The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories (10 page)

“It’s strange,” she’d said, passing the gravy. And I’d felt a sudden urge to pour it on her head.

* * *

When I got back home that night, everyone was in the kitchen and living room preparing for dinner. My sister, her husband Alex, their sons Michael and Gabriel, my brother Henry, his wife Zoe, and their three children, Annabel, David, and Toby. My mother was thrilled to have her family reassembled and she scrambled around the kitchen, assigning tasks and things to chop. When I opened the door, everyone ran over to hold Emma and I could see my mother smiling behind the island in the center of the kitchen. The adoption was far less of an event than the births of my nieces and nephews and I specifically requested that I didn’t want a shower or any public announcement. My sister had driven up in October, but it was the first time Henry or any of the kids had met Emma.

“Meet your new cousin,” he said to Annabel, who was thirteen and held her arms out immediately.

“Oh my God,” she cooed. “She’s adorable. I love her!”

“Annabel was just saying in the car how excited she was to meet Emma,” Zoe explained. “She doesn’t have a sister so she was saying she wanted to give Emma all her old dolls when she’s older.”

“Wow,” I said, wide-eyed. “Annabel, that’s so kind of you. How grown-up.”

I tried to imagine what Emma might look like when she was thirteen but I only saw another version of Annabel. Inevitably, I’d thought of this same scene a hundred times when I was younger: Julian’s and my child meeting her new family in some kitchen somewhere. She was probably in that same kitchen right now—eating Christmas dinner, if her family even celebrated the holiday.

Still, it was nice to get attention for once, and not have to give it. The prospect of bringing Emma to every family holiday from now on filled me with a kind of comfort, and the idea of her older cousins playing with her and teasing her made me extremely glad. I tried to forget my (rarely expressed) concerns that the whole thing was a big mistake, and for the most part I managed. Seeing her inside my family gave it all a little context, and I was proud to be bouncing her on my knee while the adults sipped decaf coffees at the end of the night.

Christmas Day was the same as it always was—only I’d woken up early with my brother and sister to make a little stocking for Emma that I unpacked later while Henry held her up so she could watch. Zoe had planned to cook French-bread French toast with a fresh strawberry sauce but she’d forgotten to get enough eggs, so I volunteered to make a quick trip to Whole Foods, the only market nearby that’d be open. I tried to take Emma with me but my mother insisted I leave her.

“It’s fine,” she’d said. “I had a few of these myself.” I looked at Emma, clutching a new stuffed snowman, and watched her blink at me, gnawing. I wondered for a moment how well she could recognize me but dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Emma didn’t cry too often with the particular request of being returned to my arms and it sometimes made me insecure.

* * *

I ran into him at the supermarket. Of course. The last time it’d happened was three years ago at the liquor store on Christmas Eve. I saw him before he saw me, holding a slip of paper and roaming down the spice aisle. He looked good, the same, slightly pudgier than he was a few years ago, but still sporting his mop of curly brown hair. My reaction to his presence was always visceral, and I felt my hands start to shake slightly as I watched him. It struck me in that instant that I could have just turned around, walked to another aisle, and avoided the encounter. But I didn’t even consider it.

“Jules,” I said. The nickname came out by accident. He turned around, looked at me, and we both stared, then grinned.

“Of course,” he said.

“I know.”

“Just—of course,” he said.

“I know.”

We hugged and it was only slightly awkward. We communicated occasionally via e-mail, but I hadn’t told him about Emma yet.

“How are you?”

“Good, good. How are you?”

“Good.”

“Glad we got all those details out of the way,” he said, smiling.

“I uh . . . I saw your Christmas card. Your oldest is getting . . . big.” I was looking down, suddenly. Desperate for the conversation to flow smoothly.

“Yeah,” Julian said. “He’s nearly fifteen.” He was studying me. We stood there for a few more seconds, just taking each other in.

“How’s, uh . . .” I could tell he didn’t know what to ask.
“. . . the newspaper. Are you still . . . ?”

I interrupted him. “I’m taking some time off.”

“To work on the book?”

“No, actually, to raise my daughter.” I hardly used that word and it felt strange to say aloud. He looked at me and his mouth hinged open.

“Oh! Oh my gosh. Wow, Audrey, congratulations!”

“Thank you.”

“Who’s the, um, did you . . .” I saw his eyes dart to my left hand and back again.

“Adoption,” I said. Nodding with my mouth closed and then trying a small smile, waving my hands at my sides. “The irony!” But he didn’t laugh, and I could tell it still hurt him like it hurt me. We stood in silence again, rocking.

“What are you looking for?” The subject change was pathetic.

“Coriander,” he said. “Apparently it’s essential, so I offered to run out. You?”

“Eggs.”

