Sawyer married Jane, he went back to work in his own home. He was currently finishing a Brazilian medical translation. Noah had thirteen vacation days left for this year. Maybe in a month they could travel.
- Somewhere tropical, -
Sawyer hoped.

He opened the freezer and popped two
mochi
balls into his mouth. He put his jacket and shoes back on and went to the corner gourmet grocery store, buying steaks and truffle salt and imported pesto. Tonight he'd grill the meat and cook pasta, with a thin claret.

When Noah came home that evening, he hung up his coat and stripped to his boxers. He sniffed.
What did I do?

Hm?

You never cook.

I felt like it.

You needed that much of a distraction, huh? Work's that bad?

I just wanted to do something nice. For you and me.

Noah kissed the man he loved before saying
my bird.

The two of them read on the couch after dinner with Noah touching Sawyer's foot. Noah read
The Art Pack.
Sawyer read
A Book of Common Prayer.
Occasionally Sawyer thought spooky thoughts, squiggly thoughts.

-
He doesn't know who he's in love with. -
How was he going
to get away with this? He hadn't thought this through nearly enough. Jesus, and what a time to realize it!

Noah prodded Sawyer's hip.

I have a theory about relationships.

Do you?

A couple needs only two things in common for it to work. The same sense of humor and the same moral compass. I'm right, right?

You make some sense.

A couple doesn't need a thing else in common. But if it doesn't have either of those, it can't work.

You're right,
agreed Sawyer, forcing his mouth into an excruciating, phony smile. He would never be Noah's husband. Now he could be only his lover, if even that. His bottom, his plaything. His mistress.

I always am, aren't I?

T
here were three daughters: Natasha Maude, Lucille Margaret, and Carly Wednesday. Mathilde and Claudio had traveled to Shanghai to adopt Carly, after filling out paperwork for almost two years. The adoption officials told them she'd been abandoned outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken in South Shanghai, in a bassinet, with her umbilical cord and a note that said she'd been born three days earlier. Mathilde and Claudio flew home with Carly and told their daughters,
this is your little sister
. Then Mathilde said to Claudio,
everyone is finally here.

M
athilde continued to audition for plays on her own, bookending from one off-Broadway show to the next. When he wasn't working, Claudio saw every performance of hers. By the end of each run, he could recite the lines just about as well as all the characters. He bought his wife roses at the end of every show.

Once in her life, Mathilde acted on Broadway. She was in the swing ensemble for the musical
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
from 1996 to 1998. She guessed she was one of those people in New York who had
made it,
whatever that meant, but her time on Broadway felt too painless, commercial, too presumptuous of what producers thought people wanted to see. -
The goofiness of musical theater, -
she deduced. Milla had still been more challenging, the rhapsody of that character submitted in Mathilde, buried.

After her daughters were born, she became a talent agent to make more money, for her mother late in her life adopted even more of a Scrooge-esque philosophy on sharing her wealth. Mathilde couldn't help but think, -
it's not even your money! It's Daddy's. -

From eight to six on Tuesdays through Sundays, not counting American holidays, Claudio worked in the same vinyl store he owned in Queens. The rest of the time he was a father.

Before fatherhood, the only item Claudio owned that he cared about besides the limo was his guitar, a vintage 1967 Gibson. He wasn't sure why it mattered. For the most part, he was lousy: his fingers clumsy, cosseting, uncallused. He liked the idea of being able to perfect a few staple songs. He played the Beatles. “Help!” was his lazy specialty.

Won't you please, please help me?

L
ucy's first memory was of her sister Natasha fastening a pair of headphones on her and playing an old Dylan song.
A sky that cries and a bird that flies. A fish that walks and a dog that talks.

These are your earmuffs. When you get scared, put them on.

Lucy was three. She called Natasha
Tashy.
Natasha called her
White Cat.

White cats are all deaf
.

But I hear!

You only hear what's important.

She was referencing the sixth member to the Simone family—Penelope. First Penelope lived in Upper Manhattan with Mathilde and Sawyer and their mother, then Penelope lived with Mathilde and Claudio back in Lower Manhattan, and finally Penelope lived with Mathilde and Claudio and their three daughters back in Upper Manhattan.

