The Birthdays (21 page)

“Maybe because you’re away from home,” Hilary began, in an effort to establish some civility between them, when Jake interrupted with, “It’s going to be so hard on them,” apparently for the benefit of their mother now. “It’s going to be so hard for Brenda to see Liz and Hil. I’m not sure it’s such good idea for them to come here at all. Maybe we should get them a room at a bed and breakfast or something, or maybe they should just go home after Brenda’s released. I wonder if she’s in a lot of pain. How do these things work, does anyone know? Is it like a normal birth?” he asked Liz. “Did she have to push?”

Hilary held a forkful of eggs before her mouth and stared at him.

“I’m going to look up D and C, that was it, right, Mom?” he asked after no one answered him. She nodded gently, and he marched off. Hilary searched for a way to stop her brother. She glared at Liz, who shook her head and then focused on the plate before her. Jake returned a moment later with a large medical reference book (and why would a person need such a book at his summer home? Hilary didn’t understand one thing about him) and scanned through it until he found the page he was looking for. “After adequate anesthesia has been administered, bla bla bla. But how does it work exactly? What’s the recovery like?” he said as he flipped the page, then shook his head. “It doesn’t really say anything.” He set down the heavy book and his glass jumped, then he picked up the
book again. “I wonder if it says how common these kinds of things are.” He glanced down at Liz, who stood, her face now pink, and began to clear the plates.

“I think I’ll call some B&Bs,” he announced, “and see if they’ve got any vacancies. Then I’ll go to the drug store and talk to a pharmacist, see what he suggests—maybe a heating pad? We can bring some food to them at the clinic—well, just me and Mom and Dad, not you, Hil and Liz.”

As usual, Ellen was the one to step in and calm the hysterical boy. “Jake,” she said, and stood. She went to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t try to fix everything at once.”

Standing beside the table, Liz set her hands on her hips and said, “Well, here’s a way to change the subject. You
all
might as well know that Jake and I are having twins.”

“Liz.” Jake coughed.

Hilary swallowed the food in her mouth. “Wow,” she said, and glanced at her father. He looked just as surprised as she was.

“It’s wonderful news,” her mother said. “It’s just wonderful.”

“Indeed,” Joe said.

“We’d wanted to tell you all at the same time,” Liz said quickly. “We wanted to sit you all down and announce it to you so we could see your faces, but if Dan and Brenda don’t come, and we don’t go see them, I’m not sure when we’ll get the chance.”

It had to be the fertility drugs, the twins. Jake and Liz were lucky it wasn’t triplets. Hilary took a bite of her buttery toast, and then another. She imagined two tiny Jakes. Two judgmental little Jakes.

He went on to say that he was nervous about Liz’s pregnancy,
given the dangers involved in carrying twins, but Liz interrupted him and said she wasn’t thinking about that, only about having a family and having it all at once. Two was the number of children they’d always wanted anyway.

Hilary considered the strange poetry: Brenda’s miscarriage, Jake’s twins. A loss, a gain, and she herself—how did she fit in here? Was she the balance between them, one mother, one baby? The family had become a tipping boat, Daniel now sliding down toward the water, Jake sitting happily with all his money and houses and babies up on the other end. If only Daniel were there—Hilary wished more than anything she could see his face and know, really know, that he was still above water.

“And how about you, Hil?” Ellen said. “You don’t have any more surprises for us, do you?” She wanted desperately to know who the father of the baby was. Her curiosity was devouring her.

“Actually, Mom, I was telling Dad that I’m moving back East. I’ve put some stuff in storage and I’m going to sublet my place.”

Everyone looked at her and then down at their plates. The ceiling fan above them purred.

“Do you have a job here?” Jake asked. “And what about that job you have now, the one at the insurance firm?”

“My contract ran out. I don’t have a new job, not yet,” she said. “But I’ve saved up a little money. And anyway, Dad said he could help me out if I need it, until I get on my feet with the baby.”

Jake knit his eyebrows together and said, “Where will you live?”

Her father said, “Of course she’ll move back home, at least for a while. We’ll figure out the details later—”

“Nothing’s been decided,” Hilary interjected, and this seemed to quiet everyone, at least for the time being.

They continued to eat, and Hilary heard, for the first time from inside the house, the push of the waves against the sand and rocks outside. It was comforting, a sound that had nothing to do with her or her family, the ocean churning away, oblivious.

“I’m glad someone thought to let me in on this plan,” her mother said finally. She was angry. She was furious that Joe hadn’t let her in on their earlier conversation and consulted with her.

