Nathan wanted to host a party, something for faculty, administrators, a few standout graduate students. “You know how much I hate these things,” he told Caroline. “But I think it’s important. A new day in the department. That kind of thing.”
“Of course,” Caroline replied. “Shall we do steak or salmon?”
Caroline had been “better” (Nathan’s word) for over a year now. She had not spoken to me since that rainy day in Brooklyn four years before. Renee communicated with us all via the occasional group e-mail with subject lines of “Update from Jo-burg” or “Notes from the clinic in Port-au-Prince.” Personal phone calls were difficult to arrange, unreliable, and expensive, Renee told us. Caroline did not bother inviting either of us to Nathan’s party, and I understood why: it had been too long, it seemed too risky, as though a chemical reaction might occur. Without Joe our atoms did not know where to rest, how to behave. We were free radicals, spinning in our own small orbits, dangerous, poisonous, causing invisible but elemental damage to anything we touched.
Will. Thank goodness for Will. After three months of dating, we moved in together. He tolerated my aimless walking, my obsessive list making. Sometimes he walked with me, wending our way to the Cloisters or over and up to the boat basin on the West Side. The High Line had recently opened, and it was often crowded, but we began early in the morning and occasionally had the path to ourselves. I showed him the Lasts, which now sounded something like poems, and he read them and smiled and said, “Well done, Fiona, these are beautiful.” I still worked at ClimateSenseNow!, where I had steadily advanced in title and position. After Caroline’s outburst that day, I had thought about my job. Why was I there? What was I doing? I no longer called in late. I took only my allotted vacation time. Improbably, I was becoming an expert on the slow-moving disaster of global warming.
“We are watching it happen, day by day,” I would say in the talks I gave to classrooms and boardrooms. “We all see the signs. What can be done, you ask? It is a conundrum so overwhelming in size and scope that no one can bear to acknowledge it. Around the globe I hear only a startled silence. A nervous, cowardly hush. But we must acknowledge it. We have no choice but to face it head-on.”
* * *
On the day before Nathan’s party, the twins woke with fevers. They weren’t truly sick—no vomiting, temperatures hovering at 101—but cranky, achy, and demanding, with raw, rough coughs and watery eyes. Caroline saw no choice but to keep them home from school.
Today was not a good day for sick children. Caroline had the party preparations to contend with, and today—of all days—Noni was stopping by with her friend Danette on their way to the airport. Noni was going to Europe.
“Juice!” Beatrix yelled from her bedroom. Caroline was downstairs in the kitchen.
“Water for me!” That was Lily. The two shared a room, the large west-facing bedroom where once long ago an orange tabby had birthed ten kittens.
“What’s the magic word!” Caroline called back up to them, and a chorus of pleases came down.
Dutifully Caroline brought the drinks. After Beatrix drained the last of the juice and handed the glass back to Caroline, she said, sniffling, “Thank you, Mommy.” Caroline looked down at Beatrix’s pink face, and for a moment she was overcome by a spasm of love so pure that she couldn’t see, and she nearly dropped the glass.
“You’re welcome,” Caroline said, and pulled the covers up under Beatrix’s chin and kissed her on the forehead where the skin was hot and tender. Then Caroline crossed over to Lily’s bed and leaned over to kiss her, too, and cup her palm around Lily’s puffy face. Lily opened her eyes and emitted a small sigh. Lily was six minutes younger than her sister, a span of time that she wore like a stamp on her forehead. Always she trailed after Beatrix, who was bossy but gentle, and Caroline often wondered what would happen when her daughters split into separate bedrooms, separate lives. Perhaps they would always stay close. She hoped that they would, but there were no guarantees. Once she had believed her relationships with her sisters would never falter, but look at them now.
A car door slammed, and then Caroline heard the unmistakable sound of Noni tipping a cabbie: “Thank you so much. Good luck with your surgery, Oscar. You take care, now.”
Caroline removed her hand from Lily’s face. Both girls had closed their eyes, and her mind shifted from this obligation—tending to the girls, bringing them water, loving them—to the next: our mother.
Caroline headed downstairs. Already they were standing on the porch, waving at her from behind the screen door: Noni and her friend Danette, a woman Noni met the previous year at the grief support group. Danette had lost her only child, a teenage daughter, seven years earlier. Car accident. Somehow the girl had ended up in a lake, the car submerged for three months and four days before the police found her. “Can you imagine?” Noni had asked Caroline over the phone last night. “Not knowing all that time?” “No,” Caroline had answered. “I cannot imagine.”
Danette’s husband was an airline pilot, and consequently Danette traveled free of charge to any destination. “What adventure!” Noni had said. “What freedom!” Last month Danette had invited Noni to join her on a tour of Europe’s great cities: London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Madrid.
“I’ve never even been to Europe,” Noni told Caroline in the hushed tone of a confession, although Caroline knew as much; Caroline had never been there either.
“Noni, you should go,” she said, feeling a tremor of envy. “You can’t not go. It’s Europe.”
And so Noni had said yes.
“Hello, Caroline!” Noni called, and hugged her on the doorstep. Caroline felt her breath leave her body and wondered when her mother had become a hugger.
“Caroline, it is so wonderful to finally meet you,” Danette said, and then she, too, leaned in and hugged Caroline fiercely, pinning her arms to her sides so that Caroline could return only an approximation of a hug, more a light slapping of Danette’s torso with her hands. Danette stepped back, gripping Caroline’s shoulders. “You are the image of your mother,” she said, looking from Noni to Caroline. “The very picture. Thank you so much for inviting me to your lovely home.”
The force of Danette momentarily paralyzed Caroline. She’d been expecting someone sadder, older, more beaten down. Noni and her new friend were joined by grief, members of the worst possible club. But Danette looked easily ten years younger than Noni. She was African-American, her hair sprung up in a high Afro, pinned away from her face with a multicolored band. Everything about her was a study in contrast: dark skin, white teeth, long skirt, sleeveless tank, a battered pink suitcase resting beside an expensive-looking black leather handbag. And Noni, rather than fading away in comparison to Danette, seemed herself more vibrant, the lucky recipient of Danette’s reflected glow. Noni wore traveling clothes in earthy colors and wick-away fabrics, but her hair was longer and her face made up, a tint of lipstick that looked good.
“Hi, Noni,” Caroline said. “You look great.” Noni smiled but said nothing in return; she stepped past Caroline and into the house.
“Sorry it’s a little chaotic in here,” Caroline said. “We’re getting ready for Nathan’s party tomorrow.” Stacked lawn chairs crowded the entryway and living room; they’d been delivered that morning, but Caroline hadn’t been ready for them out back.