Everybody Has Everything

“Oh God no. That’s what we pay her for. Right, Julie?” said Je

The four began to walk out of the kitchen, which took a while, passing the large marble island, the rack of gleaming pots and pans raining down from the ceiling.

“Did you get a new countertop? Something’s different,” said Ana, stopping in her tracks.

“You notice everything, Ana,” said Mike, leading her back to the island. “We couldn’t take the granite anymore. It seemed really dated. Maybe it was an indulgence, but we thought, Let’s go marble. Now or never.”

“Now or never” was one of Mike’s favorite expressions. James could never figure out what the hurry was. Mike’s life seemed entirely ungoverned by clocks. He had worked at home for the past few years, since the sale of his company. Once, after an occasionless bottle of four-hundred-dollar wine, James had asked his brother to describe, in detail, a week in his life. It was worse than James had imagined, involving early-morning online trades, sailing lessons, an Italian tutor, a trainer. The children were shuttled to and fro by a squadron of na

Je

Right after the accident, Je

Mike and Je

“How’s work, Je

She continued that way, pulling information from the two of them with her concise questions, murmuring support. It looked like warmth, or inquisitiveness, but James recognized it as a sort of vacancy, too, a way of passing the substance of the interaction to someone else.

Ana was feeling massive, as if the chair could barely contain her. Je

“And you, Jimmy, how’s the book?” asked Mike. Whenever he called him Jimmy, James was reminded that he was the younger brother and always would be. James had wanted a brother who would put him in headlocks and throw him to the floor and kick his ass, someone with badness to worship. But Mike shrugged at James’s schemes of revenge against the asshole down the street; he was too old to join a united front, and he preferred the computer. He sat. In James’s recollection of their youth, his brother is always seated in his desk chair, in front of the computer. Only the changed color of his T-shirt indicates that he does, in fact, rise on occasion and mark the passing of the days.

James was begi

“It’s okay. Tough times in publishing, with the economy. Not a lot of new contracts,” he said.

“You don’t have a contract?” Mike raised his thick eyebrows. “I didn’t know that.” He looked then at Ana, as if seeing her as something new: imperative to his brother’s survival.

“Let’s not talk about work!” said Je

“Je

“What? Come on. We know you guys were trying. The circumstances aren’t ideal, of course, but now you get to be a mom and dad! You get to parent!” Ana noted the verb: “to parent.” Something to do, not to be.

“I know this is going to sound weird, but Ana, he really looks like you! It’s crazy! You have exactly the same eyes.”

“Really?” said Ana. “Well, they’re brown, I guess—”

A chorus of screams burst forth into the living room, followed by three bodies.

“Fi

“These are the elves!” she cried. Fi

A look passed between the two girls—as if a switch had been hit—and Sophie began chasing Olivia, who responded by screaming happily, which made Fi

“Get the fairy! Get the fairy!” screamed Olivia.

“Girls! Girls!” cried Je

“Fi

“My elf!” wailed Olivia, stopping suddenly, holding in her hand the head of one Barbie, grasping its naked torso around the stomach. The adults breathed in, anticipating. Olivia screwed up her eyebrows, her jaw dropped to her chest, and a sound escaped, like a pig with an ax at its neck. Rivulets of snot and tears sprayed through the air. Ana leaned backward.