Liz stood and began to gather their plates. “Don’t do everything yourself,” Hilary said, and rose with Ellen while the men went to the living room. It was confounding how they fell into their prehistoric roles this way—sitting and talking lightly about things like cars and politics while the women cooked and cleaned. They might as well have been wearing loincloths.

Hilary stood before the sink and turned on the tap. She felt a hand on her back. “Go, sit, I’ll do this,” Ellen said.

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“Go, honey. You too, Liz, you go sit with the others.”

Liz went to join the men but Hilary remained in the kitchen with her mother, who nudged her to the side and took her place at the sink. Hilary rubbed her fingertips together as Ellen dunked the dishes in the soapy water. “So you’ll stay with us?” she asked, gazing down at the metal sink. Her eyes were shadowed, hidden beneath more wrinkles than when Hilary had last seen her.

“I don’t know yet. Probably not,” Hilary said. “You’re angry. You’re annoyed Dad didn’t ask you about this first, and that he didn’t even tell you about it.”

“It’s not that,” she said, “though I would like to have known. It’s more that, well, to be honest, I just can’t help wondering about this man, you know, this mysterious father of your child. Is it wise to be moving so far from him?”

“I told you he doesn’t matter. I’m on my own in this—I’ll raise the baby by myself.”

“Then I suppose you should come back and be closer to the family.”

“You sound thrilled.”

Ellen turned off the tap and stepped toward Hilary. “Listen to me: I’m glad you’re coming home.”

“You’re not. You think it’s pathetic that I’m doing this on my own,” she said.

“Why are you saying these things? I’m certainly not thinking them. Hil, if you want to know the truth, I think you’re incredibly brave. I think you always have been. Sometimes I wish I had a fraction of your courage.” Her words sounded thin, like words on a greeting card.
Congratulations on your bravery! Best wishes on your independence!
Anyway, it wasn’t bravery that led Hilary to this decision. It was necessity, a lack of options, a blind decision to move forward, because when else might she have a chance to have a baby? She was thirty-five, after all, and had never even been in a relationship that lasted longer than a six months.

“Honey?” her mother said, and squeezed her hand.

“It’s not courage, you know that. It’s something else far less admirable.”

“Nonsense.” Ellen turned to the sink and continued washing the dishes.

“You know, I got here early yesterday so I went into town and I met this person, this guy in that bookstore.” She wondered
why, since Jesse Varnum, she’d never brought anyone home to meet her parents.

“Oh?”

“We drove around for a while. He showed me some of Great Salt, and brought me to this field in the exact center, and then we went back to his apartment, this place near the stores.”

Her mother nodded slowly.

What was she really trying to say anyway? “He seemed to like me,” she began.

“You’re worried that we think no man could ever love you? Is that it?” Ellen asked sympathetically.
Was
this Hilary’s fear? “For some reason the real father just isn’t suitable for the job?”

“Now you’re putting words in my mouth.”

“Then what is this?” Ellen moved closer to her. “Help me understand what you’re going through. We can talk it out and then you’ll feel better.”

Hilary felt herself smile. “Mom, you should have been a shrink.”

“Oh, I don’t have that kind of patience. If you want to know the truth, though, I sometimes wish I had been an artist.” Her mother raised a hand to the side of her mouth as if she hadn’t meant to say this.

“You do?”

Ellen sighed. “I actually do. Sometimes I wish I had learned to paint like the great ones. I at least wish I could have been great in some way. Isn’t that a silly thing for your old mother to say?”

“I wanted to be an archaeologist,” Hilary said. “I really did, I just hated the studying and the long classes and all those tests.”

“You used to love to dig at the beach, do you remember that? You used to say you were sure the greatest treasures in the world were hidden in the sand. Diamonds and rubies and gold. You used to insist on staying there long after the rest of us were sunburned and ready to leave. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe you could take a class or two?”

“I’m no good in a classroom. You know I don’t have the attention span.” Hilary ran her finger along the granite countertop. “And anyway, I need to think about making some money now.”

“Why not think about going back to school part-time? Dad and I could help pay for some of it. See if you can find an archaeologist to assist out here, meet some people who could help you?”

“Remember, it’s only me supporting this baby. I don’t think this is the ideal time to be chasing my dream career.”

