“Fine.” She got out and, without hesitating, walked toward Maple Street, toward the lights and the circling cars. He followed her at a short distance. The sound of her well-heeled boots on the pavement was loud and terse, an audible fuck-you fuck-you fuck-you. Except she would never have said that.
Vini, Viti, Vine was crowded, the rows of protruding bottles just begging to be toppled by the jostle of puffy coats and shopping bags. Robert’s mother handed him a basket and told him to find a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry and four bottles of cabernet priced between twelve and fifteen dollars. She would meet him at the register.
He found the California aisle with its absurd range of choices. Turo was right about that. What might take down civilization was the sheer frivolity of choice. Who needed more than, say, a dozen red wines to choose from if it meant conserving resources, devoting land to more practical crops? After choosing two bottles of one cabernet and two of another, he cruised through a section called WINE ADVENTURES! Someone had lettered a bunch of cutesy little signs bragging about new combinations of varietals, new places in the world where viniculture had only just begun.
As he approached the counter, he saw his mother chatting with Granddad’s friend Norval Sorenson. Robert walked up and said hello, murmured politely in response to the usual grown-up crowings about how much older he seemed, the questions (not meant to be answered, really) about school, courses, friends.
“Listen,” said his mother. “You should drop by the house tomorrow. I haven’t seen Helena in ages. You could even join us for the meal. Please.”
Mr. Sorenson hesitated. “We’re used to our holiday two-step, Trudy.”
“Please come. Douglas bought a turkey the size of an ostrich.”
Robert was unnerved by his mother’s casual cheer, not five minutes after that grim infertility speech.
“I’m going to have Dad call you tonight, okay?” she said.
Mr. Sorenson seemed pleased by this idea, or maybe just let off the hook. He said good-bye and left the store.
Without conversing, Robert and his mother waited in line with their shopping baskets. When they reached the register, she told him to bring the car around so they wouldn’t have to carry all the bottles so far. Efficient as ever.
They drove out of Ledgely in silence. Robert was not even tempted to turn on the radio. He still felt the burn of his anger, at both women, at their collusion. He turned up the heater.
He was startled when his mother pulled out her cell phone and made a call. “Dad?” she said. “Dad, we ran into Uncle Norval. They’re alone for Thanksgiving, did you know that? Will you call and invite them? I’d love that. Clover would, too.… Oh good. We’ll see you in ten.”
Oh good. What gave her the nerve to give him a big Life Lesson Lecture, then gush over dinner plans? Never mind that being a good doctor meant being a good actor, too.
They crossed the town line into Matlock; by habit, he clicked on the high beams. At night, because of the sudden, dense woodsiness and the equally sudden dearth of streetlights, Robert the little boy had often felt as if he were entering a fairy-tale forest. In Matlock, the dark became darker, while the stars, filling the narrow rivers of sky that flowed between the treetops, shone much brighter. In winter, the snow in the occasional field seemed deeper, whiter, colder than anywhere else.
“So,” he said into the silence, “is it true, Mom, that you had an abortion?”
She cried out, briefly, as if he’d struck her, yet he felt not even a splinter of guilt.
“Who told you that?”
“A couple years ago, at home, I overheard it.”
“Overheard it how? What are you talking about?”
“When Aunt Clo stayed with us. When she flipped out over Uncle Todd.”
His mother said nothing, all the way down Quarry Road. They were half a mile from Granddad’s house.
“Pull over,” she said. “Pull. Over.”
The road had only a narrow shoulder, made narrower still by the swath of plowed snow. “I can’t.”
“Then pull the car into the driveway and stop there.” Her voice was thick, almost menacing.
“Okay.”
So they drove in silence for a few seconds more. Robert turned in at the mailbox and stopped.
“Turn off the engine. The headlights. Off.”
Robert did as she asked.
“The answer is yes. Your father and I made that decision together. You were seven. Because yes, Robert, I did love being a mother enough to want you to have a sibling. Absolutely. If your father had had his way, we’d have had three or four. So I was pregnant. And when I was through the first trimester, your father wanted to tell you. But we had a blood test that didn’t look good. And then I had an amnio. Do you know what that is, Robert? I assume you do.”
