Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (30 page)

Four years ago, Mrs. O'Connor delivered Catherine, a stillborn baby. The summer before the birth, twelve-year-old Carly went to Mrs. O'Connor's house to feel her stomach.
She just did a cannonball!

Mrs. O'Connor had three daughters and five sons and three children with freckles and eight children with recessively gray eyes and all of them with a startling sense of humor. Mrs. O'Connor had eight children, enough for a baseball team, whom she all knew very well (even if she sometimes whisked up the names, but it was okay, as people understood). Mrs. O'Connor, who had an exquisite baby girl named Catherine for an afternoon, whom Carly had predicted would be a good swimmer but nobody would know. Mrs. O'Connor had veins off the side of her face with a goopy texture like cold Bisquick in a pan, and she told everybody that it was okay and she would be okay because she never actually got to know Catherine. That was precisely the tragedy, but nobody could be cruel to Mrs. O'Connor and tell her so.
Don't worry about me. I never actually knew her.

Or
worry about me. I'll never actually know her.

Studying the O'Connors' crammed basement, Carly couldn't stop swallowing. She picked up a weathered dress meant for a baby either grown-up or dead. She stared at her mop, which reminded her of Janice from
The Muppets,
a kind of pretty mop, with soft, sopping curls. How could products be beautiful? Couldn't anything be beautiful, so long as it had some use to it?

Carly, true to her word, organized and scrubbed that basement for scores of afternoons. And then she quit cleaning for good. The whole week had been what did her in—every day, feeling more psychologically alone. She had never understood before how much junk was able to mar her Heart.

Carly decided to spend all of her earned money on clothes. Her favorite thing to wear was a pair of Parisian boots. She'd splurged full price, ordering online from Au Printemps. They didn't quit: showstopping, three inches. When Carly clicked them, she felt pretty, well versed, like a local weathergirl or TV personality.

Natasha told her that fashion was phony.

There are worse vices.

Carly didn't designate clothes for certain events like a normal person: clothes to go to work in, clothes to sleep in, clothes for the weekend. Instead, she categorized clothes by emotion—each article got designated to a certain mood stemming from the first time she'd worn it. She had her scared shoes and her fluky dress. She wore her near-gleeful slacks and surly headband. The day she found out Lucy was sick, Carly had been wearing white leggings, a lambs' wool skirt with anchor buttons, and a champagne-colored ribbed tank top. From then on they'd be her devastation clothes, with a thin shelf life.

Lucy also loved clothes—wearing them, buying them, talking about them, thinking about them. Before her surgery, Lucy dressed up. After her surgery, she dressed down: slips with ice chiffon clouds, sculptural textures, and cream silk. Pajamas with fuzzy linings, like the ears of a bear. Smock nightgowns printed with nightscapes, symphonies of stars. She used to spend money on bohemian dresses, lipsticks, and leather bags. Now she spent it on clothes to sleep in, for what else did she do, and what else could she do?

The night she found out her sister was sick, the basis of Carly's dream was a fingerprint of memory, the quotient of
some drive from her brain, though her recollection looped distortedly. She was in middle school, under the swaybacked sun. Children called her names—
Ugly Chinese girl. Why don't you look like your sisters?

She woke herself up, walked to the bathroom, saw herself in the mirror. Her lavender bedclothes, her blond face. Carly thought she made everything around her look better. It was self-esteem, she guessed. Like snowflakes, every girl's was different. She sat on her fingers. She wanted it all off with backbreaking speed: every invisible tattoo she had, every sacrilege she'd ever been called.

-
You're not
really
a Simone. -

Carly drew a bath. She was a Simone. -
I love my family, and they love me. I've known them my whole life. -
She consulted her olive skin, stepping out of her clothes. Her clothes hid her body, her body hid her voice. She was a Russian doll.

-
You're not really a Simone, -
a cluttered defacement of property. Her body, was it really even her property?

-
I have to be a Simone. I don't know anything else. -

She pictured Stephen as an old man, wrinkles crawling on that toxically gorgeous mug. It wasn't hard to imagine—he had the hair. Men were lucky to age with more poise than women. Carly let herself pee in the bathtub and sat for a minute in her cloistered waste. It almost felt good, the way some wanton things uneasily do.

Carly stepped out of the tub. She thought about wombs and how she couldn't see her own. She changed into a hoodie and flannel pajama pants, went downstairs to the kitchen.

It's too early for you to be awake,
said Uncle Sawyer, sitting on a stool at the kitchen's island. He was wearing a bathrobe and had been growing a linty-gray beard for the past two weeks. He looked like Father Time.

Early? I thought it was late.

Depending on how you look at it. It's five-thirty.

It's hard to sleep.

Is your room too warm? Hot rooms give me sad dreams.

No. I'm just blue about Lucy.
She found blaming her fear on Lucy the easy choice to make, since the distress their family felt about Lucy was the kind that took the cake. Even her uncle hadn't mentioned Noah since moving in, disregarding his different pain.

Are you sure? Nothing else going on?

Nothing else.
Besides her foolish loneliness?

Her uncle peeled a banana the upside-down way monkeys do.
You're lucky you're the youngest.

I'm lucky?
Carly smiled, and suddenly Sawyer saw her in an objective way. The five feet of her, the weight probably close to double digits. You wanted to take care of her. She should have probably gotten braces. She had a bad tooth-to-gum ratio that maybe some people would think exalted her appeal, but probably not everyone.

You think you get overlooked, but really, it's the best. You have your older siblings making the mistakes you can avoid,
before telling her a story of how he'd been bullied for liking boys in high school and how Carly's mother had taken care of him.