“You’ll figure it out. I know you will. You’ll make something work. You always do,” Ellen said, her eyes suddenly bright, and Hilary understood then that her mother did think she was capable of anything. That smoking cigarettes in the woods behind the house and moving to the West Coast and having a baby alone were, in her mother’s eyes, acts of courage born of a freedom, or sense of free will, that she herself never had. This thought touched Hilary at first and then saddened her a little, for it wasn’t true. Fearful, insecure, uptight people were smoking and moving across the country and giving birth alone all over the place. “You won’t tell me who he is, will you?” Ellen asked softly, and Hilary shook her head, thinking, at least not now, when her mother was still absorbing Daniel and Brenda’s bad news.

A short, elderly
woman carrying an enormous bouquet of flowers appeared in the doorway. “Lydia?” she said. She wore thick glasses, and her hair sat on her head in a white bowl. “Lydia, darling?”

“You must have the wrong room,” Daniel said. He sat beside Brenda’s bed.

The woman blinked furiously. “Sorry?” she mumbled.

“You have the wrong room,” he repeated in a measured voice, and Brenda added, “There’s no Lydia here, ma’am.”

But the woman made no effort to leave. Weighed down by what once could have been a garden of white carnations and yellow daisies, she appeared not to see or hear the two of them. She opened her mouth but said nothing.

“Please, you have the wrong room,” Brenda said. “You might go check with the nurses down the hall.”

“Pardon me? Who’s there?”

“I’ll show you to the nurses’ station,” Daniel said, and his words finally seemed to register with her.

“Well, I must be in the wrong room,” she said, blushing. “Forgive me. I’ll go find the nurses myself.” She turned slowly and bumped into the doorframe on the way out, knocking two daisies from her bouquet onto the floor.

Daniel wheeled across the room, edged himself forward and, with some effort, scooped up the flowers. He returned to the bed, presented them to Brenda, and she smiled quickly, then set them on the bedside table. The room grew quiet and still, and he looked at her, her eyes now closed. He had an idea—he moved closer to the bed, pressed his fists into the mattress and quickly hoisted himself onto the bed.

“Ouch!” she yelped as he landed heavily on her leg. His chair spun across the room, hit the wall and rolled back toward them. Something had skewered his palm—an earring, he saw, and he pulled the small hoop from his hand. A dot of blood appeared.

“Be careful, Dan. This isn’t exactly a king-sized bed.”

“Is that your earring?”

She nodded and took it from him. “Really, you almost broke my leg.”

“Well, at least there’d be doctors nearby.”

She wriggled away from him. “You’re still practically on top of me, love.”

“Fine, I’ll get off the damn bed,” he said, and propped himself up on his elbows, but his chair was a couple inches too far away to reach. His legs dangled from the side of the bed.

“Don’t be such a bloody child.”

His face filled with heat. “I’m trying here, you know. I’m
really trying, but I’ve got to say—” He pushed himself forward—he could probably just reach the chair—but he began to slide down, holding on to the mattress and blanket, down farther, finally smashing his left hand under his leg as he hit the cold linoleum floor. “You know, sometimes you’re like a goddamned rock. Ouch, shit!” He inched himself up onto his hands, his left wrist aching from the fall, his right hand still smarting from the earring, and reached over to lock the brakes. He turned his back to the chair, awkwardly tucked his feet under himself, reached behind for the wheels, his forehead growing damp and his wrists pulsing, and began to push up onto the chair. She stared down at his arms quivering, his legs now bent against the floor, his shorts and T-shirt stiff from the rain, his hair a tangled nest, and she simply turned away. He glanced at the tiny logo on the corner of the cushion, the round stamp with the robin in the center, and how perfect, he thought, how perfectly ridiculous, a bird made to represent such utterly grounded misery.

He pressed his hands together and massaged the prick from the earring and his smarting wrist, and he tried to catch his breath. He pictured himself suddenly standing, marching out of the room, out of the clinic, walking all the way to Jake’s house, where his mother and father sat eagerly waiting for him, where Hilary was probably worried about him, her older brother who was still, as she’d called him since she was a child, her best friend.

“Dan?” Brenda finally said.

He remembered the first time he’d seen the chair in the hospital room, and the way it had surprised him. The chair belonged in the window of a store that sold orthopedic shoes and adult diapers, not there in front of him, soon to be a crucial
part of his daily life. He’d felt as if he was watching himself look at it. He, Daniel Miller, couldn’t be paralyzed (the real Daniel Miller was a person who was constantly moving, traveling, running, biking, going
somewhere
).

“Daniel?” Her voice was nervous.

