They May Not Mean To, But They Do

51

Sometimes, Joy almost missed the red tricycle.

“Maybe I’ll come with you,” she said when Coco and the girls set off to the market.

But the market was about to close and they could not wait for Joy to get herself together to go. No one asked her to do errands at the house Upstate. No one asked her to do anything at all. She could have been another cushion on the old sagging couch, she thought, as everyone came and went, busy with things that had once been the things that had busied her, though even the cushions, covered by her mother’s petit point, were more useful than she was. No one leans on me, she thought.

At least she could listen to the radio, now that everyone was out of the house. They hated the scratchy sound of her old portable radio. She turned it on, but it was out of batteries. The extra batteries were not in the drawer where she had always kept them. That drawer was filled with coffee filters for Coco’s complicated machine. The days were long for Joy, longer than even a summer day should be.

There was some excitement when Ben showed up. He surprised them, arriving on the same train as Daniel. The girls introduced him to the dog, who leaped in the air and shrieked in uncanny, high-pitched glee. Ben patted Gatto, and Molly patted Ben.

“Dinner!” Coco said, and rang the cowbell outside even though they were all already together.

At the table, Ben said he had an announcement to make. No, Grandma, I’m not pregnant. The little girls laughed and pushed each other. Not pregnant, but moving back to New York for August, a job as a paralegal, enrolled in an LSAT study course at night, signed up to take the exam at the end of the month.

“You can stay in my apartment,” Joy said. “Would that be helpful?”

Ben gave a sheepish smile. “Well, as a matter of fact, I knew you wouldn’t mind, so I kind of already left my stuff there. The doorman let me in.”

“But you won’t get to be in so many parades if you leave New Orleans,” Cora said. “And wear costumes.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” said Molly.

Ben’s genial smile disappeared. “Why?”

Because it’s infantile, she wanted to say. Because all you ever do down there is drink and play dress-up. “Just time for something new.”

“New is overrated,” Joy said, but no one responded. It was a noisy table and she thought again about getting hearing aids; perhaps she had spoken too softly. It was sometimes hard for her to gauge these days.

“I’m very proud of Ben,” she said in a louder voice. “It’s difficult to change anything in this life.”

Still no one looked her way. They were lost in their excitement and chatter. But Ben must have heard her, for he kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, “Thank you.”

They were sitting outside at the long picnic table. Daniel took in the scene before him with satisfaction: his wife and children, his sister and his nephew, his mother; the corn on the cob, the first corn of the year, the butterflied leg of lamb he’d grilled perfectly, not gray, not blue.

But Ben then announced he was a vegetarian and refused the perfectly grilled lamb. Ruby asked if the lamb was butchered by a kosher butcher, and Cora, horrified at the thoughts brought on by the word “butcher,” said she was vegan as of that moment and refused her plate of lamb, too.

Daniel sat in the gloaming, swatting mosquitoes, morosely chewing the perfect lamb, aggrieved by his family and their vegetables, when his mother cleared her throat and said in an uncharacteristically formal voice, “I’d like to invite Karl to Ruby’s bat mitzvah.”

“What?” he said. “Why?”

“Why?” said Molly.

“Who’s Karl?” Ruby asked.

“You remember, Ruby,” Ben said. “Old guy with the red walker like Grandpa’s?”

Joy wasn’t sure she liked that description, but she nodded. “You met him at Passover,” she said. “He was a friend of Grandpa’s.”

“I’m sorry, but this is not appropriate,” Daniel said. “He’s practically a stranger. Ruby’s met him exactly once. Why would he come to her bat mitzvah?”

“He and Grandpa became good friends,” Joy said. “And I would like to invite him. Period.” She was a little red in the face. Daniel could see the color rising even in the dusk.

“But why do you want him to come,” Ruby said, “if he’s Grandpa’s friend? He won’t be able to see Grandpa.”

“Ruby,” her mother said sharply.

Joy said, “I thought it would be nice, that’s all.”

“Oh, okay,” Ruby said. “Since Grandpa can’t come, like a representative.”

