The Birthdays (22 page)

“Mom,” he said after a moment. “Have you ever collected anything?”

“No. Well, when I was a child I kept hair ribbons. But no, nothing really since then. Why?”

“What do you think of collecting? Do you think it’s silly?”

She had no idea what he was getting at. “It depends, I suppose, on what’s being collected. Are you thinking of starting some sort of collection?” She glanced around the room. “Art?” she asked, intrigued.

“No, no, nothing that civilized. It’s just sometimes I find these things—junk, really.”

“Oh?” she prodded, hoping he’d continue, but he said no more. “You know, sometimes I wish we could afford to collect art. Can you imagine original paintings on the walls of our shabby little house?”

“It’s not so bad. And you could probably afford one or two. I could help out.”

“No, no,” she said, and smiled. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

“You always wanted more.”

“I suppose I did. But I didn’t
need
more.”

“You sound like Dad, you know. Can I ask you something?”

She nodded.

“I don’t mean this to be rude or anything, but how come you and he never thought of getting different jobs that earned more money?”

But it was, in fact, rude. It was an ugly, distasteful question. She pushed her hand into the leather sofa cushion and looked out the window at the clouds hovering above the water. “We did well enough,” she said. “And anyway, we got on our paths and then what could we do? Your dad loves his job, you know that. And I’m happy at the school. That library is what I know.”

“You don’t regret anything?”

She shook her head. Her acceptance and longing had lived beside each other for so many years, she supposed they’d become almost indistinguishable. She looked at him. “This collecting. You’ve got a room full of junk somewhere?”

He appeared stung. “
Mom
.” He took himself too seriously. She had the urge to muss his hair. “Why
do
you suppose people collect things?”

“Maybe to fill some kind of a void?”

“Huh.” He suddenly looked terribly sad.

“I’m sure there are other reasons,” she said. “You’ve secretly begun collecting dead bodies in the basement? You’ve become a serial killer.”

“Not funny,” he huffed.

“A little funny.” She sounded like Joe, trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn’t working. She changed tack and told him about Isabella Stewart Gardner’s collection. Ellen told him that she’d been reading a book about the woman, and as she spoke she began to worry that she was saying too much. But no, she wasn’t—the museum and MacNeil were two separate things. There was nothing wrong with her love of the place or her interest in the woman’s life. Yes, Vera and MacNeil had been the ones to take her there first. Yes, MacNeil had taught her quite a lot about Isabella and given Ellen his book, but so what? She loved the place as a separate entity from MacNeil. She absolutely did. “After her only child died and her marriage began to fall apart, she traveled the world—Scandinavia, Russia, Vienna, Paris, later the Middle East. She went to all sorts of lectures on Italian studies, and began collecting art.” Jake’s eyes began to wander the room, but she continued, determined to be heard. “At first she bought Parisian gowns and jewels, and she developed this idea of her house outside Boston as a sort of Venetian palazzo. She supervised the expansion and rebuilding of the place, and decided where each pillar and arch and doorway would be. Eventually she collected 290 paintings, 280 pieces of sculpture, 60 drawings and 130 prints, 460 pieces of furniture, 250 textiles, 240 objects of ceramic and glass, as well as lots of rare books and manuscripts.” Jake looked at her sideways and nodded. She had memorized these numbers just a few weeks ago. They seemed grand, encyclopedic, like the shopping list of a god,
and she loved rattling them off to people. MacNeil, in a glum moment, said these numbers only proved Isabella’s obsessive need to acquire everything she could, but Ellen was convinced they were a product of more than just money.

She thought of Daniel’s new house and how the tall windows still had no curtains and the cold wood floors no rugs. She could sew thick, warm curtains and find them some colorful, plush rugs at a discount store. She could bring them prints, perhaps, some calming scenes of places far away to help them forget all that had happened, even if only for a second or two. Of course, they had the strangest aesthetics. Daniel, for all his somberness, enjoyed mostly humorous art. He collected original R. Crumbs and had plastered the walls of his studio with these horrid pictures of women—their breasts as large as watermelons—chasing wilted, hideous little men. Brenda had equally dark taste but preferred photographs of unhappiness and poverty, war and desperation. Ellen would bring them some La Tour or Vermeer prints, something with light and hope. She would visit the Gardner Museum shop when she returned and see what inspired her. And she would stop by the local nursery and pick up some plants with bright, lively flowers, plants that were easy to manage. Orchids, or maybe African violets, which had been Vera’s favorites.

