The Most Fun We Ever Had (71 page)

“Well, yeah, but like…”

“What?”

“I mean you gave me a lot of
attention.
”

She frowned. “I’m sorry, is that—a bad thing?”

“I just mean I’ve always been under more scrutiny than everyone else. Because you had more—time. To pay attention to me.”

“So we didn’t neglect you enough,” she said dryly. There was no such thing as winning, as a parent.

“No, it’s not— I didn’t want to scare you. I feel terrible about what a disaster we all are. Wendy’s like Miss Havisham. Violet was living a
way
bigger lie than I was when she was my age, and now she’s just, like, this weird pod person. And Liza’s basically a single mom. You and Dad are the only people in this family who have it figured out.”

It struck her how universal this particular take on her marriage seemed to be, among all of her daughters, Gillian, her father-in-law: everyone that mattered on the outside assumed that she and David were bulletproof. Her kids would never fully understand her, just as she’d never fully understood her own parents and just as she, in close proximity to this girl, once a tiny baby who’d grown inside her body, would never fully understand her kids.

“It’s okay to not know what you want,” she said. “You’re still so young. You can stay here for as long as you need, and you can figure out what’s next and get your act together and think about what you’ve been doing for the last year. But the lying has to stop, Grace. It’s a surefire way to guarantee your own unhappiness.” She opened an arm to her daughter, half-expecting to be spurned. But Gracie tucked herself against Marilyn’s side, like she’d done when she was little.

“I didn’t even mean to— You know how sometimes things just happen?”

Marilyn closed her eyes, memorizing, as ever, the part in her daughter’s hair. “Yes, I’m familiar.”

The screen door opened, a rusty squeak, and David appeared. Beside her, Gracie curled her knees to her chest to make room for him on the glider.

—

“H
ow worried are we about Gracie?” Marilyn asked him in bed that night. “One to ten.”

“I don’t know. Seven?”

“Seven’s
high.
”

“I’m generally at about a five with her, though, so you have to look at it relatively.” When he’d gone to collect Grace at the baggage claim the day before he’d wanted to cry, because while it seemed like she’d aged years since she’d last been home, she also still looked so young, as wide-eyed and vulnerable as ever. His fury—at the way she’d denied them the only thing they’d ever asked of her, the
truth
—was replaced by sadness, which rested alongside his concern and his moderate irritation that she’d asked, once they were on Mannheim headed toward home, as though he were picking her up for a normal school break, if they could stop at Johnnie’s Beef for Italian ice.

“Just when I was starting to feel so
smug
about everything,” Marilyn said.

“Pride cometh before the fall.”

“We’ve happened upon the nesting dolls of parenting,” Marilyn said. “Every time we wash our hands of one, another materializes with a pack of Camels.”

“That’s the danger of mass-producing children, I guess.”

“You were right,” she said.

“Thanks,” he replied. “About what?”

“About the fact that we’re never going to—you know. Reach the finish line. With the kids. There’s always going to be something.”

They lay in silence for a few minutes, listening to the house settle, to the wind outside.

“I was thinking,” he said.

“Were you?” She smiled. He could tell she was tired. “What about?”

“As long as we’re still going full-throttle with the rest of the kids, I thought I might talk to Liza.” He always felt nervous when proposing new ideas to his wife, not because she judged him but because she tended to support him wholeheartedly, advancing seeds of thought into full-grown blooms practically before the conversation was over. Marilyn got things done. If you ran something by her, you had to be prepared to do it. “I thought I might see if she could use a babysitter for the fall semester.”

Marilyn’s face lit up and she seized one of his hands, squeezing it to her chest.
“Really?”

“I heard that degenerate girl next door with the big spikes in her ears was looking for work,” he said, and Marilyn kicked his shin gently under the blankets.

“Honey, ask her.
Ask
her. Do it now. That’s a terrific idea.
Call
her. Sweetheart, she’ll be
thrilled
. She’s been so anxious about going back to work. Call her now. Where’s your phone?”

“It’s almost midnight, kid. Slow your roll.”

“Slow my
roll
?”

“Gracie said it earlier. Bit of disaffected youth-speak.”

