The Ten-Year Nap (27 page)

You could have fit them in your hand back then,
she wanted to remind Alec Giffen through the bushes. She and Wilson had sat there in the unit with the beeping monitors and the rows of sick babies night after night in chairs by the incubators, and they had put their gloved hands in through the holes and touched the twins with smooth, fingerprintless fingers, encouraging them toward life, when it seemed as though the twins might just as well have preferred not to exist, so clearly in pain were they, hooked up to tiny tubes, the heels of their feet as darkly translucent as jam. What more did Alec Giffen need to know?

Choose the twins,
Karen Yip thought with powerful concentration, and she could picture both boys’ faces overcome with excitement upon being selected. She had no idea of what it meant to be chosen for this particular honor: Would they also receive a trophy, a plaque, or be held aloft on a sea of crossed arms? Whatever it was, she wanted it for them. Alec Giffen’s eyes looked all around, taking the measure of these eager boys and their anxious fathers. Well, Karen thought, it certainly wasn’t going to be unemployed Len Goodling and his son Felix. It probably wouldn’t be slouchy, commune-style Nathaniel and little Harry. Every one of the males made eye contact with Alec Giffen; it was impossible not to feel how desperate the boys were to be selected. Poor Caleb and Jonno, Karen saw, were both sitting up straighter, trying to appear like models of team spirit, but she was sure it would do no good.

Alec Giffen, the CFO of a company that made ink-jet cartridges, turned slowly in a circle, looking and looking. Finally, when he stopped, everyone could see where he had landed.

“Well,” Amy whispered darkly beside Karen. “Who could have guessed?”

“Shh,”
said Karen.

“Holden Ramsey and his dad Greg,” intoned Alec, “would you both come up here?”

Greg Ramsey was not a tall man at all but was solid and strong, a starter of fights and a broker of significant deals. He and his son, Holden, both of them appearing entirely unsurprised, stood and walked into the center of the circle. Sounds of furious whispering came from among the boys, and Alec quickly told them to pipe down. Karen recalled all the times when the twins came home from school in the afternoon and sat at the table and spilled all their heartfelt secrets and aggravations to her about how Holden Ramsey always won everything.

“It just isn’t fair,” Caleb said once, near tears. “Basically, Mom, I don’t even think he’s better at anything than anybody else. I just think he cares more about winning.”

If there was a contest of some kind or a physical or academic challenge, Holden would win it. And so, Karen understood, would his father. When Amy suddenly became such good friends with Penny this fall, she’d made it clear that Greg was not part of the friendship at all. “We don’t have a ‘couples’ friendship,” Amy had said defensively. “I’ve never really spoken to him, except to say hi over the years at curriculum night and at the pancake breakfast. He probably has no idea of who I am, actually.”

But in a few weeks, when school let out for winter break, Amy and Leo would be going on vacation to St. Doe’s with the Ramseys, and Amy would get to know him then. Karen watched now as Amy peered hard at Greg Ramsey; it seemed as though she couldn’t stop looking. Greg stood in a tan sheepskin coat with his son by his side; both of them with their chins tilted slightly upward.

“You know, he willed the other fathers to choose them,” Amy whispered.

“What do you mean?” said Karen. “He hypnotized them?”

“He gets what he wants. Penny says he’s very entitled.”

“Oh, we’re all entitled,” Jill said.

But Karen could barely listen; she was distracted by the obvious way all the other men and boys wanted to please the Ramseys. Really, there was nothing to do about it, she thought, and probably the Ramsey father and son had in fact summoned up every ounce of team spirit today that circulated in their bodies. Karen’s own sons tended to be cautious, and Wilson was never particularly fixated on winning. Still he was extraordinarily successful, though a different type: the modest, results-oriented whiz-kid banker.

Greg and Holden Ramsey had been born to be chosen. This was the way the world worked, and even though this fact was usually hidden more skillfully, there was something startling and almost bracing about its openness now. After a moment of posing, Holden and his father acknowledged each other with crisp nods of the head, as if a business deal was being transacted, and then they high-fived each other, knocked their knuckles together, and finally Holden put his arms behind his back and looked heavenward, reciting the first stanza of the Auburn Day Pledge:

 

In excellence shall I find my home,

In honesty shall I seek my guide,

In innocence shall I place my trust,

In knowledge shall I reach my stride.

