by Lierre Keith
(first 10 pages)
Douglas, Fine, and Green. Black letters on clear glass. They were the kind of lawyers who didn't need to say so. The second two names could be adjectives, modifying the first. Chloe had said that to the other secretaries once but only Marta had laughed. Marta, whose husband had left her like one of those huge, helpless whales stranded on the shore. Chloe tried to follow the metaphor through to its conclusion. The four kids would be, what, mini giant mammals? How did whale mothers feed babies that big? God, what if children needed supplies of oxygen every twenty minutes, on top of food and patience and winter coats and love?
Every twenty minutes. You'd have twelve hundred seconds. No, she reminded herself, numbers are not your friends. You are one amongst many legal assistants, don't count how many. You've worked here awhile, don't do the math. You are in your thirties, enough said. Does "a" count as a number? she wondered. You had "a" husband and he left you seventy-three days ago for someone whose age is the exact median of yours and your eldest daughter's. And Ivy's only twelve.
While we're at it, a package of peanut M&M's has twenty-two pieces and 250 calories, you are now a size eighteen, and you have eighty-six dollars in the bank. With which to buy the turkey (twenty-four dollars) and gas (twenty dollars) to travel fifty-six miles to see one mother (blood sugar: hopefully under two hundred, toes: nine) and one father (blood pressure: 140/90, Prozac: 60 mg, heart attack:one). Which leaves pretty much zero for presents or new clothes.
No, numbers are not your friends. Here are the only ones you're allowed today.
Two: two daughters, two days until Christmas.
And one: one sister.
Jessica's phone rang. It was the third real sound in her apartment that morning. The first had been the soft splash of tears. The second had been lonely cry of a metal spoon inside an empty peanut butter jar.
"Hello?" She tried to sound upbeat, exciting, like somebody on fast forward to a future where a steady income soothed like a lullaby and "Doctor" replaced her first name.
"All for one."
Chloe. Thank God. She could stop trying.
"And one for both."
"What's wrong?" Chloe pounced, sword drawn, safety off, ready to protect and defend.
"My thesis."
"You got it back? What'd he say?"
"Chloe, I want him to die."
"Voodoo," said Chloe. "It's the only way. I'll do it. Otto, Otto, your name is blotto, in the depths of hell may you rott-o."
And Jessica, the younger sister still, almost believed. Her eyes fell on the single red word: rewrite. She flipped through the stack listlessly. Paragraphs, whole pages, sliced through with that same, silent pen.
"All he said is ‘rewrite.'"
"That's all?"
"He's famous for it."
"I'm making a doll. I'm getting out the pins. If voodoo doesn't work, it's your pick: garrote, ground glass, or defenestration."
Jess laughed and wiped her eyes with a frayed cuff.
"You're the one who needs cheering up," she said softly.
"No," said Chloe matter of factly. "We both do. Twenty-four hours and counting. What we really need is a strategy."
Ivy leaned against the door frame and remembered her bruise too late. A little flag of purple and blue, how bruises laid claim to skin, and the declaration they spoke was pain. David Nazer had smashed the volleyball into her, accidently. Funny how many accidents the school building held. Surprising the roof hadn't been blown off in a freak hurricane that looked like the face of Jesus. Amazing the basement wasn't ankle deep from an, oops, forgotten dumpsite. And awesome to behold that the place hadn't been incinerated by a smart bomb meant for a Middle Eastern despot. No, the accidents followed her, and they found her like deer found headlights. Even words, whole sentences, just happened. "I didn't mean it," the tormentor of the hour would plead to the teacher. "Not really. Not like ... that," they'd snort and flair their innocent eyes.
Like what then? Exactly what did you mean when you first invoked a personal creator ("Oh my God") and then called me a word commonly understood to be an insult? A word, in fact, that has no archaic positive meaning that you maychance stumbled upon in your nightly study of the Oxford English Dictionary and hence could have granted you the benefit of ambiguity. Is there, for instance, a nuance to the word "pathetic" of which you could make me aware? I am a reasonable person, attending one of the best public school systems in Connecticut, as my mother is fond of reminding me, and without fail--without trying--I score in the ninety-ninth percentile in both the verbal and math portions of our state's standardized tests. So, feel free to enlighten me. Pathetic. Please.
No point. Their names and faces had long since blurred into a solid wall that encircled her, immovably gray. Six more years. And each day was another shiny star lost down a well. Each day was a feather pulled from her wings. She wanted each day, needed each one, the tiny pieces of her life. Her life. Her life was a living thing and she was sworn to protect it. She had so few weapons. Poetry. Velvet. A silver bracelet of celtic birds. Her favorite CD: Dance Hits of the Middle Ages. And Shakespeare. He was all of it, a whole world of strange words, of tragic passions and beauty and fate. Of magic.
