The Birthdays (15 page)

Ellen remembered the tiny Hilary—and she was tiny as a child, rail thin with long brown braids and freckles. Her lips had always chapped, and she suffered perpetual rashes, and later eczema on her elbows and knees. Ellen tried to visualize
this innocent, adorable girl standing next to the adult Hilary, who was now fanning through a guidebook to the Maine islands. A little Hilary, pouting and chewing her thumbnails, rubbing her fingertips together beside her mother, secretly too insecure to join the other children. Was it insecurity that had driven her to a married man? Was she afraid to let herself be loved by a more available candidate? Perhaps she didn’t think she was worthy. Perhaps the tiny Hilary had needed to be drawn out and nurtured more, and shown that she deserved good, old-fashioned love. After all, she had a lot to offer—she could be witty and adventurous. When she cared about someone (Daniel came to mind), she’d move the world for that person. She had the most beautiful hazel eyes. Whatever would have drawn her to a married man?

Ellen thought of the Gardner, where the other week she and MacNeil had made their way through each room—past the Little Salon, beneath the vaulted ceilings of the Tapestry Room, stopping at every piece of art: the Venetian mirrors, the Belgian tapestries depicting the lives of Abraham and Cyrus the Great, the candelabra, the Jacobean dresser. Every item in Isabella’s house was art. Soon they found themselves alone in the Dutch Room, alone save a portly bald guard holding his hands firmly across his girth. He nodded when they came in but held his gaze just above their heads. She and MacNeil stood side by side, and for the first time she thought about what it might be like to kiss him. What if they had been alone? Would MacNeil have moved closer to her? Might something have happened between them? The room was cold and drafty and Ellen wondered if it had felt this way when Isabella had lived here. Ellen imagined she’d kept the place comfortable, for what was the point of collecting so much
beauty without presenting it in a comfortable environment? A voice behind her said, “That’s where the Rembrandts were,” and she realized she was standing between two empty frames, a small plaque with the artist’s name beneath one of them. She remembered hearing about the theft years earlier. “It was an absolute tragedy,” MacNeil said, and she was glad for his words, for she was sure they would have sounded overwrought coming from her. The guard explained why the frames were kept empty—in her will, Isabella had insisted that every item in the house, every piece of art and furniture, every rug and table and frame remain exactly as it had been before she died. The guard spoke without feeling about the dates of the theft and the few breaks in the case since then—perhaps just to keep himself awake on this slow day—and his nonchalant manner made her think of Joe. She shuffled beneath her skin and considered hurrying out of the Dutch Room and back down the flight of stairs to the courtyard, where the light was brighter and the air warmer.

She had not transgressed. She reminded herself: she had never transgressed.

“You’ve chosen the hospital?” she asked Hilary. “You’ve got a good doctor?”

“No, Mom, I’m going to squat in the woods alone and have the baby there.”

“It’s been done before,” Ellen said, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. “When is the due date?”

“November second. A Tuesday.”

“Election Day!” Ellen smiled and leaned forward to push a long strand of hair out of her daughter’s eyes. “A day of decision,” she heard herself say, then instantly regretted it.

Hilary scoffed. “You make it sound almost biblical. I’ll be
having a baby, Mom, not standing in front of the Pearly Gates. At least I hope not.”

“I’m just saying it’s an interesting date.” Ellen wanted to ask whether the father would be there for her, for the birth. Was he at all there for her during the pregnancy? She’d said he wouldn’t be a factor in the child’s life, but was he at least present for Hilary now? Had he ever been? Ellen hoped he had. She hoped that he’d loved Hilary, that he’d treated her well and that her choice to have the baby on her own was in fact her own, and not his.

Jake and Liz had left the house late thanks to him and all of his drama, and as they’d pulled onto Main Street, they’d found themselves behind a car crawling up the street. “Come on, COME ON,” he moaned.

“We’ll get there,” Liz said. “Calm down.”

“It looks like it’s about to pour. I don’t want them to have to wait around for us in the rain.”

“There’s that shelter near the landing. They’ll be fine,” she said, and set her hand on her stomach, then shifted in her seat.

He looked over at her. “Is everything all right? How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Jake, I’m fine,” she snapped.

He stepped on the gas and pulled up just behind the car in front of them.

