The Almost Archer Sisters (21 page)

“’Kay, bye, I gotta go,” he said, darting off before he answered my question about Jake, before I could remind him of how much I loved him, pushing the love through the little holes in the receiver, like sweet-smelling Play-Doh.

Beth came back on the phone.

“Is the laundry done yet?” I said, not expecting it to be, not wanting it to be.

“That’s next on my list. Sam helped me load it in the trunk just now. That’s where we were going. I wrote everything down,” she said with a kind of pride in her voice I hadn’t detected before. “Peachy, are you going to meet up with Marcus tomorrow night?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Don’t, Peachy,” she said, her voice haunted from this morning’s crying. “Please don’t let this make you mean like me. And I don’t care if you tell Marcus everything. At this point I really don’t care who knows what a screw-up I turned out to be. I’m sure Marcus won’t be surprised anyway. I just hope he doesn’t tell everyone. Actually, I don’t care if he does. You know what? I don’t care about anything except for making things right with you. With us.”

“Go do the laundry, Beth. Try to find parking on the street. They charge at the lot.”

“Will do. And Peach?”

“Yeah.”

“I love you more than—”

“Just don’t.”

She was quiet.

“Did you see Nell’s picture in the kitchen?”

“I did.”

“She wouldn’t be too proud of me right now, would she?”

“Doubtful.”

“There’s a good walking map in the drawer by the sink. There’s a subway one in the wicker basket by the door. But take cabs and I will reimburse you. God, it’s so weird you’re there without me.”

Her voice sounded reedy, beaten.

“Okay. So. I’m gonna get off the phone now. Tell the boys I love them and I’ll see them Sunday afternoon, by which time I hope you will be gone from there.”

I hung up on her, threw off the robe in the living room, and caught a glimpse of myself, my whole body, in the full-length mirror hanging outside of Beth’s bathroom door. What a template the mother’s body is, I thought. A fleshy notebook upon which her children’s stories are told. My stretch marks weren’t too pronounced, my sides merely lined with the light claw marks of maybe a playful cougar that might have tried to mangle me from behind. Twice. My legs were thin at the base, but they bloomed up and out at the thighs like a vase with generous handles. I didn’t mind my arms, my collarbones, my shoulder blades, and I liked most of the skin over me except for the parts that hadn’t sprung back, that now remained the roomy evidence of my body’s former inhabitants. But even after they had left it, the boys kept returning to my body, which was still theirs. They’d sit on my flabby lap and play with my greying hair. They’d rest their hot heads against my chest and ask questions about my freckles and my bruises and my scars, for the same primal reason, I supposed, that people would sometimes drive by the homes in which they used to live, to remember what it was like, and to note all the new changes.

Once, while Beth was visiting, I was sitting in my underwear and a loosely wrapped bathrobe, breast-feeding Jake. Sam would have been about four when he asked why I didn’t have a penis.

“Because we don’t need any more of them. We have four penises in this house already—five, if you count what Auntie Beth has stashed in the inside pocket of her suitc—”

“Peachy!” Beth screamed, looking up from peeling potatoes. Sam looked at her utterly confused.

“You have a penis, Auntie Beth?”

“No. I don’t have a penis. But it’s been said that I have a fine set of balls.”

“Beth!” I yelled back.

“You started it,” she said, pelting me with peel.

God, my boobs shrunk so unevenly after breastfeeding, my torso wore the expression of someone dinged in the head too often and rendered stupid. My nipples were wall-eyed and sad-looking, and the flap under my belly button (which was the nose of the face) looked like the mouth of someone strange and dopey, someone you’d run away from in a schoolyard.

“Hello, Peachy,” I said, taking my fingers and making my tummy flab talk in a Muppety voice. The boys loved when I did this, though it caused Beau to cringe and leave the room. “You’re in New York City by yourself because your husband fucked your skinny, skinny sister. What are you going to do about that? And by the way, what are you going to do about me? I keep getting bigger and bigger.”

I cupped my breasts and made the nipples look me straight in the eye.

“We’re going to get in shape. That’s what we’re going to do. But first we’re going to take a bath and then we’re going shopping to buy expensive clothes to cover us up. Make us look super nice and pretty and we’re going to meet Marcus and maybe let him touch us. Would you like that? No? Just a little? Maybe? Well, we’ll see.”