If there was school tomorrow, she'd have worn her black vest--the satin one, not the embroidered rayon--and no sleeves to cover her bruise. Who cared about the cold. Cold meant nothing. You can hurt me but you still can't hurt me, she wanted to say. The bruise was a visible sign of resistance, and she would claim it. My skin, swelling in anger. My blood, blazing into color.
But tomorrow wasn't school. Tomorrow they were driving to Grandma's.
Robin was sketching something, one of the small bits that only she ever noticed. Robin, her little sister in her tiny room, in the overalls and baseball cap she'd worn every day since Mom had said "divorce." It was almost Christmas. Which meant the fighting was about to start.
Ivy shifted so her back leaned against the doorframe.
"We need a strategy."
Holly leaves were so shiny. Dark green secrets hidden inside winter. Robin had picked one from the tree at the edge of the field. Then she'd felt so sad. Had she hurt the plant? And the leaf. The leaf, so plump with color, would curl into a slow sleep of brown without its tree. It would die. Did leaves have lives or were they only part of some other's life? Trunk and branches, root and berry. The tree might not need that one leaf, but the leaf would die on its own. All she'd wanted was a piece of that secret green so she could try to draw it. But she'd killed it. She stared down at it, trying to listen, to know the awful truth. Was it crying for the branch that had held it tight? She put it to her ear, like a shell. All she could hear was the kids playing soccer way down the field.
She slipped it into the pocket of her overalls. Maybe when she got home, she'd have forgotten how sad it was. Or maybe everything would be so sad it wouldn't matter.
Later, sitting at her table, drawing, she did forget a little. Could she show the secret green when all she had was black charcoal? Aunt Jess had given her the drawing set. Robin was ten, too old to believe in Santa Claus, but she still believed in something. Somewhere, there were deer running in snow. There were geese sleeping on secret islands, surrounded by running rivers iced silver. In two days it was Christmas. The baby would be born in a stable and everyone would love him. So today was the day before Christmas Eve. The Eve of Christmas Eve.
She didn't have words for these things. She didn't need words. She wanted to know they were there, and she wanted to draw them. Everyone said there wasn't magic, but she knew there was. Last year, Aunt Jess had gone to a place called Venice. It was a city built in the sea. People stepped out of their houses and into boats. No one at school believed her, but it was true. It was like Moley and Rat from The Wind in the Willows. She looked at her sketch pad. The leaf looked shiny and plump. The Eve of Christmas Eve. Her dark green secret.
"We need a strategy," Ivy said from the doorway. Ivy was always right. There was going to be a war tonight, tomorrow. Robin's nine Christmases said Ivy was right. But Ivy was also so brave: strategy meant they could fight, not just hold their breath and hope. Hope there'd be something that didn't get ruined.
"What do you hate the most?" Ivy asked, stepping into the room.
"The criticism," Jess said to Chloe, little sister to big.
"Yeah, that would be Platonic Essence of Mom," Chloe said.
"The clothes," Robin said miserably, curling up inside her overalls.
"Yeah. The clothes," Ivy agreed, sitting down beside her.
"Then we can't let her," Chloe vowed to her little sister, through the phone. "We have to stand firm. All for one!"
"We need a united front," Ivy said to her little sister, rallying the troops. "All for one."
"And one for both," Jess agreed to Chloe, and Robin replied to Ivy.
"So when Mom says, ‘Jessica, if you don't finish your thesis soon, you're going to become a permanent landscape feature', I should say ...?"
"You should act like she's a normal, rational, adult person," Chloe replied.
"Chloe, a normal, rational, adult person would never say something that awful."
"Right. Well, pretend she's a normal, rational, adult person who's stepped on some mental ice and landed on her butt for a second and in the lapse this terrible sentence has fallen out of her mouth."
"Mom's gonna say I can't wear my overalls," Robin was trying hard not to cry. "Or my Meat Birds." That was what her cap said. Dad had given it to her. It was a band that was playing at his club. "Made me think of you," he'd said, pointing the index fingers of both hands at her on the "you."
"Then we stay calm and explain that we just aren't happy in other clothes," Ivy said.
"She'll just say, ‘Well, I'm not happy, either,'" Robin said.
"No, Mom, really? Thanks for the clue," Ivy said.
Chloe found the last bag of M&M's. The emergency stash at the back of the drawer. Modern packaging was all that stood between her and sweet relief, and suddenly it was such an enormous effort.
"Maybe we're attacking this the wrong way," she groaned.
