Reunion: A Novel Read online

  “Yes,” she says, nodding but not looking at me.

  “And it sounds like a gun going off?” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “It woke him up almost every night.” I’ve embarrassed her, which is not how I wanted to start the day. I wanted to start the day a better person, but now I’ll have to put it off until tomorrow.

  “They should really come up with a better name,” I say.

  This world gets more and more perplexing. Fact: the longer I live, the less I understand.

  27

  morning, kitchen, eggs

  Elliot goes for a jog and Nell goes upstairs to take a shower. Sasha is tidying up the living room, getting ready for the day’s guests. I am in the kitchen, drinking coffee and nursing a mild hangover. There are two new text messages from Marcy. There is no word from Peter.

  A carton of eggs is on the counter in front of me. I don’t know what the menu is, but I’m assuming it’s something brunchy and inoffensive. My money’s on quiche or strata. I open the carton of eggs and look at them. They’re the brown type. Organic. Big, with little mole-like flecks. I’ve always liked the look of an egg. Joyce kept a basket of hollowed-out ostrich eggs as a dining room centerpiece.

  I pick up one of Sasha’s eggs and close my fist around it. I’m tempted to disprove the myth—that an egg squeezed in a palm won’t crack—but I don’t. Instead, I put the egg back, close the cardboard cover, and then, very slowly, use my finger to push the carton across the counter until it falls to the floor. The sound is stunning.

  “Shit,” I say.

  I wait, but nothing happens. Sasha must not have heard me.

  “Shit,” I say again. This time louder.

  She appears at the entryway to the kitchen.

  “I’m so sorry.” I bend down and start picking up the eggs. “I think they’re all broken.” The mess isn’t too bad. Only a little goop has escaped. But all twelve eggs are, in fact, broken.

  Sasha gets a roll of paper towels and bends down next to me.

  “No problem,” she says. “I have to go to the store anyway. I forgot the pasta salad.”

  I look up. Of course! It’s what I wanted all along.

  “I’ll go,” I say. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Sasha grabs a bottle from under the sink and sprays the floor. Then she puts down a wad of towels and uses her foot to finish the job. I’ve always liked people who use their feet for chores usually reserved for hands. It reminds me that we came from monkeys. Or apes. Whatever. It reminds me that we all came from the same place.

  “Take my car,” she says. “Keys are on the front seat.”

  “Make me a list,” I say. “Anything you need.”

  She ducks into the pantry and I try not to think about how easy it would have been just to say, “Hey, I need to get away for a few minutes. I’m panicking about the arrival of the ex-wives. I’m panicking about the idea of the half siblings. Do you mind if I take your car and get some air?” Is there a chance in hell that she would have said no? No. There’s not. And so why couldn’t I have been direct? Why couldn’t I say what I wanted? At least I didn’t hide the eggs. At least I didn’t take them upstairs and stash them under the bunk beds to be found, no doubt, by Mindy at some inopportune time.

  Sasha reappears with a list.

  “You know how to get there, right?”

  “I remember,” I say.

  “They have about a hundred different pasta salads. Pick one with lots of colors,” she says. “Your choice.”

  She hands me the piece of paper and I put it in my pocket, which is when I rediscover the two five-dollar bills, which is when I remember I am without funds.

  What I think is: At least I know when it’s raining.

  What I say is: “This is embarrassing.”

  I make an exaggerated face.

  “Can I borrow some cash?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Of course. But, you know, they take cards.”

  Of course they do.

  “I lost it at the airport.” A lie. “I canceled it, but it’ll be a few days and they’re sending it to Chicago.”

  “Of course,” she says.

  I am lying to a saint.

  She opens a cabinet above the stove and takes down a tin of coffee. “Take what you need.”

  She pushes the tin across to me. I open the lid. There’s a few hundred dollars in there. Maybe more. I am being tested.

  “You do it,” I say. I push the tin back to her. “I’m already so embarrassed.”

  She counts out five twenties and hands them to me.

  “Kate,” she says. “For real, don’t be embarrassed. I lose my entire wallet every six months. I’m not kidding. I’ve been to the DMV three times this year. No joke.”

  I fold the twenties up with the list and put them in my back pocket.

  “And now you know where the money is,” she says. “Take whatever you need whenever you need it.”

  I am definitely being tested.

  She puts the tin back above the stove.

  “Hey,” I say. “Would Mindy like to come with me?”

  It’s the guilt talking. Bill Cunningham would be so disappointed in me.

  Sasha cocks her hip and looks at me. “Are you sure?” she says.

  No. No, I’m not. I take it back.

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  “She’d love it,” says Sasha. “You’re sweet to offer.”

  28

  grocery shopping with Mindy

  Sweet? I don’t think so. But whatever I am—unsteady, unsafe, unstable—it’s how I ended up here, with Mindy, at the fanciest, cleanest, coldest grocery store in Druid Hills, picking out stinky cheeses and multicolored pasta salads.