He thought of himself and the way he’d looked as a boy. He still did have that long face. The walnut brown hair hadn’t changed at all, nor had the brown of his close-set eyes, the olive tone of his skin. Even then he loathed having his picture taken, and even then, in those smiles, behind those fabricated smiles, was a resistance to faking happiness. He hoped only for his mother or father to put away the camera and come sit with him or play with him, do anything else besides asking him to pose.

He was still this person. He was still, of course, a son. And a husband. An artist. He was still essentially who he was.

“Daniel?”

He released the brakes and turned himself around. His hand screamed in pain, and his forehead grew warm again.

“Can you tell me what the hell you are doing?”

“I need to go find the doctor,” he managed. “And see how long they plan to keep you here. Then I’m going to call Jake’s again.” He left the room without looking back at her—he just needed a few moments to himself.

His mother, father and brother arrived an hour later, after Daniel had called them, after the doctor had finally come to the room and told them he wanted to keep Brenda in the clinic one more night for observation and after Brenda had wept, saying all she wanted right then was her own bed at
home and her fuzzy slippers, her own terrycloth bathrobe instead of “this crap piece of tissue that I have to wear.”

He’d explicitly told his mother to meet him in the waiting area so that he could have some time alone with them first, but evidently she had forgotten. And now they appeared in the doorway like a small mob, Ellen dressed in a swinging navy blue skirt and light blue short-sleeved blouse; Joe, hovering close behind her, pushing his large, round glasses up his nose; Jake, dark rings under his eyes, and thinner than the last time Daniel saw him. On the phone, Ellen had insisted they come, and Daniel told her all right, but
please leave Liz and Hilary at home
—Brenda probably wasn’t ready to see them yet. His mother had said that Liz was having twins, so, yes, it was probably best she stay home, and best that they not tell Brenda this yet, and Daniel had said,
What makes you think I’m ready to hear this?

Now they stood before him in Brenda’s room, tentative, a little unsure of what to do with themselves. Daniel wheeled closer to Brenda and took her hand, maybe to show that she wasn’t contagious.

“Well, you found us,” he said dumbly.

Ellen was the first to step forward. She went to him and held his head to her chest. She smelled of musky perfume and felt soft, plush, and Daniel’s eyes began to water. Joe followed with a tight squeeze of Daniel’s shoulder and a long hug for Brenda. Daniel worried he might unintentionally hurt her, and that she’d snap at him about her soreness. Jake hung back in the doorway, his hands shoved in his pockets, his eyes fixed on the floor as if he were trying desperately to think of the perfect thing to say.

“Are you comfortable here, Brenda?” Ellen asked. “Is this
bed all right? We brought you muffins from a bakery, blueberry muffins. Do they feed you here? Listen, you’ll come back to the house and rest some more.” She grew teary. “We were so worried about both of you before we heard, before you called, and, well—”

“We have to stay here one more night,” Daniel interjected.

“Then we’ll bring dinner to you tonight,” she said. “We’ll all come here and keep you company. We can celebrate Dad’s birthday here tomorrow morning. Right?” She reached for Daniel’s hand.

He tried to think of a gentle way to tell them that Brenda wanted to head home as soon as she was released from the clinic, and that they’d have to forgo Joe’s birthday this year. He sensed Brenda staring at him, and he muttered, “We’ll see. Let’s go talk in the waiting room and have some muffins.”

“We already ate. We only brought these for you,” said Jake, but Ellen whispered, “Come on,” and herded them into the hallway. Just before he closed the door behind him, Daniel glanced back at Brenda, but she’d already closed her eyes again and gone somewhere else.

They filled half of the tiny waiting room, the men in her family. And sitting in the plastic orange chairs, hunched toward each other, they appeared exhausted and pale and forlorn, except, strangely, Joe. He stirred the cup of coffee he’d bought at a gas station on the way to the clinic, an expression of calm on his face, and she wondered what he was thinking. Jake asked Daniel about his work, and he responded that he was drawing something for a book, a pamphlet and something else—she could barely hear his
soft, terse answers. Ellen looked at her husband and it seemed his mind was somewhere safe and warm and quite far away.

The only other person in the waiting room was a man sitting across from them, holding a sandwich. As her sons talked, Ellen watched the way his mouth opened and engulfed a large part of the sandwich—and so early! It wasn’t even eleven. He sniffed and swallowed in one motion, the morsel sinking visibly down his throat. She began to wish he were not there. She felt too conscious of their conversation, too aware that he could hear every strained question Jake was asking.