I'm really sorry that happened to you, Uncle. Why are people so mean?

We were teenagers. Most teenagers grow out of being mean. And you have your sisters to go through it all with together.

I guess,
said Carly, thinking of how poles apart her plights could be from either of her sisters'.

That's not to say you won't make mistakes. But you also have Lucy and Natasha there to comfort you, who know what it's like. You're lucky not to be alone in your troubles.

We're all lucky,
said Carly.

That's right,
said Sawyer, as if he'd only just realized this.
Any day above ground is good. And many days are less good, but many are also more.

Maybe the adoption agency matched me up with Mommy and Daddy because I looked—I mean, seemed—like the type of baby who would grow up into a girl that gets hurt. Maybe they looked like the type of parents who knew how to help me.

Don't say such nonsense about yourself. But you're right about your parents.

N
atasha took Lucy to Mass only because Lucy had asked her to.
You don't mind?
asked Lucy.

None of my business what helps you,
said Natasha.

I like the sermon,
Lucy said to Natasha.
The priest can say whatever he wants.

Probably not anything he wants.

Church could be nice, I bet. Why didn't we go after we finished our Sunday school years?

Because you have to believe in god and I don't think Mommy or Daddy did, or do.

But why did we go in the first place?

Because I once heard Mom say that tradition and communities
get you through
. Whatever that means.

Get you through what?

Beats me. This world, maybe?

This horrendous world.

It's not such a bad place. First off, we have life in the first place. It's more the universe's fault. After all, it's cold, and nobody knows too much about it.

Lucy looked at her sister.
Not my universe. Maybe yours. Tell me, Natasha, where's your universe?

Natasha parked the car.

I believe in god,
Lucy continued. Their father believed in rock and roll. Lucy believed in god.
Would you ever?

It's too hard for me to.

I'm sorry.

Don't feel sorry for me. It's just that, how could a loving god smite people all the time, à la the Old Testament Yahweh?

Well . . .

At least Jesus was a little nicer?

It's not the point,
persisted Lucy.
Do you think that most of the people who go to church these days believe in the bogus details anyway? About homosexuality being an abomination or Eve sprouting from Adam's rib? Well, maybe some, but I think most people go to church, or temple, or mosque, because you can turn to each other and go,
peace be with you, said Lucy, taking a seat in the back pew.

Or because rules make them feel safe,
murmured Natasha.

- Here is the church, here is the steeple. Open the door and see all the people.
- The people, who were there for a reason, sitting down and craning their knees and taking Communion and sitting down again. Lucy received Communion, even though she also knew that technically she couldn't take Communion unless she'd recently been to Confession and absolved of her sins. But the last time Lucy had gone to Confession, the priest had told her to say a bunch of prayers. And she'd probably sinned since then—temptation from Sloane, gluttony over cupcakes, futile envy. Would these infractions matter to her god? The oddest and worst parts about religion were the technicalities.

Lucy opened her mouth. The priest slipped a dry wafer inside and said,
the body of Christ.
She thought back to her first kiss. Sloane had handled her mouth with his and said,
god, I love your body.

Abruptly Lucy considered: what if he'd not been talking to her in the warmth of the moment, but to god? In which case, Sloane loved god's body, not Lucy's. The thought was
incredulous but almost relieving. -
Sloane loved someone else's body. Some divine body. -
This abdication of responsibility, the idea that she could consume somebody else's lovable body, felt good.

The service ended with
Amen!
and consolation in the certainty of the final word. Lucy wondered what her final word would be, her Heart moving in her fishbowl of a body. She felt terribly unholy. The god Lucy believed in probably had nothing to do with the Catholic Church, but she didn't know how else to find him. (Him? Her? her? It? Like polytheists or Shakespeare conspiracy theorists, them?) she said, more to herself than anyone else,
heavenly father.

G
uess what?

You're pregnant,
Natasha joked.

Uh, almost.

Huh?

Stephen and I. We did it!
Carly heard herself saying
it's a long story,
while smiling, the casual way an acquaintance would say
it's a small world.

Whoa,
said Natasha. Her little sister, sexually active? How could Carly have time for boys? Natasha couldn't imagine having time for anything but the constant jeopardy game in her head.

The next day, Natasha made an appointment for Carly with her gynecologist. Natasha had her appointment on the morning of her eighteenth birthday, a few months prior.
You have to go when you turn eighteen or lose your virginity. Whichever comes first,
their mother had explained to Natasha.

Dr. Pendleton was middle-aged, her own figure akin to a loaf of focaccia bread. She said,
it would help if you pushed your bum down and made like you were going to pee,
sticking something cold that felt like a giant doorknob inside of Carly. The instrument made a snapping noise. While examining Carly's reproductive atmosphere, Dr. Pendleton made chitchat.

What is your favorite subject?

History,
said Carly,
even though it stresses me out.

How's your sister?
When Carly asked her how she knew, Dr. Pendleton said,
your other sister
.

At the end of the appointment, Dr. Pendleton asked Carly if she had any questions for her. But Carly had a fear of being defective, so she didn't speak a word, not asking even the most timid or softball of questions. It wasn't until the ride back home when Natasha asked Carly how it felt to be loved.

I don't know,
said Carly. Carly was used to sharing her opinion in slim lines, mostly affirmative and in reaction to others.

You don't know?

He's not only my boyfriend, he's also a really good friend. One of the best. We draw together, and read out loud to each other. I know it sounds kind of stupid, but we also listen to cassettes together. He was on the basketball team, but the season just ended. I've met his parents, and I like them. I don't know what his dad does, but he works on boats. It sounds totally obvious, but I have an enormous crush on him.