Reunion: A Novel Page 17

  “You selfish little—”

  Nell interrupts him. “Don’t say anything you can’t take back, Ell.” She puts a hand on his shoulder.

  “Ha.” He says it in that gross, dull voice that I’m beginning to think all men are capable of. “‘Don’t say anything you can’t take back?’ How about ‘Don’t do anything you can’t take back?’”

  “Like an affair?” I say. “I get it.” And I do get it; some decisions are irreversible. But like I’ve said, sometimes it’s the irreversible ones that help a person get to know herself a little better. It’s the consequences that matter. It’s the fact that there are no do-overs that makes life matter at all.

  “You don’t get it,” Elliot says. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. That’s your problem.”

  One night, after I’d told him I didn’t want a baby—ours or anyone else’s—Peter woke me up. I’d cried out in my sleep. “What is it?” he said. “What is it?” He had his hand on my chest. He was trying to comfort me. “Tell me,” he said. There was nothing but me and him and the sound machine in that room, and so I told him: It was a dream. A terrible dream. And in the dream I’d awakened in a strange room, a room I’d never been in. A gang of children was crowded around me. “Where am I?” I said to the children. “You’re home,” they said. “You live here.” I shook my head. “I don’t,” I said. “Tell me where I am.” But the children said I was wrong. They said I belonged to them and they to me. I pushed them away. “It’s a dream,” I told them. I was filled with relief. “It’s a dream.” But they shook their heads and chased after me. “It’s not a dream,” they said. “It’s real. You want to take care of us. It’s real.”

  I told all this to Peter. My guard was down. I wasn’t thinking.

  He took his hand away from my chest. “You’re trying to hurt me,” he said.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  He sat up. Our bedroom was dark. I couldn’t see his face.

  “Then you have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. He slept on the couch that night. I started looking on message boards the next day.

  The point: Peter was right then, and Elliot is right now: I have no idea what I’m talking about.

  “Oh, Kate,” says Nell, but she doesn’t say it with any sort of sympathy. Instead, she’s looking at me like I’m some ragged kitten that can’t take the hint that this isn’t a no-kill shelter.

  “You’re vile,” says Elliot.

  I am. It’s true. But I’m cornered, trapped. I feel I must claw my way out, and so I say, “You know what? My agent wanted me to write about this.”

  “Write about what?” Elliot looks bored with me. They both look painfully bored with me, with this stranger who’s been masquerading all these years as their sister.

  “But I told her there was nothing to write about.” I can’t stop myself. “I told her there wasn’t a story here. I told her, my family is tedious. I told her, my family is shit.”

  The three of us are just standing here, no longer a single united still life. Lines have been drawn, sides have been taken, teams have been formed. It is me against them.

  Elliot’s right. This is boring. This late-night run-in feels forced and ultimately inconsequential. To hell with Atlanta. To hell with this funeral. To hell with these people.

  “Forget it,” I say.

  Neither of them responds. They’ve won. I’ve lost. I know that much. But the question is, won what? Life? What would that even mean?

  They’ve both got their arms crossed now. They’re looking at me like I’m a rat drowning in its own excrement. They’re giving me nothing, not even a twig to hold on to. If car keys were on the counter in front of me, I’d grab them and walk out the door. If a bottle of bourbon was on the counter in front of me, I’d grab it and walk out the door. But there’s nothing on the counter in front of me, and so there’s nothing for me to grab, and so, in a completely undramatic fashion, I turn away from them and walk empty-handed and alone out the back door.

  “Wait,” I hear Nell say.

  “Let her go,” says Elliot, which is what they both must decide on, because they do let me go.

  Outside it’s not exactly cool, but the humidity has dissipated and it’s actually kind of pleasant. I’ve always liked Atlanta late at night. Wait. Let me rephrase: at night, I find the city tolerable. There are fewer people (depending on what part of town you’re in, obviously). The crickets are out. The crickets and the cicadas. It seems almost manageable at nighttime. The streetlights soften the edges, cushion the hard lines.

