The Most Fun We Ever Had (19 page)

“Matt,” she said, surprised, because they weren’t raising their children to lie.

He rose to his feet and lowered his voice. “You really want this getting out at school?”

She ceded his point, picturing the Shady Oaks moms encircling her like a flock of turkeys marching around a dead body. “Yeah, little loves, this’ll be our family secret for now, okay? Like that silly story we heard at the library, how the bear’s whole family plans the secret party for him and they all keep their lips zipped?” She made an exaggerated zipping motion across her mouth and Eli laughed, but Wyatt still looked skeptical. “We just don’t want Jonah to feel overwhelmed, okay, sweetie? So let’s keep this between us. He’s got a lot of new things going on in his life.”

She went alone to pick up Jonah from Wendy’s house, and as they drove back to Evanston, she pointed out their familial landmarks—“We did a fund-raising thing to install that Little Free Library”; “There’s the boys’ school”—and it wasn’t until she looked over and saw his blank expression that she remembered how dull her life had become. She wondered how he would guide her around a tour of his past locales—
This is where I tortured squirrels,
perhaps, or
I almost set fire to this place just for the hell of it.
They spent the rest of the ride in silence.

When they pulled into her driveway, he let out a low whistle. “Damn.”

She turned to him suspiciously. “What?”

He smirked. “Nothing. Nice house, that’s all.”

Of course she was aware that a person she’d created had been living in a group home while she lorded over six thousand square feet of lakeside Tudor swankiness, but it wasn’t as though she’d deliberately orchestrated the disparity. “It was a fixer-upper,” she said defensively.

Inside, she introduced him clumsily to her family: “This is my—your—a—Jonah.”

“A Jonah, huh?” said Matt, who usually didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He extended his hand and she wondered what he was seeing, if he recognized her in Jonah’s face, if he was thinking about her with someone else, carrying another man’s child before he ever knew her. “Really nice to meet you,” Matt said, and he sounded genuinely welcoming, and she touched his back gratefully. Jonah had moved on to the kids, giving them each an awkward little wave. Eli hid behind her leg, peering at him between her knees.

“Don’t worry,” Wyatt said conspiratorially. “We won’t tell anyone about you.”

Jonah looked over to her and she could see, past the smirk on his face, that of course the remark had wounded him. “Thanks, dude,” he said to Wyatt.

He had an ease with the kids, as it turned out. He was the kind of person who talked to children as he’d talk to anyone, a trait she knew her boys admired. They were introducing him to their abundant roster of Lego people, and Matt impelled her into the kitchen.

“You know, I wasn’t suggesting that we should tell them to
lie
about him,” he said, “just that we don’t want them going around telling everyone when we’re not even sure—”

She turned to face him, offering him her wineglass. “No, I understand. It makes sense.”

“And yet you used the word
brother
when we hadn’t discussed—”

“Jesus, Matt. There’s no instruction sheet for this. What else was I supposed to say? That Mama and Dada just casually befriended a random high school sophomore?”

“I just think it’s better to play it safe. You know how impressionable they are.”

“Our children?” she said. “With whom I spend every day? Yes, I’m familiar.”

“There’s no need to get—”

“Isn’t this night stressful enough without us fighting?”

“You’re the one who—”

“Mama!”

At the sound of Wyatt’s voice she leapt efficiently into panic mode. Was this what she got for opening her home to the boy: peril for her own children? She pushed past Matt, steeling herself for whatever was transpiring in the playroom, hoping that her latent mammalian strength would kick in, whatever it was that helped people save their kids from being crushed by cars.

But in the playroom, Jonah was upside-down in a handstand, a slight outward bend in his elbows, legs splayed in splits, and Wyatt was regarding him with bald admiration.

“Mama,
look,
” he said.

She paused to get her bearings. “Honey, you
scared
me. I thought something was…” She trailed off when she saw the look on Jonah’s face, shades of embarrassment and hurt feelings.

He lowered himself to the floor.

“I didn’t mean,” she said. “I just thought—maybe someone had gotten hurt.”
I thought you’d managed to kill one of my children in the two minutes I left you alone with them.

