When she was a kid, Gwen’s parents were the storm. But then with Danny they didn’t lose each other; there were no houses or boats or china whirling perpetually around them. After Danny was born, she remembered them, her parents, curled together in the rug room on the chaise. They had always liked to sleep when it rained. To nap together. Like cats. They became something impossible—parents who couldn’t get enough of each other. Then again, hadn’t it always been that way? Before, they couldn’t get enough of each other’s tears, and then, they couldn’t get enough of each other’s space and time. They hung on each other, like middle school couples on the school bus, with a desperation, as if at any moment someone would tell them they needed to stand three feet apart, tell them to fornicate on their own time, call them into their office to explain how they were making people uncomfortable with their affection. All of which had happened to Gwen during seventh grade.
“The hardest part of the kid thing,” said Melissa, “is losing the life you had with your partner. You can get back a lot of what you had by yourself. Well, after the first year. The first year is a fucking tornado.”
“Particularly with Kerry. Jesus, that shit was ridiculous,” said Gwen.
Melissa had practically lived in the NICU, Kerry asleep on her chest, the size of a twelve-week-old kitten. She and Libby had alternated days taking care of Buster, picking him up at day care. On weekends Gwen went to the hospital and held Kerry, gathered her tiny, splayed legs and arms to her body and cupped her head as she lay in her incubator. Gwen would go home, but she wouldn’t even make it inside. She’d sit on her front stoop with her sagging purse on her knees and smoke cigarettes.
“But at least I got to recover, got to sleep at night. That was the upside. Skipping the last trimester definitely made recovery easier too. But leaving her there every day, not knowing. That was hell.”
“I don’t know how you made it through,” said Libby.
“Tom got through it,” said Melissa. “I just followed him. One day I refused to go to the hospital, knowing that every day there was only a fifty-fifty chance she would make it. I felt paralyzed. And Tom put me in the car and drove me to the hospital. At a stoplight he said, ‘If she goes today, at least we got to meet her, to have her for a few weeks. Even one day is worth it.’ He was the strong one.” Melissa arranged the lemon slices on a plate. “Strange to think that was twelve years ago. We talk about it sometimes. He doesn’t even remember that day. He remembers the bills.”
“I remember holding Kerry when she was just home from the hospital, and you had gone somewhere. I spent the whole time watching her breathe; I was terrified,” said Gwen.
“She did have a tendency to turn blue. You’d have to give her a little shake.”
“God, no wonder you guys never had a third,” said Libby. She poured more wine into Melissa’s glass and then her own. Libby held the bottle toward Gwen, but she waved it away.
“Maybe with dinner,” Gwen said. Libby looked at the wine bottle for a moment and then put it on the table.
“The more kids, the more you end up losing track of each other. I didn’t want to compound the problem,” said Melissa. Gwen and Libby exchanged a look. Melissa often complained about Tom. He kept his briefcase under their bed. In the middle of the night Melissa would hear the thunk of the latches opening as he searched out his blackberry. He insisted that their children’s friends call him Mr. Willoughby. Usually, though, she told these stories while sitting next to him, rubbing his back. This was new.
“Your parents somehow managed with four,” said Melissa. “I have no idea how they did it.”
Maybe their parents were an aberration, their love and their success as parents with Danny. Maybe the real truth was children ruin things. Maybe it was the three of them that made their parents that way. But then what was Danny? How could three destroy something that a fourth could save?
“Well, they did it in shifts,” said Libby. “It’s not like they had all four of us in the house at once. Besides vacations, Tom and Danny have never lived in the same house at the same time.” Maybe that’s the trick, not too many. Maybe it’s all mathematical, Gwen thought, maybe prime numbers are the key to success. Families of three or one. But not two, not her alone with a baby; she didn’t want to burn the kid’s dinner while she dreamed about glory days smoking spliffs.
“Too bad, both those boys could’ve used it,” said Melissa.
The boiling water rattled the lid on the steamer; Gwen turned the heat down a touch, looked at the clock.
“They would’ve killed each other,” said Gwen.
“You’re the only person Tom can stand to live with,” said Libby. “I couldn’t live with anyone, except for maybe Gwen.”
Gwen ran the eggbeater, and Libby sat at the table with Melissa. When the noise stopped, Melissa said, “Tom’s definitely better than some of the roommates I’ve had; at least I don’t have to put my name on my food. And I’m certainly not his idea of the perfect roommate. I stay up too late. I load the dishwasher wrong. I have to sleep with the room pitch black, and when he gets up to pee he trips over the laundry basket because he can’t see. He says I’m a safety hazard. Half the time, he sleeps in the guest room because he’s afraid he’ll break his neck.”
“Get him a flashlight and tell him to shut the hell up,” said Gwen. Living with her ex-husband, Reed, Gwen had felt like she woke up in a mausoleum. Was this where Melissa was, entombed within the blue walls of their house? Was she living on wine offerings and dead leaves? Tom must know better, Gwen thought, than to leave his wife alone in an empty bed.
The unplugged beater in her hand like a gun, Gwen walked through the china closet to the dining room and called toward the open porch door for Danny.
“Dan, table, please.”
She was tempted to confront Tom right here and now: “You aren’t fucking this up, are you?”
Through the window she could see her brothers sitting on the porch each reading a book, two sweating cocktails on the table between them. She imagined them as old men living together in some dust-filled apartment. Maybe they wouldn’t be so bad together. They seemed to know how to coexist. But she and Libby and Danny had great plans to retire to Florida and glue tiny shells on lamps that they’d sell on the curb. She waited as Danny slowly turned down the corner of a page, read a last sentence, and put the book down, before going back into the kitchen.
Melissa was slicing strawberries; Libby was peering into the steamer.
“I think these puppies are done,” Libby said.
Then Melissa gasped, throwing the knife onto the table like it burned her. She gripped her left hand to her chest.
“You okay?” Libby and Gwen said together, moving close to her.