“Well, call her in the morning, then. Will you? I think it’s a fabulous plan.”

It was sort of funny, if you thought about it, this poetic reversal of roles: his wife cycling off to work each morning at the hardware store while he spent his days swimming in the dull minutiae of babyhood. They weren’t so old after all, were they?

“You’re wonderful with the babies,” she continued. “It’ll be—I mean, tedious is an understatement; ask anyone. Ask Violet. Ask Lize. Ask
me,
if you don’t feel I’ve adequately briefed you over the last forty years. But it’ll be abbreviated. I’m guessing Lize is going to want to spend as much time at home with her as possible. And you’d be doing her such a favor, David; you’d be giving her such a gift.”

“Well, not a gift. Do you think thirty-five dollars an hour is a fair asking wage?”

“Don’t downplay this, honey.”

“Think I can handle it?”

She smiled at him. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

He found her confidence deeply touching. He thought of her desperation in those early days, her panic and her disappointment, the paint fumes in the kitchen.

“But it made you miserable,” he said without thinking.

Marilyn looked hurt. “No, it didn’t.”

“I mean, sometimes, didn’t it?”

She let go of his hand and turned onto her back. “Sometimes, sure. I was in over my head, and I was exhausted to the point of insanity, but I—I mean, of course I was. But it was also—immensely gratifying, sometimes.”

“I know this isn’t the same thing.”

She smiled faintly. “No, it’s not.”

“I didn’t mean to say you were miserable,” he said.

“Not hardly. It was a blast, day in and day out.”

His turn to smile. “I just know that there were things you might rather have been doing.”

“Is that ever not the case?” She sounded tired again.

“No, I guess not.”

“It would be a good thing for you and for Liza. And especially for Kit. I’m sure you’re wildly preferable to a daycare at a public university.”

“Gee, thanks.” He nudged her. “Did I offend you?”

She sighed. “Oh, a little. It’s silly, though. I know what you meant.”

“The girls and I are lucky to have you.”

“Yes, they all turned out so flawlessly,” she said. She sighed. “Jesus
Christ
.”

“I mean it,” he said.

She faced him again and kissed him. “Sweet man.”

He moved closer to her, slipped his hand beneath the back of her shirt and pulled her against him.

“Hey,” she said, moving back to look at him. “I’m proud of you.”

The word still meant so much to him, coming from her.

2014

Wendy had expected—
hoped,
perhaps—that Violet and Matt’s new home would be located in an undesirable part of Evanston, but the house in front of which the cab deposited her—to bring her car was to commit to sobriety, which she couldn’t bring herself to do, not when Violet was involved—was smack in the middle of a dense thatch of elm trees and mere blocks from the lake and stately and imposing and fabulous. Probably at least a couple million. It made her want to throw up. She considered slipping the driver a fifty and asking him to drive around for a few minutes while she smoked a cigarette, but then the front door opened and Violet appeared, ponytailed and smiling, kid on her hip.

“Thanks, Alan,” she muttered to the driver. “May the rest of your day suck less than mine.” He let her out and left her standing alone with Violet, who reached out with her free arm to hug her. Since when did Violet
hug
? She could feel her sister’s bones through the thin, expensive knit of her summer-weight cashmere. Eli was—what? Four months? Five? How was she so skinny already? She’d been keeping a low profile for months—God, since Miles had died, twenty-six weeks ago to the day—and she’d been avoiding Violet more than anyone else, consenting to shopping trips on the Mag Mile when Gracie was home for break and attending tepid dinners at her parents’ house but not much else. She’d ditched Matt and Violet’s housewarming party last month and finally consented to this makeup only because Violet had threatened to bring the kids over to her house if she didn’t.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” Violet said. She reeked of money and Kiehl’s and suburbia. “You look wonderful. Wyatt’s making you a sign as we speak.”

“A sign?” Violet was making her feel huge and clumsy and inarticulate, the urban ogre who had emerged from her spinster cabin to make the rounds in the North Shore.