“He can do a thing on one hand, too,” Wyatt said incredulously. Jonah had since risen and was now standing over by the window, stretching his arms self-consciously against his chest.

“It’s a—you know, an accident-prone age. I get nervous,” she said, in partial apology. Behind her, she could feel the weight of Matt’s silent assessment. “I didn’t know you were a gymnast,” she said.

Jonah snorted. “I’m not.”

“Just a skill you picked up?” she asked. She lifted Eli into her arms and reveled in his solidity. Her children were fine. Everything was fine.

“Yeah, actually.”

“No lessons?” She realized the stupidity of the question, dripping with her privilege, a woman for whom
lessons
—gymnastics, viola, whatever her heart desired—had always been a part of life.

“Just things I learned I could do,” he said mildly.

“Well, you definitely didn’t inherit your agility from me.” Again, it was an awkward and conspicuous thing to say, a faux pas of the highest order. Jonah blushed.

“Can you teach me?” Wyatt asked him, and Jonah looked at her quickly before he replied, “I don’t think so, dude. Too dangerous.”

The doorbell rang. Matt went to answer it.

“Pizza,” she said. “I hope that’s okay. The universal unifier.”

She watched him open his mouth and then decide to close it again.

“Don’t tell me you don’t like pizza,” she said.

“I
love
pizza,” Wyatt said gravely.

“I’m lactose intolerant,” Jonah said.

“Are you—really? How did I not know that? Wendy should have said—” But of course this wasn’t Wendy’s fault; it was another orb hanging densely between them, pulsing, winking:
That’s just the tip of the iceberg of things you don’t know.

“It’s really no big deal. I’m not actually that hungry.”

“You’re fifteen,” she said. “Of course you’re hungry. Do you do gluten?”

“Do I— Sure.” Jonah seemed to suppress a smile. “Yeah. Gluten’s great.”

She was so ashamed of the PB & J she made for him that she pretended not to notice, doing the dishes as Matt drove him home, that three bottles of wine were missing from the rack.

—

W
endy became aware, as the redhead was about to find his target, of another presence in the room. She assumed at first that it was a trick of her mind, fuzzy with Grey Goose, but when she turned her head at the feel of the guy’s beard against her clit, she saw the shadow in the doorway.

“Fuck,” she said, and for a few seconds there was a kind of slapstick arrangement as she scrambled for the covers, the man’s head caught between her thighs, her elbow knocking painfully into the headboard. “Jesus fuck; what’re you
doing
in here?” Her pity dinner with Miles’s friend, of course, had been a lie; she’d taken advantage of her childlessness to have a night out. She’d heard Jonah come in after dinner at Violet’s, but she’d been preoccupied with the redhead. She’d assumed Jonah had gone to bed.

“What the hell?” the redhead said. He was on his feet, hands balled into fists, shoulders tensed like the fur on a dog’s back. “Who the fuck is this?”

“No, it’s okay,” she said, scrambling up, wrapping the sheet around her body. She grabbed his arm before he could approach Jonah. “It’s all right; he lives here.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” The man looked back and forth between her and Jonah. “Is this your
kid
?”

It hurt her heart that this was the first cognitive leap he made, and with such ease. She’d told him earlier that she was thirty-two. “He’s my nephew. Jonah. Jonah, this is—” She was blanking on his name. She waffled constantly between worries about early-onset Alzheimer’s and fears of alcohol-induced memory loss.

“Were you
watching
us?” the man asked, his muscles flexing beneath her fingers.

“No, I was just— I came to ask for some Tylenol and—sorry; I wasn’t—I just needed—”

“What do you need Tylenol for?” she asked, because—oddly—her first instinct was concern for his well-being.

“I pulled a muscle, I think. My shoulder. I was doing some tricks for Violet’s kids.”

“Ibuprofen works better,” she said. “Downstairs bathroom. Third shelf on the right.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Take two, not three,” she said.

“Okay. Sorry. Thanks.” He skittered away and the redhead pulled his arm from her grasp.

“Well, that was fucking weird,” he said.

“It was.” She sank onto the edge of the bed.

“He lives with you? You should’ve
told
me. Jesus Christ.”

“Why?” she asked, suddenly defensive. “Why is that your business?”

