All I could whisper was, “Lorenzo, I’m having a baby.” I could barely get the words out.
Help me, Larissa!
As usual, they celebrated Larissa’s birthday belatedly. Jared was swamped with the end-of-the-quarter tax reports, and couldn’t take the time to plan a get-together. They had cake with the kids on April 4, but didn’t invite their friends until almost May. Jared wanted to go out, like always, to reserve a room at one of the great city restaurants, perhaps Tabla, but Larissa, after feebly suggesting Nobu—which in itself was strange since it was a famous
sushi
place—said she would prefer
to stay home. She found a new recipe in one of her cookbooks and wanted to try it out. They hadn’t had a dinner party in so long, she said. She’d like to keep it casual, and have the kids with her. The kids had been sick, Larissa said, and she didn’t want to leave Michelangelo when he was just getting over a cold.
Jared invited Maggie, Ezra, Bo, Jonny, Doug, Kate, Evelyn, Malcolm, and even Dora and Ray. On the day of the party Dora called and inexplicably cancelled, saying only that something came up. Jared found that perplexing, even more so than her clipped and awkward manner, especially considering her unrestrained enthusiasm the week before when she had thanked him profusely for inviting her. Doug and Kate were away and couldn’t come.
At the house, Evelyn mentioned that she hadn’t seen Larissa in a long time. Evelyn’s reaction at seeing Larissa unsettled Jared.
“God, Larissa, have you not been outside?” she exclaimed. “You look frighteningly pale.” Jared studied his wife.
Did
she look pale? “Oh my God, Jared, her skin is like porcelain, and I don’t mean that in a good way, Lar. It looks translucent.”
“What, like you can see right through me?” Larissa went back to stirring something on the stove.
“Yes, like that.”
“Plus,” said Maggie, “she’s wearing black. Why would you wear black in April, on your birthday, Lar?”
“Didn’t you hear, Mags?” said Larissa, not turning around. “Black is the new black. How are you feeling?”
“Today, a little better, thanks for asking. I’m getting used to living with my new warped and tired body. That’s all I can ask.”
Larissa didn’t turn around. “You definitely look better.”
Jared didn’t see what Evelyn saw; he thought his wife looked pretty good, no matter how black-clad and pale she seemed
to others. The jersey dress draped sexily around her slim figure, she wore high-heeled black pumps, her hair was down.
That was at the beginning of the evening. Larissa stayed in the kitchen until dinner was served, and during dinner she must have gotten up three dozen times, without exaggeration, to help the nine kids with their food. Larissa got up to bring them butter, to cut their bread, to pour more drink, to scoop the peas from the bottom of the pot, to get a new spoon for Michelangelo and a straw for one of Evelyn’s children. She spent the entire dinner bent over their table, cutting up food or buttering, spreading, pouring, salting, fixing napkins and mouths. “Larissa! Sit down. The kids will be fine,” Jared kept repeating. This wasn’t just a different-looking Larissa; this was a different Larissa.
“Yeah, really, Lar, they can fend for themselves,” said Evelyn.
“They’re only children,” Larissa said. “They need our help.”
“Oh, it’s time they learned,” said Malcolm. “They’ll be out on their own soon. Right, kids?”
Usually there’d be a witty riposte from Larissa. Not tonight. She was back at the kids’ table, hovering over Michelangelo. Her own food got cold. “I don’t mind,” she said when she came back to Jared’s side. “I always eat it lukewarm anyway.” She had made beef bourguignon and potato skins with bacon and cheese. She didn’t touch her tepid food.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Bo asked.
“I can’t tell you how much I had while I was cooking.” Larissa chuckled mildly. “I didn’t realize how stuffed I am.”
“Lar, you want more wine?”
“No, I’m good, thanks.”
She was good if by good she meant her wine glass was still full, the red bobbing in the hollow bottom. Oh, she swilled it, she just didn’t swill it down. Carefully Jared laid his hand on her hand. Carefully she smiled, turning to him halfway like an animatronic Disney figurine, and then bobbled slowly
away, on a little spring that wouldn’t let her turn all the way to face him.
Much of the dinner conversation was taken up by the travails of
Saint Joan
. Larissa barely contributed. The troubling Megan was Larissa’s responsibility, and Jared thought she didn’t want to be blamed again for Megan’s obdurate softness. Why did Joan
have
to wear boy clothes, Megan wanted to know. Did she really hear saints’ voices? Could Joan be made into a secular Joan? She had done the impossible
with
God; could she have done it without Him?