Robert looked at her, certain she must be crying, but she wasn’t. Her jaw was set—maybe in defiance of tears. She was waiting for an answer. Tentatively, he said, “So the baby was, like, deformed?”
“Down syndrome,” said his mother. “And I did, we did, consider going to term with that baby. But it wasn’t so.… Back then …”
“I’m sorry,” said Robert. “Wow. I’m really sorry.”
“Your Aunt Clover has caused me a lot of grief over the years, Robert. I have covered up for her, I have lied for her—your grandfather has no idea about some of the stunts she’s pulled. The drugs in college. The … Well. I’ll stop there. Some members of this family are discreet. And on top of everything else, I have graciously let her refuse shitloads of good advice. Chalk this up as just one more gift from my hopeless loser of a sister. It’s a damn good thing she’s not in that house tonight.” She sighed aggressively. “Okay, turn the car on. Go.”
Robert asked, as calmly as he could, “Would you never have told me?”
“Why, Robert, would there be any reason you should know? Why would you want to know?” Her voice was raised, as if his question had been idiotic, but then she put a hand on his arm and stroked it for a moment.
When they pulled up at the front door, she said, “Because you are bound to wonder, and I don’t want you to ask me later, the baby was a girl. You would have had a sister.”
She got out, slammed the car door, and went straight into the house. She did not wait to hold the door for him when he carried in the box of wine.
Turo was playing Connect Four with Rico. Robert’s dad read a magazine, his stocking feet pointed toward the fire. For one shell-shocked moment, Robert stared at his dad’s socks, which never varied: black, ribbed, that thin orange stripe across the toes. Dependable. A metaphor. Snapping out of his trance, Robert looked toward the dining room. There, almost but not quite hidden from view, Granddad was kissing Sarah (and boy was she kissing him back). Mom had gone to the kitchen or straight upstairs; though she had tossed her coat on the bench by the closet, she was nowhere in sight.
It was a done deal that he would lie awake that night, neither calm enough to sleep nor sharp enough to work on his biology paper.
Dinner had been a roving affair. People ate where and when they wanted: Sarah, Granddad, and Robert’s father in the kitchen; Turo and Robert on the coffee table by the fire. Claiming she had to deal with e-mail, Mom took her plate into Granddad’s study. Rico had been tucked in, much earlier, on a couch in the upstairs alcove that everyone still called Poppy’s dressing room.
First Turo, then Dad, and finally Robert made their way upstairs. He hadn’t seen Granddad and Sarah retire, yet now he saw the light under Granddad’s door and heard them whispering, heard her laugh in her ticklish way. Through another closed door, the one that led to his mom’s old bedroom, he heard his father snoring.
Turo, thank God, rarely snored. He’d fallen asleep the minute he climbed into bed. Robert kept his lamp turned low and tried to absorb an article on American immigration policies in the 1990s, jam-packed with graphs.
But all he could think about was his phantom sister, the daughter his mother had th
ought she would have and then didn’t. Decided not to have. What was Down syndrome anyway, other than a certain appearance, the combination of ungainly head, flat face, and startled doe eyes that he could spot, and name, in an instant? How long did you live? Did you deteriorate, or stay the same forever? Did pain go along with the mental—what, deficiency? His mother had to be reminded of that daughter, that decision, every time she saw someone like that on the street, in the hospital. And not just then. How often? Every day, every few hours—or not so often at all? Did it ever come up with Dad? Jesus, did Granddad know?
Seven. Robert tried to remember his life when he was seven—his mom when he was seven. He could remember his first-grade teacher, the classroom, his best friends. Mrs. Kilgore read Stuart Little out loud at rest time. The kids lay down on plaid blankets to listen, after lunch. His dad packed bologna sandwiches. God, baloney. Who ate bologna anymore?
His mother was right; this was something he didn’t need to know, shouldn’t have known. It did not complete a puzzle or give any comfort to anyone. What you didn’t know could hurt you.
