Everybody Has Everything - By Katrina Onstad Page 0,82
at the same moment that Diana cried out: “But it’s absurd. You must know this.” Ana nibbled from a glass bowl of mixed nuts, as if by keeping her mouth full, she was excused. They tasted stale. Ana felt James next to her giving off heat, like a planet imploding.
“They were optimists, your friends,” said Wesley. “They saw something in you.”
“But can you imagine it, entrusting your child to two people who have never changed a diaper? Am I right, Ana?” Diana turned to Ana, who put the peanuts down slowly. “Do you have any experience with children? I had the impression you two did not even want children.”
Ana was surprised by the question. The holidays and evenings they had passed in each other’s company had run on the momentum of the quotidian: the mortgage rates, the garden, the traffic problems.
“It wasn’t about want,” she said. Then, to James: “You never told them?”
James rubbed his hand across his forehead.
“We can’t have children,” said Ana.
Wesley reached a hand down to the floor, as if searching for something in the carpet. Diana didn’t blink.
“You waited too long,” she declared. “It is not your fault, of course. This is how it is here.”
Ana could feel each one of her particles circling, trying to remember where to land.
“Jesus, mom. It’s nobody’s fault,” said James.
“In a cosmic sense, certainly, but medically, the doctors must have given you reasons. There were tests, am I correct?”
“It’s personal, mom,” said James tightly.
Finn tired of the puzzles and began circling the room like a shark, pulling at a coffee table book, pointing at a vase of hydrangeas.
“Don’t touch!” called James. “Gentle!”
“Diana, tell them about the cottage,” said Wesley, nervously redirecting the room.
“Ah, yes. We might go to a new cottage this year with Michael and Jennifer,” said Diana. “In Quebec, while workers renovate the other one.”
“You hate cottages, mom,” said James.
“Michael said there was a high quality washer and a dryer.”
Ana watched Finn carefully, and tried to make sense of her anger toward James, the sensation that she might just pick up the table lamp beside her in one hand and crack it down on James’s head, watching pieces fly across the room, hair and blood clinging to the ceramic edges. What was the thing she wanted him to say to this woman?
He was not going to rescue her, so she tried: “I—” said Ana, above Finn’s babble and Wesley’s murmuring to him. Heads turned.
“It was a difficult time for me,” said Ana. “But I don’t think about it anymore.”
“Because you have the boy now,” said Wesley, conclusively. “It makes perfect sense.”
Ana shook her head. “No, no, it’s not that—”
“We don’t really have him,” interrupted James. “It’s probably temporary. It depends on Sarah—”
The ramble was halted by Finn’s squealing car sounds as he raced two coasters along the floor.
Diana stood, clearing James’s empty glass, and drifting on her stockinged legs to the kitchen. Her heels left half-moon indentations in the carpet as she walked.
Ana needed for Finn to stop his wailing so she could make sense of the chaos, locate exactly the source of the slight. She knew that a moment had passed, and they had all survived it somehow. But then she glanced at her husband, who looked wild. He was red-faced, his hair strangely mussed.
Ana stood and turned to the kitchen, feigning an offer of help, though there was never anything to do.
“This is nice,” said Ana, picking up a small glass from the window ledge. It was a little bigger than the lid of a shampoo bottle, and covered in tiny painted flowers.
Diana wrung a sponge at the sink. She placed it in its dish and looked at Ana. “Oh, yes, that’s Wesley’s. A tea glass from Tunisia.”
“Tunisia? What was he doing there?” Ana had only one image of Wesley spanning the years, courtesy of James: in a windowless office, with a giant ledger open in front of him, like Bob Cratchit.
“There was a business opportunity,” said Diana. “We actually considered moving there at one point. Can you imagine? James and Michael with their blue eyes.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I don’t think I would have been functional there,” she said. “Water?”
Ana nodded, and she drew them each a glass of water from the tap. They stood, sipping.
“Did you see there will be a new development? Condominium tower. Right by the train tracks,” said Diana.
“We came the other way.”
“I hope it means we can get more funding for the library,” said Diana.