Everybody Has Everything (19 page)

It had been silently agreed, years ago, that James was a bad uncle, not only for lack of trying, but because he couldn’t stay on top of the volume of accomplishment that rushed out of the large brick house. Everyone was gifted. Everyone was a genius. What happened to such people in adulthood? No one ever said:
Meet my friend, Dave. He won an award for Best Handwriting
. The future pointlessness of all these accolades made it hard for James to respond in the present. Driving home from evenings at Mike and Jennifer’s, fuming, he delivered the same anecdote: “Studies have proven it’s the B students who run the world.” But that morning, when he saw Finn scribble on a piece of cardboard and hold it up for offer, he understood, just a little, the full force of parental pride, the greed for a child’s future. He understood, for the first time, why his brother and his wife bored others so relentlessly.

“Can we help?” Ana asked, nodding toward the woman at the sink, her apron tied tight around her waist, dividing her body like the twisted end of a wrapped candy. The plates from dinner formed a tall pile, tilted at an angle from all the uneaten food between them. The carcass of a large chicken spilled its bones greasily over the edge of a white serving plate.

“Oh God no. That’s what we pay her for. Right, Julie?” said Jennifer. The young, dark-skinned woman looked over and smiled, holding up her yellow washing gloves as evidence.

The four began to walk out of the kitchen, which took a while, passing the large marble island, the rack of gleaming pots and pans raining down from the ceiling.

“Did you get a new countertop? Something’s different,” said Ana, stopping in her tracks.

“You notice everything, Ana,” said Mike, leading her back to the island. “We couldn’t take the granite anymore. It seemed really dated. Maybe it was an indulgence, but we thought,
Let’s go marble. Now or never
.”

“Now or never” was one of Mike’s favorite expressions. James could never figure out what the hurry was. Mike’s life seemed entirely ungoverned by clocks. He had worked at home for the past few years, since the sale of his company. Once, after an occasionless bottle of four-hundred-dollar wine, James had asked his brother to describe, in detail, a week in his life. It was worse than James had imagined, involving early-morning online trades, sailing lessons, an Italian tutor, a trainer. The children were shuttled to and fro by a squadron of nannies and housekeepers. A couple of times a week, Mike did this job himself, to stay “connected.” James thought of him in his luxury minivan with the TV screens blaring, idling as the girls jumped out and ran up the steps to the private French school. He pictured Jake wending his way across the grassy concourse of his Eton-like campus while Mike waved at him at the end of the day, cranking up his $10,000 sound system, listening to music he’d downloaded not because he liked it, but because it appeared on lists as Most Downloaded. Beyoncé. Jack Johnson. Mike had always been without taste, and in James’s eyes, this made him wispy and unsubstantial, despite his height. James was held together by his preferences, his books and movies, his loud opinions on politics and art.

Jennifer existed to provide shape, to ground this dangling way of living. She had always worked, and always would, she said, even when there was no need. The need, as she saw it, was on the other side, from the severely handicapped adults to whom she administered physical therapy at a rehab center. James had never asked her to describe her week. Rarely did anyone inquire about those men and women (swollen tongued, pants wet—James turned away from the image), but they loomed somehow, shadowy in the vastness of the house. The knowledge of Jennifer’s hands on their gnarled bodies every day, morning to night, was a relief to all who visited there, pleased to know that some sense of purpose still propelled this couple through their days.

Right after the accident, Jennifer had sent James links to papers on the importance of physical rehabilitation during “coma vigil,” a new phrase for Sarah’s unroused sleep. James had been grateful and was reassured by a nurse that yes, every day, they were moving Sarah’s limp arms and legs as often as they should be. But it was “coma vigil” that stayed with him. His vigil was for Finn. James was keeping watch over Finn while Sarah lay in her darkness, enduring other women’s hands rearranging her scarecrow limbs, while her son was someone else’s devotional object.

Mike and Jennifer sat on the couch, and Jennifer stretched her legs into Mike’s lap. Ana, James noticed, was far from him, the only one who had not taken a seat on the wide curved couch. She sat across from them in a stiff-backed brocade-covered chair, each arm at right angles on the armrests, her fingers curled over the edges.

“How’s work, Jennifer?” asked Ana. “How are the cutbacks?”