Perversely, Turo’s gimmicky little catchphrase came to mind: senza ragazza. Without girl. Over the past year, Turo had developed the philosophy that to resist the pull of a woman’s emotions gave you that much more strength and purpose. Like some ancient warrior ethos. This was no excuse for a lack of attraction. Turo had juggled at least due if not tre ragazze toward the end of their year in Kirkland House. He wasn’t tall or handsome in that oh-so-Ivy J. Crew way; Robert thought he was too skinny. But according to Clara, Turo had a “jive Latino impishness.” Maybe other guys dismissed him as scrawny, but women saw him as wiry and supple—a certain essential sexiness if you were repulsed by the football physique. “Fred Astaire meets John Leguizamo,” she said, at which point Robert had heard enough. As if he hadn’t been the one to ponder Turo’s appeal in the first place. Not that he’d been jealous, not with Clara.
And now here he was, senza Clara. This hadn’t struck him so clearly until that awful, queasy conversation with his mother. Until then, he’d had this general feeling that it was more like he was … rebelling against the notion of some pathetically outmoded going-steady kind of relationship. At Clara’s urging, they’d even celebrated a “first anniversary” on a particular day in early October. When he asked her what made that day an anniversary, she’d lowered her voice to say, “Like you don’t know, bobcat.”
That made it pretty obvious she’d committed to memory—or, what, recorded in some girlish diary?—the first night she’d invited him to her dorm room (her roommate gone for the weekend). Sweet, the way she’d made note of the date … but maybe a little creepy, too.
Had he resented that celebration more than he knew? They’d gone to Harvest, the totally overpriced restaurant where you were likely to see half your professors with their spouses (which was sort of like seeing them in their underwear, no matter how curious you thought you were). The food was pretty great—even if you couldn’t have wine because places like that would have carded the pope—and he and Clara had split the check without any weirdness. Clara looked incredibly pretty in the candlelight. They’d gone back to the apartment and drunk champagne in his bedroom, naked.
Turo had knocked on the door at 2:00 a.m., wanting to borrow the car. Robert had said no, not at that hour. Turo hadn’t seemed pissed, but the next day he teased Robert mercilessly about his “little wife.”
“Been there, done that, right?” Robert teased back.
“On the contrary, my friend. That scene I reserve for the future.”
“Your mail-order bride, once you secure the hacienda?”
“Ouch, man.”
Robert had grinned at Turo across their kitchen table. “You started it.”
“Hey. Clara is a catch. You know it.”
“So come on. You have to be shagging that eco-babe. Miss OTF?”
Turo had looked puzzled for a moment, then whistled, long and low. “Robert, my friend, I thought you knew me better than that. Miss Tats and Manifestos? I do not mix business with sex. NFW. Negativo. Nyetzka.”
They cracked up. Though he couldn’t say exactly why, Robert was secretly relieved that Tamara was just a colleague to Turo.
As if guessing at, and misinterpreting, Robert’s relief, Turo leaned across the table and kissed him on the forehead. “You, you are the closest thing I have to a wife these days. Perhaps I lie in wait for the end of your cozy duet with the estimable Clara. One day perhaps she’ll wake up beside you and think you’re not good enough for her.”
Turo had rolled a joint; against his better instincts, Robert had shared it. By nine o’clock, he’d eaten a bag of cashews that were meant for a stir-fry later that week and fallen dead asleep. Clara had been hurt—just a little, she said in the e-mail he found next morning—that he’d forgotten to call her. Hadn’t they had a wonderful anniversary?
“It was perfect, totally sweet,” he’d said, calling her as soon as he got the e-mail. But maybe that had been the beginning of the end.
And maybe the end of the end had also passed without his fully knowing.
As so often throughout his childhood, Robert heard his mother downstairs, switching off the lights. She was almost always the last to go to bed.
Staring at the ceiling, he marveled at the radiance cast by the snow surrounding Granddad’s house. He began to consider that maybe his mother had never recovered, deep down, from her own mother’s sudden, premature death. Maybe her amazing efficiency, her professional cool, was like loneliness turned inside out. This grandmother Robert had never known was remembered by everyone as a colorful, universally loved, almost heroic figure, her death extra-tragic because her life had been so special. They’d talk about all the plans she had yet to fulfill. The tragedy to Mom—and Clover—nobody said too much about that.