  I take a right out of Sasha’s driveway and cross so that I’m on the lighted side of the street. There is no plan. There is no place for me to go. But a walk will clear my head. A walk will calm me down. That’s the theory, anyway.

  I knew Elliot would react strongly to the infidelity. I knew from the very beginning. So it’s not his reaction that comes as a surprise to me. And I knew Nell would be disgusted. But Elliot had called me vile. Vile. I can’t remember the last time I’ve even seen that word in print, much less heard it. You’d think I cheated on him. It was hatred I saw on Elliot’s face, a look of impasse, as if this time I really have gone too far and now there’s no possibility for forgiveness—short term or long.

  I was hoping Elliot would take the news more like Rita had, or if not with such generosity, then that he might have reacted with disappointment, but also with pity, also with sadness, also with an air of reassurance. Some indication that We can get through this, and we’ll do it together. As opposed to Pack your bags. You’re out of this family. Am I missing something?

  I replay the scene in my head.

  The kitchen. The dark. Nell saying, “Don’t.” Nell saying, “Not now.” And what about what she said when I walked in? Did she say, “She’s gone too far”? I had assumed they were talking about Rita. I had assumed they were huddled in the darkness in the kitchen to talk about Rita and Rita’s choices.

  But Nell said, “Don’t.”

  Nell said, “Not now.”

  In Elliot’s hand there was a cell phone. He must have been on the phone before I walked in. He’d been on the phone with Rita. And Rita—Rita had been on the phone with me.

  Thunderbolts.

  Lightning.

  Clarity.

  They were talking about me. As in, I had gone too far. In advising Rita to cheat, I had gone too far. Rita called Elliot. Of course she called Elliot. And she told him. She told him that I thought she should have an affair.

  It doesn’t feel good, but the revelation actually feels better than my pure lack of understanding. Elliot isn’t mad about the affair—well, I’m not sure I should go that far just yet—but what’s really eating away at him, what caused that gnarly look of hatred, is that I counseled his wife. I counseled betrayal.

  Of course. Of course.

  It all makes sense now. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t do it again—counseling Rita, that is; I’d undo my performance in the kitchen just now in a heartbeat—which is to say I do think there’s some unpopular sensibility to my logic. But at least I understand the offense, which means I can begin to craft an apology.

  And Nell—Nell had said, “She’s gone too far.” And she’d added, “But still.” But still. But still. Which means that she sees my side. She might not agree with me, but she is able to see my side; she is able to remember her role as a sister and our roles as family members. We are still a unit. A unit in crisis, perhaps—massive fucking crisis—but still a unit.

  I stop under a streetlamp and look up at the muted yellow light. The electricity pulses in the air and makes a thick, buzzing hum. All around the bulb are black winged things that are also buzzing and humming and pulsing, buzzing and humming and pulsing.

  And I think, It’s getting closer. Yes, yes. The epiphany is getting closer. I can feel it. I can feel it knocking about in me, shaping itself, forming itself into something that—one day, one day soon—I will be able to hold on to.

  37<
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  waking up in the middle of the night

  I wake up in the middle of the night. My back is moist, my hair damp. I look at my phone. It’s 3:15. I’d assumed Mindy was the one who would have nightmares about those geese. But it was me, and in my dream, Nell’s story came to life. Only I was Stan. I was the one killing geese. I was the hunter.

  I slip off the top bunk and tiptoe downstairs. There’s nothing specific that I’m after. No middle-of-the-night sip of wine or bite of ice cream. It’s just that Atlanta is starting to feel small again. I’m starting to feel its suffocation. I’ve been away from my own world too long. I feel displaced, uneasy.

  Downstairs, Elliot is fast asleep on the couch. He’s thrown off the top blanket. I tiptoe toward him and place it carefully at the foot of the couch. If he wakes up and he’s cold, it’ll be within his reach.

