be fun. I’m sorry if it was wrong to try to create some fun.”
“Are you angry at me?” Gracie says to Kelly. Grayson’s hand has not left Gracie’s shoulder since she sat down, but he seems speechless. I reflect that the women in our family often render the men quiet. Especially since my husband died. All balance is lost.
Beside my chair I hear Weber whisper to Lila, “Is your family always like this?”
I cannot hear her answer. I hope she is shaking her head. I hope that she tells him that we are not like this. That when Patrick was alive nothing like this would have happened. There was order to our family then, and small children running around filling the rooms with laughter. It is only in the past few years, when perhaps I was not as firm as I should have been, that things have come to this. I hope Lila tells Weber that when the baby comes, when the laughter of children fills our rooms again, everything will settle down. This family will be whole and we will find our way back to solid ground.
Something in Kelly’s face crumples. “No,” she says. “I was saying good-bye when you saw me this afternoon, all right? I was trying to say good-bye.”
“Outside the barbershop?” Theresa asks politely, trying to clear things up for everyone.
“All right,” Gracie says. “All right. Don’t cry.”
Kelly gives a single sob, which she masks as a cough into her cupped hands.
I wait for Meggy or Lila to jump in and attack Kelly for trying to conduct a private conversation in front of everyone. But neither of them says a word. Lila is standing so close to Weber, she might as well be touching him, and Meggy has found a seat on the arm of the couch beside my mother. Both women appear almost sedate.
“Gracie,” Angel says in a bright voice. “What do you think the sex is going to be? Do you have a feeling either way?”
“I keep picturing a girl,” Gracie says. “I saw her once.”
I am pleased that no one in the room laughs or even smiles at this.
What used to annoy me now gives me pleasure. I am glad that my children listened when Patrick told them stories about leprechauns and lovelorn boys and people who knew hunger and want. He told those stories instead of ones about his own poor childhood. He rarely mentioned his parents, or his brother. But I think for him—and I am understanding this now, too late—everything, all of his experiences, his disappointments, and his faith, was in the stories he told. Our children heard Patrick’s stories and absorbed them. Perhaps, I think, looking around the room, these gray-streaked versions of my children have even had their own visions from time to time. Perhaps they have lives and hearts I don’t know about. The idea gives me hope.
My husband has been in my dreams lately. He is holding my little girl on his lap, or hugging the twins against his shirtfront. He looks very uncomfortable sitting on the small couch in my room at the assisted-living center. The little girl tries to wiggle off his lap and run to me, but Patrick won’t let go. He holds on to her arms until I can see the pressure of his thumbs against her skin, until she cries out. Gentle, I say, please be gentle. Her face is too pink, as if she is preparing for the fever that is to come and take her away from Patrick and me for good. I think that perhaps Patrick feels the heat of her skin and that is why he is holding so fast. He doesn’t want to let her go.
“Are you all right, Gram?” Lila asks.
“Of course,” I say, and hand over my white slip of paper to Kelly.
“Do you have to be so difficult, Mother?” Kelly says. “You didn’t write anything down.”
I feel the hot touch of my feverish girl. Patrick is forcing her on me, making me see that I couldn’t change what happened, that no matter what, she was still going to die. I push her away, I push him away. I push the truth away while at the same time feeling it settle into my skin like the finest, the most inescapable dust. I breathe it into my lungs. I am covered with it.
“I’m an old woman,” I say, “leave me alone.”
Kelly gives me a hard look over the bowl she has filled with everyone’s guesses