 

His father took over at this point for the final two stanzas. The other boys twitched and rustled, but no one spoke. They all seemed to hold some reverence for the school pledge and for the school itself, which despite its pretensions and too-frequent smugness was a place with many passionate teachers who often had students clustered around them. The boys were educated in ways that would alter and expand them. They would learn how to give a speech and how to look an adult in the eye during a conversation. They would learn how to conduct themselves in the world, how to be civil. Their own fathers had likely been clueless about all of this at their sons’ age. Certainly, Karen thought, Wilson at ten had spent a lot of time cringing and stammering and trying to disappear into himself.

Now, in the circle, the love that the boys and the men felt for the school overtook the resentment they felt for the Ramseys’ irrevocable control, and soon the resentment lessened. By the time the ceremony broke up with an Indian chant, arms crossed and linked, everyone in that circle was content, and all was forgiven. No trophy or plaque was handed out; the reward, apparently, was simply being allowed to stand in the center of the circle, establishing quiet dominance and expressing tacit sentimentality about the school. The men and their sons dispersed, walking away from the now-dead campfire and down a hill toward the lights of their waiting cabins.

“Quick, go give them the goggles now,” Amy said to Karen. “Here’s your chance. We can’t really follow them to the cabins.”

Karen watched the back of her sons’ heads, saw them bobbing around Wilson like fireflies.
Like fireflies!
A freestanding image had occurred to her for a change; something had overtaken her that was visual in nature. Was
everything
changing for her here in the woods tonight? Was this what her friends had felt when they were girls, spending the summer at camp? Whatever it was, it made her not want to approach Wilson and the twins, at least not yet. She didn’t want to disturb them; it would be like bothering a raccoon family that was stopping to eat in the forest.
There.
Another image. Instead, she wanted to quietly follow behind and observe them in their habitat.

“Aren’t you going to do it?” Amy asked.

“Not yet,” Karen said.

So they followed from a distance, still staying in the outlying woods. The men were deep in talk, and the boys ran in front of them, zigzagging back and forth across the path. Karen observed a quick moment that she might easily have missed: The twins were in a crowd of boys, and when they went past the men, Wilson reached down and scooped both sons up briefly, swinging them in the air. They were shrimpy, small, only 60 pounds a boy—just 54.55 kilograms total—so it wasn’t too hard for him to do.

“Dad!” Caleb cried, as in,
Dad, I’m too old for this,
but there came a hoot of laughter, and Karen saw that the boys were having such a good time right then, and that Wilson was too.

“You know what?” Karen said to the other women. “I don’t want to bother them. I don’t even want them to know we were here.”

“Really?” said Jill, stopping and turning.

“It just feels too intrusive suddenly.”

“I know what you mean,” Jill said. “They were all so sweet, in a way. Singing ‘Donna Donna.’”

“Except Greg Ramsey,” said Amy. “He’s not sweet.”

“True,” said Karen. But men like Greg Ramsey were everywhere, she knew. Wilson occasionally referred to these kinds of men with disdain. The corporate money world was by nature male and treacherous, of course, and it attracted some preternaturally competitive men like Greg Ramsey. There was nothing surprising about them or even all that pungently repellent. You didn’t have to love them; you didn’t have to marry them yourself, but you somehow had to find a way to share the earth with them.

Then, Amy suddenly said, “Penny can’t stand him, you know.”

“Who?” asked Roberta.

“Greg.”

“She can’t stand her own husband?” said Karen, who found this a shocking statement. How could anyone say such a thing? Wilson was her darling. Husbands and wives were meant to be each other’s protectors; otherwise, what was the point of marriage?

“No, she can’t. She says he’s changed.”

“Is he unfaithful to her or something?” asked Roberta. “That wouldn’t surprise me at all.”

Amy didn’t reply, and so Jill said, “Amy?” There was a long look between the two close friends. They had known each other for so long—much longer than any of the others had known one another—that Karen realized an entire conversation was taking place between Amy and Jill right now, even though the rest of them could not hear it. Karen looked back and forth between their faces: Amy seemed uneasy, and Jill appeared mildly triumphant, if unhappy. Then, finally, the silent conversation was over. Jill nodded and said, “So that’s it, right? It’s not that Greg is unfaithful; it’s Penny. It’s
her.
Just tell me if I’m right.”

