The Most Fun We Ever Had (62 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said, though he didn’t feel terribly sorry.

“No,” she said, “that’s—a reasonable request.” She cleared her throat and went back to work on the bed. “It’s just difficult for me to talk to you like an adult when you’re behaving like a little boy. I have sort of a hard time equating that person with the husband I’m accustomed to.”

“It’s not fair for you to resent me for—”

“I don’t resent you in the least.” She said it so plainly that it startled him. She came over and stood in front of him again. “This is why we exist, isn’t it? To be here for each other? The store isn’t my top priority right now. Because I love you, and you being well is more important to me than anything else. You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“The only thing I resent is your complete unwillingness to look on the bright side.”

“I could’ve
died,
” he said, the first time he’d verbalized the thought.

She took his hands. “But you didn’t. That
is
the bright side. You’re here, and you’re going to be okay. I’m just trying to help that along.”

He took a slow breath, felt the warmth of his wife’s hands in his. She was the only person he knew who could find an upside like this: medical recovery as a means of enjoying life, exploring new hobbies,
basking.
“Thank you,” he said.

She smiled, smoothed his hair again. “You don’t have to thank me. Hey, we’re both unencumbered and not working, at the same time, for the first time
ever.
It’s criminal for us to take that for granted.”

“I guess we could go to the grocery.”

“Oh, my adventurer.” She bent to kiss him.

“
If
you agree to shower with me.”

The phone rang and she rose to answer it, calling over her shoulder: “I’ll give that some serious thought.”

—

L
iza’s first word was, bafflingly,
David.
Not
Papa,
which was Wendy’s, or
Ma,
which was Violet’s, but
David,
two crisp syllables from her tiny handlebar-mustache mouth,
David,
at the dinner table, and her parents had looked at each other, fighting constantly at that time about money and mortgages and space and time management, and laughed, the tension of their difficult months momentarily extinguished.

What would her kid’s first word be?
Despair,
she thought dully.
Injustice. Existential apathy. Gloom.
She was in her sunroom, marooned on the glider, marveling over her enormity and her isolation. The only reminder that she was not completely alone was the occasional thump she felt from within, the baby now too big to move around with much intent.

“I’m David and Marilyn’s daughter,” she’d say sometimes, introducing herself to family friends. Her kid wouldn’t get to say that.
Undetermined Sorenson-Marks,
the kid would say.
As-yet-androgynous offspring of Liza Sorenson and Ryan Marks, two people who tried to settle but couldn’t ever make it work.

She shifted uncomfortably on the glider and a gripping in her torso took her breath away for a good thirty seconds. There was a warm, sharp-smelling fluid between her legs, seeping out of her onto the floor; when had her life become so gross, so undignified? This couldn’t be it; of course it couldn’t; she was supposed to have several more days; the sensation was so violent, hurt so much, had emerged out of nowhere, out of her indulgent self-pity.

Motherfucker; this was it. She thought she might throw up. She thought of Dirk the tattoo artist, the musk from his armpits, the needle on her neck a 4 out of 10 on the pain scale. How naïve she’d been. She wanted her dad; she wanted a do-over. She picked up her phone and dialed.

“Mom?” she said.
David and Marilyn’s daughter.
The relief of being able to call herself that. “Mama, I need you.”

2006

Another wedding in his backyard. Another daughter married, on her way to building an autonomous life. Violet had friends and coworkers and a husband, now, and with him a large, vaguely agnostic extended family. But as pleased as David was for his little overachiever, at some point he became painfully aware of Wendy, who, as the night wore on, got progressively drunker. Between requisite dances with his wife and his other three daughters he kept an eye on her, saw her nearly topple a waiter trying to grab a flute of champagne, saw Miles chastise her and saw her rebuff him with a jab of her elbow. Saw the guests watching her similarly, warily.

“Someone needs to cut her off,” Marilyn said. They were standing together by the ginkgo, taking a breather, thinking of their own inception, thirty years ago in this very same spot. “She’s drawing attention to herself.”