Larissa might have participated in her own defense had she not been up at Michelangelo’s elbow, wiping up the melted cheese he dripped over his brand-new sailor suit.
Jared and Jonny had a long discussion about which era was best for rock music. Malcolm and Ezra and Evelyn got into a heated debate about who was the greater military leader, Saint Joan or Napoleon. Maggie and Bo chatted about the Met’s newest exhibition of “Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography.” Jared caught the tail end of that when he stopped talking about who had the greater influence on modern music: The Who or The Stones, and heard Bo say, “Sugimoto was stunned by the fact that no matter how fake the subject, when photographed it became completely real.”
Jared realized Larissa was not back at the table. Excusing himself, he got up and went to the kitchen. She was cleaning up. “What are you doing?” he said quietly.
“We’re going to have cake soon. I want to get the table ready.”
“It’s your birthday, I don’t want you to clean up after cooking all day. Come on, sit down. You’re making everybody feel bad.”
“Who’s everybody?” said Larissa, wiping down the granite. And it was true, the noises from the dining room were of happy people drinking and talking.
“Do you want me to help?”
“No. You go sit. Otherwise that would be plain rude, the host and hostess both missing.”
So Jared went back, and she cleaned up, and then served her own cake. They put candles on, a number 4 and a number 1, and after they sang “Happy Birthday,” she blew out the candles before they had finished the last note.
“Whoa, Larissa,” said Maggie. “You blew them out so fast, I don’t think you had time to make a wish.”
“Well, I already made a wish on my actual birthday,” said Larissa. “No sense irritating the gods with repeat wishes.”
Maggie nodded with friendly approval. “Did you hear that, Ezra? Our Larissa doesn’t want to irritate the gods.”
“It’s so considerate of Larissa to even think of them,” remarked Ezra.
Silently Larissa moved her own slice of cake around on her plate for a while and finally got up, disappearing again.
Half an hour had passed and she wasn’t back. When Jared went to look for her, she wasn’t in any of the bathrooms, nor in the bedroom upstairs. Puzzled he came into the den to ask the kids if they’d seen their mom, and found her on the couch, watching a Nickelodeon show, with Asher on the floor by her feet, Emily leaning against her right shoulder, and Michelangelo on her lap, pressed against her as she embraced him with both arms. He watched her from the back for a few seconds; she hadn’t stirred. He tapped Emily on the shoulder and mouthed, “Is Mom awake?”
By way of answer Emily pointed to her mother’s face. Jared walked around the couch and witnessed a glassy Larissa sitting blank-eyed, unreacting and unemoting. “Larissa?” he said, expecting her to snap out of it, the way people did when they’ve spaced out for a moment. But she didn’t snap out of it. Slowly she blinked, and then raised her eyes to him, as if she had not been entranced at all, but fully aware. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Come to the table.”
“I will, hon, in just a sec. I cooked and cleaned all day. I’m a little tired.”
Lowering his voice, he said, “That was your choice. No one made you do it.”
“I’m not complaining.” But she had already turned her attention back to the TV and stopped blinking. “I just want to sit here with my kids.”
“Yeah, Dad,” said Michelangelo, nesting against her. “Leave Mom alone. Can’t you see she’s busy?”
Slowly Jared returned to the table.
She didn’t come back to the dining room. Half an hour later Jared found her upstairs giving Michelangelo a bath.
“Larissa!” he hissed in the steamy bathroom. “What the hell are you doing? We have guests downstairs! Evelyn and Malcolm are about to leave.”
“Jared, the boy is not feeling well and needed a bath. I’ll be down in a minute.” She was kneeling against the tub. She didn’t turn around.
“I like it when Mommy gives me a bath,” said Michelangelo, splashing his mother, still wearing her black dress, “because she puts bubbles and colors in, and you don’t, Dad.”
Downstairs only Maggie and Ezra remained.
“What’s wrong with Larissa?” asked Maggie.
“I honestly don’t know,” Jared replied.
“She’s so out of it,” Maggie said. “The shrink doesn’t seem to be helping her.”