Later, Liz set out ingredients for people to make sandwiches, but no one had much of an appetite. Ellen looked around the kitchen at each person in his or her own world—at Jake, staring out the window, thinking about his mysterious collection of junk; at Joe, reading, oddly, the arts section of the paper;
at Hilary, rubbing her fingertips together; and at Liz, both hands bracing her knees, a look of grave consternation on her face as if she were about to give birth. And what if she were? What if the two unformed babies came toppling out too early?

Ellen sat up straight and focused on the tiled floor, the small squares the color of rich earth. Isabella had chosen bright tiles for her floors, Mediterranean blues and greens. She’d found novel ways to soften the fierce New England light and make it resemble the coyer Italian sunlight. She spread gray curtains of lace over her enormous windows. Around the panes she hung paintings of the Madonna, or mythical gods, or the baby Jesus. Paintings warm and sacred but also muted and gentle. In a letter to her great friend Bernard Berenson, she wrote, “I look out as I write and see the rain puddling the snow and man and beast wallowing! Inside in this my boudoir, where I am writing, it is charming. Everywhere bits of Italy.” Ellen had jotted down this last sentence on the back of a receipt and now kept it in her wallet. It sounded to her like the start of a poem.

It’d grown humid, the worst sort of air that caused the mosquitoes to descend in swarms and people on the island to walk in slow motion, glistening with sweat. Jake stretched out on an Adirondack chair and patted his forehead with a tissue. He watched Liz and Hilary wander down the small path to the water, kick off their sandals and dip their toes in the tide. They turned to each other, talking and nodding. Strangely, unaccountably, it seemed they’d taken to each other this weekend. They looked almost similar from this distance: both tall, though Liz was slightly taller; both fairly big, though of
course Hilary had grown much larger. Even from here Jake could see the shallow dimples on the back of her legs, the long creases where her arms met her torso. Liz’s body was firmer, slightly muscular in the shoulders and calves, wide through the hips. She had far better posture.

While he watched them talk casually, while he lounged on his back porch, Brenda lay in that bed in the clinic and Jake now wished more than anything that he was there, not here, there beside her in her room to tell her and Daniel that he was sorry for what they had gone through. He had not said anything to her. He’d merely hovered behind his parents, mute as he searched for the best words. He should have said that there must be nothing worse than what they’d just been through, and for this to happen when they were away from home. But he’d been intimidated by the enormity of the situation—the only sentences that occurred to him were stiff condolences or unfounded assurances that he knew would only upset them more.

Low waves splashed Liz’s feet and she took a step backwards. Hilary swept her hands in wide gestures. She was telling a story, maybe, and Liz nodded every few moments. She was a born listener—she managed to make everyone feel fascinating. After a while, the two turned and made their way back to the house. Playful smiles on their faces, they looked as if they’d been talking about him and he suddenly wanted to yell,
Do you know how lucky you are? How can you look so happy at a time like this?

“Hey,” Hilary called. “You should check out the water. It’ll wake you up for the rest of your life.”

Liz said, “She’s right, you know.”

He stood, lifted his hand in a wave and walked inside. His
father was sitting on the floor right next to the coffee table, his back facing Jake. Joe leaned forward and said, “That’s it, honey,” and when he looked closer, Jake saw Babe lolling around in one of their casserole dishes that Joe had filled with water. “There’s a good boy. Your dad loves you, yes he does.” Joe had never been this demonstrative with any of them. He stroked Babe’s shell and continued on. “We’ve had a hard weekend, honey. Some bad things have happened to Dan.”

Certain that he wanted to hear no more, Jake cleared his throat to announce his presence, and Joe turned around. “Didn’t see you there,” he mumbled.

“I just came in a second ago,” Jake said. He sat on the couch next to him and looked down at Babe. “You do love that thing,” he said, and his father nodded. “You can go ahead and take that casserole dish home with you.”

“He’s clean, don’t worry. I’ll wash it out afterward.”

“Fine, fine,” Jake said. “Hey, can I ask you something? What do you and Hilary talk about?”