Jesus, he thought now, to have lost your mother way too early—and then a daughter before she was even your daughter? What the hell could Robert know about living through stuff like that?
Granddad and Robert’s father sat at the heads of the table. Robert sat between Sarah and his cousin Filo; across the table sat Mom, between Lee and Turo. Clover was between his dad and Norval Sorenson, Mrs. Sorenson on the other side of Sarah (Rico wedged between them).
Robert figured they had Sarah to thank for his father’s failure to stage a conflagration. She’d organized a buffet in the kitchen so everyone could fill a plate and proceed to the dining room, where the table was a traffic jam of goblets, water glasses, candlesticks, flowers, and dishes of relish.
Once they were all in their places (was this Sarah’s elegant script on these tiny red cards?), Granddad stood. He always dressed up for holidays, but this time he looked downright flashy: his shirt green like the inside of a dinner mint, his orange bow tie so huge it resembled an explosion. He waited till everyone was looking at him and said, “Thankful yet again. We do this over and over, don’t we? Year after year. And isn’t that something.” He laughed. He glanced at Sarah.
The tradition was for each person to stand, starting with Granddad, and name something he or she was thankful for that year. Ordinarily, Granddad issued thanks for a “not” (not living in a nursing home, not having a child in Iraq, not being senile or not knowing if he was). This set the tone for a David Letterman kind of list from everyone else.
This year, however, Granddad said, “Everything. With a codicil here and a caveat there, I am thankful for everything.” He sat down.
Robert’s mother and Clover looked stunned, almost alarmed. Filo and Lee giggled. Lee was up next.
“Um, that I got onto A-squad soccer.” (“Stand up,” whispered Clover. Belatedly, he stood and then sat.)
Robert’s mother was thankful for his father. Turo was (obsequiously) grateful for the invitation to dinner. Mr. Sorenson was glad to have a bookstore in the black, Clover to be loved by “both of my wonderful families” (never mind the dark expression on her sister’s face).
Robert’
s dad sprang to his feet and held both arms out, like a conductor. “Call me unimaginative, but I’m just going to echo my sister-in-law. As my son might say, I am one righteously fortunate dude.”
Mrs. Sorenson was thankful for a year of good health and prosperity in a world where so few people enjoyed either. Rico, after his mother whispered something in his ear, said, “I love turkey!” Laughter, agreement, fond gazes.
Then Sarah stood. “I am a woman who counts her blessings daily, yet I did not know how blessed I could be until this fall: until this enchanted place came into my son’s life and, because of it, Percy came into mine.”
“Yowza,” Robert whispered. Then he was on his feet. “Yeah, well, Granddad, she’s right. You’re the man. This is the place. To you.” He raised his goblet, though the thanks weren’t meant to be toasts.
Arms rose. Robert’s dad said, “Hear, hear.” Glasses clinked.
And then everyone began talking all at once, lifting knives and forks, and like a symphony, the feast began.
Robert turned to his forgotten cousin, Filo, and whispered, “I sorta screwed up there. You want your turn?”
“Jeez no,” she whispered back.
“But tell me what you’re thankful for. You have to tell someone or it’s bad luck.”
She put her mouth close to his ear. “That my dad’s getting married again.”
Robert leaned forward to see her expression. She was serious. “You would not have said that.”
“Duh,” she said. “I’d have said I was thankful for getting to go to horseback-riding camp last summer. Which was here, with Mom. And it was really great. I’m going to do it again next summer. After the wedding.”
Robert had actually forgotten the Todd news, which he’d heard from his mom. He glanced at Aunt Clover. She looked happy as could be; Turo was flirting with her in a courtly way (Fred Astaire ascendant) while Mr. Sorenson looked on, bemused. They were talking about the pros and cons of woodstoves. Was Turo capable of thinking about anything other than carbon emissions?