A Lily in the Light(57)
She wandered slowly along the river, kicking cigarette butts with the toe of her sneaker. Her legs were ready for an ice bath. Heat pushed through her jeans. She was sore and tired, in need of Advil. Her stomach was unsettled, nauseous with possibility when there were only two: it was Lily, or it wasn’t, like pulling flower petals. It’s Lily, it’s Lily not. The jasmine smelled more sickly than sweet. She tossed them into the river and watched them float away. A rat scurried past on the cobblestone quay. It was peaceful to be alone in the city, like a prayer. She enjoyed the possibility of not knowing and tried not to let “what if” ruin the dream of “maybe.”
Chapter Fifteen
It was eight o’clock in New York. Madeline would be filling out seating cards. It was going to be a small wedding, fifty people and a ceremony at city hall followed by dinner in Chinatown, where Nathan and Madeline had had their first date. Too shy to admit she didn’t know how to use chopsticks, Madeline had stabbed a dumpling through the middle and eaten until it had splashed onto her plate. Nathan had made her a pair with rubber bands and shown her how to hold them, and Madeline had let herself be taught. “You’ll marry him,” Esme had told her. “Anyone who can teach you anything is worth keeping.”
The hotel lobby was quiet. There were only the man behind the front desk and the humming overhead lights for company. Esme curled into the phone booth and cradled the phone in her hands.
“Mom’s throwing a fit about not having the ceremony in a church. She says it’s not a ‘legitimate’ wedding.”
“Not surprising.”
“Yeah, but I hoped she’d drop it. She’s been huffing around, slamming cabinets, cleaning obsessively, like she’s getting ready for . . .” Madeline’s voice trailed off. She didn’t have to say Lily coming home.
“Any updates?”
“Nick can’t get anything. The FBI’s here now. She’s in the hospital.”
Esme didn’t push further. She didn’t want to think about the girl being malnourished or sick or hurt. “Ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes,” her mother had whispered when Lily was born, gently pinching Lily’s fingers and toes like a prayer.
“What can I do?” Esme changed the subject back to Madeline’s wedding.
“Nothing.” Madeline sounded relieved. They were playing a kind of pretend, but it was a pretend they were used to. “I just want it to be over, actually. I’m not having a shower because it’s just another way to showcase how dysfunctional our family is. I can’t think of anything worse than inviting everyone I know to watch me open presents with a hat made of gift bows on while Mom cries every time I open one and gives her ‘if I hadn’t married your father’ narrative to all my law school friends. And that’s if she shows up, because, you know, that’s always a risk.”
“Dad wouldn’t let her not show up.”
“Yeah, well, it might be better if she didn’t. How sad is that?”
In another life, Esme would have been Madeline’s maid of honor. She would have helped her mother plan a shower and then a bachelorette party, and they would have hot-glue gunned invitations and wedding favors. Now, Cerise couldn’t even handle birthdays. Cerise would buy birthday cakes and light candles, but when it was time to sing, she’d find a reason to wash dishes or fill glasses with milk no one wanted because she couldn’t stand life moving forward.
“You could’ve eloped.”
“Yeah, well, part of me still wants a normal family. You’re still coming, right?”
“Of course—why wouldn’t I?” The accusation hung between them again. She would always be the one who’d snipped herself out of the equation and made a luxurious life for herself compared to living in Queens and helping their parents, but they were still sisters, and there would always be a part of Esme that wanted her family too.
“I don’t know, Esme. I’m taking my bar exam in three weeks. I don’t even want to think about this.”
“But it’s your wedding. You’re only supposed to get married once. Why don’t you just push the bar back? Or the wedding? What’s the rush?”
Silence. Papers shuffled. Madeline didn’t do anything spontaneously unless she . . .
“Oh, shit.” Esme finally understood. “Does Mom know?”
“Of course not. You think I want to dump that on her too? She’s got enough, and it’s fine, really. After the wedding, it won’t matter. Nathan wants to be a dad. He’s excited about it. And don’t even think about throwing me a baby shower, ever, because I can’t imagine what a shit show Mom would be there. God.”
“But what about you?” Madeline had always stepped in when their mother couldn’t, spooning her ice chips when she was sick, showing her how to plot x and y on an axis, following library book instructions on how to make a Balanchine bun. She’d be a good mother, but how would Madeline try a case in the Supreme Court or be her own Darby Shaw if she had a baby?
“Do you want to be a mother?”
“Well, look,” Madeline said finally. “It doesn’t matter if it happened when I was ready. It happened, and now I have to be ready.”
Esme felt guilty for sitting in a phone booth in Paris, for the bag of chèvre at her feet from the fromagerie and the croissant wrapped in paper. Her life was luxuriously selfish in comparison, despite how hard she’d worked for it.