Joe looked up. “She tells me about her life, I guess. And I listen.”

“What does she tell you?” There was no point tiptoeing around the real questions. “Did she tell you about the father of her baby? Who he is? Did she say that she feels bad about having a baby on her own?”

“No.” His father looked briefly at him and then at the floor. “Of course not.”

“Well, I for one worry about what’s going to happen to her.”

“I worry about all of you.”

“Even me?”

“Of course. You’ll see, once your babies come along. You never stop worrying, even after they grow up.” Babe lifted his head.

“You don’t much show it.”

“No,” he said. “I guess I don’t really see the point.”

Outside, Liz and Hilary took seats on the porch. Liz stretched her arms above her head and then burst out laughing.

“What exactly do you worry about?” Jake asked, drawing his hand across his forehead. He’d grown warm again.

“Well,” Joe mumbled, and pushed his hands together. “For starters, the fact that you’ve got two babies on the way. It’ll be a lot of work. You two have someone to help, right?”

“Liz is asking around about nannies, and her friends at the school have offered to help out too if we need it. She’s taken care of every possible thing, I think.”

“You’re lucky to have her.” He paused, as if trying to anticipate what Jake might want to hear. “How could you not like her? And of course I like you too, Jake. I like each one of my kids very much.”

Jake crinkled a tissue in his pocket.

“Your mom and I could’ve done much worse, when you think about it. I’ve got friends whose kids refused to grow up. Bill Dooley’s son never left home. Mom’s friend Maureen’s daughter is in and out of the mental hospital.”

Jake thought to say,
So your standards are high,
but stopped himself.

Babe’s head suddenly shot to the side and the turtle appeared to be looking at Jake. “Christ,” he said, and looked away. “Hey, remember that fishing trip you took me on a thousand years ago? Just the two of us? That morning we
both tried to learn fishing but didn’t catch a thing?” It had been Ellen’s idea. Jake had been throwing tantrums over the smallest things at school, and Ellen had thought some fatherson time might help.

His father sucked his lips into his mouth for a moment. Clearly he didn’t remember a thing. “I’ll tell you what I remember,” he finally said. “This was maybe when you were ten or so. You and Hilary were riding your bikes with a bunch of kids, and she fell off hers. She broke her toe, remember? It started raining, and she couldn’t walk, so you gave her a piggyback ride all the way home—it had to be three miles you walked with her like that in the pouring rain, and when you got home, you said you’d tried to ride her on your bike but you worried she’d fall and hurt herself again. So you carried her on your back instead.” Joe smiled. “You’re going to be a good father.”

“I hope so.” Jake said, only vaguely remembering that day. “Though sometimes I’m not so sure.” He tried to think of a way to broach yesterday’s embarrassments without revealing the actual details, but it seemed that their sting had faded, and soon the women came inside, and Hilary went to Joe, and Liz gave Jake a squeeze on the shoulder, then headed to the bedroom. He stood and followed her, and suggested calling Daniel to check in on him and ask him whether they planned to join them the next day for Joe’s birthday dinner. Jake went to sit on the bed, picked up the receiver, and Liz stood before him, his head in her hands. As he listened to the phone ringing in the clinic, she pressed his forehead against the slight curve of her belly.

“Our whole family is in there,” she whispered as someone at the clinic answered the phone.

“Hey there,” he said happily, and tried to calm his voice to an appropriate sobriety as he asked for Brenda’s room.

“Yes?” Brenda answered.

“It’s Jake. You feeling any better?”

“Sort of. You want Dan?”

Jake couldn’t take his eyes off his wife, who stood above him, smiling down. “All right, but first, how are
you
doing?” he asked Brenda. “We’ve been thinking about you all day.”

“Oh. I’m fine, like I said.”

He could barely hear her, she spoke so softly. Though Jake could certainly see why his brother married Brenda—she was attractive and talented, and seemed intelligent enough—he found her a little aloof. Part of him suspected she didn’t like him that much, didn’t like his money or his corporate job with money (not that she understood precisely what he did, not that anyone in the family really did or ever once thought to ask about it) and didn’t really like their big new house or the fact that Liz was a talented cook and an organized housekeeper, such predictable wifely traits. Part of him felt extraordinarily American around her—clumsy and gaudy, materialistic.