The Widower's Tale (33 page)

"So this is like, what, the bird-in-hand approach to marriage? Or marriage is like, what, an HOV lane? Why would you want me to get married so soon? Oh, I get it. You can't wait to be a grandma. Is that it?"

"I did not say I wanted to see you get married soon. I am simply wondering if you've done something rash." His mother spoke calmly, which only pushed him closer to the edge of fury.

"Some guys in my shoes would say this is none of your frigging business."

"Don't speak to me like that, Robert. As mothers go, I've always given you a lot of space, wouldn't you say?"

They had entered downtown Ledgely, where it looked as if every second and third cousin of every resident in a ten-mile radius had decided it was time to go shopping. The lot by the wineshop would be full, so Robert turned down a residential street.

"Wouldn't you?" she persisted.

"That's your stated M.O. Though it's always made me wonder, Mom, whether it's related to your never having more kids than me. Like, it's easy to give a kid space when one turned out to be more than enough."

His mother gasped quietly.

"Yeah, see what it feels like, Mom? That's not
my
business, right? Or maybe it is." Three blocks from the main drag, he found a spot in a dark lane of fancified colonial houses. He parked and turned off the engine.

"Robert. Are you telling me you've felt unloved?"

"Jeez, Mom, of course not." His voice cracked, as if he were still an adolescent. He opened his door.

"Do not get out. I have something to say to you."

Robert forced himself to look at her.

"I love and have always loved being your mother. Fiercely. Your dad would say the same about being your father--though that would be more obvious, right? My classmates at med school thought I was insane to willfully have a baby in the midst of it all, but I knew that if I delayed, if I thought a better time would come after endless residencies and studying for boards, and all that it takes to get where I am, then I would probably end up deciding to get pregnant when I no longer could."

The car was quickly growing cold, and Robert had left the house without gloves or a hat. He started to get out again, but his mom clutched his arm.

"Wait." She kept her hand on his sleeve. "I want to tell you what I see all too often in my practice. Women in their thirties, even forties, who thought they had all the time in the world to have a family. Even without cancer, they were probably fooling themselves. By the time they get to me, the grief they face is like a hurricane. A few go on to have babies, a few more to adopt, but a lot of these women are alone. They've passed up chances to settle down, and the regret I watch them battle,
while
they go through treatment ... Robert, it's ghastly. People ask how I can bear to deal with so many people I know are going to die from their disease, but sometimes that's not the worst part of what I deal with. Regret--regret that devours people worse than a tumor--that's the hardest thing for me to see in my patients."

Robert couldn't look at her. What the hell was she talking about! "Mom, don't project those scenarios onto my life. Or, Jesus, Clara's life either."

"Fine." She got out and, without hesitating, walked toward Maple Street, toward the lights and the circling cars. He followed her at a short distance. The sound of her well-heeled boots on the pavement was loud and terse, an audible
fuck-you fuck-you fuck-you
. Except she would never have said that.

Vini, Viti, Vine was crowded, the rows of protruding bottles just begging to be toppled by the jostle of puffy coats and shopping bags. Robert's mother handed him a basket and told him to find a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry and four bottles of cabernet priced between twelve and fifteen dollars. She would meet him at the register.

He found the California aisle with its absurd range of choices. Turo was right about that. What might take down civilization was the sheer frivolity of choice. Who needed more than, say, a dozen red wines to choose from if it meant conserving resources, devoting land to more practical crops? After choosing two bottles of one cabernet and two of another, he cruised through a section called WINE ADVENTURES! Someone had lettered a bunch of cutesy little signs bragging about new combinations of varietals, new places in the world where viniculture had only just begun.

As he approached the counter, he saw his mother chatting with Granddad's friend Norval Sorenson. Robert walked up and said hello, murmured politely in response to the usual grown-up crowings about how much older he seemed, the questions (not meant to be answered, really) about school, courses, friends.

"Listen," said his mother. "You should drop by the house tomorrow. I haven't seen Helena in ages. You could even join us for the meal. Please."

Mr. Sorenson hesitated. "We're used to our holiday two-step, Trudy."

