The Burning Side(36)
When a summer wind does sweep through, it comes from an unexpected direction. My phone vibrates one evening during dinner, and I look down at the screen. “Hmm,” I say. “Josie.”
Mom is handing Otto a bite of cornbread, which he shovels past his plump little lips. Dad and Sadie are watching Leo and Cameron play Crazy Eights. Sadie is leaning on her grandfather’s arm while collecting cornbread crumbs with her fingertip. Dad is explaining which is a spade and which is a club.
I push the speaker button. “Hey, Jo. We’re all here.”
A chorus of “Hi, Josie” comes from around the table.
“Oh, perfect! Just what I was hoping for.” She clears her throat dramatically and starts belting the song “What’d I Miss” from Hamilton. I turn my phone volume down and widen my eyes at Cameron, who smirks.
Mom leans over the phone, holding her hair back as if my phone is a bowl of soup. I’ve told her a million times she doesn’t have to get that close for speakerphone. “Sweetheart, what’s going on?”
“I’m coming home for our Dallas run! I thought I might be staying with other cast members, but with everything happening—well, it’s perfect!”
I know this tone. It’s like when she got a part, or an A, or a boyfriend. She wants applause. But for this? She’ll be working in Dallas anyway. This is hardly a sacrifice; it’s the least she can do, joining us here in the cloud of diagnosis land.
The news settles. All three Russo siblings living under one roof again. Add to that the man I’m divorcing, our children, and regular appearances by my brother’s fiancée. It’s…a lot.
I watch Leo get out bowls for mango sorbet.
Still leaning far over, Mom looks at Dad as she says into the phone, “Oh, that’s great! When do you arrive?”
“Next week!”
At this, Sadie grants Josie her cheers. “Hooray, Aunt Josie’s coming!”
Jo will bring our tally to eight people. Eight people to three bathrooms and one kitchen. And she won’t be so easily pacified by Leo’s and my charade, pretending we’re fine until we almost believe it ourselves. Almost.
If I know Josie, she will ask needling questions about the little distances between us. The clipped sentences and eye rolls. The resentful grumbles from Leo about how he’ll just take care of everything, then or from me about how I’m not a mind reader. And then—quite damning for the two of us—the fact that we never touch anymore. Leo used to do things like tug me onto his lap after dinner.
How can I explain to my footloose sister that it’s those little distances that erode a marriage? My explanation will crumble when it hits the air. The experience defies words when someone stands there frowning, wondering where things really went wrong.
Because I wonder that too.
I watch Dad now with his grandkids and spades and clubs. How can we tell a man who’s losing his mind that he’s also losing a son?
“Josephine’s coming ho-oh-ome!” Leo is singing, playing along, using Josie’s sibling name to welcome her with open arms, even though he knows the losses that are coming. He eats a spoonful of sorbet, somehow finding it in himself to offer my family that crooked smile of his. It pains me how much he stands to lose. But with Josie coming home, we won’t be able to avoid ourselves much longer.
And what will we tell everyone when they ask why it’s ending?
LEO
Earlier 2022
OTTO IS ONLY FIVE MONTHS old when I introduce April to Cody Blanchard.
He’s a new hire for the district literacy program, and he needs tutors. Individual educational coaches, they’re called now.
April misses helping kids read. Sadie has no signs of dyslexia at all, and April seems almost disappointed about it, like it means her daughter doesn’t need her. Never mind that she does so much for Sadie: takes her to preschool and gymnastics and the doctor, slathers her with sunscreen and bug spray, holds her after nightmares, lifts her over mud puddles, sings to her while trimming her hair, applies Neosporin to cuts with Q-tips, and presses on her toes through her shoes to see if they fit, kneeling and saying, “Wiggle your toes.”
But recently Sadie corrected a word when April was reading Dr. Seuss, and April mumbled, “Well, she might as well just read to me instead.” I thought, Nothing wrong with that, but I knew better than to say it.
I was scared when April got pregnant with Sadie, but I was really scared when she got pregnant with Otto, because my fears were no longer abstract. I was scared of being a fourth wheel, of April seeking purpose in a baby that no baby can satisfy. I was scared of her vacant eyes and a house made of eggshells. I was scared to have a son. To fail a son. Every marriage needs strength to survive, but especially a marriage with young children, because new buds weigh down the branch.
In the first days of Otto’s life, I could tell I was a nuisance on top of everything else April was dealing with. But I told myself those were just early days.
Does it still count as early days four months later? Five months? Six? April doesn’t like me to see her postpartum body, much less touch it. She has always been self-deprecating, but never more than when she has given birth, despite the fact that she practically shines in glory. What her body has done and continues to do is divine, mystifying, intolerably sexy, a paradise of new lines and life. I want to pilgrimage. To worship. But she wants to lose weight. To sleep alone with the baby, avoid mirrors, and keep the lights dim.