Everybody Has Everything - By Katrina Onstad Page 0,19
about cultural identity. Oh, James’s pride at that book launch, but only two trays of cheese. The lack of cheese was the first sign that as an author, James had arrived late to the party. Store shelves were already heaving with books on cultural identity. No one bought James’s. He went back to television, a little stiffer, a little meaner.
“I worry about him,” said Ana, but the reason was cut off because, suddenly, Finn burst into tears. Sarah was on him instantly. Ana watched: Sarah identified the problem – the collapsed tower – and talked to him quietly through his screams, asking him questions: “What can you do to make this better? You don’t like it when things you build break, do you?”
Out of habit, Ana imagined herself with a child that age. She stored away Sarah’s wisdom and words, trying to picture herself applying them later. But the picture was fainter now than it had ever been. Any child to come would not be hers, in all likelihood. This hypothetical child might even be out there right now, floating in a woman’s belly in a far away country, being carried through a rice field, out of the hot sun. The image didn’t excite Ana, or sadden her. It seemed absurd; the stuff of science fiction, of a future she hadn’t arrived at yet.
She looked again at Finn being stroked in Sarah’s arms, and tried to envy it. She knew how James felt when Finn was nearby: she had seen his face, for once entirely drained of rage. After dinner the other night, she watched her husband on the porch as Finn was wheeled away, waving good-bye at the stroller sadly. Ana rooted around for some feeling to match James’s, but came up with only a casual affection for this boy, for all boys, a mild curiosity that didn’t demand investigation. Hadn’t there been a time when the sight of a pregnant woman had caused her to look away, yearning? Hadn’t she hidden in that hotel room after the final miscarriage and wept? A chill crept over her body: She needed to find that person again, or James would be lost to her.
When Finn calmed, scurrying toward a basket of clean laundry on the edge of the room, Sarah returned to the couch, rolled her eyes at Ana, and looked expectant, waiting for her to start the conversation where it stopped. Ana admired Sarah’s silences; they had a kind of presence, like rooms she was inviting Ana into.
“I feel like …” said Ana, groping for it. “I feel like I miss him. I miss something we were.” She was remembering the previous night, how she had returned home and James was gone, as usual. He had made some kind of silent commitment to not being home when she got home, as if to sustain the scaffolding of the life before he got fired. Ana did not ask him where he went.
In the immediate wake of the firing, there had been meetings, interviews, and then a long late-night conversation about James taking “a break.” Perhaps they could live off her salary while he tried his hand at fiction, maybe wrote a script on spec for a hard-hitting cop show about the politics of downtown living. Ana trod delicately while they spoke, knowing James did not want to hear anything but yes, yes, yes, that he saw everyone but her huddled together against him in a giant no. They could afford for James not to work, after all, because Ana had always made more money, and because, most of all, they didn’t have children. Neither of them said this, but it was there, breathing between the lines of the conversation.
James had come in after Ana had changed from her dress into blue jeans and a T-shirt, was pouring herself a glass of white wine and standing at the back French doors, looking out at the churned-up garden, still unfinished. The landscapers had vanished around the time James lost his job.
James slammed the door, dropped his jacket on the floor, kicked his shoes off so they blocked the doorway. Ana was watching all of this from far away in the kitchen, across the first floor, seeing through the walls that used to be there. James had a drink in his hand within seconds. He had not said a word.
“Nice day, dear?” she asked in a June Cleaver voice.
“Not really,” he said. “Do you know the only thing worse than having someone say to