"Please come. Douglas bought a turkey the size of an ostrich."

Robert was unnerved by his mother's casual cheer, not five minutes after that grim infertility speech.

"I'm going to have Dad call you tonight, okay?" she said.

Mr. Sorenson seemed pleased by this idea, or maybe just let off the hook. He said good-bye and left the store.

Without conversing, Robert and his mother waited in line with their shopping baskets. When they reached the register, she told him to bring the car around so they wouldn't have to carry all the bottles so far. Efficient as ever.

They drove out of Ledgely in silence. Robert was not even tempted to turn on the radio. He still felt the burn of his anger, at both women, at their collusion. He turned up the heater.

He was startled when his mother pulled out her cell phone and made a call. "Dad?" she said. "Dad, we ran into Uncle Norval. They're alone for Thanksgiving, did you know that? Will you call and invite them? I'd love that. Clover would, too.... Oh good. We'll see you in ten."

Oh good
. What gave her the nerve to give him a big Life Lesson Lecture, then gush over dinner plans? Never mind that being a good doctor meant being a good actor, too.

They crossed the town line into Matlock; by habit, he clicked on the high beams. At night, because of the sudden, dense woodsiness and the equally sudden dearth of streetlights, Robert the little boy had often felt as if he were entering a fairy-tale forest. In Matlock, the dark became darker, while the stars, filling the narrow rivers of sky that flowed between the treetops, shone much brighter. In winter, the snow in the occasional field seemed deeper, whiter, colder than anywhere else.

"So," he said into the silence, "is it true, Mom, that you had an abortion?"

She cried out, briefly, as if he'd struck her, yet he felt not even a splinter of guilt.

"Who told you that?"

"A couple years ago, at home, I overheard it."

"Overheard it how? What are you talking about?"

"When Aunt Clo stayed with us. When she flipped out over Uncle Todd."

His mother said nothing, all the way down Quarry Road. They were half a mile from Granddad's house.

"Pull over," she said. "Pull. Over."

The road had only a narrow shoulder, made narrower still by the swath of plowed snow. "I can't."

"Then pull the car into the driveway and stop there." Her voice was thick, almost menacing.

"Okay."

So they drove in silence for a few seconds more. Robert turned in at the mailbox and stopped.

"Turn off the engine. The headlights. Off."

Robert did as she asked.

"The answer is yes. Your father and I made that decision together. You were seven. Because yes, Robert, I did love being a mother enough to want you to have a sibling. Absolutely. If your father had had his way, we'd have had three or four. So I was pregnant. And when I was through the first trimester, your father wanted to tell you. But we had a blood test that didn't look good. And then I had an amnio. Do you know what that is, Robert? I assume you do."

Robert looked at her, certain she must be crying, but she wasn't. Her jaw was set--maybe in defiance of tears. She was waiting for an answer. Tentatively, he said, "So the baby was, like, deformed?"

"Down syndrome," said his mother. "And I did, we did, consider going to term with that baby. But it wasn't so.... Back then ..."

"I'm sorry," said Robert. "Wow. I'm really sorry."

"Your Aunt Clover has caused me a lot of grief over the years, Robert. I have covered up for her, I have lied for her--your grandfather has
no idea
about some of the stunts she's pulled. The drugs in college. The ... Well. I'll stop there.
Some
members of this family are discreet. And on top of everything else, I have graciously let her refuse
shitloads
of good advice. Chalk this up as just one more gift from my hopeless loser of a sister. It's a damn good thing she's not in that house tonight." She sighed aggressively. "Okay, turn the car on. Go."

Robert asked, as calmly as he could, "Would you never have told me?"

"Why, Robert, would there be any reason you
should
know? Why would you
want
to know?" Her voice was raised, as if his question had been idiotic, but then she put a hand on his arm and stroked it for a moment.

When they pulled up at the front door, she said, "Because you are bound to wonder, and I don't want you to ask me later, the baby was a girl. You would have had a sister."

She got out, slammed the car door, and went straight into the house. She did not wait to hold the door for him when he carried in the box of wine.

