Everything I Never Told You(62)

Which was this: Lydia waited for them to finish singing. As they reached the last line of the song, James held up the camera and she bent over the cake, lips pursed as if to kiss. Her perfectly made-up face smiled around the table, sweeping each of them in turn. Their mother. Their father. Nath. Hannah did not know everything Lydia thought she understood—the necklace, Louisa, all I want you to remember—but she knew that something had shifted inside her sister, that she was balanced on a dangerous, high-up ledge. She sat very still, as if one wrong move might tip Lydia off the edge, and Lydia blew out the flames with one quick puff.





ten



Lydia had been wrong about Louisa, of course. Back then, on his daughter’s birthday, James would have laughed at the very idea; the thought of anyone other than Marilyn in his bed, in his life, was preposterous. But back then, the thought of life without Lydia had been preposterous, too. Now both of those preposterous things have come true.

When Louisa shuts the apartment door and returns to the bedroom, James is already buttoning his shirt. “You’re going?” she says. Inside, she still clings to the possibility that Marilyn’s visit was just a coincidence, but she is fooling herself, and she knows it.

James tucks in his shirt and fastens his belt. “I have to,” he says, and they both know this is true, too. “It may as well be now.” He’s not sure what to expect when he reaches home. Sobbing? Rage? A frying pan to the head? He doesn’t know yet, either, what he will say to Marilyn. “I’ll see you later,” he says to Louisa, who kisses his cheek, and this is the one thing he’s sure of.

When he enters the house, just after noon, there is no sobbing, no rage—just silence. Nath and Hannah sit side by side on the living room couch, eyeing him warily as he passes through. It is as if they are watching a doomed man march to the gallows, and this is how James himself feels as he climbs the stairs to his daughter’s room, where Marilyn sits at Lydia’s desk, eerily calm. For a long while, she says nothing, and he wills himself still, keeps his hands steady, until she finally speaks.

“How long?”

Outside, Nath and Hannah crouch on the top step in wordless accord, holding their breath, listening to the voices that carry down the hall.

“Since—the funeral.”

“The funeral.” Marilyn, still studying the carpet, presses her lips into a thin line. “She’s very young. How old is she? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”

“Marilyn. Stop it.”

Marilyn doesn’t stop it. “She seems sweet. Quite docile—that’s a nice change, I suppose. I don’t know why I’m surprised. I guess you’re long overdue for a trade-in. She’d make a very nice little wife.”

James, to his surprise, blushes. “No one’s talking about—”

“Not yet. But I know what she wants. Marriage. Husband. I know her type.” Marilyn pauses, remembering her younger self, her mother’s proud whisper: a lot of wonderful Harvard men. “My mother spent her whole life trying to turn me into that type.”

At the mention of Marilyn’s mother, James stiffens, as if he has turned to ice. “Oh, yes. Your poor mother. And then you went and married me.” He chokes out a laugh. “What a disappointment.”

“I am disappointed.” Marilyn’s head snaps up. “I thought you were different.” What she means is: I thought you were better than other men. I thought you wanted better than that. But James, still thinking of Marilyn’s mother, hears something else.

“You got tired of different, didn’t you?” he says. “I’m too different. Your mother knew it right away. You think it’s such a good thing, standing out. But look at you. Just look at you.” He takes in Marilyn’s honey-colored hair; her skin, even paler than usual from a month spent indoors. Those sky-colored eyes he has adored for so long, first in his wife’s face and then in his child’s. Things he has never said, never even hinted to Marilyn before, pour from his mouth. “You’ve never been in a room where no one else looked like you. You’ve never had people mock you to your face. You’ve never been treated like a stranger.” He feels as if he has vomited, violently, and he drags the back of his hand across his lips. “You have no idea what it’s like, being different.”

For a moment James looks young and lonely and vulnerable, like the shy boy she’d met so long ago, and half of Marilyn wants to gather him in her arms. The other half of her wants to batter him with her fists. She gnaws her lip, letting the two sides struggle. “Sophomore year, in the lab, the men used to sneak up behind me and try to lift up my skirt,” she says at last. “One time they came in early and pissed in all of my beakers. When I complained, the professor put his arm around me and said—” The memory catches in her throat, like a burr. “Don’t worry about it, honey. Life’s too short and you’re too beautiful. You know what? I didn’t care. I knew what I wanted. I was going to be a doctor.” She glares at James, as if he has contradicted her. “Then—fortunately—I came to my senses. I stopped trying to be different. I did just what all the other girls were doing. I got married. I gave all that up.” A thick bitterness coats her tongue. “Do what everyone else is doing. That’s all you ever said to Lydia. Make friends. Fit in. But I didn’t want her to be just like everyone else.” The rims of her eyes ignite. “I wanted her to be exceptional.”