  Mindy is acting timid and clingy. Whenever I turn an aisle, she grabs onto my shirt and looks up at me, as though to make sure it’s still me. I feel culpable. Nobody ever asks kids what they want to do. Decisions are always being made on their behalves. Probably Mindy wanted to stay and hang out with her cool half sister Nell. Probably she wanted to bake and churn and stir and taste and greet the guests as they arrived. Instead, she’s helping push a cart down a too-cold grocery store with Big Scary Kate.

  “You and your mom seem super tight,” I say.

  I look down at her. She’s nodding, scanning the shelf in front of her.

  “Does she have lots of friends?”

  We’re moving slowly through canned goods now, which we don’t need, but it’s a way for us to talk—walking side by side, pushing the cart in front of us—without having to look directly at each other. I’m trying hard not to shock her into complete silence.

  I look down at her again. Now she’s shaking her head.

  “Your mom doesn’t have lots of friends.”

  She shakes her head harder, but doesn’t look up.

  “She’s so pretty, though,” I say.

  Still the shaking.

  No words.

  “I would think she’d be popular,” I say.

  Mindy stops in front of a display of soups. I stop too. She tilts her chin up toward me. Her face is bright red, her eyes completely bloodshot.

  “Mindy,” I say, and squat down so we’re eye to eye. “Oh, kiddo.” I pull her into me. “What’s wrong?”

  She lets me hug her, which surprises me, and I almost think I’ve fallen for some trick—like she’s maybe twisted the skin on the inside of her wrist so hard that she’s made herself cry (something I’ve thought about doing with Peter)—when she starts full-on hyperventilating and spits out the words “I miss him.” The phrase comes out wet and I feel moisture seeping through the shoulder of my shirt from where she’s crying into it.

  I pull her off me gently, just so I can look at her and reassure her.

  “Who?” I say in a near-whisper, wiping under her eyes with my thumbs.

  “Dad,” she says, and clutches me all over again.

  Of course. Dad. They probably came to this grocery store together. The seventy-year-ol
d and the seven-year-old. They probably had a blast going up and down the aisles.

  Tentatively, because there’s every chance in the world this could go very badly, I hold my hands up, palms facing Mindy. Her eyes widen.

  “Do you know this game?” I say.

  She bites on her upper lip and nods. My heart flutters. It’s nearly imperceptible, but the butterfly wings are there, behind the rib cage, just inside the right ventricle, flapping.

  “Will it make you feel better?”

  There are people in the aisle with us, other women, probably women who are mothers. If they’re watching, then they’re judging, but we don’t care.

  Mindy nods again.

  “Okay then,” I say.

  I kneel so that I am directly across from her, my hands parallel with her shoulders.

  “Hit me,” I say softly.

  She gives my right palm a little punch.

  “Again,” I say.

  She punches me again.

  “Ouch,” I say. It doesn’t hurt, but she cracks a little smile and that smile makes the wings flutter faster.

  “One more?” she asks.

  “Go for it.”

  She lands a perfect little thunk in the middle of my palm.

  “You’re strong,” I say.

  She nods. “Dad said so.”

  “He was right,” I say. I want to cry. He never told me I was strong. But this isn’t about me. “Want some ice cream?”

  Her eyes go buggy.

  “Don’t tell your mom, though, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  AND SO NOW we’re in the car in the grocery store parking lot, the A/C on full blast, and I’m watching Mindy eat an ice cream cone in the passenger seat up front. There’s forty dollars and some change in my back pocket. I didn’t touch the two fives.

  “Is it good?” I say.

  She nods. Her eyes are still a little bloodshot, but the snot at least has abated and the tears have dried up. I reach over and tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye and smiles. I should be having some sort of breakthrough right now. I should be thinking something about me and motherhood. Something terrifying and big, like, Oh fuck, it’s not that I don’t want children—mine or some poor stranger’s—it’s that I don’t want children with Peter. But that’s a breakthrough I don’t want to make. That’s a breakthrough for another day, if at all. Sure, I’m able to see the timeliness of the thought, but nope, I’m not yet willing to lock it into place in any meaningful or long-lasting way.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, a pause between licks.

  “You’re sorry?” I say, and give her a big, friendly, dopey smile, actually thinking the words big, friendly, and dopey to try to make my face behave the way I want it to. “What are you sorry for?”

  “Getting you in trouble.”

  “You mean last night?”

  She nods and eats her ice cream.

  “I’m just really sorry you found out like that.”

  Stan must have thought about Mindy. He must have considered how she’d get the news. A walk at dusk, just Sasha and his youngest. The girl’s little hand cupped around a few of the mother’s fingers. Something gentle and strangely sweet. Something to bring the two of them—his last wife and his last daughter—even closer than they already are. He didn’t have to worry about Sasha saying anything about suicide. Not her speed. But me. Stan probably hadn’t considered me. He probably didn’t imagine what I might do. He couldn’t have known that his thirty-four-year-old would drunkenly spill the beans while on the phone with her ex-lover.

  “I told Mom,” she says.

  “What did you tell your mom?”

  “That I was spying,” she says.

  I wipe a bit of ice cream from the seat.

  “I did a bit of snooping when I was a kid,” I say.

  “You did?”

  I nod. “They called me meddlesome.”