Turo was playing Connect Four with Rico. Robert's dad read a magazine, his stocking feet pointed toward the fire. For one shell-shocked moment, Robert stared at his dad's socks, which never varied: black, ribbed, that thin orange stripe across the toes. Dependable. A metaphor. Snapping out of his trance, Robert looked toward the dining room. There, almost but not quite hidden from view, Granddad was kissing Sarah (and boy was she kissing him back). Mom had gone to the kitchen or straight upstairs; though she had tossed her coat on the bench by the closet, she was nowhere in sight.

It was a done deal that he would lie awake that night, neither calm enough to sleep nor sharp enough to work on his biology paper.

Dinner had been a roving affair. People ate where and when they wanted: Sarah, Granddad, and Robert's father in the kitchen; Turo and Robert on the coffee table by the fire. Claiming she had to deal with e-mail, Mom took her plate into Granddad's study. Rico had been tucked in, much earlier, on a couch in the upstairs alcove that everyone still called Poppy's dressing room.

First Turo, then Dad, and finally Robert made their way upstairs. He hadn't seen Granddad and Sarah retire, yet now he saw the light under Granddad's door and heard them whispering, heard her laugh in her ticklish way. Through another closed door, the one that led to his mom's old bedroom, he heard his father snoring.

Turo, thank God, rarely snored. He'd fallen asleep the minute he climbed into bed. Robert kept his lamp turned low and tried to absorb an article on American immigration policies in the 1990s, jam-packed with graphs.

But all he could think about was his phantom sister, the daughter his mother had thought she would have and then didn't. Decided not to have. What was Down syndrome anyway, other than a certain appearance, the combination of ungainly head, flat face, and startled doe eyes that he could spot, and name, in an instant? How long did you live? Did you deteriorate, or stay the same forever? Did pain go along with the mental--what, deficiency? His mother had to be reminded of that daughter, that decision, every time she saw someone like that on the street, in the hospital. And not just then. How often? Every day, every few hours--or not so often at all? Did it ever come up with Dad? Jesus, did Granddad know?

Seven. Robert tried to remember his life when he was seven--his mom when he was seven. He could remember his first-grade teacher, the classroom, his best friends. Mrs. Kilgore read
Stuart Little
out loud at rest time. The kids lay down on plaid blankets to listen, after lunch. His dad packed bologna sandwiches. God,
baloney
. Who ate bologna anymore?

His mother was right; this was something he didn't need to know, shouldn't have known. It did not complete a puzzle or give any comfort to anyone. What you didn't know
could
hurt you.

Perversely, Turo's gimmicky little catchphrase came to mind:
senza ragazza
. Without girl. Over the past year, Turo had developed the philosophy that to resist the pull of a woman's emotions gave you that much more strength and purpose. Like some ancient warrior ethos. This was no excuse for a lack of attraction. Turo had juggled at least
due
if not
tre ragazze
toward the end of their year in Kirkland House. He wasn't tall or handsome in that oh-so-Ivy J. Crew way; Robert thought he was too skinny. But according to Clara, Turo had a "jive Latino impishness." Maybe other guys dismissed him as scrawny, but women saw him as wiry and supple--a certain essential sexiness if you were repulsed by the football physique. "Fred Astaire meets John Leguizamo," she said, at which point Robert had heard enough. As if he hadn't been the one to ponder Turo's appeal in the first place. Not that he'd been jealous, not with Clara.

And now here he was,
senza
Clara. This hadn't struck him so clearly until that awful, queasy conversation with his mother. Until then, he'd had this general feeling that it was more like he was ... rebelling against the notion of some pathetically outmoded going-steady kind of relationship. At Clara's urging, they'd even celebrated a "first anniversary" on a particular day in early October. When he asked her what made that day an anniversary, she'd lowered her voice to say, "Like you don't know, bobcat."

That made it pretty obvious she'd committed to memory--or, what, recorded in some girlish diary?--the first night she'd invited him to her dorm room (her roommate gone for the weekend). Sweet, the way she'd made note of the date ... but maybe a little creepy, too.