After my body’s puppet show, I shut off the water and sank under the suds, realizing that the last time I’d had a bubble bath—alone—was
the night I tried to induce labor with Jake. Almost six years ago? Jesus. I felt around down there with a kind of numb purposelessness, suddenly wanting Beau so badly I felt angry, as though I had rained more betrayal upon my body just thinking about him. If I was exhilarated during the plane ride, my freedom suddenly felt terrifying, like a balloon freed from a bouquet. At first it was a wild and unfamiliar ride, being away from them, but the farther I got the smaller, the more untethered, I felt. I saw myself floating up and above all the action, unable to will any weight into my legs, now two noodly strings, drunk on wind and fury. I had no real plan and I had always had a plan. I learned in school that before diving into the toxic soup of a situation, social workers had to have plans. You had to be able to anticipate dilemmas with textbook assessments and well-placed questions, open-ended and benevolent. But my training left little room for understanding Beth. Beyond the vagaries of our childhood, the things we shared and those we kept secret from each other, she remained a mystery to me. Her drunken mishap and Beau’s lack of vigilance led to an event as rare as a centennial comet to us. But I lingered in the water, sad for myself, the cuckolded baby sister, sad for the boys and their rotten parents, sad for their aunt, born with a vile bent, and sad that Lou had tried his best and failed us both.

When I pulled the plug, the drain made the sound my heart would have made if it could have made a sound when I found them. I deliberately dripped water all over Beth’s shiny parquet floors while pouring myself a half a glass of wine, a daytime luxury as uncommon as the bubble bath had been. I sat my wet ass on her expensive office chair, a black, springy contraption, and logged into our email account, remembering our dead laptop at the bottom of the kitchen sink. Even if Beth had wanted to muck with the account or warn Marcus, she’d have difficulty finding the time to go into town.

I threw the robe around me and stretched across the couch and closed my eyes for what I thought was a second, only to jerk awake to the sound of a faraway doorbell, and to a sun that had dimmed considerably. I had had a nap, my first in several years. During those few seconds between sleep and full alertness, I had the sudden understanding that my kids were far away, which explained the hollow thudding in my chest. The boys would be bracketing the supper table by now, I thought. Beau would probably linger in town after work, stopping in at Lucy and Leo’s, perhaps, or at Earl’s to eat and watch whatever was playing on the giant TV. Who would he talk to? Who would he tell about what he did? Lou knew, but Lou had a preternatural ability to forgive any transgressions.

Beau also wasn’t the vengeful type, which is what I loved about him. I also loved his hands and arms, and how he’d wrap them tight around his torso and scratch himself awake in the kitchen, pajama bottoms sagging around his bony hips, one hand still scratching as he dopily pinballed from the coffeepot on the counter to the sugar pot on the table to the cream in the fridge, his yawns smelling exactly like the pond. I remembered knowing we were young in the beginning. But after the kids I don’t remember when it was that we got old. And so fast too. Was it awful to be in love with the fact that, with Beau, I didn’t feel the need to talk about every little thing? I had talked to neighbors, to Beth, and the boys. I talked to Lou, and Sam’s doctors. I talked to Lucy, even to Leo. I picked Beau because I thought his body had already contained all my unsaid words. He knew me. He knew Lou, my sister, our past. And I thought he had extra room under his skin to store more unsaid words, the ones we’d gather over the years we’d be married. That’s what made him mine. My prize. But Beau was Beau. He was just a man, who, given
the opportunity to get away with having sex with someone other than his wife, would take it and run with it. Even if it was with his wife’s sister. Where I thought he was solid and steady, he turned out to be tippy and hollow, like the rest of us.

The noise of the city twelve stories below sounded like an enormous outdoor party, the honking traffic an awful sort of jazz band providing the music. And I was invited. I stretched and realized I had all weekend and good maps. I had money and Beth’s backup closet. I had a date with a handsome lawyer tomorrow night, and I seemed to have finished crying. The tiny ding-dong sound that had woke me from the nap was actually Marcus’s email reply. He wrote,
“U bet. Can’t w8.”

A
ND THAT’S ALL
it took to send me out the door. I covered my sad-faced body with my best pants, cream-colored corduroys, knowing nothing in Beth’s closet could come close to covering up my hips and ass. Even her tops, dresses, and blouses had the cut and consistency of tattered flags, each seemingly festooned with some kind of string or wrap, requiring fussy little buttons and hooks. I managed to find a pretty orange tunic that fit, with tasteful embroidery framing the V-neck. I pulled it over my head and tucked it in, then untucked it, then tucked it in, then finally untucked it in the elevator down. I passed Jonathan wearing my first genuine smile of the day.