“Because I’m—we were about to— Don’t you think I deserve to know if there’s some weird-ass kid who might be watching us from the doorway?”

“He wasn’t
watching
us.” Though she was preoccupied by the fact that Jonah’s initial reaction when he saw them in bed together wasn’t to run away in horror.

“I’m really— Shit, I’m sorry, Wendy, but I’m—really weirded out by this.”

“We can lock the door,” she said listlessly. The little thrill of him was gone, leaving only a light residual slickness between her legs. Steve. His name came to her epiphanically.

“I should go,” he said. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’ll call you.”

Because she’d perfected the line herself, she knew it wasn’t true.

—

S
itting on the porch with her mother, Liza asked, “Mom, have you— Was there ever a moment when you thought you might not be with Dad?”

The thing Liza admired about her parents’ generation was that they didn’t seem to
think
very much. They just did things because those things looked a certain way and looking a certain way was half the battle. You reached a certain age and you found a semiattractive, living, breathing man, and you went through the motions even if he was boring or mean or a sociopath, and you stuck it out to the bitter end. And this was not the most
romantic
notion but she liked the stubbornness of it, the simplicity, the
security
.

Her parents were anomalous, though. They appeared, to this day, ferociously in love. And this stemmed from a mutual feverish adoration, judging by the old photos adorning her father’s desk, the kitchen window, the insides of the bathroom cabinets: Marilyn, a twenty-year-old knockout at Foster Beach, wrapped from behind in David’s arms; David in a pumpkin patch beside an appraising Marilyn, his arm slung around her waist, her middle swollen with Wendy; Marilyn and David on their wedding day, just after the ceremony, standing to the side of the altar, dissolved with laughter.

“Lord, no,” her mother said, and Liza’s heart swelled and sank at once, because she liked that those simpler times had existed but knew resoundingly that they did no longer. “I mean,” Marilyn continued. She was two glasses of wine deep and Liza stone sober; they both adjusted their posture accordingly. Pregnancy was the cruelest evolutionary fuck-you, filling you with more anxiety than you’d ever experienced in your life while prohibiting you from imbibing anything that might calm your nerves. “Have I ever wanted to punch him in the face? Yes. Has he ever said something that made me question the very construction of the universe?” Wine made her mother poetic. “Of course. But have I ever not wanted him around?” Another sip. “No. In another room? God yes. Silenced somewhere far away? Absolutely.”

“But never anything major,” Liza said. She and Ryan had met in college. On paper, it was the perfect equation for a simple, stubborn union. Meet someone when you’re both too young to realize how stupid you are. Learn all of their oddities and secrets before they have a chance to create more of them beyond your control.

“Never separation,” Marilyn said. A light flipped on within the house—David in his office—and they both turned to look, scandalized by the reminder that the subject of their gossip was mobile and mere feet away. “Never anything like that.”

“But why not?” Liza asked.

Her mother took another sip of wine and tilted her head, seemingly reflexively, toward the light in her husband’s study. “Why would I? God, look at him. Who’s better than that man?”

They looked together through the window. Neither had a satisfactory answer.

“Why are you asking me that, sweetie?” Her mother’s expression had changed from wistful to concerned.

Liza shook her head, suddenly feeling like she might cry. “No reason.” She wanted to ask her mom if this undercurrent of despair was something gestationally ubiquitous that they’d just neglected to mention in the BabyCenter forums.

“How are things at home?”

“Fine. Great.”

“You’re an endearingly bad liar, Liza-lee.” Her mother rose and came to sit next to her on the glider. “I shouldn’t have been so glib. We all have doubts.” She touched Liza’s knee. “Of course we all have doubts. But I think the key is being able to look past them. If you can do that and still feel good, still feel at peace, that’s what’s important.”

“Settle, then,” she said.

“No,” her mother said emphatically. “
Not
settle. Not at all. I mean take a hard, honest look at the things you’re doubting and see if they really matter.”

“But how can you tell? How can you decide whether or not—you know, what’s a deal breaker, or whatever?”

“That varies with every couple, sweetheart. Not everything has a formula.” Her mom put a hand over her thigh. “What’s going on with you, Lize? Talk to me.”