Chapter 4 #7
ovens in the sixty-six-inch baby-blue Viking range. (After her first visit to Hillside Haven, Mae had googled the oven and
learned that the range cost nearly forty thousand dollars. Not four thousand, which would have been enough to pay a few months
of Mae’s former apartment share in Boulder. Forty.)
The Christmas season is also something to behold.
Sleigh bells ring (they actually do) and Scarlett and Evangeline wear matching red velvet dresses with white bows at the ends of their French braids as they hang ornaments on a Nutcracker-tall tree.
Natalie herself always has a grown-up version of her daughters’ dresses, with maybe one or two differences to give it a Hot Mom vibe, like a low V-neck where theirs have Peter Pan collars, or knee-high Stuart Weitzman boots instead of the girls’ patent leather Mary Janes.
It’s a fine line, the line between wholesome and hot, and she walks it like a tightrope artist.
“Not sure we do anymore,” Natalie says to her Dixie Cup. She’d been able to put a plug in her thoughts about the article for
a little while, as her father’s announcement took over, but wine and fatigue have loosened the plug, and it’s all threatening
to pour out, all of her anger and disappointment. She may not be showing it yet, but she’s really rocked.
“What do you mean?” demands Jordan, sitting up.
“Nothing.” She holds her cup out to Jordan. “Please, sir, I want some more.”
Jordan refills Natalie and Mae. “I mean, I think he can make exceptions in his will or whatever if he chooses to, but, yes,
when Dad dies, assuming he does not outlive his wife—” Natalie snorts. “Assuming he does not outlive his child bride,” continues
Jordan, “everything will go to her.”
“Does forty count as a child bride?” Mae wonders.
“Yes,” say Natalie and Jordan together.
“That’s all fine,” says Natalie. “From a financial standpoint. Who cares. We’re adults.”
Easy for you to say, thinks Mae. Her thoughts again go to the storage unit, the car, the bank account.
“But from an emotional standpoint, that’s not fine at all,” concludes Natalie.
Jordan undoes her body ball, floating her arms behind her head and her legs in front of her, and says, “Hold on. What if they
have a kid? Then what?”
“Kara’s too old to have a kid,” says Mae.
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” says Jordan.
“Ew, that’s so gross.” Natalie covers her face with one of the pillows from the bed, then uncovers it enough to say, “To have a kid you have to have sex.” She whispers the word sex as though she’s at a middle school slumber party, as though she herself does not have three children and a husband.
“Well, obviously they’ve consummated the marriage,” says Jordan. “More than once, probably.” She pokes Natalie in the leg.
“That’s how that works, you know.”
“Ew,” says Natalie again. Her voice goes so high and strident that Leo lifts his head and stares at her.
“You’re okay, Leo,” says Mae. “You’re a good boy. Settle.”
“Leo’s okay, but we’re not,” says Natalie.
“Has he ever mentioned kids with Kara?” asks Jordan. “That actually is such a horrifying thought.”
“Kara could be pregnant right now, for all we know,” says Natalie.
“Don’t ever say that again,” says Jordan.
“Would that be so bad?” says Mae. Her sisters turn on her, four blue eyes blazing at her. “What?” she says. “Don’t look at
me like that, it’s a hypothetical.”
“Of course that would be bad,” says Jordan. “In so many ways.”
“Well, maybe not to me. You guys already got to be older sisters. I never did. I only got to be the baby, always the baby.”
“Being the baby is the ideal scenario,” says Natalie. “Better than the middle!”
Jordan rolls her eyes and says, “It’s good to know your middle child complex is alive and well.” Natalie shoots her a look.
“And Dad is not young, in case you haven’t noticed,” Jordan says to Mae.
“I noticed,” says Mae. “But look at Steve Martin. And Robert De Niro.”
“They have a kid together?” asks Natalie.
Jordan can’t tell if she’s serious. “No, dummy. They each became fathers at an unusually late age.”
“I might have a hundred kids,” says Natalie. “With my age-appropriate husband.” She has momentarily forgotten about her fatigue
from earlier in the day.
“Really?” says Mae.
“Well, maybe not a hundred,” she concedes. “Maybe four. Or five.”
“Five!” says Jordan. “Geez. What about overpopulation?”
Natalie goes on. “I love being pregnant. I pity men that they don’t get to see what it’s like, you know? Our bodies are amazing.
They can do so much.”
“Have fun with that,” says Jordan, even though she loves her nieces and nephews with such fervor that she’d eat her own hand
if they needed her to.
Natalie puts her Dixie Cup on the night table. If she doesn’t change the subject away from Kara and her thoughts away from
Austin and the article, she’s going to lose it. She turns to face Jordan and sticks out her foot, tapping Jordan’s elbow with
it. “I know you saw her.”