Wendy had pulled even further away from them—from everyone—since she’d lost the baby.
She’s hurting,
he wanted to say to his wife, but he knew she already knew that. It was a mystery to him why the largest-hearted woman in the world had such a difficult time mustering active sympathy for their firstborn, especially when he knew how much time she spent worrying about her.

“Should I go get Miles and have him take her home?” she asked. He smoothed the material of her dress between his fingers. She looked beautiful, had looked radiant all night; all his girls were glowing except for the one self-destructing in a folding chair over by the swing set.

“No,” he said. How nice it would be to just stay over here with her, agree to dance with her to “Tennessee Waltz,” sip at his scotch and feel good about life. “I’ll go talk to her.” His poor kid had been through so much. He kissed Marilyn’s hair and handed her his drink. “Go remind our new son-in-law of your fictitious ties to the Irish mob.”

She smiled a little at him but her gaze shifted to Wendy again and she wilted. “Bring her some seltzer,” she said. “It might settle her stomach.”

He nodded and set off across the lawn.

“Wendy,” he said. He wished he didn’t always sound like such a stickler. She looked up, her eyes watery and wandering, and she smiled.

“Daddy,” she said. He squatted down before her. “Nice socks, dude.”

“How about you come with me?” he said. Wendy attempted to glower at him. He took her elbow. “Humor me; come on.” She shrugged and made an effort to stand. He helped her up and guided her slowly inside, through the kitchen and past the caterers, into his office, grabbing a liter bottle of Perrier from the counter on the way. “Have a seat,” he said, leading her to the sofa.

She stumbled a little on her way down, and she laughed, a cackle that both scared him and reminded him of times when she was three, spinning around in his arms in their old backyard, unapologetically gleeful. He grabbed the ottoman from the foot of his armchair and dragged it over, sitting down before her. He uncapped the bottle of water and handed it to her.

“Daddy, I’m
fine.
”

“Wendy, drink some water.” He lifted the bottle to her lips and she moved to drink some, spilling a considerable amount down the front of her dress.

“You’d
die
if you knew how much this cost.”

He reached for a tissue and blotted at her face.

“One thousand six hundred dollars,”
she said in an affected whisper.

“All right,” he said. “Just try to relax.” But relaxation was not what his daughter needed, he knew. She needed coffee and psychotherapy and a father who knew what to do besides dry her off with a Kleenex and tell her to relax.

“I know Matt’s Mr. Savings-and-Bonds,” Wendy said. “But I don’t think it would have killed Violet to buy a dress that didn’t look like it was from
Kohl’s
.”

“Okay, now.” It was what he always said when they did things that made him uncomfortable, when they tried to confide in him past a point that he understood.
Okay, now
. “It’s her wedding day, Wendy. Try to be happy for her.”

“I’m thrilled,” Wendy said. “Mazel tov, Violet. We’re all so fucking shocked that your life is turning out perfect.” It had been six years since Wendy’s wedding, since the day he’d observed Wendy looking, for the first time in her life, truly happy.

“I know you’ve had a hard year.”

Wendy turned her face to him and he saw her make that frightening shift achievable only by the extremely intoxicated, a fluid leap from joviality to malevolence. “Do you, Dad? Do you know what a hard year I’ve had?” The final syllables bled together, an assonant slur that betrayed how far gone she was.

“Lower your voice.” He felt his face getting hot. “Of course I do, Wendy. We all know.”

“She could have waited,” Wendy said.

He’d had the same thought. He’d mentioned it to Marilyn, wondered aloud if maybe Violet shouldn’t put off the wedding for a while, if maybe it wasn’t kind of unseemly to have a big party on the heels of your sister’s stillbirth, but Marilyn had looked at him as if he had three heads and said, “It’s been almost a year. And she’s always wanted to get married in June.”

So here they were, June sixteenth, in his office with a bottle of seltzer.

“You should be happy for your sister,” he said.

