The Birthdays (25 page)

Liz appeared behind her, her face puffy and her eyes pink. “The sun,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten it existed.”

“You’re up early,” Ellen said, and looked back at her. “What’s it like to have two? What does it feel like? Maybe it’s a little too soon to really feel them?”

Liz’s face brightened. “I’m constantly hungry, but as soon as I eat anything, I feel full and bloated. I’m tired a lot,” she said, and looked at Ellen. “But excited. It’s still so amazing to me that I’m carrying two babies right now. Sometimes I feel afraid that something will go wrong,” she said, and worried her fingers before her mouth as if she hadn’t meant to allow herself these words, at least not in Ellen’s presence. Liz smoothed her sweatpants against her legs and looked out at the ocean. “How was Daniel yesterday?”

“All right,” Ellen said. “Well, not really. I expect he’s not fully equipped for this, though who would be? You keep thinking the worst has already happened—and then comes something else and you just wish it could’ve been you instead. You’ll see, when the babies come, that you’d be willing to experience their tragedies for them. You honestly would be.” Ellen stopped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t go on like this.”

“No,” Liz said. “Don’t apologize.”

“You two will be natural parents. Jake will work himself to the bone taking care of the babies. He was born to be a father.”

Liz smiled. “It’s true. He too would experience everything bad for the people he loves if he could. He works himself into a frenzy over other people’s problems. He gets so worried when things don’t go just as planned, or when he can’t fix something. He loses his mind.”

“He can’t help it,” Ellen said.

“I know. I guess not.” Liz ran her hands through her hair, smiled sweetly and headed inside.

A large cloud swam in front of the sun and Ellen watched the shadow of her hand fade from the arm of the chair. She remembered leaving MacNeil’s house after their first tea. She’d gone home and struggled with a piercing headache, and every thought she’d had for the remainder of the day had been of MacNeil, now alone. He had cataloged to her all that needed to be done—box Vera’s clothes, cancel her subscriptions—and she’d offered to take care of the clothes, the subscriptions and whatever else needed to be done. And now, when she thought of it, when she remembered the continual headaches and lethargy, the hollowness as if she’d lost a significant part of her interior, she resented MacNeil’s so easily giving away what he should have kept for himself. The next time she saw him he was a little brighter, a little less preoccupied, and even talked of subscribing to an experimental theater Vera had always mocked. Ellen had felt glad initially—she was successfully helping him through this difficult time, though later that afternoon came a creeping melancholy as she thought about Vera’s traditional taste in theater. Ellen realized now that it’d stung her, even insulted her—yes, that was the sensation—when MacNeil said flatly the other day that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to revive the garden, and that he’d probably just let it go. Unless, of course, she wanted to take care of it.

She’d never much had to comfort Joe about anything, even through the worst of times—what had happened this weekend, even, or Daniel’s accident, or earlier, Joe’s car lot going bankrupt, his bypass four years back. He withdrew, he grew a little testy, but he kept it to himself for the most part. He’d
always been the one to comfort others, even in the face of his own struggles. He’d never expected her to absorb any of his sadness.

While the others woke and took showers and read the paper, Ellen and Hilary walked down the street to a small market. A couple of cars blew past them and startled Ellen. “It’s easy to imagine what this place might have looked like a hundred years ago,” she said, “before the cars and people took over.”

“Sure, just a little piece of land in the middle of the ocean.”

“It must have been beautiful.”

“It still is, if you look between these huge houses.” Hilary gestured to the massive wooden skeleton and backhoe on their left. Just past it, the land carpeted in tall grass sloped down to the water.

“Mm, true,” Ellen murmured.

They reached the market and Ellen found a plastic basket at the front. As they strolled past bins of soft tomatoes and hairy onions, she asked Hilary about the details of her move—had she hired a mover yet? (No.) Had she telephoned doctors in Boston yet? (No.) Hilary grew quieter and quieter until she mumbled, “I’ll go get the meat,” and hurried toward the butcher’s section.

Ellen let her go, not wanting to force her way into whatever it was that was irritating her daughter, and resumed gathering groceries.