"What do you really want out of Christmas?" Jess asked.
What do I what? Chloe tried the question like triageing a wound. No. That was not a question she could survive. The first hit of chocolate crossed her blood-brain barrier. She could talk again. "I just want it to be over."
"I'd settle for minimal damage," said Jess.
"No screaming, no crying," said Ivy.
"I want the best Christmas ever," said Robin.
"Okay," said Chloe, pressing a clean legal pad to her desk. "We need a list. One. No dissertation. If mom brings it up with any preface besides, ‘Aren't you the smartest daughter anyone could be blessed with to be getting a Ph.D. from Yale,' I will stop her."
"Thanks," said Jess.
"Yeah. Number two?"
Jess hesitated. "Danny?"
"0h. Oh, yeah, good call. I do not want to talk about the divorce."
"How about, ‘Mom, please, it's too painful.'"
"That's good, that's really good," Chloe said, writing it down. "It's—too—painful. Number three?"
"Containment," said Jess.
"Keep Mom out of kitchen," Chloe repeated while she wrote. "Let us do it, Mom," she practiced.
"You just relax," Jess tried.
"Like that'll work. Number four?"
"Presents. But it's too late," Jess moaned.
"She's already spent money they don't have on crap we don't want. Windchimes all around," sighed Chloe. Eleanor had windchimes everywhere and those tiny harp things with their dangling silver balls lined up to hit metal strings at the slightest motion, as if heaven awaited behind the bathroom door. They had to be tuned, too, and Eleanor attended to them every Saturday.
"It's too late," Jess sang like a Greek chorus.
Last year, after Venice, Eleanor had given Jess a toothbrush holder shaped like the Tower of Pisa. I needed that sooo badly. She'd arrived home from the maternal extravaganza to find that her heat had been turned off. And then the wool tights--which she had asked for--but size extra small? Her picture of me never changes, Jess thought. That's what I'm always fighting. Her Jessica Icon, where I'm a tiny little girl, prepubescent and helpless, and starving myself to get there.
"Literally, Chloe, I couldn't get them on past my knees. Never mind the thighs."
"I don't want to hear it," Chloe said as the last M&M spread tidings of comfort and joy across the surface of her brain.
"I'm the one who got grandma's butt."
"Yeah, but you got the gorgeous hair. I got mom's hips."
"And you got two beautiful daughters."
Ivy and Robin. One, two. The only numbers that mattered.
"You're right. Enough. Solidarity with the female fat cell! Women everywhere need to say, enough."
"It would help if men took up the cause, too," Jess laughed, but Chloe felt all the air drain away, like the world had lungs and they'd been punctured. And the lance was named Danny.
"Let me bring the turkey," Jess was saying.
Chloe made herself focus.
"No. You're bringing the pie. And I know what's in your fridge. Peanut butter, ketchup, and ice buildup."
Jess flicked the lonely spoon, then lay her head down on her books.
"But I have an economic future," she insisted, to Chloe, to her scarred dissertation, to the table that kept sagging like each new day was a demand, to anyone that was listening.
"Well, when the future arrives, you can buy the turkey. It's a sugar-free pie, right?"
"Yeah," sighed Jess. "But you know Mom'll just complain about it."
"Most people--wouldn't they be happy that their family made special food that wasn't going to kill them?"
"You know she's gonna complain."
"And you wanna know the worst part?" Chloe said in surrender.
"What?"
"The older I get, the more I understand her. This is it. This is your life. And if it wasn't what you wanted, while, too bad, ‘cause that's all you get."
"You're having a hard year," Jess soothed. "You are not our mother."
"Not yet."
"Chloe, you're ... a normal, rational, adult. There's a relationship between what you earn and what you spend. You let other people talk sometimes. And you don't hit your kids."
"Yeah, thanks. See you tomorrow."
The house was small because it was the schools that had mattered, and this was all they could afford here. Three thin bedrooms off a tubercular hall. The bathroom was downstairs. You couldn't turn on the sink if someone was in the shower. You couldn't open the fridge when someone was sitting on the fourth side of the table. Not a problem now.
Ivy set the pan down carefully. "Pheasant a' l'Orange," she announced. Really it was just chicken legs. But she knew Robin would smile, knew how her eyes would get rounder, like anything funny was a little bit wondrous. Robin had smiled like that since, well, since there'd been Robin. Ivy sat down and glanced over at her. Now Robin's smile was a brave little boat on a vast, rough sea.
I hate him, Ivy realized, and it was like remembering the punchline to an unfunny joke. Dad. Father. No, Daniel. Dan? Danny. I hate Danny.
If only it wasn't Christmas, Chloe thought. If I could just skip it this year.