“Who?” says Mae.
“Simone,” says Natalie. “Running along the beach. You didn’t think I saw you, but I saw you see.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Jordan.
“Yes, you do,” says Natalie. “Do I need to tickle you until you admit it?” (Jordan went through a phase in her preteen years
where the merest suggestion of this would send her into a panic.)
“No,” says Jordan. “You do not need to tickle me. And, gross, get your dirty foot off my arm.”
Natalie’s foot is not actually gross or dirty; like everything about Natalie, thinks Mae, it’s well tended to, matched to her aesthetic, camera-ready.
Pumiced and moisturized. Currently her toenails are painted baby blue, the same color as that fantastic range, and her fingernails match.
How does Natalie have time for this? There are days when Mae, who has zero children, no husband, and nobody expecting cast-iron skillet biscuits from scratch, feels like the world is asking too much to expect her to brush her teeth twice a day.
Mae closes her eyes and tries to drown out her sisters’ voices, even though she’s also reveling in them.
“I’m out of wine,” says Jordan in her bossy big-sister voice. She lifts her Dixie Cup above her head like the Statue of Liberty
hoisting the flame. “Who has the bottle?”
“You do,” says Mae.
Natalie laughs. “The wine is gone. You drank it all, you psycho alcoholic.”
Is now the time? wonders Mae. Is now the time to open up to her sisters, to tell them they must stop the sale at all costs,
to confess that she needs to live here for a little while, until she sorts things out? Until she catches her breath, or maybe,
who knows, forever?
“I will say that I kind of see Dad’s point,” says Jordan. She knows this is a controversial statement, but it’s also true.
“About what?” say Natalie and Mae together.
“About cleaning out the garage storage room.” She takes a deep breath. “Selling the house.”
“You what?”
Jordan shrugs. “He refuses to hire a property manager. He’s never here. We’re never here. All of those repairs in the next
few years—it’s a lot. This house is old! Whatever isn’t failing now is going to fail in the near future!”
“That,” says Natalie, “is the most coldhearted of all of the coldhearted things you’ve ever said.”
Now is not the time to bring up her situation, thinks Mae.
Now is the time to be an adult, to train the dog she has committed her week to, to get to bed early and stay mostly sober and hydrated so she can wake up and be a productive member of the family tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.
To bring the sunshine, the way they are expecting her to, have always expected her to.
“Right, Mae?” demands Natalie. “You’re not saying anything, but you agree, right?”
Mae wants to say so many things, things that would take the conversation in a whole different direction. What she really wants
to say is see me, know me, help me.
But she says, “I agree.” Then: “I’ll go downstairs and see if I can find another bottle.”
“I’ll go with you,” says Jordan. “I need water.”
Like magic, all the photos are back in their usual spots: the mantel, the hooks on the way up the stairs that earlier held
nondescript beach scenes like you’d find on the walls of a midrange motel. Jordan appreciates that her father has gone to
the trouble, especially since he’ll have to undo all of it for the open house on Sunday.
There’s a single photo—maybe the only one in the world—of Mae not looking cute, and that photo is now back on the wall. It’s
Christmas Eve 2008, and the girls are lined up in front of the tree in their Lenox living room in matching pajamas. Theresa
bought them a new set every Christmas. They were allowed to change into whatever they wanted later, but they had to wear them
for the photo.
Mae has come to stand beside Jordan.
“Oh my god,” says Mae. “Look at this!”
“I’m dying at your face. What are you so grumpy about?”
Mae peers at the photo. “I think I just got my braces tightened the day before. Remember that feeling?”
“It’s the worst,” says Jordan. “I’m so glad that part of my life is over.” She looks more closely. “Natalie’s hair is on point. Even when she’s ready for bed.” In 2008 Natalie’s hair falls in long sculpted waves, with a side barrette just over one ear, very Scarlett Johansson.
“She was probably going to sneak out and meet a boyfriend.”
“Not on Christmas Eve!” Jordan chews her lip. “Or maybe yes.”
“Probably yes.”
“I just can’t believe someone took a photo during the only two minutes you went through an awkward teenage phase.”
Mae snorts. “Not true. I had the worst skin for half of middle school.”
“I don’t remember that. I don’t remember you ever having even half a zit.”
They both stare at the photo, their eyes growing uniformly damp. “She got us matching pajamas for so long,” says Jordan. “I
was a sophomore in college in this photo. I came home from, like, clubbing in Manhattan and had to throw on some L.L.Bean
classic plaids.”
“You loved it,” accuses Mae. “You know you did.”
Jordan’s shoulders soften, and the air around them seems to soften too. “You’re right. I did. We all did.”