Penelope had white fur and eyes the color of key limes. Penelope purred a lot, usually whenever she was happy. Roughly, like a triumphant engine. But late in her life, she purred hard even when uncomfortable. The vet told Mathilde that for cats, purring was like smiling. How it was turbid and of the utmost difficulty, from happiness or nerves. That a person could smile even when something bad happens.

When Lucy was five, Penelope stopped eating for a week.
Mathilde took Penelope to the vet, who told her she was dying. Claudio gathered his daughters in their living room.

Penelope's sick.
Already he felt convoluted.

We know that already, Daddy,
said Carly.
She won't even eat her favorite cold food, the tuna, which smells like stinky hands!

Girls,
Claudio said.
I don't think she's going to get better.

My throat hurts,
said Natasha.

So we have two choices,
said Claudio.
We can let the vet give her medicine to have her pass away tomorrow, where she's comfortable, or we can let her pass away on her own. And she'll be in a lot of pain until then.

The vet will kill her?
asked Lucy.

He can't help her,
said Claudio.
She's an old cat. god bless her.

Where will she be when she's dead?
asked Lucy.

Well,
said Claudio. -
Let's be honest, -
he thought.
We'll bury her.

But she won't be able to breathe!

Kid, she won't need to breathe.

She'll be buried forever?

Well,
said Claudio,
she'll also be everywhere. When you die, you go to the After, which is different from here.

Another planet?
The idea filled Lucy with woe and wonder.

Possibly.

Claudio,
said Mathilde, sick with the tragedy of abstract answers. The more complicated the situation got, the more they'd have to fudge the truth. And why? Because they weren't too sure what the truth was. The truth, so vague in their hands.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
hummed Carly,
how I wonder what you are! Uppa guppa world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Shine on, crazy diamond.
It wasn't unusual for Claudio's daughters to confuse rock and roll with lullabies. Their childish confusion with lexis was one of Claudio's favorite things, as a parent, to observe. The other day, Lucy accidentally said
Fourth of July
when she was trying to say
grand finale,
which just about killed
him. Or how about the time Carly thought
bouncer
and
bodyguard
meant the same job?

If she goes tomorrow, you can say good-bye to her,
said Claudio.
Right now, she doesn't know why it hurts. She just wants the pain to be done with.

This was the first time Lucy was introduced to death as a concept—the wild epiphany that not everybody lives forever. After the family meeting, Lucy petted her sick cat for hours until accumulating a little pile of stray, sooty hairs. She filled a Ziploc bag with the shed furs and kept them under her bed.

That sucked,
Claudio later revealed to his wife. They were in the kitchen slowly sharing a package of microwave popcorn. It was past everyone's bedtime, and Mathilde's eyes were soggy and almost violet with kept tears.

There's no way to make it easy,
she said.

Claudio could divide his life into before fatherhood and after fatherhood. Before he was a father, Claudio swore that there was nothing he could love more than rock and roll. And then he had his daughters, and it wasn't even that he loved them more than rock and roll. It was that they were rock and roll.

The following week, Claudio picked Penelope up in her cat carrier, which Penelope usually despised, emitting mews. This last time was easy as Penelope was too bushed to feel claustrophobic. He asked his daughters if they wanted to say good-bye. Carly and Natasha came outside and petted her through the cage with their fingers, but Lucy kept her door locked.

I'm busy
.

The week after, Lucy's class went on a field trip to Ellis Island and learned about American immigrants.
The immigrant mentality is when you save everything,
Lucy heard her teacher say in passing to a parent chaperone. -
Like me, -
Lucy thought.

Was it possible to be born with the émigré approach, always hoarding, even if you've never left home? After a few months, the bag disappeared and Lucy kept mum, ashamed to tell
anyone in her family about the sentimental act of salvage she'd performed. The bag had been more private to Lucy than her underwear.

As Lucy entered the garden terrace of their apartment building that evening, she saw Penelope's grave, covered with a stone marker of two triangle carves of cat ears and the words
RIP CAT.
Her parents had buried her earlier that afternoon. Natasha had been witness, and later told Lucy that
Daddy said a prayer.

What kind of prayer?

I don't know. It was like in another language. Like Hebrew or Latin or something.