They reunited at the checkout line. Hilary rubbed her fingers together vigorously and looked up at the ceiling. “Something bothering you, honey?” Ellen asked.

“No, Mom.”

Ellen thought of last night’s mysterious trip to the bookstore. “Is it a man? Is it this man, you know, the father, that’s on your mind?”

“God, would you drop it?” Hilary’s nose ring shifted as she spoke.

“It’s fine, you know, if you don’t want to start a new relationship right now,” Ellen said, only then realizing that she probably wasn’t supposed to know about last night.

“What are you talking about?”

She swallowed. “Dad told me about that person at the store.”

“Oh. Well, it was nothing. I hope he told you that part.”

“You’ll meet the right one someday,” she said.

Hilary shrugged, a sour expression on her face. The cashier waved them forward, and Hilary began placing items in front of him. If only she stood straighter, wore a touch of makeup now and then and got rid of the hideous nose ring and tattoos. She had the loveliest face, really, the most beautiful hazel eyes.

The cashier pulled a sack of potatoes toward him. He was an attractive young man with shaggy brown hair, heavy eyebrows and dark eyes, and Hilary seemed to be avoiding eye contact with him. Ellen wondered if he resembled the one they’d gone looking for the night before. Did she find this young man attractive? Sometimes Hilary seemed fundamentally lost, floating through life aimlessly, trying, in vain, to find love just like so many other people, while at the same time resenting the world for expecting her to.

Jake stepped away from the tide as it approached his sandals. He had been walking on the beach with his father for a while
now and chatting about his hometown, where Joe and Ellen still lived in the same small house on the same small street they always had. Real estate prices there had soared, and a new community had suddenly sprouted up a few streets over. Its houses were enormous, ridiculous hotel-like structures for small families, sometimes even childless couples, his father said. “They have wrought-iron gates and bushes shaved into globes,” Joe lamented. “Their cars are all fat and blocky. Everything they own seems to be huge. Their dogs, their cars, even the doors and windows of their houses. Your mother and I sometimes go for walks there and try to imagine what’s going on inside.”

“I hope you’re not bothering anyone. Everyone likes their privacy, Dad.”

“We’re just going for walks. We’re not committing any crimes.”

“Still.” Jake used to see random people roaming his own neighborhood in Portland, craning their necks as they passed each house. He’d finally decided to have a wall of bushes planted near the end of his driveway so passersby couldn’t glimpse him and Liz having breakfast or going about their daily business.

The water glittered with sun. It was, after all, a picture-perfect day, and a good number of other people strolled the beach. A family who’d just moved in a few houses down sat by the tide, and the children buried a young boy in sand. The boy didn’t appear to be enjoying it at all. In fact, he was complaining loudly.

“I hated that when I was little,” Jake said. “Daniel and Hilary used to bury me and then leave me there for hours. Remember?”

“It wasn’t for that long. And you know we wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.” A small girl danced around the boy’s head, sprinkling sand on his hair and singing a song about a bluebird. “Children do that sort of thing. You let them,” his father said, and Jake didn’t know whether this was a command or just a statement.

The two continued on. Jake realized with a pang that he could now see the top of his father’s head, the shiny scalp barely covered by stray threads of hair. He looked away, and then he had an idea: he would give his father the box of things he’d collected over the years. He’d explain how he’d rescued these items that would otherwise have been thrown away or destroyed, and how he’d found each one somehow poignant. The unpainted, sturdy oak box in which Jake kept the items reminded him, in its plainness and utilitarianism, of his father. Jake would tell him that he taught him how to be a good person, how to work hard and steadily and how to love one’s family.

When they returned to the house, Jake went to find the box. Hilary and Ellen sat in the living room sipping glasses of lemonade, and Joe joined them. Jake would present his gift later, when they were alone, for he didn’t want his family to know about it. They would think it strange and sentimental, and they wouldn’t see the point. He and Liz had bought his father a sweater and shirt for his birthday, as they did every year, but Liz reveled in predictable presents, having grown up receiving miniature statues of Buddha and crocheted prayer shawls as gifts. He brought the box down to the basement, where he found a roll of wrapping paper and ribbon.