  There was a time—so many years ago it hurts, but there was a time—when I could have crawled into bed with Elliot and there would have been nothing out of the ordinary about it. Nobody would have raised their eyebrows or thought anything suspicious was going on. It would just be a brother and his little sister curled up together like two sleeping puppies.

  I miss being young. I miss the lack of boundaries. I miss the easy cluelessness of it all.

  I make a beeline for the kitchen before I talk myself into getting into bed with Elliot, which would be sheer madness, but there’s no trusting me at all these days. And of course, as if to prove the theory, the cash tin is sitting on the kitchen island. Just sitting there. All by itself. My heart makes a thudding sound.

  Outside the kitchen window, there is a spark of fire. A moment later, I smell cigarette smoke. This makes sense, because when I open the back door, I find Sasha sitting on the swing, sitting in darkness and smoking a cigarette.

  “Guilty pleasure,” she says.

  Thud, thud, thud.

  I close the door quietly behind me and take a seat on the concrete railing across from her. “I thought weed was a guilty pleasure,” I say. This is the first time the two of us have been alone since she winked at me.

  “I am a woman of many vices,” she says. Then, after a slow inhalation, she adds, “Do you want one?” She holds the pack toward me so the moonlight hits the plastic wrapper.

  I shake my head, then say, “Actually, yes. Sure. That sounds different.”

  I take a cigarette. She lights a match and holds it so that I have to lean in close.

  “You left your money on the counter,” I say.

  She nods. “I hide the cigarettes underneath.”

  “I can put it away.” I half rise. Thud, thud, thud.

  “No, no,” she says. “Sit.”

  I do as instructed. “Where do you get it?”

  “Get what?” she says. “The weed?”

  “Your money.”

  She lowers her cigarette to a coffee mug next to her feet and taps the tip gently at its mouth.

  “You’re a nutso little thing,” she says.

  I clear my throat. “There’s nothing little about me.”

  She smiles and shakes her head. To Sasha, I am both adorable and inappropriate, and for some reason—at least at this moment—she’s fine with the combination. “My parents have been generous,” she says.

  “Family money,” I say. Thought so.

  “But I’m not a trust-funder or anything. I saved a lot when I was younger.” She pauses, as though she’s really considering the question, as though she’s never had to put the answer into words before. “I wanted my twenties to be about working on my body and working on my bank account. What my friends were doing—drinking, shopping, eating—looked boring to me.”

  I nod. She wouldn’t have liked me in my twenties.

  “Your father and I found each other at an interesting time in our lives.”

  I nod and smoke my cigarette, which is making me instantly light-headed.

  “He didn’t have any real friends,” she says. “At the club, there were people who glommed on to him, but he was too generous. They took what he had and moved on.”

  “Not you?” I realize it sounds like an accusation, which is definitely not how I mean it, but there’s no going back now.

  “You know what I loved about your father?”

  It’s a rhetorical question—of course I don’t know what she loved about Stan. I’ll never know. That’s the point. And yet she’s certainly taking her time with the answer.

  “Listen,” she says. “There are people—lots of people, most people—who spend a terrible amount of time caring about what other people think. Your father wasn’t one of those people.”

  Maybe he should have been. Maybe he should have cared more.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she says.

  “Yes,” I say. “You probably do.” And it’s true. I have no doubt in the world that she can guess my thoughts. They’d be the thoughts of any kid who felt given up on, abandoned.

  “He had this—” She stretches her hand into the air and grabs at it. Then she catches herself and laughs. “You’re going to say I sound like your father. But he had this, like, goddamn joie de vivre or something. He wanted to live. It was infectious. It was sexy. You know?”

  “Until he didn’t want to live.” I say it matter-of-factly. Maybe I’m trying to bring her down. Maybe I’m just trying to reestablish a more appropriate mood. I don’t know. But Sasha isn’t having it.

