Every Last One (16 page)

“I can’t believe we haven’t heard any complaints from my son,” says Alice, picking up her glass of wine. I raise mine to her. There are half-eaten turkey sandwiches on a plate between us. I love turkey sandwiches, but by the Saturday after Thanksgiving even I have grown tired of them.

“Repeat after me: Liam is fine,” I say. “Liam can sleep without me. He can even breathe without me.”

“All I can tell you is that at home he’d be out of his crib and
into my bed,” she says. “And don’t tell me he’s too old for a crib. I know he’s too old for a crib.”

“He’s discovered someone more interesting than you.”

“Impossible,” says Alice, taking a drink.

“Someday he’s going to marry somebody he thinks is more interesting than you,” I say.

“Are you trying to make me feel bad, or have you had too much to drink?”

“Both,” I say.

“I haven’t had this much wine in years,” she says.

“You haven’t actually had that much.”

“I know, but I hardly ever drink anymore. I picture having to go to the emergency room half-looped, or having the sitter smell something on my breath.”

“What about when Liam was with your parents?”

“Worse,” she says, staring into her glass. “I was convinced I was going to have to go get him in the middle of the night. My parents are both very casual about everything he does.”

I say nothing.

“I am not one of those crazy older mothers. I’m a little type A, but you can’t imagine what it’s like to be the only one responsible. You have Glen. You even have the other kids. Look at how your boys were with Liam.”

Alice and Liam had arrived an hour before Thanksgiving dinner. We could hear the sound of Liam screaming as the car door opened. “Oh, goodness,” my mother said as she turned from the stove. This is why I made certain to have well-behaved children: so that my mother would not say those words in that tone.

“Will you go help Aunt Alice?” I had asked the twins. “I’ve got to get this stuffing into the oven.”

Five minutes later there was silence, and Alice in the kitchen
doorway, her cheeks pink and her long hair disheveled. Since we graduated from college, she has had many incarnations: business suit, cropped hair, leather jackets, enormous jewelry, stiletto heels. Now she looks much as she did when we were twenty—a big sweater, jeans, flat boots, long hair. She hugged my mother, then me. “Terrific to see you again, honey,” said Stan. Glen handed her a tumbler of eggnog.

“Max and Alex went off with Liam,” she’d said, looking around at all of us. “He was crying, and Alex said ‘little dude’ in a deep voice, and he stopped crying and walked off with them. What happened to your sons? They’re men.”

“That’s an optical illusion,” Glen said, picking at the turkey skin with his fingers.

Alice had watched with amazement as her son sat quietly through Thanksgiving dinner, built with Legos compliantly in the den with Max, watched football while lying atop Ginger, and then went without a whimper to Max’s room, where he was installed on a futon on the floor. The company futon, we call it, for when the beds are full. The plan had been for Liam to share Ruby’s bed with Alice, while Ruby slept on the couch in the den, but Liam has thrown himself completely into the big-boy camp. “Are you sure, Meensie?” Alice had said. “Won’t you be happier with Mommy? Mommy has a big, big bed.”

“I’m big,” Liam replied.

“He needs siblings,” Alice says in the den, absently fitting some blocks together. “Should I adopt?”

Alice is not going to adopt. Liam is not going to have siblings. This is simply one of those questions we ask one another so that our friends will say that everything will be fine.

“He’ll be fine,” I say. “He is fine. He’s so cute.”

“Your guys are wonderful. They’re so grown-up. And they were so good with him. How many teenage boys would take that kind of trouble with a three-year-old?”

I say nothing. I hate women who meet a compliment with a list of their children’s shortcomings.

I lie back on a pile of pillows. “What a day,” I say.

The young man who drove Ruby home from the writing program had come to visit her. His name is Maxwell, but everyone calls him Chip, apparently because he comes from a long line of Maxwells.

“This is really great,” he said over a lunch of open-faced turkey sandwiches layered with gravy and stuffing. “I think the best part of Thanksgiving dinner is leftovers. And football games. There’s some great football this weekend.”