  “Who did?”

  “Joyce,” I say.

  “What’s meddlesome?” she says.

  “Snooping,” I say. “Paying attention when you’re not supposed to.” Which, now that I think of it, probably isn’t the best way of saying it, because honestly, paying attention when you’re not supposed to doesn’t sound all that bad. Unless, of course, it’s a kid who’s doing it. Then it sounds bad. Or if not bad, tricky.

  “Meddlesome,” she says back to me, nodding gravely, like she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  This kid. This little gray-skinned, gangly kid. I can’t believe that just last night, I was thinking of her as some sort of mastermind, some sort of long-awaited opponent. She’s just a girl. Just my weirdo little half sister who, according to my brother, anyway, looks just like me.

  “You ready to get home?” I say.

  She holds out the last of her ice cream cone.

  “You don’t want it?” I say.

  “Last bite is best bite,” she says, which is something my father used to say, and for a minute, I think I get it. I think I understand what all the fuss is about. For the briefest of seconds—a second split into nanoseconds—I think, I miss him too.

  “Are you okay?” she says.

  “Yeah, why?”

  She nods at my chest. I look down. I’m clutching at my breast like some sort of lunatic, and I realize my heart feels too big for its cavity.

  “I’m fine,” I say, which is a lie. But I manage to take the piece of cone she’s still holding in my direction and pop it in my mouth.

  29

  Nell figures things out, sort of

  Nell is standing in the driveway when we get back from the grocery store. There are two other cars—cars I don’t recognize but that must belong either to some of our grown half siblings or to their mothers. My chest is still expanding, trying to escape from its cage.

  Mindy hops out first and runs to Nell.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Nell says. “Have fun?”

  “Yulp,” she says. “Double yulp.”

  “Is that ice cream on your chin?”

  “Yulp,” she says. So much for secrets.

  “Don’t tell your mom,” says Nell. “She’ll be M-A-D.”

  Mindy holds out her hand like I taught her before things went south at the store. South, but only momentarily. We seem at this juncture to be on a northerly swing.

  “Give me five,” she says.

  Nell slaps her hand and looks at me.

  “Up high,” says Mindy, raising her hand higher. Nell slaps it.

  “Down low,” says Mindy. She lowers her hand, but moves it away too slowly and Nell has to deliberately miss. “Too slow,” says Mindy.

  “Yeah, yeah,” says Nell. “Inside.” She shoos her away.

  And now it is just me and Nell in the driveway. Her arms are crossed. She’s got that pissy look working on her face that always makes her appear older than she is.

  “What’s up?” I say, shutting the driver’s-side door and going to the trunk for the groceries.

  “You were gone three hours,” she says.

  “Was I?” I disappear behind the open trunk. I could write this scene in my sleep.

  “You were,” she says.

  I root around in the trunk longer than I need to. Sadly, there’s really nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. The trunk offers very limited procrastination.

  “Did you borrow money from Sasha?”

  “Are you asking me a question or are you telling me that you know I borrowed money from Sasha?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “I lost my card,” I say.

  Still nothing.

  “I can write her a check.”

  “Peter called,” she says.

  I stand up, knocking my head against the roof of the hatch. I did not see that bit of dialogue coming.

  “Shit,” I say.

  “Thought that would get your attention.”

  I shut the hatch and rub my head with my free hand.

  “You’re b
leeding,” she says.

  I look at my fingers. “I am?”

  “Christ,” she says, coming over to me. She takes the groceries and sets them on the gravel. “You’re a mess.”

  She removes a damp paper towel from her back pocket and wipes my forehead with it in a not-exactly-delicate way.

  “What did he say?”

  She pulls down on my chin to get a better view of the cut. “What do you think he said?”

  I twist my mouth off to the side. “That he’s trying to get in touch with me?”

  “No,” she says, and then steadies my face so that we’re looking squarely at each other. She’s so maternal sometimes. I have no idea where she’s learned all these mannerisms I equate so thoroughly with the mannerisms of a mother. It’s essentially gentle manhandling, and I kind of like it. “He wants you to stop calling.”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  “And texting.”

  “That makes sense,” I say.

  “See,” she says, and gives my forehead a final hard dab, “but it doesn’t make sense. Not to me, anyway.”

  “Right.”

  “Because last time I checked, he was your husband.”

  “Right.”

  The back door opens, and Elliot sticks his head out. “You guys coming in?”

  “In a minute,” says Nell, without turning to look at him.

  “Who’s here?” I say to Elliot, hoping that Nell will let me go.

  “The twins and Joyce.”

  “What about the twins’ mom?” I say.

  Elliot takes a step toward us and stage-whispers: “We have not yet been blessed with the arrival of Whitney Somerworth, botanist extraordinaire.”

  “Ah,” I say. “Too bad.”

  Nell turns and looks at Elliot. “Can we get a minute?” she says. “For real?”

  “Fine, fine,” he says. “Do what you want. Do what you want.” My ally disappears inside.

  Nell looks at me. “Give me something,” she says. “Anything.”

  “He wants a divorce,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “He told me that much. He said I should ask you for the reasons.”