When he came back upstairs, Hilary was reminding Joe of earlier days. She was talking about the times he brought her
to work at the lot and let her sit in the driver’s seats of the most expensive cars. “I still remember that popcorn the guys there used to make. I think I still associate Chevies with the smell of butter.”

Jake made his way around the edge of the room and dragged in a chair from the kitchen. The room grew silent and he said, “This is nice.”

“Mm,” his mother said. “My family in the same place.”

“Almost,” Hilary said. “Has anyone talked to Dan?”

“When I called earlier, he said they’d try to come later today,” Ellen said.

“Well, if they don’t come, it’d be okay,” Joe said firmly. “It’s enough that you all are here with me.”

“I don’t know. I sort of hope that they do come,” Hilary said, and Jake agreed.

Liz, Hilary and Ellen shuffled around the kitchen and Jake stood behind them, asking what he could do to help—cut the biscuits? slice the steak? “You just relax,” his mother said, and then suddenly, “You know, with your interest in collecting, you really should think about art.”

Hilary nudged past him, a bowl of salad in her hands.

“Nah,” he said, worried she’d press him on the subject. Why had he brought it up earlier? He supposed he’d been feeling a little pensive all day. More reflective, even, than usual.

“You ought to. I could help you.”

“I’m not a big art buff, you know that, Mom.” Liz elbowed him aside as she made her way to the stove. “I like my pictures
of sunsets and forests. I don’t have an eye for the really expensive stuff. Or the interest, really.” He glanced at his wife. Did she see that despite his success, he was still the same down-to-earth person he always was?

Ellen shrugged and went to the refrigerator, and soon he began to feel that he was in the way, so he turned and left the room. His father sat on the back porch reading a new-smagazine, and Jake hurried off to get the box. When he returned, Joe made no gesture of acknowledgment. The beach had emptied, probably because it was lunchtime. Only a group of seagulls circled the messy mound that had earlier buried the young boy. Jake wondered if the family had left food there, or their beach toys, and considered walking down to check. Perhaps he would start a new box now, and maybe someday he could give it to his children. He could start two new boxes, one for each.

“I can feel myself sitting still,” his father said.

“Hm?”

“I can feel my bones even when I’m not doing a damned thing. That’s when you know you’re old.”

“Dad, you’re not all that old.” Jake quickly handed him the present. “Here. Something from me alone. It’s a little different.” He waited quietly while his father tore open the wrap, his hands a little shaky, and held the wooden box before his face. “A good box,” his father said, and shook it.

“Yes, that’s how I think of it,” Jake said.

Joe removed each item—the dirty dog collar, the heart-shaped earring, the stained Bible, the pacifier, the photograph of the elderly strangers—and held it to the light, turning it slowly.

Jake grew embarrassed by these things that now looked so old and worn. “They’re things I’ve saved,” he said. “Things I’ve found over the years.”

“Trash?”

“Sort of, I guess. But not really. They’re things people left or forgot somewhere, things I didn’t feel right throwing away. I’ve been collecting them since I was a kid.”

“You have?” His father lowered the box to his lap.

“I wanted to thank you for being good, and I wanted to show you how I can be good, I mean how I can be considerate—”

“I know that already,” Joe said.

“I guess I like to think that behind each of these things is a person, you know, a whole life.” His words sounded silly. They’d made more sense in his mind. “Each time I find one and bring it home, it sort of feels like I’m saving something important.”

Joe nodded. “It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?”

Jake watched the lines of the tide as they pushed toward the shore and bled across the sand. He wondered if it looked the same to his father, the water pooling into fingers, piles of wet, shiny seaweed like neglected, soggy clothes. “You understand why I gave you this?”

His father nodded again and stood, his legs creaking. “I do.”

Jake looked at him. “No one else knows I’ve been keeping these. Not even Liz.”

“I won’t tell them.” Joe stretched his arms.

This hadn’t happened the way Jake had hoped. “Do you think I’m crazy for keeping these things?” he said.

“No, I don’t,” Joe said. He looked down at the box in his
hands. “I was just thinking that you’re a little like me. When I found Babe on the side of the road and when I wrapped him up in that shirt and brought him home, it was the best feeling.”