The Misfortunes of Others (2 page)

“Seven months. I would have been here the first two months if you had told me. Did she tell you I knew over the phone? Do we have a connection, Maya and I, or what? Did she tell you I was coming?”

“She warned me.”

“Where is she now? I want to show her the bear.”

“Snooky, she’s pregnant. Don’t show her the bear. It might scare her, and that would disturb the child.” Bernard stared at the plain brown suitcase Snooky had brought with him. “Since when do you have luggage? I’ve never seen that before.”

Snooky, on his wanderings across the country and to various foreign lands, visited them often in the little town of Ridgewood, Connecticut. He had graduated from college several years before and had never yet held a job, so it made visiting very easy. He had inherited enough money from his parents’ untimely death to get by in the style to which he had always been accustomed—as his older brother William said, “He spent his life in training to do nothing”—and part of that lifestyle was to wander from place to place, never staying anywhere too long, renting instead of buying, visiting instead of settling down. The one place he returned to year after year was his older sister’s rickety old Victorian house in the idyllic suburb which was Ridgewood, a town of winding lanes, crystalline lakes surrounded by woods, and houses of every shape and color, from thatched cottages to modern steel-and-glass geodesic domes, tucked away into the scenic landscape. Snooky usually traveled light, which in his case meant weightless,
i.e
. no luggage at all, showing up at Maya and Bernard’s front door with grand plans to borrow a toothbrush and wear his brother-in-law’s clothes—not that they fit him, but he would wear them anyway, Bernard’s oversized outfits draped luxuriously on Snooky’s gangly frame.

“Don’t tell me you brought your own clothes,” Bernard said.

“No, no, don’t be ridiculous. It’s presents, Bernard—gifts. Small bits of this and that for Maya. My sister. My pregnant sister.”

“Where’d you get the suitcase?”

“I bought it at the airport. Nice, isn’t it? I’ll leave it here when I go. No point in traveling with luggage, it just means more waiting in line when you get off the plane.”

Bernard led the way into the kitchen. “Maya’s asleep right now. At least she’s lying down. I don’t want you disturbing her, Snooky. She hasn’t been feeling well for weeks.”

“So I gathered on the phone.” Snooky flopped down at the big oak table in the middle of the room. He glanced around in satisfaction at the big country kitchen, with gleaming pots hanging from the ceiling, ceramic tiles on the walls and vining plants tumbling in graceful green loops from the shelves. “This kitchen never changes. Nothing ever changes here. You fixed this place up nicely when you moved in, and now nothing is ever different. I love it here.”

“I hope you don’t love it too much.” Bernard stirred the shrimp gloomily. “Maya said she wanted shrimp tonight. I’ve never made shrimp before. Is an hour too long to cook it?”

“An hour?”

“Too long, isn’t it?”

“It depends. Is it the four-foot-long, twenty-pound jumbo shrimp of the Frisian Islands?” Snooky got up and leaned over the stove, to be greeted by a gust of steam from the pot. “No. Well, in that case, an hour is too long. By a factor of twelve.”

“I don’t trust shrimp. You can get sick from it. I wish Maya wouldn’t eat it, but when she wants to eat, I want her to have whatever she wants, as long as it’s not obviously poisonous. Do you think it’s safe by now?”

“Yes. I think it’s safe. It’s not edible, but it’s certainly safe. What else do you have in the fridge?” Snooky opened the door. “What is this, Bernard? A festival of celery?”

Bernard shrugged.

“Do you have any rice?”

“I think there’s some in the cupboard.”

Snooky rummaged around. “This is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. This pantry looks like … well, like you’ve been doing all the shopping for two months. Never mind, I’ll find something for dinner. But for now, let’s talk, Bernard. We so rarely get a chance to talk, just the two of us. Tell me, how does it feel? How does it feel, knowing you’re about to become a father? I know how excited I am about being a new uncle. How do you feel?”

Bernard stared at him in glum silence. This was what he hated most about Snooky’s visits—this, and the trail of misfortune and sudden death which always seemed to accompany his appearances. Bernard shared his soul with few people, and his brother-in-law was not one of them.

“I feel pretty,” he said at last.

“No, really.”

“I feel frightened.”

Snooky was interested in this. “Frightened? Is that so? Increased responsibility? The care and feeding of a helpless newborn on your hands?”