“No kidding. I actually think she’s worse. Ever since starting counseling she’s been having awful mood swings, unlike ever before. She’s either like this, or she’s maniacally frustrated with the kids’ shoes, notebooks, baseball gloves…”
“Maybe she’s got a bipolar disorder?”
“What, she suddenly developed one after finding a psychiatrist?”
Ezra waved his hand at both Maggie and Jared, downing
his remaining wine. “Don’t be so overwrought, both of you,” he said. “I talk to her at school. She is fine. Why is it unreasonable to assume that when she is in her own house, she might feel exhausted from being so front and center all the time? That exhaustion can show itself either in silence, like tonight, or in impatience. She’s not a performing monkey. She is a human being. And sometimes, human beings get tired. You know?” He stared pointedly at Maggie.
Maggie lowered her gaze.
Ezra casually continued, “She is okay during the week. There’s a lot of stress with
Saint Joan
. I feel partly responsible. I roped her into it, and I think she regrets it now. Blame me, but don’t be so hard on her.”
The three of them quickly changed the subject to Dylan’s gifts in sports and arts, and how unfair it was that he had to choose one or the other before he entered college. Soon it was time to go. Larissa came downstairs to say goodbye. Upset with her, despite Ezra’s mollification, Jared went to yell at her for spoiling her own damn party that he wished to God he’d never arranged now, and found her on the floor in Emily’s room, playing Scrabble with Emily and Asher, and he wanted to say, oh, to talk to adults, you’re all out, but to play Scrabble,
that
you’ve got a brain for, but the three of them looked so cute on the floor.
“You wanna play, Dad?” asked Emily. “We just started. We’ll go easy on you. We’ll give you a thirty-point handicap. Right, Mom?”
“Thirty? Let’s give him at least fifty.”
“No, you guys go ahead,” said Jared. “I’ll go check on the ballgame.”
He didn’t mean to, but he was also tired, and he fell asleep on the couch around midnight. When he woke up it was six in the morning and his back was sore and cramped from sleeping in a sitting position. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t
come to wake him, and she wasn’t even in bed herself! Larissa was with Michelangelo, sleeping on top of his covers, her arm around him. Jared thought about waking her, but reconsidered, leaving her where she was.
3
Scylla and Charybdis
“L
arissa.” Kai closed the door, but made no motion to touch her. She couldn’t even smell him. Usually, he had his happy-go-lucky, come-hither-and-take-what-I’m-offering smile, but not today.
“What’s the matter?”
“You know what the matter is.”
“Kai…” Her arms went around herself.
“I’m waiting.”
“You’re not giving me time to think.”
“It’s been twelve weeks!” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Oh my God, no, it’s been seventy weeks.”
“It’s not enough time.”
“Not enough time for what? What are you waiting for?”
“I don’t know.” Oh, the hated phrase!
“Do you want me to call him? Go to his work? Come to your house?”
“No!” Larissa, still standing, backed away toward the door. “What are you saying…? No. Never.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Kai, what’s wrong with you. You’re never like this…”
“I’m like this now.”
“But you’ve been…”
“Been so what? Patient? Nice? Tolerant? Adaptable? Easygoing? Doesn’t my cup ever get full, too? Doesn’t it spill over?” When she didn’t answer him, he said, “What do you go to your doctor for, if not to work this shit out?”
“I go so I can see you at night.”
“Okay, but even
en passant
, without meaning to, don’t you manage to resolve anything, since you do actually speak to her once a week?”
“Clearly, we haven’t resolved this.”
“Clearly.”
She stood. He stood.
Minutes passed. “I can’t do this anymore, Larissa,” Kai said. “I can’t do this for another day. I can’t have you go to him, sleep with him, live with him. It would be one thing if you never touched him, but…” He trailed off. “I had been hoping that my love for you would make you see the light.”
“I see light.” I see lots of things. Darkness, too.
“Apparently not. Look, that’s it. You love me? So stay with me. Or you love me, but can’t? Then walk the fuck out that door.”
“Kai…”
He raised his palm to stop her. “No more. Tell me we had so much, and it was good, but what I ask of you, you can’t do, you can’t go with me.” His young face was dry, grim.
“Not many could do it,” she whispered.
“You’re right. Many could not lie like you, deceive like you, pretend like you, live a double life like you, be married to one man while you say you love another quite so well as you. Many women are not you, Larissa. But then I’m not with them. You can’t do it? So tell me you can’t do it.”