Other People's Houses(16)

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Iris sat on the edge of Wyatt’s bed and watched him breathe, his face smoothed out in sleep, his cheeks flushed. How could eyelids so small lift lashes so long? He held Gubby in his hand, a small rabbit that had once been soft and gray, but was now worn and torn, the cream feet and ears more like gray, the gray more like brown. When I die, he had once asked, will Gubby die with me? Iris had nodded, taking the question at face value and trying not to let him see how the thought made her feel. She prayed he’d die about eight decades after he’d forgotten Gubby, or more, maybe breaking the world record for longevity, oldest man ever.

Sara coughed gently at the door and held out her hand. Iris smiled and got to her feet, after tucking the sheet more fully around Wyatt. She held her wife’s hand as they walked down the hall toward their bedroom. Sara was looking at her in a way that meant she wanted to fool around, and Iris was wondering if she could ask her, afterward, if another baby were possible. That’s what it was doing to her, this longing: Everything was related to it, somehow. Every breath, every kiss, every bite of nutritious food, every baby smiled at in the grocery store, was a wish for another. She was going mad and the madness was coloring everything. She and Sara had a good marriage, a strong friendship, yet Iris was worried her request for another child would sound like a demand. What if Sara said, “It’s me or a baby”? And why did Iris even think that was a possibility? Sara was never like that, had never been like that. Iris was losing her fucking mind.



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Lucas slept horizontally, like a stave. He had fallen asleep in his parents’ bed, and pretty much stretched from one side to the other. Bill had slowly moved to the very edge of the bed to make room. He folded one leg down to stop himself sliding off, and to help him balance the computer on his lap. The lights were off and he was miles away, immersed in the music he was composing. As his heart slept beside him in superhero pajamas, Bill fought dragons one phrase at a time and didn’t think of his wife at all.





Eight.


Frances tapped the horn. Lucas was supposed to be running down the slight slope of his front yard right now. Actually, several minutes ago. She sighed, turned to Ava, and opened her mouth.

“No, honk again. Louder.” Her daughter’s tone was cool, but her eyes were ready to start a fight.

Frances raised her eyebrows. Ava was working on her passive resistance this morning, and had been ever since Frances had dared to suggest that something with sleeves might be a good idea.

“Here he comes,” said Lally, from behind her, saving Frances from another bout with the standing featherweight champion of in-car boxing.

“Sorry, Frances.” Bill had come with his son, and stood next to the car as Lucas clambered in. “I overslept. Then he didn’t want to get dressed, and it took a while to compromise.”

Frances looked in the rearview. Lucas was wearing pajama pants, but a regular T-shirt. She smiled at Bill. “Looks like a perfect outfit to me,” she said. “He’s covered, right?”

Bill smiled back, thinking for the hundredth time how much he liked Frances. She was easy, Frances was. No muss, no fuss. Just us humans here, no need to panic.

Frances smiled at him, put the car back into gear, and got ready to pull away. “See you later, Bill.” She waved as she headed down the street, and Bill raised his hand in return.

Frances looked at him in the side mirror, still waving after her as she reached the end of the block. As she swung around the corner he swiveled on his heel just as smoothly, and went back into the house. She wondered anew where Julie was. Once Lally and Lucas had started at the same preschool she and Julie had begun a tentative friendship, but then, suddenly, Julie wasn’t at home anymore. She’d asked Bill if Julie was away for work, and Bill had just shaken his head and said nothing.

That had been a couple of months ago, and somehow the moment for inquiry had passed. She and Iris had joked that maybe Bill killed his wife and buried her in the yard, but she’d heard Lucas talking about his mom to Lally, so presumably that wasn’t true. It was strange, and the neighborhood gossips had tried Julie in absentia and found her guilty of abandonment with a side order of failing to keep them all informed. Frances hadn’t known her well enough to have her phone number, and certainly didn’t know Bill well enough to ask where he’d stashed his wife. Frances mentally shrugged her shoulders, and focused again on the road. People did weird shit, usually for boring reasons, and Frances tried not to judge people without knowing all the facts. She flashed on Anne’s face, her eyes closed with pleasure as her boyfriend’s tongue teased and pleased, and found it all too easy to judge and sentence that one.



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After dropping off the smallest kids, Frances circled back to the high school. She sat there with her windows down and the radio on quietly, waiting to hear the first bell. Frances had an appointment to talk to the school counselor about Ava’s grades. They’d argued about it the previous night.

“My grades are fine,” Ava had insisted. “A solid B is totally OK. Why are you so focused on achievement? Aren’t we supposed to be embracing a growth mind-set these days?” She’d been sitting on her bed, her long legs in stripy tights folded up under her, one side of her hair shaved, the other streaked with purple. She was the cool kid Frances had always wanted to be friends with at school, but now Frances understood that the independence she’d admired had come at a price at home. The coolest girl at her school, six million years previously, had brought a pet rat to school every day, hidden somewhere on her person. At the time it had seemed bold and daring, a declaration, a manifesto. Now it struck Frances that the rat must have represented a daily argument with her mother that only got her revved up for the potential half dozen others she would have once she got the rat to school. Frances wondered what had happened to that girl. The rat was dead, of course, time being what it was.