Everybody Has Everything

Diana’s eye makeup was blue and a little thick, like crayon filler in a few creases. But otherwise, she was perfectly contained, upright in her kitten-heeled shoes and flesh-colored stockings over her slightly rounded ankles. “Elegant” was the word she was going for. It was how she’d described Ana when she first met her: “A smart dresser. Elegant.” This was possibly the only judgment she had ever voiced around James’s biggest choice. Diana was fundamentally, agonizingly private. What had happened in Belgrade that brought her here was never discussed. James had tried, question upon question, and the answers were always the same: “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t concern you. It’s over.” But James could piece together something, a shape. He knew that she was five in 1941 and so must possess some memory of the Luftwaffe bombs raining down. But how, exactly, had her parents managed to get her out, through fascist Italy and Switzerland to the new world? Was there a priest? Were there false documents, illicit favors? Did money change hands?

He looked at her. She was talking. He remembered her saying to him, at thirteen: “I came because my family died.” Died. Not killed. As if old age had gently carried them away.

She met Wesley while working in the sock department of a clothing store. She had become a librarian late in life, through hard, private work, but why this pull toward books? James wondered. She was a woman entirely uninterested in stories. Sitting on the edge of his bed, upright in the darkening room, she would shut Narnia and say to her sons: “You must know this is only fantasy. Enjoy it as such.” She dragged James away from gulches crossed by children in the night and lions waiting and closets that led to forests, dragged him away and back to his bedroom with its glow-in-the-dark globe, his window overlooking the pebbled driveway.

“So,” said Diana. “You are playing at parenthood.”

Ana filled her mouth with water, thereby volleying the non-question to James. Her body was grateful not to be in the car anymore but had retreated to a hum of discomfort centered in the back of her head.

Ana could see James flushing, reverting to guttural teenage responses. “Not really. Maybe. I guess so,” said James. Diana stared at him, her eyelids vanishing.

“It’s very strange, isn’t it, a child with no relatives? In this day and age, it’s possible to trace anyone. I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she said, something faintly foreign in the phrasing if not the accent.

Wesley placed three wooden puzzles on the floor. James recognized them from the toy stores in his neighborhood: new but designed to look old-fashioned, with Depression-era line drawings of little children (Dick and Jane?) ru

“Do you think about hiring a detective, to see if there’s anyone else?”

“We were stipulated in the will. They didn’t want him to go to anyone else,” said James. He tried to sound certain, but the questions brought more questions: What if, right now, the grandparents were packing their bags? What if there was a knock at the door, a phone call, a letter? Family wins in these situations. Blood wins.

James looked at Fi

Wesley nodded, saying, “Yes, of course,” 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 down the peanuts 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 one another’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.

Fi

“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 Je

“You hate cottages, Mom,” said James.

“Michael said there was a high-quality washer and a dryer.”

Ana watched Fi

He was not going to rescue her, so she tried: “I …” said Ana above Fi

“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 Fi

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 Fi

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 spa

“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.