“Like instead of Grandpa,” said Cora.

For a moment there was silence, then Coco boomed, “Salad! I forgot the salad,” and dashed inside.

“No one can take the place of Grandpa,” Daniel said.

“Yeah,” Ruby said, giving Cora a punch in the arm.

Cora began to cry, Ruby called her a crybaby, Joy excused herself with a headache, Ben cleared the table, Ruby punched Cora again and said it was her fault that Grandma had a headache because she was such a crying crybaby, Daniel yelled at them both, Coco yelled at Daniel for yelling at the children, Molly filled her glass with wine and downed it, and dinner was over.

“I really think it’s, I don’t know, unsuitable,” Molly said to Daniel as they sat in the lawn chairs in the dark a few hours and a few bottles of wine later. “It’s, it’s unseemly.” She knew she’d had far too much wine, but when your octogenarian mother announces her intention to betray your recently deceased father with her college boyfriend in public, there’s not much choice but to drown your sorrow and humiliation in drink, that’s what she told Freddie when Freddie called earlier.

Molly looked up at the stars. They were revolving. Stars did revolve, didn’t they? No, they didn’t. The earth revolved and it looked like stars revolved, she could almost hear that little pedant Ruby correcting her, but these stars were revolving so fast. “Unseemly,” she said again. “It’s like she’s bringing a date. A date. To Ruby’s bat mitzvah.” Molly closed her eyes, but the stars kept spinning.

“Okay, so she has a new friend, okay, fine, good,” Daniel said. “But you don’t have to bring him to a family thing, right? I think it’s disrespectful. To Dad.”

“And us.”

“The body isn’t even cold yet.”

“No boundaries,” Molly said. “I mean, she’s our mother.”

There was silence, except for the stream.

Then Daniel said, “Do you think they…”

“What? Do I think who what?”

“You know. Mom and Karl.”

“Daniel! You’re, you’re a…” She wanted to say pervert, but she was overcome by a wave of nausea.

“Molly, oh god, that’s disgusting.” He moved out of the way as she retched.

“Thank god Ben didn’t see that,” she muttered, still leaning over the side of the chair.

* * *

The next morning was a Saturday and Coco took Cora to a mall an hour away as compensation for too much nature, Ben and Ruby went out on a bike ride, and Molly and Danny were both still asleep. Joy made herself a soft-boiled egg that was too hard and a piece of toast. The house was unusually quiet, no construction equipment grinding next door, no grandchildren squabbling. Even Gatto was silent, asleep in a patch of sun in the kitchen. Joy drank her tea and thought how serene it was.

Alone at last.

That was meant to refer to a couple, surely. Two lovers, alone at last.

Nevertheless.

She and Aaron had lived together for so long they had barely noticed each other, like two old dogs asleep before the fire. Without him, the room was empty, any room. Yet it was wearing to be around other people. That was something she realized more and more. People you love, they wear on you, too. Molly and Danny and Coco and the girls, she wanted them to be near every minute of every day — it was wearing, that was all. Lovely. And wearing.

She looked for the jam in the refrigerator, but then remembered Coco kept it in the cabinet. But she kept peanut butter in the fridge instead of the cabinet. It was aggravating, all this change. Coco and Danny put knives in the dishwasher, they left the bathroom door closed when no one was in it. There were so many things here, Upstate in her house, that were done differently now. The television remote was new and made no sense to her, but then, she was not allowed to watch television, anyway, she made it too loud and disturbed everyone. The toilet paper was the wrong brand, as were the paper towels and the dishwashing liquid. The towels were folded oddly and put in the wrong closet when they were clean or, when they had been used, hung wet and moldering on hooks she had never installed in the bathroom. The place had become almost foreign to her, as if she were a stranger, a stranger in the house her mother gave her, the house she had nurtured and protected for so many years.

She wondered what would happen if she agreed to live with Karl. It was possible he would turn out to be another comfortable old dog, just like Aaron, just like her, but it was more likely he would be wearing. New, unfamiliar, and wearing.