“Ah.” Silence again. Then he smiled. “Is her name Emma?”

I nodded.

“You never got your Chloe, did you?” I said.

“I didn’t,” he laughed. “Alexis didn’t like it.” The thought of his wife made me uneasy and I realized, suddenly, that I should say I had to go.

“Listen.” I took a step toward him. “I need to run home, but if you want to meet her, stop by the First Parish service tonight when you leave St. Andrew’s. Nine o’clock. Jared roped me into having her play Jesus. Well, understudy for Jesus.”

“You’re kidding,” he said. “I miss Jared. He’s ridiculous.”

“Everyone does.”

“Well, I’ll be there.” He shifted his bag up on his shoulder. “Nine o’clock First Parish?”

“Nine o’clock First Parish.”

* * *

I convinced my family, finally, that they didn’t have to come “be supportive,” and I drove Emma alone to the church and held her in the basement amid the sea of swarming children, parents, costumes, and cardboard. Jared arrived a little after I did and led me to my seat in the front pew slightly before the pageant was scheduled to start.

“Hi,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.

“Hi,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.” I waited for a second but then went on with it.

“I ran into Julian at the supermarket today.”

“Of course you did.”

“I know.”

“Was it . . . ?”

I cut him off. “It was fine.”

“Did you . . . ?”

“Yeah.” I took a moment. “He knew her name was Emma.” I decided to leave out the part about inviting him, but I scanned the crowd obsessively as the congregation built like a wave behind me. I was undercover—smuggling a baby Jesus whom no one else could see. I imagined
The Tempest,
the mythologies, and all the secret sets of twins I’d spent so long assessing in grad school. But then they lit the candles, so I stopped imagining and searching and tried to think about the present.

It was pitiable, pathetic, but I wanted him to come. Wanted him there, badly, to see me and Emma and understand that this was hard but that I wanted it. That it was hard but I was
okay.
But the pews were nearly filled and I didn’t see him.

They dimmed the lights and I held Emma tight in my arms. I looked behind me and saw an old man writing in a notebook. Behind him, a kid yanking at his mother’s shirt. To their left, shadowed by the balcony, a young couple pressing together and sharing a program. The boy was lanky and freckled and the girl was petite. She traced tiny circles into his palm, toying with his hand on her lap. The girl whispered something in his ear and he shook his head. She offered him a piece of gum and he refused. I looked away as the backlights faded, but I could just make out the boy pulling his hand away. I remembered a party in the city I hadn’t thought of in years when I’d told Julian not to hold my hand because it was juvenile. I remembered wanting both hands that night—for gestures and hugs and brushing back my hair. That’s the feeling I needed to remember, I thought. Not those nights in his car.

* * *

A small boy walked down the aisle with a giant North Star and the choir began a version of “The First Noel.” I breathed in the pastor and the warmth of the other bodies. The wise men came and the shepherds and the sheep. I looked behind me again but I still didn’t see Julian. The candles on the chalice dripped wax onto the lambs and the songs from the choir made the angels start flying. More angels came, and the kings and the queens. I looked back again but the door was still shut. He wasn’t coming.

Somewhere, buried in the manger, a baby was crying. It screamed and shrieked to the decrescendo of “Silent Night.” Somewhere, someone was making a sign; somewhere, Jared was gesturing furiously. The Wise Men shrugged and Mary started crying. But I didn’t notice. Emma had her tiny hand
wrapped around my finger. I pressed her against me until
the song had ended. Until the dust started falling like snow and I could feel her tiny breath on my neck. My daughter, I thought, was not twenty-two and home from some college with a family I didn’t know. She was breathing against my chest as the pews sank and rose.

I heard the creak of a door behind me and turned, quickly, to see Julian shutting its heavy frame behind him, panting. Jared’s hands were on Emma and I felt him pulling and myself letting go.

Sclerotherapy

K
aren found out the tattoo of the Chinese character on her right ankle actually meant
soybean
five months after she got it.
Inner resolve and outer peace, a general levelheadedness and tranquility
was the translation printed under the thin black character she had chosen from the chart on the wall.
Soybean
was the translation her brother’s Asian roommate awkwardly gave her after she modeled it for him in the smoky dorm room on the fifth floor. He asked if the artist was Chinese, and she shook her head. She asked if he was high, and he shook his. Karen slid the leg of her jeans back down and bit at a nail. The roommate fidgeted.
I mean, he probably just copied them onto the chart from a takeout menu
. The tang of incense clung to Karen as she walked down five flights of stairs.

* * *

“So it’s five veins today, right?” The nurse made small movements with her pencil as she flipped between thin papers on a clipboard. Karen didn’t respond but shifted her weight back in the chair. The thickly set woman pushed her lips out and adjusted the waistband of her brightly patterned scrubs. “Five veins, yes?” The question was repeated slowly, with an emphasis on the word
five
.