“The prospect of you and William coming to stay permanently.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about William.” Snooky took out a dog-eared package of brown rice and inspected it from all sides. “This should be okay. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about him. You’ll be lucky if he flies in from the West Coast to inspect the newest member of the family, see if the baby is up to his high standards. Has Maya told him yet?”

“No.”

Snooky was gratified. He flashed Bernard a pleased smile. “I was first, then,” he said dreamily. “The first one she told. William doesn’t even know. That’s wonderful.”

“She didn’t exactly tell you.”

“No. I guessed. It’s a little gift I have. Psychic, you know. I can foretell the outcome of horse races, too. That’s why I don’t gamble. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Bernard was not impressed. “Can you foretell when you’ll be terminating this visit?”

Snooky turned back to the cupboard. “The future is hazy, Bernard. Hazy, and unexpected. Certain things are difficult to predict. It depends a lot on my sister. If she’s really not feeling well, I may be here for a long time. A very long time.”

“Everyone says she should feel better in the second trimester. That’s in a few weeks.”

“Could you tell me when she wakes up?” Snooky lifted the cover again and peered doubtfully into the pot. “I have a few little things I brought for her. I don’t think you have to worry about these shrimp, Bernard, they’re definitely dead.”

When Maya opened her eyes an hour later, she was confronted by the sight of an enormous brown bear leaning over her, its flat button eyes gazing at her sympathetically. She smiled.

“Thank you, Snooky. I love it.”

“Well,” said her brother, putting it down on her bed and sprawling beside it, “it’s big, at least. It’s the biggest one they had.”

“I love it. Have you named it yet?”

“No. I left that up to you. I was too busy planning the games I’m going to play with my new niece or nephew. Do you know which it is?”

“No, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” Maya caressed the soft fur. “How about … hmmmm. How about Mabel?”

“Mabel? Maya, this is a boy bear.”

“How do you know?”

“Of course I don’t know, but—well, aren’t they all?”

Maya looked stubborn. A faint crease appeared between her eyebrows. “I want to call her Mabel.”

“Mabel it is. And a good name, too. A fine name. Mabel. Yes. I hope the baby likes her.”

“I’m sure Mabel will be a big hit.”

“How are you feeling, Missy?” Missy was his pet name for her, from his childhood. Maya was five years older and had practically raised him after their parents died. He patted her shoulder and took her hand in both of his own. “You don’t look any different.”

Maya’s gaze softened as she looked at her reprobate younger brother, the black sheep of the family. “I feel different, Snooks. I feel really terrible most of the time. I have my good moments and my bad moments. I’m just so tired that sometimes I feel like crying. I lie on my side and look out the window at the weeping willow on the lawn, and I think things like, ‘Someday winter will come and the snow will cover the ground,’ stuff like that. My brain doesn’t seem to be working. I feel much stupider than I used to.”

“Hormones,” her brother said sagely. “Hormones. Hormones make you stupid.”

“I suppose so.” Maya stuffed two pillows behind her and leaned back. “It’s just that Bernard and I were so excited about this whole thing, having a baby and everything, and now that it’s happened I sometimes wish we had never started. I feel like I’m trudging uphill on a long road leading nowhere. I lie on my bed and I feel like saying, wait a minute, I didn’t know it would be like this, but I know the universe doesn’t care. Nobody cares. Everybody thinks it’s so cute when I feel bad, because I’m not really sick. I’m just pregnant. Just pregnant!” She scowled. “You and Bernard wouldn’t last a day, feeling like this.”

Snooky looked at her thoughtfully. “You have it bad, Maya.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve allowed yourself to become bitter. I blame it on Bernard.”

Maya bristled. “Bernard? Why Bernard? He’s been terrific, slaving away downstairs for me, doing all the shopping and running the house.”

“I blame Bernard. Bernard, as you apparently have not noticed, is not a good slave. He has too independent a spirit. He is not a good cook and, even though he loves you, he has his own work and cannot wait on your every need. What he did to the shrimp tonight, Maya, no poor helpless invertebrate should have suffered.”

Maya smiled at her brother. Looking at his face was like looking into a mirror, a younger, male reflection of her own. They had the same thin crooked nose, hazel eyes and pale skin. They had the same golden-brown hair, which Snooky wore brushed back casually and Maya wore sweeping her shoulders in a pageboy. They even shared the same aristocratic bone structure. “And you feel you can correct this situation?” she said.