“I won’t be, though, if you ram into that guy. Slow the hell down.”

“ALL RIGHT,” he yelled, and took his foot off the accelerator. He let the car slow, and when they reached a small hill, it nearly stopped. He eased his foot onto the gas again. He’d overreacted yet again—he supposed he was still a little on edge after this afternoon. But he’d been reading too much into what was undoubtedly nothing. She knew that people masturbated—for all he knew, she’d probably walked in on similar scenes with her parents.

When they reached the ferry, no one was waiting at the shelter. And then a moment later the rain came and it was torrential. His mind raced. Once he found his parents, what could he give as an excuse for being so late? And where the hell
were
his parents anyway? Where should he even begin to look?

“We should just go home. They have the address, don’t they? They can make their way there,” Liz said.

“I’m not sure I gave it to them,” Jake admitted. “I told them I’d pick them up. Let’s drive around a little and see if we can track them down.”

His parents were probably stumbling through the rain, searching for him. Maybe they were looking in the shops, carrying their many bags (they always overpacked, ridiculously so), their shoulders bowing with the weight.
We’ll meet up with him eventually, Ell,
his father would say, always the anti-worrier.
It’s not the end of the world that Jake isn’t here yet
. And his mother would try to calm herself by saying,
Of course we will get there, and in the meantime, let’s enjoy the shops here—we haven’t been here in so long. Let’s look in here, at the Seafarer’s Gallery.

This isn’t art,
she’d say once they’d entered the small general-store-turned-gallery,
but paintings of scenes that have been painted a hundred times.
Ships, waves, lighthouses, moonscapes,
sunsets.
There are far better artists living here.
She’d scoff at the silly scenes and raise her nose to them, but his father would warm to them—
for
, he’d say,
wasn’t a sunset or a moonscape always beautiful? And when we see these things in person, aren’t we struck, so why can’t I be struck by the same thing on a canvas? Because,
his mother would say,
because it’s fake, it’s a fabrication of a million other fabrications, and that does not make art.
Jake agreed that this might not in fact be art but could never account for the quiet comfort within whenever he saw similar paintings in his office or at the doctor’s.

They drove past a couple of shaved plots of land where new houses were being built. Enormous new summer homes had begun to sprout up across the island, and Jake watched the growth with secret pleasure. Their summer house, which they’d bought for a bargain, was worth something now. Not that he wanted to sell it necessarily, but it was now worth an awful lot more than what they’d paid for it.

“They’ll sink the island with those behemoths,” Liz said.

“They might. Ours isn’t exactly small, you know.”

“I guess not, but it’s not as big as those. I never thought I’d be the sort of person to own a summer home,” she said. “Did you?”

“Not really, I guess. I mean, I used to hope for certain things. My mom and I used to play this game—what would you do with a million dollars.”

“And now you have so many millions.”

“Mm.” He paused. “It’s not a
bad
thing.”

“No, of course it’s not. It’s just sort of weird. Sometimes it hits me as really strange.”

“Me too,” Jake said. “But good strange, you know?”

Liz reached over and set her palm against his cheek.

“You know?” he repeated.

“Sure,” she said. She suggested they park on Main Street and check to see whether his family was in one of the stores there, and he agreed. He parked beside the post office, and they pulled their hoods over their heads as they hurried along the sidewalk. At one point, Liz stopped, opened her raincoat and stood, her chest to the sky. The rain pounded her face and hair. “It feels wonderful,” she said, and Jake opened his jacket too. “Doesn’t it feel great?” she said. Her blue T-shirt clung to her breasts and he could see the small peaks of her nipples.

“It does,” he said, licking the drops from his lips, though he was in fact growing chilly, his shirt soggy. He wanted it to feel great, though. He wanted to experience joy in being soaked to the core. “And like it or not, you look sexy, my dear.” He couldn’t help himself.

Liz leaned back to wring out her hair. “Onward?”

“Onward,” he said. He reached his arm around her and massaged her wet shoulders as they walked toward town, stumbling through the puddles and every now and then bumping hips.

Jake led Liz into a convenience store where gray-faced men in fishing clothes stood huddled in the corner, smoking. Jake and Liz then checked the gallery and the ice cream shop, but his family was nowhere to be found, and Jake was about to suggest they run back to the car when Liz cried, “They’re in here!” and tugged him inside Books & Beans.

