The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley [56]
On Saturday, Dana asked me to take the children up to the house in the country and maybe spend the night. The beds, she said, were made. There was plenty of firewood. We would, she said, have a good time. She would join us for dinner, after the Saturday-morning office hours. It was very neatly done. I said, “Maybe that’s a good idea. But you could take them and let me do the morning work.” Her face fell into her shoes. I said, “No, I would like to go into the country, I think.”
It was another sunny day, but cold. Each child was bundled against the weather, her coat vigorously zipped, her hat pulled down over her ears with a snap, her mittens put on and tucked into her sleeves. To each one, Dana said, “Now you be nice to Daddy, and don’t make him mad, okay? I’ll finish my work and come for dinner, so I will see you very soon. Tonight we’ll have a fire in the wood stove and make popcorn and have a good time, okay?” And each child nodded, and was hugged, and then strapped in. Leah sat in front, eyeing me with pleasure. We drove off.
I couldn’t resist looking at Lizzie and Stephanie again and again in the rearview mirror. They were astonishingly graceful and attractive, the way they leaned toward each other and away, the way their heads bent down and then popped up, the way their gazes caught, the way they ignored each other completely and stared out the windows. The pearly glow of their skin, the curve of their cheeks and foreheads, the expressiveness of their shoulders. I felt as if I had never seen them before.
After about an hour, Lizzie began feeling anxious. She asked for milk, said she was hot, subsided. Stephanie sat forward and said, “Is the pond still frozen, do you think? Can we slide on the pond?”
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“Daddy, my stomach feels funny.” This was Lizzie.
“You shouldn’t have drunk so much milk.”
“I didn’t. I took three swallows.” Then she panicked. “I’m going to throw up! Stop! I’m going to throw up!”
“Oh, God,” said Stephanie.
“Oh, God,” said Leah, mimicking her perfectly. I pulled over. Lizzie was not going to throw up, but I got out of the car, opened her door, took her to the side of the road, bent over her, holding her forehead in one hand and her hair in the other. All the formalities. Her face turned red and she panted, but though we stood there for ten minutes, she neither gagged nor puked. I felt her body stiffen, and we straightened up. There were tears in her eyes, and she said petulantly, “I was going to.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay with Stephanie. As soon as I pulled onto the highway again, she said, “I don’t see why we always have to stop. She never does anything.”
“I was going to.”
“You were not.”
“How do you know? I was.”
“Were not.”
“Stephanie—” This was me. I looked in the rearview mirror. Stephanie’s tongue went out. Leah said, admiringly, “Stephanie—” The argument subsided, to be resumed later. They always are.
Now Lizzie said, “Why are we going to the house? I don’t want to go. We went there last week.”
“Me, neither,” said Stephanie. “I was going to play My Little Ponies with Megan.” She must have just remembered this, because it came out with a wail.
“It’ll be fun,” I said, but I wasn’t as convincing as Dana, who must have cast a spell to get us to leave, because I didn’t want to go to the country, either. I glanced at my watch. It was ten o’clock. We could have turned around and been home before lunch, but we didn’t. There was no place for us there. At the next K-mart, I turned into the parking lot with a flourish and took them straight to the toy department.
After the dinner that Dana missed and the bedtime she failed to arrive for, I turned out all the lights and sat on the porch