Chapter 2
Chapter Two
NAOMI
Sunday dinner was every other Sunday at four. It had been every other Sunday since the fall I turned fifteen, when my father left for Scottsdale with a dental hygienist named Pam. My mother believed in structure the way some people believe in saints.
"You're early," she said when she opened the door, like I'd done it to her.
"It's three-fifty, Mom."
"That's early."
Graham kissed her cheek and handed over the wine. She held the bottle at arm's length to read the label, then gave him the smile she saved for men who brought good wine without being asked.
Daniel's Audi was already in the driveway, parked a little crooked across the line where the concrete changed color. Lila used to drive an old green Honda with a dented passenger door until Daniel sold it for her last year because it "wasn't safe." She'd never replaced it.
In the kitchen, my mother lifted the lid off the big skillet. Steam rolled out, sharp with lemon and brine.
"Chicken piccata," she announced. "Lila's had a long week."
I didn't like capers. I'd been telling my mother that since middle school. I took a stack of plates down from the cabinet and went to set the table, because somebody had to. It was always going to be me.
Daniel was in the living room with his feet planted wide, talking to Graham about interest rates.
He was a regional director for a pharmaceutical company, tall, with a trimmed beard he touched whenever he was thinking about how smart he sounded.
He called my mother "Jo," which nobody else on earth was allowed to do. She loved it.
"Naomi." He raised his glass at me. "How are the flower beds?"
"I design public spaces, Daniel."
"Right. Parks." He winked at Graham. "Tough racket."
Graham didn't smile. He was looking past Daniel toward the back hall.
Lila came out of the powder room drying her hands on a big oatmeal-colored cardigan, the sleeves pulled all the way down over her knuckles.
She'd gotten thinner since August. Her collarbones showed at the neckline, and her hair, which she normally blew out every morning like it was a religious observance, was twisted up in a clip.
She hugged me quickly. Through the sweater I could feel her shoulder blades. She smelled like fig with something white and heavy underneath it, tuberose, the same perfume she'd worn since her sophomore year at Temple.
"You smell like college," I said. I always said it.
Usually she rolled her eyes. This time she just smiled with her mouth closed.
"You okay?"
"Tired." She glanced toward the living room. "Work's been a lot."
Lila worked at a tile and stone showroom in Northern Liberties, helping rich people pick between forty shades of white marble. She'd once told me it was the least stressful job in Philadelphia.
We sat down in the usual order: my mother at the head, Daniel at her right hand where my father used to sit, Lila next to Daniel, Graham across from Lila. I took the foot, nearest the kitchen door, where I could get up for things.
Daniel took Lila's plate before my mother could serve it.
"Half portion for Li," he said pleasantly, cutting a chicken breast in two with the side of the serving fork. "Her stomach's been off." He moved her wine glass an inch to the left, out of her reach. "And no wine this month. We're doing a reset."
"Oh, Daniel." My mother put a hand to her chest. "You take such good care of her."
Lila didn't say anything. She picked up her fork.
The capers burst salty against my teeth. I started picking them out one by one, lining them up on the rim of my plate like tiny green pills. My mother saw me do it and didn't say anything either. We were a family of people who said nothing at very high volume.
I didn't notice Lila's hands until Graham did.
He'd gone quiet across from her, which wasn't like him at my mother's table. He liked her, or he liked being good with her, which with my mother came to the same thing. Normally he asked about her garden club and praised her gravy. That night he chewed slowly with his eyes on my sister.
Lila picked up her water glass. The ice chattered against the sides, and she put it down too fast, sloshing water over the rim onto the tablecloth.
Graham got up, took the pitcher from the sideboard even though her glass was nearly full, and topped it off. When he set the glass back down, it was closer to her plate, right where her hand would find it without reaching.
"Thanks," Lila said, very low.
"Sure."
Daniel was telling my mother about a conference in Chicago. Neither of them saw any of it. I saw Graham see it.
After dinner Daniel's phone rang. He held it up with an apologetic face. "East Coast accounts never sleep, Jo." He took it into the front room. My mother sent me to the kitchen for the pound cake, which had come from the Acme in a plastic clamshell she'd tried to hide behind the toaster.
I scraped plates, running the water until it scalded. Through the window over the sink I could make out the dark shape of the maple in the side yard, with the swing my father had hung that nobody had sat on in twenty years.
The trash was full, so I knotted the bag to take it out the side door. It was cold enough that my breath showed. I dropped the bag in the bin by the fence, and I was turning to go back in when I saw that the back porch light was on.
Graham was standing under it with my sister.
Lila was talking fast, her fingertips pressed against her cheekbones the way she used to do when she was little and trying not to cry in front of our mother.
Graham leaned in to hear her. When he answered, he tapped the fingers of one hand against the palm of the other, once, twice, three times, the way he did when he walked a contractor through a punch list.
Lila nodded. He put his hand on her shoulder, just once, then took it away.
I stayed by the recycling bins with my wet hands going numb. I couldn't have told you why I didn't move. Maybe I wanted to see what my face would do if I figured it out.
When I came up the porch steps, the third one creaked, and they both turned around.
Lila dropped her hands. "Hey."
"Hey."
"Graham was just telling me about the Delancey building."
"The Manayunk building," Graham said.
"Right." Her laugh came out wrong. "The one in Manayunk."
In all the years she'd known him, my sister had never once asked about one of Graham's buildings. She thought commercial real estate was something men talked about at weddings to get out of dancing.
"There's cake," I said.
"I'll get Daniel." She slipped past me into the house, trailing fig and tuberose. The screen door slapped behind her.
Graham shoved his hands into his coat pockets. "Pound cake?"
"From the Acme."
"Your mother's lost her nerve."
"She lost it in 2011."
He smiled at me, and it looked like his normal smile. I just couldn't tell anymore whether normal was what I was seeing or what I needed to see.
In the car, I waited until we were on the Blue Route. The dashboard lights turned his face green.
"What was that on the porch?"
"She's stressed."
"About what?"
"Work, I think." He changed lanes. "Life."
"Since when does Lila talk to you about her life?"
"She was standing on the porch. I was standing on the porch." He glanced over at me. "It wasn't a summit, Naomi."
We drove another mile. Conshohocken went by, then Plymouth Meeting.
"I don't like how he talks to her," Graham said.
"Nobody likes how Daniel talks to anyone."
"Your mother does."
"My mother likes a man who carves."
He didn't laugh. His hand tightened at the top of the wheel.
At home he went into his office to answer one email, he said. I went up to brush my teeth, then came back down in my socks for the glass of water I'd forgotten. Through the office door I could hear him on the phone, in the low voice he used with lawyers.
"No. Don't say anything to him. Just get through tonight."
I stood on the bottom step holding my empty glass. Then I went back upstairs without the water.