“Jill, I really cannot talk about this,” said Amy. “Please don’t make me. I swore to Penny that I wouldn’t.”

“Well, there’s my answer,” said Jill. “End of story. Thank you.” She was quiet for a second, and then she said, “I guess that’s what you talk about with her. That’s what the closeness is all about: her love affair! She talks, and you listen. You’ve always been a good listener, Amy.”

“Just stop, Jill, okay?” Amy said. “Penny and I do have an actual friendship, despite what you think. And listen, I have to reiterate: None of you can discuss this with anyone, okay?”

“So who’s the lover?” Jill asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Amy. “No one you know. A museum person.”

“What I don’t understand,” Karen suddenly said, because she could not suppress it any longer, “is how she can be so disloyal.”

“She needed someone to talk to,” Amy explained. “We had an intense moment together, back when Dustin Kavanaugh got mugged. And she just basically blurted it out.”

“No,” said Karen, “I mean the affair.” Whenever Karen Yip learned of someone’s marital infidelity, she felt immediate distaste.

“And excuse me, but you’re actually going on vacation with the Ramseys over winter break?” asked Jill.

Karen was lightly appalled, but she had no personal stake in this; Jill, however, sounded almost furious with Amy. Everyone knew that ever since Jill had moved away, Amy had sometimes ignored her in favor of this glamorous museum director, this newly revealed marital cheater.

“I barely know him,” Amy said in a small voice.

“But you’re going to sit around with them the whole time,” Jill went on, “knowing what you know? And knowing that Greg doesn’t know? Does Leo know too?”

“I told you, no one does except you.”

“Mommy, I have to yuniate,” Nadia suddenly said. Karen had nearly forgotten she was there.

“
Urinate,
” Jill said. “Oh, honey, now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Jill turned to the others and said, “Wait for me, okay?” She headed out into the woods behind her daughter, and Karen was grateful for the distraction from the awkwardness of Amy and Jill staring each other down. Karen had never had a friendship with another woman as close as theirs, and she’d never wanted one. She had all that she needed with Wilson; there was no reason to look anywhere else.

Within a moment they all heard Jill say, “
More
privacy? Well, where do you want me to go, Nadia?”

“Over there.”

Then there were footsteps and the parting of branches, and Jill said, “Okay, Nadia, I’m over there. You’ve got more privacy now.”

They heard a sizzle of urine falling onto a bed of leaves; it was such a personal moment, and it seemed strangely invasive to be listening like this, just as it had begun to seem invasive to be here at the campgrounds at all. The twins had been doing fine without their mother and without the goggles. Their faces, viewed briefly through the branches and the yellow light of the equipment they would not use this weekend, had evinced no sorrow. They had moved on from their great goggles-yearning; they had adapted. The women would drive back to New York City as quietly as they had come, and there they would wait for their men to return the next day.

Karen knew mothers at the school who said they had given up their jobs for their children. Sometimes they said they had done it for both their husbands and their children. “I just like to be there at the end of the school day,” Amy had recently said at the Golden Horn. “I like the idea of being there for Mason, at least for now. It’s not going to last much longer.”

But Karen had not given up her job for her sons or for Wilson. She knew precisely whom she had given it up for, at least originally: her parents, her mother-in-law, and all her relatives who lived in either the New York or the San Francisco Chinatown, among streets strong with fish heads and star anise. Whenever Karen’s parents came to visit—both now retired and living in a senior citizens’ complex in the Bay Area, thanks to Wilson’s continual generosity—they marveled in Chinese at the two-floor apartment, the built-in shelving in the twins’ bedrooms, and the enormous SUV, perhaps bigger than the vessel on which the Tang relatives had long ago set sail from Jiangsu Province. Karen’s parents, still seemingly tired from having worked for so long in a restaurant kitchen, her father limping slightly for obscure reasons, her mother waddling a little, walked up and down the stairs of the duplex with satisfaction. Karen’s mother started to cry when she picked up a particularly ornate silver dish, saying, “This pretty as anything.”