  “Yeah,” she says, this goofy grin still smashed across her face. “Yeah, but. Wow. The man oozed charm.”

  She’s remembering something. She’s got a specific scene playing on the screen in her noggin. It’s private and probably intimate and even if I could see it, I wouldn’t understand. But I do believe her. I do believe in the way he must once have made her feel.

  “I don’t believe in spiritual connections or telepathy,” she says. “But I’ve been sitting out here for the last half hour willing you to wake up and come talk to me.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say. Please, please, please, do not let this woman make a pass at me.

  “And now here you are,” she says. “Maybe it’s kismet.”

  “I had a bad dream.”

  “The geese?”

  “Yes,” I say, completely surprised.

  “Me too,” she says. “It was a nasty little story. Mindy’s up there sleeping like a rock, but I tossed and turned just thinking about those terrible boots.”

  The cigarette is making me nauseous, but I don’t want to be rude.

  “Were you the goose or Stan?” asks Sasha, and I wonder how she knows to ask that question. Is the choice so obvious? Are there only two ways to incorporate such a story into a dream? What about the little girl? What about Nell? Is there no room to adopt her point of view?

  “The hunter,” I say.

  “Ha,” she says. “A guilty conscience.”

  Yes, I think, a guilty conscience. But unlike Peter, I don’t put much stock in dreams unless they feature famous actors.

  “You were the goose?” I ask. “Zero guilt?”

  “No,” she says, stubbing her cigarette into the coffee mug. “I was the little girl. I was Nell.”

  I feel I’ve been tricked, but I can’t say how and so I say nothing.

  “Are you working on anything lately?”

  The Failed Comedian, starring Matt Damon as Matt Damon.

  “No,” I say.

  “Maybe you’ll get some material out of this visit.”

  I can picture it now:

  Fade in on KATE PULASKI, a woman two inches too long in every direction. She sits next to FRANK, die-hard Packers fan, in the last row of an airplane that’s just made an emergency landing in Indianapolis. Her phone buzzes.

  “Help me,” I say. “I hope not.”

  Then I think of Marcy’s requested memoir. How might that number begin?

  My father is dead.

  Everybody’s father is dead. Try again.

  My marriage is over and my father died this morning. />
  Good God. If I were reading that book, I’d throw it across the room before I finished the first sentence. Try again.

  My mother died when I was a little girl. My father died when I was a woman.

  Am I trying for chick lit? Keep it simple. Be honest. Facts only.

  On June 16, at roughly eight thirty in the morning, I get the phone call that my father is dead. That’s not quite right, but it’s better. I’d need to get the gun in immediately. Suicide sells, said Marcy. Now that—that is vile.

  Sasha says, “Wait here, yeah? I have something for you.”

  She gets up and slides quietly inside the dark house. I sit in silence and slowly finish my cigarette. The nausea passes. In college I dated a boy who said it took exactly seven minutes to smoke a perfect cigarette. At the time, I’d thought that was just about the coolest thing in the world. I’d thought he knew something about life and love and what it all meant. I let him pee on me once. It was the last time we went out. I hadn’t done it right, I think. I’d just lain there at the bottom of the tub, my knees bent awkwardly so that both he and I could fit, and watched as he took aim and peed. I hadn’t held my hands up. I hadn’t opened my mouth. Afterward—after I’d turned the water on and washed myself thoroughly—he’d sat on my windowsill and smoked a seven-minute cigarette. Then he said, “That’s not how I fantasized it happening.” If I could go back, if I could go back to that moment, I would have said something better. I would have said, “You think that’s how I imagined it?” Or “You fantasized about that?” Or “What the aphid is wrong with you?” Instead, I just looked down at the pilled yellow carpet and picked at its weave.

  Sasha returns with a shopping bag that she sets carefully next to her on the swing.

  “What’s that?” I say.

  “Two things,” she says. First she pulls out a large jeweler’s box, which she hands to me. I’m surprised by its weight.