Of course she would bring him to Ruby’s bat mitzvah. Her children were behaving like children. They should be happy she had a new friend. She hadn’t mentioned Karl’s proposal that the two of them live together, but even that should make her children happy. Would they prefer she be sent off to a nursing home, by them? Like Freddie’s father? To fend off some senile old goat? Like Freddie’s father? Molly and Danny were probably worried about their inheritance, that’s what it was. She was doomed to rot on a urine-stained sofa like Mrs. Astor. Except there was no inheritance. Except the house. Which they wanted to sell. Where she no longer belonged.

She tried to shake off this feeling that she was an intruder, the sense that even this timeless place had moved on and left her behind. She went outside and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs. Such an unpleasant smell. The dog must have vomited. She moved to the porch swing and breathed in the wet summer air, so familiar, her summer air. But it felt all wrong, even the air was wrong, heavier than she remembered it, stickier. The fresh smell of grass and soil and the damp living smell of the stream evaded her. She had hoped, she’d been sure, that Upstate was where she would get her bearings again. She would walk along the road and pick wildflowers, wade in the stream to cool off from the summer heat, pick raspberries from the thorny hedges at the bottom of the hill.

But everything had gone awry. The weather had gone wrong first, hotter and rainier than any year Joy could remember, but that was just the beginning. There was the construction on the other side of the road, which got worse and worse, puffing out clouds of dust when it didn’t rain, oozing mud when it did. And that rain, forcing the field mice to take refuge in the house, the lightning knocking out the power every week. There was a coyote, too, which prowled the property and howled at night. She worried about Gatto, so small, so urban in his experience of the world. Bad enough he’d been attacked by a brute in Los Angeles. What if he wandered out one night and was attacked by a coyote? She wouldn’t be there to save him. She’d be inside, asleep. She had become attached to the dog. He was the only one who didn’t tell her what to do.

The swing creaked as she stood up. She could not wade in the stream this summer. It was rushing full speed ahead, carrying fallen branches, no time to wait for an old lady and her poor balance. She could not pick raspberries, either. The bulldozers had ripped the bushes out of the ground. And the wildflowers had been crushed beneath enormous tire treads.

She walked out onto the lawn and looked back at her house. Perhaps she should sell it, after all. It stood on the hill, dim and weather-beaten, her own house, a house she loved and had loved for almost as long as she could remember. But at that moment, in the gray morning heat, this wonderful place, this house that had given itself over to the happiness of so many generations of children, seemed to feel as out of place as Joy did.

The sky was suddenly dark, thunder grumbling in the distance. Poor Ben and Ruby. They’d get soaked. What if they went under a tree to get out of the rain? What if they touched a wire fence? They could be electrocuted. Joy felt herself tilting, listing to one side. The bottom of the earth shot away from her, from beneath her feet, then came back. Vertigo, a new plague, thank you very much. And her eyes, so unreliable. There had been several trips to the ophthalmologist in the city and an emergency repair of a cataract lens that was far from successful. She closed one eye, but the sky still threatened rain.

She wished Ruby was not going off to sleep-away camp. She wished Cora would not be going to day camp every weekday. She wished Danny didn’t have to go to the office. She wished Aaron were not dead.

It’s your fault, damn you, she thought. All your fault, Aaron.

What was the point of everyone being together if people went away?

If the black clouds above had not spelled certain death for Ruby and Ben, she would have welcomed the darkening sky and thought it beautiful, much more beautiful, certainly, than the dingy clouds of dust, the dun-colored fog, that was usually lurking in the sky from the building site. The digging had done something to the septic tank as well, something obstructive, and there had been overflowing toilets. The fireflies had given way to houseflies and bees and wasps and, with all the rain, a burgeoning crop of mosquitoes. Inside, the air conditioners labored noisily and the doors and windows were kept shut.

The girls sometimes sat on her lap, smelling of dirt and childhood, and she would say, “I’m so lucky to be able to spend so much time with you.”

“Yes, you belong here with us, Mom,” Danny would say, benevolent, as if the house were his and Joy were his guest.

And Joy would think, I don’t belong anywhere. Then: Joy! Are you such a delicate flower? Get a grip.