She continued that way, pulling information from the two of them with her concise questions, murmuring support. It looked like warmth, or inquisitiveness, but James recognized it as a sort of vacancy, too, a way of passing the substance of the interaction to someone else.

Ana was feeling massive, as if the chair could barely contain her. Jennifer had this effect on her. She was trying not to glance at her sister-in-law’s tiny feet in their childlike gray-striped socks, now being massaged casually by Mike’s hands. He pushed and pulled as he told them about their Christmas plans in Mexico, a beach house that they should come visit. These kinds of holiday invitations were always extended only once, and never accepted nor rejected nor brought up again by anyone.

“And you, Jimmy, how’s the book?” asked Mike. Whenever he called him Jimmy, James was reminded that he was the younger brother and always would be. James had wanted a brother who would put him in headlocks and throw him to the floor and kick his ass, someone with badness to worship. But Mike shrugged at James’s schemes of revenge against the asshole down the street; he was too old to join a united front, and he preferred the computer. He sat. In James’s recollection of their youth, his brother is always seated in his desk chair, in front of the computer. Only the changed color of his T-shirt indicates that he does, in fact, rise on occasion and mark the passing of the days.

James was beginning to regret the way he had framed his firing. He had done too good a job of blocking the horror by inserting this distracting fantasy of a book. There was not enough sympathy for him, he felt, not enough commiseration over the shortness of his stick.

“It’s okay. Tough times in publishing, with the economy. Not a lot of new contracts,” he said.

“You don’t have a contract?” Mike raised his thick eyebrows. “I didn’t know that.” He looked then at Ana, as if seeing her as something new: imperative to his brother’s survival.

“Let’s not talk about work!” said Jennifer. “How is parenthood? At long last! Do you absolutely love it?” She lowered her voice: “Come on, can I ask that?”

“Jenn—” said Mike, flicking her toe with his finger.

“What? Come on. We know you guys were trying. The circumstances aren’t ideal, of course, but now you get to be a mom and dad! You get to parent!” Ana noted the verb: “to parent.” Something to do, not to be.

“I know this is going to sound weird, but Ana, he really looks like you! It’s crazy! You have exactly the same eyes.”

“Really?” said Ana. “Well, they’re brown, I guess—”

A chorus of screams burst forth into the living room, followed by three bodies.

“Finn’s a fairy! He’s a fairy, Mommy! And we’re the queens who are taking him to our kingdom to do our bidding!” Sophie, at six, was the eldest. On her head she wore a crown of toilet paper. In her hand, she waved an elaborate wand dangling beads and stuffed hearts. She was followed by Olivia, age four, who also wore a toilet paper crown, wielding a Barbie in each hand.

“These are the elves!” she cried. Finn looked pleased, toddling to James and leaning on his legs.

A look passed between the two girls—as if a switch had been hit—and Sophie began chasing Olivia, who responded by screaming happily, which made Finn scream, too, joining the chase. “Attack! The fairy is attacking!” bellowed Sophie as the
three raced in figure eights around the couch. Then James noticed that Finn had a juice box in his hand; he reached to grab it just as Finn slipped out of the line and wrapped himself in the curtains. The curtains were so shining and sumptuous that Ana imagined tearing them from the wall and lying down in their silky arms.

“Get the fairy! Get the fairy!” screamed Olivia.

“Girls! Girls!” cried Jennifer.

“Finn! Don’t pull the curtains!” cried James, alarmed at the sausage shape in the golden fabric, straining at the top of the rod. He jumped up to try and undo him, to rescue the juice box before the inevitable stain.

“My elf!” wailed Olivia, stopping suddenly, holding in her hand the head of one Barbie, grasping its naked torso around the stomach. The adults breathed in, anticipating. Olivia screwed up her eyebrows, her jaw dropped to her chest, and a sound escaped, like a pig with an ax at its neck. Rivulets of snot and tears sprayed through the air. Ana leaned backward.

Jennifer and James went into the fray, untangled and soothed, calmed and hugged. Ana took a drink of her wine. Midsip, she recognized that her isolation might appear unsavory, and she reached for a coffee table book on an “Edvard Munch and the Uncanny” exhibit, as if to appear preoccupied.