“Ruby hates football,” Max had said with a smirk.

“I don’t hate football,” Ruby replied. “I just prefer other sports.”

“I’m playing club rugby,” Chip said.

“Now, that’s a tough sport,” Glen said, getting up for cranberry sauce. “I had a friend who started a practice in orthopedics in some little college town in Ohio; he told me he spent a third of his time taking care of the rugby players. He said there was a broken nose almost every weekend.”

Chip bowed his head modestly over the crusts on his plate. “I’ve broken my nose twice,” he said.

“Dude,” said Alex. “How much did it bleed?”

“A lot.”

His nose did not look in the least broken. He was handsome in the fashion of Disney princes, with regular features and broad shoulders. He had lovely manners. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Latham,” he said as he was leaving after lunch, Sarah and Rachel standing at the curb giddy at the thought of a newcomer in their circle. “You knew if anyone was going to do it, it would be Pearl here,” Rachel had said when Ruby announced that Chip would be stopping by on his way to school from the Cape.

“That boy’s hair is completely wasted on a man,” Alice says now.

“Shh. We’re both getting really loud.” And we start to laugh, loudly.

Somewhere in the house we hear a door open, and both of us sit up, Alice smoothing out her sweater, me putting down the wineglass. Alice envisions Liam tumbling down the stairs, screaming for Mama, waking my mother and Stan. I envision my mother coming downstairs and telling us that we are keeping her and Stan awake. If Glen comes down, I will mollify him with a slice of pumpkin pie.

But it’s Ruby who slips into the den and stares down at the two of us. She’s wearing a tiny corduroy skirt with tights and lace-up boots, and as she eyes us she reaches up and lets her hair fall down. “Can I have some wine?” she asks, and I raise my brows as Alice says, “Come on, give the girl a glass. This time next year she’ll be going to keg parties.”

“Thank you so much. That’s so helpful. Would you like me to tell you what Liam will be doing in fifteen years?”

“Didn’t you already tell me that he would have thrown me over for some floozy?”

Ruby has returned from the kitchen with a wineglass, using the hem of her sweater to wipe it out just as her father always does. “Did you actually just use the word
floozy
?” she says, sitting cross-legged next to Alice.

Ruby is too critical to idolize anyone, but she is devoted to Alice. She notes it aloud whenever a book Alice has edited gets a good review or is on the bestseller list, and once a year she takes the train alone to New York City and goes with Alice to art museums, the theater, and restaurants. Judging by the companionable way in which they clink glasses, I suspect that this isn’t the first time they’ve shared a bottle of wine. Ruby believes Alice is who I would have been had I chosen a more interesting life. A more interesting
life that would not have included Ruby: There’s the problem with her analysis.

“So?” Ruby asks, not even bothering to include me in her gaze.

“So how did your friends like him?” Alice replies, knowing how much that matters.

“Loved him. Loved. Him. Or the girls did. You know the boys. They were territorial. But I think after a while they thought he was okay. He and Eric seemed to get along pretty well. Sarah and Rachel thought he was gorgeous.”

“And he likes you,” says Alice.

“He made a point of saying that.”

“Your grandmother thought he was so polite,” I say. “She said she hasn’t heard anyone use ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ for a long time.”

“Oh, he brought you something, Mommy. It’s on the kitchen table. It’s olive oil. Some really good olive oil.”

“He didn’t need to do that. He didn’t even stay over. Although I don’t know where we would have put him if he had.”

“He could sleep in Ruby’s bed,” Alice says.

“Stop!” Ruby cries.

“With me,” Alice adds.

“Even worse!”

“It’s been so long,” Alice says.

“Oh please, stop right now—so much too much information,” Ruby says.

“I agree,” I say.

“He’s exactly the kind of guy you would have liked in college,” Alice says to me.

“Really?” Ruby says.

“He has great hair,” says Alice.

“Doesn’t he? Amazing hair.” Ruby falls back on the pillows. “Why are you lying on the floor?”

