Susanna’s mother had three children with three husbands. “She was misnamed Prudence,” Susanna said to Eleanor and Rupert. “Her mother, Granny Bowles, gave all her children allegorical names. Prudence was the most ironic, Patience second most.” Prudence paid the bills for her children’s private schools and college but otherwise ignored them. Susanna’s father came to her graduation, the only time he stepped onto the Princeton campus. Her mother sent a check. Susanna graduated magna and won the English prize. “How come you’re not nuts?” Sam asked her. “Granny Bowles,” she said.
Sam brought Susanna home for Thanksgiving that first year, then for Christmas, then for spring break. In June, she went on holiday with all of them to Spain. By sophomore year, she had achieved the status of a beloved cousin. I’m becoming Sonya in War and Peace, she thought, with chill foreboding. She had full kitchen privileges. She answered the phone and, unlike the boys, took messages. She looked like a member of the family: dark-haired, dark-eyed, long and lean. People took her for Eleanor’s daughter, to the pleasure of both.
“It’s narcissism, Mom,” Sam said. Andrew was also dark and long and lean. “Except for Dad, I’m used to loving people who look like me,” Sam said.
“Ditto,” Eleanor said.
In Susanna, Rupert felt both the loss and pleasure of a daughter. Until she came into their lives, he never thought he had missed anything by not having a girl. He had liked their all-of-a-kind family. “I don’t know which one I’d give up,” he said to Eleanor, “but I think now I’d like to have had a daughter.” Eleanor was past wishing for a daughter. She had wanted one in the beginning, to make up for everything she had missed, but after Sam, she wanted only more boys. She knew the routines and rituals of boys. “Oh, I know which one I’d give up,” she said. Even after twenty-five years, Rupert was not sure Eleanor was joking.
—
Harry made up with Eleanor in his way. He said that her willingness to recognize the Wolinskis’ claim had thrown him. How could she be so understanding and accepting unless she had known? He got carried away.
“I’m glad,” Sam said, eager now to move on.
“You do know,” Harry said, “the woman Susanna saw me with, she was just a friend.”
“Do you want to play squash Saturday morning?” Sam said.
—
Eleanor invited Susanna to dinner. She was worried about her. Susanna was already thirty-six. When I was Susanna’s age, Eleanor thought, I had five children, ages five to thirteen, and no career. Eleanor made the meal festive: rack of lamb, asparagus, salad, Chaumes, Barolo. Eleanor always drank Italian or Spanish red wines. French and Californian gave her headaches. White wine tasted like organic mouthwash when it didn’t taste like peat moss.
“Let’s open another bottle,” Eleanor said. “For the cheese.”
“If I drink too much more,” Susanna said, “I’ll get weepy and self-pitying. Or vice versa.”
“I’ll risk it,” Eleanor said.
“Work’s fine. Satisfying,” Susanna said. “But I have no one in my life. I’ve never been in love with anyone who was in love with me.”
“It’s more important to like your husband than to be in love with him,” Eleanor said. “Liking lasts longer.”
“I was so stupid to fall in love with a gay man,” Susanna said.
“Unlucky, not stupid.”
“I am pathetic,” Susanna said.
“Do you want children?” Eleanor asked.
“More than a husband.”
“Then do it without one. We couldn’t in my day, but you can.”
“No. I want to give my children a fighting chance. Two parents,” Susanna said.
“You didn’t have any parents. One would be a major advance. And one good parent is all a child needs, so long as there’s enough money.”
“You’ve thought about this,” Susanna said.
“In a lot of Mom-and-Pop families, there’s often a superfluous parent. I was very lucky. Rupert was a good father. My own father was not a presence in my childhood. I’m glad he lived a long time. We became close after I married.”
“What was your mother like?” Susanna asked. “Sam loved your father but never has a good word for your mother.”
“Boring and mean. Rupert protected me from her.”
“You and Rupert were my ideal couple,” Susanna said.
“Were we?” Eleanor said.
“You were so kind to each other and to the boys,” Susanna said. “The boys being boys are of course cutthroat competitive, but in any other family of five boys, all so smart and talented, all so close in age, it would have been Old Testament, Cain and Abel.”
“I think my mother would have preferred not to have had a child”—she paused—“or sex.”
“You missed the jinx. I’m afraid I’ll be a bad mother,” Susanna said.
“Will you abandon your children?” Eleanor said.
“No.”
“Will you beat them?”
“No.”
“Will you browbeat them?”
“No.”
“What are you afraid of then?” Eleanor said.
“Not loving them, not liking them, not wanting them once they’re here.” Susanna started to cry.
Eleanor put her hand on Susanna’s arm.
“Not possible,” Eleanor said.
—
Sam wanted children, or at least a child. It had been a long time coming, this feeling. His father’s death was a great blow, much worse than he’d imagined. It cemented the feeling. He had loved growing up in his family, the only team he’d ever wanted to play on. He wanted a team of his own.
Sam called Will to congratulate him on his big news: Francie was pregnant. He could hear the happiness in Will’s voice. He felt a spasm of envy.
“I’ve been thinking about Dad,” Will said. “Becoming a father does that. I hope I’m as good a dad. He always made me feel I was fine just the way I was. Like Mr. Rogers. Did he ever yell at you? He never yelled at me. He never criticized me. He never said he was ‘disappointed’ in me. When I didn’t go to law school, which might have been a mistake: when I didn’t finish my PhD, which wasn’t a mistake: when I quit publishing to become an agent and moved to L.A., so far so good: he never was anything but encouraging. His advice to me was always the same: ‘Jack knows the secret: his work is his play, his play is his work.’?”
“What was Mom’s advice to you?” Sam asked. “Or was she her sphinxlike self?”
“Mom’s advice was similar but more bracing,” Will said. “?‘Not everyone has a calling. Jack is a rare bird. Aim for being interested, or at least not bored—and never boring. Vote Democrat.’?”
“They had confidence in us,” Sam said.
“I miss him, even two years on,” Will said. “I didn’t know I would. Stealth Dad.”
Andrew was dead set against having a child for all the usual reasons: their work, their travel, their friends, their sleep. He liked their life the way it was.
“If we had a baby,” he said, “we’d need a live-in nanny, what you and your brothers had.”
“We can afford a nanny,” Sam said.