“It’s just not
fair,
” she said. “She just gets to pretend none of it ever happened? Why can’t
I
do that? You think I wouldn’t like to do that? She just gets to act like everything’s perfect and I’m the huge fuckup, but
she
fucked up too, Dad; Violet and her huge fucking
secret,
but I’m not the only person in this family who fucks things up, okay?”

“Nobody said that, Wendy. What are you talking about?”

She looked at him with an odd clarity for just a second before tilting her head up toward the ceiling again. “Just for-fucking-get it.” And then she was crying and what could he do, then, besides hug her? He held her until she fell asleep and then he positioned her on her side on the couch in case she threw up, and then he went out front and got Miles.

“You might want to go keep an eye on her,” he said, and his son-in-law shoved his hands in his pockets and toed the dirt like a teenager and then nodded.

“Thanks, David.”

“Should I be worried?” he asked. He’d always liked Miles, albeit reluctantly, given how much older he was than Wendy. But he could tell how much the man loved his daughter, and he suspected, now, that Miles was probably the only thing keeping her from hitting rock bottom.

“I ask myself that hourly,” Miles said. “I don’t have a good answer.”

He returned, disoriented, to the party, and he spun Gracie in circles and posed for photos and he kept saying,
Thanks, we’re thrilled; we couldn’t be happier; we’re so proud of her,
and he didn’t even notice when Miles guided Wendy out to their car and drove her home.

In bed that night, a night on which he should have been blitzed by his happiness, he was still thinking about his conversation with his eldest daughter.

“Wendy said something strange to me,” he said.

Marilyn rolled to face him. “What?”

What huge secret? Not their Violet. Violet had nothing to hide. Violet, who’d gotten weepy during their requisite father-daughter dance to “Sweet Thing,” who’d made
him
also get weepy during said dance, who appeared wholly at peace, lithe and unburdened, bound for an impressive career and married to a man she loved.

Marilyn was watching him, sleepy and affectionate, rubbing her foot between his calves underneath the blankets. Wendy had been completely obliterated. She hadn’t even recognized her father’s office. Certainly she hadn’t meant anything by it. Certainly he didn’t need to burden his wife, who’d had such a nice time, who was so beautiful and trusting. “Well, now I can’t remember,” he said lamely.

She smiled and reached to cup a hand to his face. “Too much to drink?” She scooted closer to him, twining her leg between his thighs, and she leaned in and kissed him before urging him onto his back and climbing on top of him, his lovely, oblivious wife, and he let her, kissed back and let her and pretended that what Wendy said hadn’t set off an alarm bell somewhere deep inside of him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“He’s worried about germs,” Marilyn said flimsily, acknowledging Liza’s disappointment when she realized that David wouldn’t be coming. A half hour earlier, as she banged around the house, throwing anything in her purse she thought might prove useful in the coming hours—playing cards, ChapStick, and, inexplicably, a flashlight—she’d stopped and fixed her gaze lethally on her husband. “You’re being a child.”

“I’d just be in the way.”

“You don’t deserve to have your ego massaged right now,” she said, “but you know that’s not true.” Of course she knew he had other reasons. She couldn’t
identify
the other reasons, but she knew they existed, and she knew they had to be weighing heavily on him for him to be protesting so forcefully, but she was too anxious to stop and try to get to the bottom of it.

“Can we drop this, Marilyn?”

“She needs you,” she said.

“You’ll be there.”

“
I
need you.”

“You would have lost your
mind
if your dad showed up when you were giving birth.”

“My dad wasn’t the dad to me that you are to the girls,” she said. She felt a murky mix of grief and nostalgia and a fresh wave of sadness for Liza. “Our daughter is having a baby, David. Alone. She needs us.”

But he wouldn’t budge. So she was in the car with her daughter, the driver, for once, marveling at Liza’s composure; the only evidence that betrayed Liza’s unease was the way she’d suddenly go quiet, gripping the handle above the window.

“It’s okay, love,” Marilyn murmured, and she felt a pang of retroactive empathy for David, beside her in the hospital again and again. Of course there was nothing she could do. And Liza probably wanted to kill her, just as Marilyn had repeatedly wanted to kill her husband.