“I, Maya, am the perfect slave. If this were an eighteenth-century English mansion, I would be the butler. You will do nothing; I will do everything. I am used to that from my previous visits.”

“You are a good cook, I’ll give you that. Not that I feel like eating anything.”

“That will change. I have noticed that most pregnant women, after the first few months, seem to have no trouble eating.”

“I suppose so.”

“Come on downstairs. I have a few things to give you.”

In the living room, a large open area with a high ceiling, exposed wooden beams and a picture window overlooking the
willow tree in the backyard, Maya sank into an overstuffed chair while Snooky opened the suitcase. It was filled to overflowing with stuffed toys, rattles and mobiles.

“A stuffed platypus,” Snooky said, lifting it up for inspection. “You don’t get to see this every day, do you? Pink and blue matching stuffed bears. A dinosaur.” The dinosaur was an attractive forest green. “The trendiest kind of mobile. They say these black-and-white designs are good for the baby’s ocular system. I think they’re a little hallucinogenic, myself.” There was also a very charming little rattle shaped like a star, a mobile with stuffed animals that played “Send in the Clowns,” a newborn outfit covered with smiling cows, a tiny pair of socks (“the baby will be born in the fall”), three receiving blankets in pale blue, green and yellow, and a jack-in-the-box.

“Very nice,” said Maya, when Snooky was finished. “Thank you very much. How in the world did you manage to buy all this stuff today?”

“I rented a car at JFK Airport and stopped off in a baby store on the way up here. I told them I was expecting to become an uncle soon and I wanted the best of everything.”

“We don’t even have a nursery yet to put this stuff in,” Maya said fretfully. She picked up the tiny pair of socks and gazed at it. A cold fear gripped her heart. “I don’t think I can handle this, Snooks. All this responsibility. Look at these socks. They frighten me. They frighten me, Snooky.”

“Don’t worry, Maya, I’m here now. I’ll take care of everything. I’m wonderful with babies.”

“Since when are you wonderful with babies?”

“Since you decided to have one. Hello, Bernard.”

Bernard had wandered into the room, sweating slightly from the heat in the kitchen. It was the middle of March, an unseasonably warm day. He was followed by a small red mop whose tail beat furiously when it spied Snooky.

“Misty!” cried Snooky, picking up the dog and dangling it in front of his face. “It’s little Misty! How are you? Ready for a little brother or sister? Give me a kiss, Misty.”

The dog licked his face luxuriously.

“I don’t see how you can let her do that,” said Bernard. He went to the picture window and cranked open one of the glass panels.

“Misty loves me,” said Snooky. “I have a way with women. They come under my spell, and all is lost for them.”

“Sweetheart,” said Maya, “look at what Snooky brought for the baby. It’s really too much.”

Bernard looked over the pile of pastel animals, clothing and blankets scattered over the floor. “You’re right. It really is too much.”

“It frightens me, Bernard. It makes the whole thing seem so … so
real
.”

“It is real,” said Bernard, in his pragmatic way. He stood next to the window, hoping for a breeze. “You can take over in the kitchen now, Snooky. I’m done in there. What’s this?”

“It’s a jack-in-the-box, Bernard. Didn’t you ever have one?”

“Of course I had one,” Bernard said irritably. He sat down on the floor and tentatively wound it up. The box played a manic “Here we go round the mulberry bush” several times in succession, then the top sprang open and out popped a little clown in Scaramouche attire, all gaudy tatters and purple velvet scraps. It bobbled there in front of Bernard’s face, giving him a poignant lopsided grin.

Bernard, for the first time that day, smiled. It was a slow smile that seeped over his face like sewer water.

“I like this,” he said. “It’s the first thing you’ve ever brought us that I’ve liked, Snooky.”

“There’s no telling what it is you’ll like, Bernard. There’s simply no telling. I try my best.”

Bernard put his hand on top of the little clown’s head, pushed it gently back into the box, and cranked the handle again. Once again the tune played, the top sprang open, the Scaramouche popped out.

Bernard smiled. He pushed the clown back in, closed the top, and happily cranked the handle.

On the fifteenth repetition, Maya motioned to Snooky and the two of them left the room. Behind them they could hear “Here we go round the mulberry bush” played in an uneven, clanging tone, then a clatter as the doll sprang out. Maya could imagine Bernard’s smile.