“Mom!” Danny said, pushing the screen door open, still in his pajamas.

He was angry, Joy realized with surprise. He was so rarely angry about anything that did not have to do with climate change. Maybe another glacier had melted.

“We have to talk,” he said. “Right now.”

“Don’t come out here barefoot, Danny. The deer ticks…”

“Come in, then.” He gestured impatiently.

As she sat at the kitchen table, Joy allowed herself to feel just how tired she was. Then she sat up straight and smiled at her son. “We’ll sell it, that’s all,” she said.

“Sell what?”

“The house. This. The house, the house.”

“No. Karl. We have to talk about this Karl guy.”

“This Karl guy? Is that how you think of your father’s friend?”

“Oh come on, Mom, let’s cut the ‘Daddy’s friend’ crap.”

Joy was stunned. Danny never spoke to her like that.

“What is the matter with you?” she said. “Good lord.”

Joy went outside again. It was raining now. Good. She would catch pneumonia and die and everyone would have to stop lecturing her.

The raindrops were enormous. She could almost hear them as they hit the ground. They were cold on her arms, on her face, a shock in the steaming heat of the day. Her clothes were soaked through immediately, her pants sticking to her legs.

“Mom, come inside. What are you doing?” It was Molly. She ran outside.

“You’re barefoot! You’ll get a tick!” Joy said.

Molly pulled her inside and threw a beach towel around her.

“It’s only water,” Joy said. Her teeth were chattering. She let Molly rub the towel on her hair, her back, her arms. She obediently went into her room and put on dry clothes. When she came out, Molly handed her a mug of coffee.

“I can’t drink coffee. My digestion…”

Molly snatched it back. “Fine.”

“Where’s Danny?”

“Sulking in his bedroom.”

“He was very rude to me. I’m eighty-six years old and I deserve some respect.” Joy felt the tears and willed them back.

Molly sat across from her at the table, bedraggled, her hair wet and matted, dark circles under her eyes. “Yes, let’s talk about respect,” she was saying. “Respect for your husband, my father, Daniel’s father. Let’s talk about that. Since we’re talking about respect.”

“Why did you make such a fuss about the rain? It’s about a hundred degrees out.”

“Mom, it’s disrespectful to Daddy to invite Karl to Ruby’s bat mitzvah. That’s what Daniel is upset about. And so am I.”

“That’s ridiculous. Karl was your father’s friend.”

“He’s your friend.”

“Am I not allowed to have friends now? What is wrong with you two?”

Molly offered her mother a cup of tea, which Joy accepted. She did not want tea. It would make her have to pee. And the kitchen was humid and hot. But she could see Molly trying to be civil. It was important to be civil. She had tried to teach her children that.

“Look, Mom, you can’t bring him to the bat mitzvah, okay? You just can’t. It wouldn’t look right. I mean, it’s only been a few months. It might, you know, embarrass Ruby.”

“Ruby? You mean it will embarrass you two, although god knows why.”

“You think he can take Dad’s place?” Molly said, all pretense at civility gone. “Well, he can’t. Ever.”

She was shouting now, and Daniel stomped down the stairs to join in: “The body is not even cold. How can you do this to us?”

Joy looked away from them, her two beloved children, yelling and stamping their feet like toddlers. Graying toddlers. She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling and wondered if it might fall in and shut them up.

“What has Karl ever done to you?” she said softly.

There was silence, just the thunder, closer now, and the rain on the roof.

“Did you know that Karl asked me to live with him?”

“See?” Daniel said to Molly. “See? I told you.”

“Mommy! You can’t. You’ll turn into a caretaker.”

“Your father liked Karl. Your father would have wanted me to have some companionship. Your father would be ashamed of you both.”

They shifted uneasily.

“Yeah, well, still, it’s just…” Daniel’s words trailed off.

“And whether I choose to live with Karl or not,” Joy continued, “one thing I can see clearly now. I cannot stay in this house one day longer. I am not welcome. I do not belong.”

And she marched out, slammed her door, and began packing.