“That’s what they tell me.” She was a woman of sixty-two; it wasn’t her first time sitting in the polyester recliner. Wasn’t the first time the thick substance would be injected carefully into her calves. She hated the experience. Not just the pain of her legs thickening then thinning, but also the two-hour view of nothing but her ankles. Socks were usually the solution, folded down and over the youthful rebelliousness stamped above her anklebone. But in the Sclerotherapy Clinic, there were no ridged socks to cover her shins, and no smile to cover her keen self-consciousness. In the Sclerotherapy Clinic, she thought, there were only fat nurses and varicose veins.

The blood in Karen’s veins was beginning to drain out. Her body lay inflexibly strapped to the recliner, tilted at a harsh angle so her feet were raised high above her head. The sting of the injected gel still tingled over her skin, making the thin unshaven hairs on her legs stand up.

“All right now, Karen, try to relax.” The nurse opened a small drawer and removed a bundle of compression stockings. “I’m sure you know the drill by now.” She squirted down the nozzle of a Lubriderm bottle and thick white lotion plopped into her hand. “But remember, you can’t take these things off for two weeks unless you’re lying down.” Her hands rubbed each other and attained an oily glisten in the office light. “Your veins gotta glue themselves together, see, so the blood is forced to find another path.” Karen nodded and blinked slowly.

* * *

What does it mean?
she had been asked by a coworker one spring about twenty years ago when sweat had rubbed the usual Band-Aid off her ankle. Karen tugged at her earlobe.
It means inner resolve and outer peace, a general levelheadedness and tranquility.
The woman nodded, smiled politely, and turned back to her desk. I was nineteen, Karen said, almost sarcastically. She opened her mouth again but realized she had nothing to say. The question always bothered her. Made her hate herself more with each false explanation. But she kept at it, as if it might somehow compensate for having
soybean
etched permanently into her skin. Karen swung her chair left and stared into her computer screen. The case she was studying stared back, its importance suddenly mocking her.

* * *

“Oh.” The nurse paused. “I didn’t know you had a tattoo, miss.” She grinned slightly. “What does it mean?” Karen had expected it. In fact, she was surprised it had taken this long.

“It means inner resolve and outer peace, a general levelheadedness and tranquility.” She lied, she thought, for the same reason she was getting her varicose veins removed. The nurse exhaled and tucked her hair behind her ears.

“That’s nice. Very peaceful.” She began unbuckling Karen’s legs. “Did you get it in China?”

“No. I got it in Brooklyn. I was nineteen.” The nurse carefully lifted her calves and started pulling the beige compression stockings over her skin.

* * *

The edamame jeered at her. She was trying to enjoy herself, but this type of thing always seemed to happen at Chinese restaurants. If it hadn’t been her daughter’s choice, if she hadn’t just returned from college and if they hadn’t been meeting her really-serious-this-time boyfriend, she would have objected. But it was all of those things, so she kept her mouth shut.

So, Brian
—Karen looked up at him—
I hear you’re thinking about business school
. Brian responded, but the answer sort of floated through her. She imagined the black lines on her ankle thickening with glee as she slowly filled her body with soybeans. Karen wondered if she was as pathetic as this thought suggested. If she was so preoccupied with her own sense of herself that basic conversation was beyond her. She looked up at Brian and nodded.
I see
. His hand was resting on her daughter’s next to the chopsticks.

It had been months, maybe years, since she had actually thought about it. It wasn’t something that entered her daily musings. Socks on during the day, socks off at night; dresses and skirts meant Band-Aids: an almost unconscious ritual in her routine. Karen glanced at the couple glancing at each other. She wondered if Brian could be put in the category of impulsive decisions. If he was her daughter’s version of not bothering to consult a language dictionary.

* * *

“There you are, all done.” The compression stockings were tight around her thighs now and the polyester recliner was humming as it tilted slowly upward. The room seemed slightly darker than when she had entered, and the lack of light peering through the edges of the blinds told her it was probably late afternoon. The nurse walked to the corner and began rinsing her hands.

Karen studied her legs. Her varicose veins no longer popped out like tributaries leading to her ankle, but she wasn’t pleased. The thin dark outlines could still be seen slightly beneath the lean nylon of the stockings. Images of her brother’s incense-hazed dorm, the coworker at her firm, and the evening when she first met her son-in-law drifted in her head. She gently placed her feet on the floor and lifted her weight down off the chair. Some things, Karen thought, couldn’t be flattened at the Sclerotherapy Clinic.

“Take care now, ma’am.” The nurse was drying her hands on a paper towel.

“My tattoo,” Karen said, pausing in the doorway before shutting it behind her, “actually means soybean.”