“A welcome sign,” Violet said. “He’s so excited to see you. So’s this one, aren’t you, babycakes?” She jostled Eli. He appraised her in the blank, unforgiving way of babies. “He’s starving; he’ll perk up in a little bit. Come in, come in. Wy? Buddy? Guess who’s here?”

Her nephew appeared in the entryway of the kitchen bearing a piece of poster board larger than he was that read
WELCOME WENDY
in a messy spewing of glitter glue, the lack of punctuation giving it an air of comical indifference. “Hi,” he said shyly, ducking behind the sign.

“Hey, Sheriff,” she said. She liked this kid; he was thoughtful and funny and he had kind eyes. “Did you make that for me?” She nodded at his sign. “Or is there another Wendy coming over?”

Wyatt looked to his mother with concern, making sure. Violet winked at him, nodding.

“It’s for you,” he said.

“It’s fabulous,” she said. “It’s the most spectacular sign anyone’s ever made for me.”

He brightened and then faltered. “It’s not done yet. I’m just finishing the stickers.” He hugged the board to his little body and skittered away from whence he’d come.

When she turned around she was confronted head-on by Violet’s exposed breast; her sister was sitting at the dining room table with her shirt lifted for the baby.

“Jesus
fuck,
” she said, and Violet looked up at her, blunted and dazed, like a panda.

“What?” The baby latched on and Wendy turned her head away sharply.

“Oh my God, Violet, you have a
guest.
”

It amused her a little, thinking that there were people on the earth who would reply to that with “You’re not a
guest;
you’re family.” But being a guest trumped blood relation in their family, and so she was allowed to be a little pissy if she wanted, because she otherwise did not have anything resembling the upper hand. This small victory pleased her.

Violet opened her mouth and closed it again. She glanced down at the baby as though she were doing something workaday and normal, filling her gas tank or renewing her library books. Wendy couldn’t help but voyeuristically delight in the silvery stretch marks that fleeced her sister’s breast, the way that, unclothed, she looked less like perfection and more like a PSA.

But Violet was still so lovely. She looked at peace, half-naked in her cavernous dining room, providing sustenance to a skeptical infant. Violet, annoying as she was, could pull shit together. She was beautiful and capable and tranquil in a way that almost made Wendy feel dizzy. And her house smelled like jasmine.

“I got yelled at in a Starbucks last week,” Violet said. “I’m a little sensitive.”

“Well, he’s kind of
old,
isn’t he?” she asked. Violet cradled the baby closer. In truth, Eli still looked microscopic. She couldn’t remember his birthday. She didn’t know when it was appropriate for a person to stop breastfeeding; she’d shoved all of that knowledge out of her mind after Ivy. Wyatt was lurking in the doorway with his stickers, and it seemed vaguely untoward that he was so comfortable with the sight of his mother’s exposed rack.

“We’ve talked about weaning but it’s hard,” Violet said. “With his schedule.”

She snorted. “Is he, like, a broker or something?”

Violet looked at her in a tired, bothered way that reminded her of their mother. “It’s harder than it looks, okay?” she said, and though something in her voice bespoke a real kind of sadness, Wendy chose instead to be offended. It was something you were allowed to do when all of the most important people in your life had died.

“Yeah, I suppose I wouldn’t have any idea, would I?” she asked, slapping down the trump card. It was needlessly hostile; she was a little embarrassed for herself.

“I’m sorry, Wendy.” It was too easy with Violet. It was far too effortless to get exactly what you wanted from her. “That was a stupid thing to say. I’m tired. Forgive me.”

“You don’t
look
tired,” she said, giving Violet something in return. A seesaw, this sisterhood, and Wendy was the jerk who jumped off early so the other person toppled into the sand.

Violet laughed, and whatever was askew had been righted. “Well, that’s blessedly kind of you to say. I got a facial yesterday. I was hoping it helped.” Perhaps that was it: expensive self-care. Something about her sister looked eerily different—her face was the same, her body, but there was a shift in the way she carried herself, in the way she seemed to be willing her face into every expression it made.

Wyatt brought in his sign and Eli finished nursing and Violet rose to give her a tour of the house, which nearly made her heave—it was so huge, so bright and open and orderly, artistic but not in a weird way, the house of normal, tasteful rich people.