karma and destiny and all that lied to you? You can’t believe that.”
He seems unbelievably calm. “People have to work to meet their destiny, Lila. I think one of us just didn’t work hard enough, that’s all.”
“But I dropped out of school!”
“So? That has nothing to do with me.”
“Yes, it does.”
“How?”
I shake my head. How can he expect me to answer these kinds of questions? These kinds of questions are impossible. I say, “You should see the women inside, my mother and my sister and my cousin and my aunts. You think I’m crazy, but they’re the crazy ones. I’m sane in comparison to them.”
Weber looks everywhere but at me. He looks at the sky and he looks at his shoes and he looks at the present in his hands. His voice sounds as if it’s coming from far away. “Maybe we should go in. I can say hello to your grandmother and then I can leave. I know Gracie doesn’t want me there. I just remind her of Joel.”
I don’t want him to go in the house until I’ve said the right thing. I have to keep trying until I figure out what that is. I say, “I wasn’t trying to say anything to you through Belinda. I was just being a bitch. I can be a bitch sometimes.”
“I didn’t know what kind of gift to bring,” he says, his eyes on the wrapped box. “I never bought a present for a baby before.”
I stop trying then because he has stopped me. He tells me without saying a word that there is nothing else to say in this moment on the front steps of my parents’ house. I have exhausted the opportunity. So I step aside and let Weber walk into the blast of air conditioning. Then I follow, the skirt of my sundress in my hands because I need something to hold on to. But as I walk into the cool air toward the women in my family, I feel a strange, surprising hope beat against my ribs. I have the sense that I am walking toward my strength, toward my saving grace. The feeling is inexplicable, but still it feels like the most real thing I have come across in weeks.
I hope, I wish, I think, that somehow these women—my grandmother, my mother, my sister, my cousin, my aunts—will be able to say to this boy what I have not. Will be able to fix what I have broken. Will make clear everything I have convoluted with my memory and my coldness. I hope, wish, think—with no logical reason for doing so, with no precedent to rely on—that they will help me make everything all right.
NOREEN BALLEN
Shortly after Lila and a young man with a crew cut walk into the room, I tap Mrs. McLaughlin on the shoulder to let her know I am going to step outside. It is still a few minutes before I expect my kids, but I am uncomfortable in this close room with the McLaughlin family. In their paleness and their freckles and their fair eyes I see my own family, but these people behave differently than mine ever did. The conversation is stilted, and there are long silences, and everyone looks either upset or worried. I do not belong here; I do not understand the sharp way they speak to one another, and they deserve their privacy.
To draw less attention to myself, I leave through the kitchen. I loop my purse over my shoulder and look over the plastic catering trays balanced on the kitchen counters. There are tight balls of cellophane scattered about. There is the smell of prepared food and the zap of the microwave in the air-conditioned air. When I swing open the back door, I am hit by the heat of the day. It is August in New Jersey, which means hot, sticky weather that makes walking even a few steps a chore. “This air is like molasses,” my mother used to say during the Augusts while I was growing up, when there were too many children and not enough space and no air conditioning.
I take off my cardigan as I walk around to the front of the house. I stop under the dogwood blossom tree and breathe in the pink perfumed scent. I don’t turn my attention to the street yet, as I have never known Betty Larchmont to be early. I hate to have my neighbor watch the children on a Saturday, as the few