We both laugh. “We always sat on the floor in college,” Alice says.

“We had no chairs,” I say.

“We had those desk chairs, but they were so uncomfortable.”

Ruby rolls over onto her stomach and looks at Alice. A look of chagrin crosses her face, and she puts her head in her hands. Her hands are so pretty, with long fingers and buffed nails. She has stopped wearing polish and jewelry, only a friendship bracelet made of silken string. Rachel and Sarah have them, too, and they’re not supposed to remove them until they fall off, although Sarah has to slide hers off during swim meets.

“He’s so boring!” Ruby wails.

“Shh. You’ll wake the house,” I say, but Alice starts to cackle loudly.

“He is really boring,” Alice says.

“He’s a nice guy,” I say indulgently.

“Boring,” says Alice.

“Boring!” shouts Ruby.

“There are worse things than boring,” I say.

“There’s married,” Alice says.

“That’s enough, Al.”

“How did I not realize how boring he was during the summer?” Ruby cries.

“Was every other girl there interested in him?” says Alice.

“Yes.”

“Bingo!”

“I’m not that shallow,” Ruby says. “I think it was because he was really well-read. He’s read Aeschylus and Joseph Conrad and Eudora Welty. He’s the one who told me to read John Ashbery.”

“Okay, honey, no one understands John Ashbery,” says Alice. “And smart is not always interesting. And well-read is not always smart. I can tell you this authoritatively.”

We hear footfalls on the stairs. “You see,” I say to Ruby. “You’re too loud.”

She giggles and rolls onto Alice. “It’s not my fault,” she says in a stage whisper. “It’s her fault.” The wine seems already to be making Ruby a little silly. “Did you eat tonight?” I whisper back to her.

“Leftovers at Sarah’s. Ask Nancy if you don’t believe me. God.”

“Don’t be such a bitch,” Alice says, shoving her.

Max is standing in the doorway, blinking, in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt that says
GENIUS
on the front. “That’s my T-shirt,” Ruby says.

“Aunt Alice, Liam took his diaper off and peed on the futon.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Alice says, struggling to her feet.

“No, it’s cool, it’s cool. He just got a little corner of it; the rest is on the floor.”

“Oh, no.”

“Don’t get up. I just want to know where his diapers are. I tried to put the old one on, but it won’t stick anymore. Like, those tape things.”

“I thought he was toilet trained,” I say.

“Sometimes he has an accident at night,” Alice says.

“Just tell me where the diapers are,” Max says.

The two of them go upstairs. Ruby is still lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling. “I’m star-crossed,” she says.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” I say.

“Can I sleep here?”

“It’s the only place you
can
sleep. The blankets are folded on the chest in the corner.”

“I mean on the floor. I’m comfortable.”

“Suit yourself.”

I go into the kitchen to turn out the lights. It smells of turkey. On the table is a large bottle of very, very good olive oil.

The lamps in the windows of the dining room and living room
are on, too. There must be a moon; I can see the tree branches in bas relief against the sky, a few hardy leaves holding on as November rattles to a close. On Monday José will come and remove the cornstalks and the pumpkins, and next week I will begin to put up the greenery and the garlands.

Across the street I see movement, and I wonder whether a deer is crossing to our backyard, to crop the top from the faded butterfly bushes against the side of the garage. As I turn out the last lamp, I see a man rising from a seated position on the steps to the Jacksons’ front door. I step back unconsciously. “Your call,” Rickie had said the last time he brought me home, bringing up the idea of outdoor lighting again. There have been two robberies in town in the past few months, although nothing much was taken—some spare cash, a little jewelry. But by the time I go to the window again no one is there. I can tell by a change in the darkness and the shadows that Alice has put out the reading lamp in Ruby’s room. The street outside is empty, a long tunnel of trees embracing across the dark strip of the asphalt. The house is quiet, and very full, and Ruby is asleep on the den floor, and I go upstairs to bed.