His mother’s eyes were on him, wild and happy and anxious all at the same time. “Thank God,” she practically shouted.

Joe stood beside her, and Hilary behind the two of them.
Jake hugged his mother and father, and as they stepped out of the way and Hilary moved forward, Jake saw that she’d put on some weight. Even her face and her hair seemed bigger.

“Look at you,” he managed. He tried to make eye contact with Liz and see if she noticed the same things, but she was busy talking to Ellen.

“Hello,” his sister answered. A man tried to squeeze past her, but she blocked most of the aisle. He gave up and headed toward another aisle. Jake glanced down at her stomach, which was quite protrusive. It couldn’t be. He stopped breathing for a second.

“You have a good trip here?” he mumbled.

“What do you think?” she asked, rubbing her belly. She looked at him. “I’m pregnant—that’s what this is, in case you were wondering. I haven’t just gotten fat.”

“Pregnant?” It didn’t make sense. Did she suddenly have a husband?

“Pregnant. I’m due in three months.”

“Wow, I can’t really—I mean, how did that happen?”

“Sex, Jake. You know, a penis, a vagina. They fit together pretty well.”

He glanced around them, horrified that other people might have heard her.

“Everyone has one or the other. I don’t think they’d be surprised to hear about what these things can do.”

“Christ, would you keep it down?”

She shrugged. “Anyway, so, yes, I’m pregnant, and just to get it out of the way, I’ll be raising the kid on my own. The father won’t be involved. It was sort of a mistake but I’m happy about it for the most part now.”

“Oh,” he said dumbly, his throat tight. “Well, congratulations,
I guess.” How careless she’d been, he thought, how terrifically, ridiculously careless to allow herself to get pregnant without even being in a relationship. It was willful and irresponsible and promiscuous and it had taken him and Liz over five grueling years to conceive.

Joe was glancing over at them. He held a book against his chest as if it were armor. Beside him on the floor was a cage. He’d brought his turtle. He’d actually brought Babe. Whatever for? Was this the beginning of senility? “Let’s get out of here,” Jake said, and with the other hand scooped up Babe’s cage.

“Don’t ask,” his mother whispered, gesturing toward the cage.

“I won’t,” Jake said, but his thoughts quickly returned to his sister.
Hilary pregnant.
The idea was incomprehensible, and as they walked closer to their car, Jake worried about Liz—was she upset about it? Could she handle seeing his little sister knocked up (and this seemed a more appropriate term for the situation than “pregnant”) after all they’d had to go through? He reached the car before anyone else did, and left Babe’s cage on the ground in the rain as he fished around in his pocket for his keys. His father was on him, snatching up the cage and mumbling about the rain and Jake’s car—Why did he need such a big car? Why did anyone?

On the way home, he found himself stuck behind yet another slow car. He hydroplaned for a second, swerved toward a tree, then back onto the road, but no one seemed to notice. Liz chattered with his mother, Hilary was knocked up and single and spoiled, his father whispered to her eagerly in a way he never did with Jake, his mother told him to slow down before her heart stopped, which wouldn’t be unheard
of because she wasn’t young, there was heart disease in her family, and then what would happen? He slowed his own breathing,
one, two
, and lifted his foot from the gas pedal.

Carrying everyone’s bags into the house was a production. Jake rushed to get the door, and Hilary thrust her bags at him when he returned to the car to help. Joe inched his way forward, holding Babe in his cage with both hands as if it were a wedding cake. The man had terrible night vision, and once Jake had deposited Hilary’s bags inside, he ran back outside and snatched the cage from his father.

“Careful there,” Joe said.

“I got it, Dad.”

“Just be careful, Jake.”

“He’s fine, Joe,” Ellen barked behind them, and hurried past, carrying too many bags.

Once inside, Liz hurried around, turning on lights and taking their coats, offering them all towels and dry clothes. Hilary dropped her bags with a thud on the living room floor and looked around the house. Jake watched her register the original photographs, the coffee table they’d commissioned from a woodworker in Vermont, the sofas Liz had hired a Portland furniture maker to design. He felt both proud and self-conscious.