“Good color on you, Peachy,” he said.

“Thanks, Jonathan, I think so too.”

“You got a map?”

I slapped my purse and nodded.

“Where are you off to now, then?”

“I don’t know. But not far, really. Just around the neighborhood. See some sights?”

He scribbled a number on a piece of paper and gave it to me.

“Call me if there’s trouble,” he said, and I thanked him, thinking, Lou would love you. I love you.

When I hit the city air, I suddenly felt starving from the hurry of the morning and dizzy from the mouthful of afternoon wine and the nap. But it made Manhattan seem all the more Technicolor and amazing. I found myself looking up at people’s houses, the high stoops, the lack of privacy but utter mystery each building seemed to contain; the strange color paint jobs (Who paints a living room red?), the gorgeously ornate ceilings and cornices of the imposing brownstones, stacked as they were, side by side like orderly tombs. Sometimes, I could see the tops of paintings or high bookshelves. I didn’t go so far as to climb the stoops, to peer right into the windows, right into the beautiful homes, right at the beautiful people inside, but I wanted to. What stopped me was Beth’s imaginary scolding, her snobbery, which would have surely accompanied us on all our jaunts had she been with me.

“Jesus Christ, Peach, you’re like the phantom of the fucking opera. Get down from there!” I could imagine Beth saying. “You’re embarrassing me.”

But Beth wasn’t here. She was in Belle River sorting my laundry, fingering my stained bras, my worn T-shirts, Beau’s sweat-stiffened work socks, and, hopefully, she’d be close to fainting by now over the fact that little boys and grown men seem to leave behind an astonishing amount of skid marks in their underpants.

But though I was in her city and wearing her clothes, I was nothing like Beth. Because unlike Beth, I ducked inside the first restaurant I found, careful to keep her building within my view, lest I become lost and permanently forgotten. Where I was terrified, Beth was fearless, throwing herself into this cauldron of a city at
the age of eighteen, just to see what would stick. And it all stuck. I thought how brave she must have been, how scared and yet how brave. I couldn’t imagine being tossed into a city this big, loud, and fast, and blithely rising to the top as Beth had. I would have curled into a ball at the first sound of sirens, remaining that way until Lou came to get me.

In the diner I ordered dinner: a hamburger, a Diet Coke, and a side salad. Later, I asked for fries, too, which I ate slowly, one by one, avoiding all eye contact with strangers and regretting that I hadn’t brought anything to read. In my head I toasted to an imaginary Beth sitting across from me.

“Here’s to my first big weekend away from everyone but you.”

By the time my hamburger arrived, my hunger had been replaced by heavy sadness. While I sat alone, an unremarkable woman eating an unremarkable meal in an unremarkable diner, Beth was, at that moment, surrounded by my beloved boys, and at least one of the two troubled men I lived with. Lou would be keeping one eye on Beth’s awkward caretaking, the other on filling in the gaps: finding the other sock, counting out pills for Sam, digging out Jake’s favorite story book, which he kept tucked under his arm for at least an hour before bedtime. Beau wouldn’t be there, of that I was certain. He’d stay away as much as possible that weekend without alarming the boys or overburdening Beth and Lou. He’d probably eat at the tavern or stay late at the shop, slouched over a work bench, slowly chewing take-out fries and staring into the middle distance. His head would be running a looped argument with himself, his internal voice by turns reproaching and defensive, giving him the demeanor of a man watching a boxing match on a tiny TV. A new and awful uncertainty had crept into our marriage, something I hadn’t felt since Nell died and something Beau hadn’t known since a childhood spent tiptoeing around a volatile stepdad. He was in anguish, and I didn’t care. I wanted to yell,
You did this! You
brought this on! You, you jackass! Not me
. But his own self-loathing would be nothing compared to Beth’s hatred for him. If there was animosity between them before, now there was war. They might hiss at each other over the kitchen island, or curse in the carport over cigarettes, out of earshot of the boys and away from Lou, the standby referee. Beau would blame her for taking advantage of his dopey vulnerability. Beth would blame him for being too stupid to realize that she was too drunk to know any better.