“We saw that show in Vienna,” said Mike, leaning across, shouting over the diminishing din. “A bit dark for me. I bet James would like it.” Ana flipped to the back of the book, stopping on an etching by a German artist she had never heard of named Max Klinger. She recognized one of the German words in the title,
Kind
, and her body stiffened. A woman in a full garden, carpeted with grass and rimmed with furry bushes and tall trees, lay resting on a bench, her eyes closed. Beside her, a
hooded baby carriage. But the carriage was empty, the blankets had tumbled onto the ground. A path from the blankets, trampled by feet, revealed a figure in the distance, walking away from the mother. In his arms was an unfurling bundle, too small to be deciphered, white and unseen. Ana put her finger on the path, traced its line. She felt, again, that strange flutter, a feeling of ascension.

James and Jennifer had been successful. When the screams had slowed to whimpers, and the whimpers to whines, the two girls curled up on either side of their mother like cats. Jennifer stroked the head of each: “There, there. Silly queens.”

Ana put the book down on the table. She wondered if the girls had seen it. It seemed to her now as inappropriate as pornography. She drank her wine quickly.

“Uncle James, how come we never see you on TV anymore?” said Sophie.

James pulled Finn a little closer.

“I got fired,” said James.

“On fire?” asked Finn, and everybody except James laughed.

“Why?” asked Sophie.

“That’s a complicated question.…” interjected Jennifer, but Mike tilted his head, as if equally curious. Ana felt her body reassembling into something normal, the effect of the picture beginning to cease.

“It’s okay, Jennifer,” said James. Addressing Sophie, he said: “I’m too old for TV. It’s a job for young people. You should be on TV.” He leaned over and tickled her. She laughed. Ana had never seen him so engaged with his nieces.

“I know. I could be on TV,” said Sophie.

“Sophie was amazing in the Thanksgiving play. I know all parents think their kids are great on stage, but it was really
striking. The teacher said she has a natural aptitude for theater,” said Jennifer.

“Now we’re adding acting lessons to the roster,” said Mike, in the part of exasperated father.

“I played an aboriginal person,” said Sophie. Ana laughed.

Sophie snatched a remote control from the coffee table. She hit a button and a large, wood-framed abstract painting—red and blue swirls on red and blue swirls—moved to the side with a gentle whoosh. A large flat panel TV appeared.

“Jesus, Mike, how James Bond,” said James.

“I know. It’s extravagant. But now or never, right?”

“Sophie, we don’t need the TV on,” said Jennifer. “You can watch upstairs if you want.”

But Sophie clicked, and the TV came to life. There, across the screen, was James’s former colleague, Ariel, each strand of her long straight hair clearly outlined with the perfectionist brush of high-definition television.

“I worked with her—” said James.

“What? Is this your show?” asked Jennifer.

Mike said, “Sophie—turn it off—”

“No! Let’s see Uncle James!”

Ariel was sitting in a hotel room across from a famous singer, a block-headed young man with one raised eyebrow.

“Who’s that?” asked Ana.

“The new Frank Sinatra,” said James.

“Really?”

“He thinks he is,” snapped James.

Ariel was breathless. “Just tell me, seriously—is this song about any particular girl? Or is it about girls in general?”

“This is news?” James shouted. “This is documentary?”

The singer chortled, winking and shifting in his seat, his
nonanswer running atop the video clip: the singer in the rain, embracing a tall blonde. “What can I say? When love hits you, it hits you!”

“This is a fucking national news program,” said James.

“James, watch the language—” James turned from Mike’s pious face.

“Soph, turn it off—” said Jennifer.

Ana placed her wine carefully on the table. On the screen, Ariel threw back her head and giggled. Jennifer grabbed the remote out of Sophie’s hand and clicked the TV to silence.

“You can’t be surprised, James. TV’s always been this way. You were just this unusual little exception,” said Ana. She gestured to the blank screen. “This is what people want.”

“People don’t know what they want. Give them shit and they’ll eat it,” said James. Olivia giggled into her hands.

“Jimmy! Language!” said Mike. The painting moved slowly and smoothly, until finally it had covered the entire TV with red blur.

At the door, Finn kicked at the stoop outside. As Ana buttoned her jacket, Jennifer appeared with a paper Whole Foods bag.

“Olivia’s too old for these,” she said. The bag rattled with puzzle pieces and Legos. Something made a few electronic grunts, then silenced.