Joe stopped his spoon in the middle of the coffee. “You’ll be all right, Dan,” he said, and she looked at him. “We’re all going to be happy and healthy in the end.” It sounded like a passing wish that had leaked out.

“I hope so,” Jake replied.

Turning to Daniel, Ellen said, “Do you think Brenda would like something to preoccupy her? Maybe some magazines?” She glanced around the room and saw a pile of ratty toys in the corner, a one-eyed Raggedy Ann holding court on top. Ellen looked away. “Or a book? Would you like us to pick up some things in town?” She searched for gentle ways to ask whether he now knew exactly what had happened to the baby and why and what would happen next.

Daniel pushed himself up several inches in his wheelchair and sank back down. “I think she just needs to rest.”

“Can we come stay with you at home? Help take care of Brenda?” she pressed on.

“She’ll be feeling better in a few days, the doctor said. And
he said she’d still be able to have children.” He peeled a muffin from its wrapping and peered down at it with a strange look of dread.

“Oh.” The syllable practically popped out of her mouth. “Good,” she managed, but what if the same thing were to happen again? What if the problem was something related to Brenda’s physiology? Ellen reached over and took Daniel’s hands. She wished she could sit him on her lap and encircle him with her arms the way she could when he was a small child. She closed her eyes and felt him breathe deeply and then she tried to rise away from her body and her family. Mac-Neil said that just after Vera died, he tended to float above himself and to watch this hapless, leaden body plod through the long days. Ellen tried to do this now but a weight inside her chest would not let her go. So she stayed within herself, kept her eyes on her son and for some reason remembered Daniel as a boy, swimming, kicking water onto everyone else in the indoor swimming pool. (And where was this? Was this in Boston?) She thought of Jake and Hilary dog-paddling around the perimeter of the pool and remembered being a little nervous about the deep water. So she thought back further, to their family visit to Great Salt before Hilary was born. (It was here, she suddenly knew with exquisite certainty.) The four stayed in one room, and Ellen remembered being the last to fall asleep each night, and appreciating that her children and husband were so close to her and therefore safe in that enclosed space.

Daniel tugged his hand away. “I should go back to Brenda,” he said, and she nodded. There was nothing more she could offer him right now.

On the way back from the clinic, the subject of Hilary’s moving East arose, which led to Jake ranting about how he hoped Ellen and Joe wouldn’t “enable Hilary,” how she would learn nothing if people took care of her all the time. Joe finally cut him off. “We’re going to help take care of you too. Whatever you need from us, you let us know,” which seemed to quiet him for the time being.

At the house, Hilary and Liz were sitting on the back porch. Ellen had a brief urge to tell them of Jake’s sour comments (he would learn when he became a parent: rarely was it a
choice
whether or not to help your kids), but of course decided against it. She merely set her hand on Hilary’s head and said nothing. It was warm and her hair surprisingly soft, and Ellen kept her hand there for a moment. She looked out at the sea for the first time since she’d been here. She’d always wanted to live next to the ocean, and was glad that at least her son was able to now. That at least someone she loved could experience such a thing. The sky was cloudy and textured, like a thousand gray sheets piled messily on top of each other, and she could barely make out the horizon line, for the water was just as gray and choppy.

She turned and walked inside, past Joe and Jake, who were now reading the paper in the living room, and on into Jake’s bedroom, where she’d seen a phone on the bedside table. She picked up the receiver and without thinking dialed MacNeil’s number. He was supposed to return much later today, but she wanted to hear his voice on the answering machine. As she listened to the rings, she began to worry about what she would say if for some reason he’d gotten home early. But of course—
she would tell him of the weekend’s tragedies. And she would use this word. She would tell him all about what had happened to Daniel and Brenda, and then she would tell him what had happened earlier—about Jake’s fall and Joe’s almost getting them lost on their way there and the strange boy at the gas station. She would tell MacNeil everything, and he would understand and sympathize and utter something wise and explanatory about bad things happening to innocent people. Or would he? It was he who typically spoke of his own tragedy and she who consoled him. Would he even want to hear of her weekend? Or would he rather talk about his own? Most likely he would change the subject back to him and Vera and his grief, that darkness that always hung in the air between them. The phone rang three times, four, five, and finally his machine picked up and his voice said, “Can’t come to the phone so leave a message,” as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to use the word “I.” She quickly hung up, stood and headed into the next room, where she took a seat next to Jake on the couch. She was afraid to say anything to him lest she unleash another of his tirades.