Everybody Has Everything

“Did Dad carry you across the sand?”

Lise laughed. “Oh, no. I waited in the shallow part of the sea until the sun set. We both did. We sat down on our bums in the water and waited for the sand to cool.”

Ana squeezed her mother’s hand. Lise looked at her, and Ana could see the memory vanishing.

“I’m having a good day,” said Lise.

“Yes, I think you are.”

“Who are you?” The question would never cease to take away Ana’s breath.

“I’m your daughter. I’m Ana. You’re my mother.”

“I know that,” said Lise, snappishly. Then she sighed: “But not a very good mother.”

“You did the best you could.”

Lise looked over Ana’s head, toward the window, which was open, letting a warm breeze move across them both.

“I loved Conrad,” said Lise.

She looked back at Ana. “Oh my,” she said, as if startled by what she saw. Ana knew that she was always being seen anew by her mother, which might have been liberating, but somehow felt exactly the opposite.

Lise searched her daughter’s face and said, finally: “What are you so afraid of?”

Ana didn’t know how much meaning to ascribe to this question and suppressed the sensation that she was being had, searching for profundity where there was none. Any revelations were just the brain seizing and releasing, and not her mother at all. She tried to believe this.

“Do I seem afraid, Mom?”

“I loved being your mother,” said Lise. Ana nodded, bracing herself.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Lise, loosening her grip on her daughter’s hand. “Don’t be so afraid.”

James finished with the sunscreen and stood back to admire his handiwork. It was one of the first days hot enough to require lotion. James was now learning about Fi

Fi

“Ready, Freddy,” said Fi

Sarah was sleeping upstairs in her bedroom. The day she came home from the hospital, six weeks earlier, James sat in the back of the medical van with her while Mike and Je

He had a few things in the spare room. During the day, he took Sarah to her appointments and Fi

The cat, returned from the house next door, lay on the pillow beside him while he slept. James was constantly rubbing fur from his mouth. When Fi

His own house, his house with Ana, sat empty several blocks away. He was glad not to be there. For the first weeks that Ana was gone, friends had come by, not knowing what to say about the split. James fielded many calls, and a lasagna. People were sympathetic, but no one really knew what he had lost. He was now carrying sadness, the man who had never tasted of it, whose parents were alive, whose mother had survived carnage and spared him its description, refusing to burden him with even a single image. He knew now why she would die with that war inside her. He knew what it was to pretend anything for a child.

Sarah was like a dimmer switch slowly being turned to maximum, getting brighter every day. But there were ugly moments, too, bursts of anger followed by tears, and collapse. James took over then, cleaning the kitchen and bathing Fi

James brought his guitar over from the house and learned the song in a few minutes from the Internet. But Fi

When she was recovered, James would have to go. He couldn’t imagine returning to the house. Maybe Ana would come back from Montreal and want to live there. She had revealed no plans. The e-mails between them were polite; unadorned information traveling between machines.

“Ready, Freddy,” said James, picking up the bag containing a Mexican blanket and plastic containers of snacks. Fi

James was anxious to get Fi

James was determined to take this story back to Fi

James locked the door behind him, and they headed down the street.

“You lead the way to the park,” said James, and Fi

In the distance, James saw a woman clutching a large bouquet of pink flowers. Fi

“Ana! James! It’s Ana!”

James felt short of breath. She got closer. Her blond hair was longer and her face a little rounder. My Ana, he thought. My wife of a different substance. My vapor wife. But she was really there, watching him. He ran his fingers rapidly across the raised scar on his knuckles.

She stopped, across from him but still far away. “Hi,” she said.

“You’re here,” said James.

“I’m sorry. I should have called. It was spontaneous. I wanted to see Sarah, but I didn’t know—”

“Let’s go to the park now!” said Fi

Ana stared at James. Bats flapped inside her torso.

Ana gestured at Fi

“I promised him. We’re working on this movie and …” James rubbed his face, fumbling in Ana’s presence.

“Should I go to the house? Is Sarah there?” asked Ana.

“She is, but she’s sleeping. She won’t get up for another couple of hours.”

“Oh,” said Ana, looking down at the flowers in her hand. They seemed suddenly ridiculous.

“Do you—you could come to the park with us, and then, you know—come back after …” James had wondered how he would feel at such a meeting, and now he knew: He was famished for her. He didn’t want her to go yet. He needed to show her that he was not the bleeding mess she’d left in November, and that even then, he hadn’t been the mess she’d presumed. He wanted a chance.

Ana smiled. “I’ll come,” she said.

Fi

Ana was impressed. He had found his gift. For the first time, she didn’t feel excluded. It wasn’t her failure; it was their victory.

She thought suddenly how in all their time together, there must have been a moment where that other life would have been possible. If they had been able to have a child easily, or accidentally, then maybe the propulsion would have kept them aloft. They would have been like everybody else, never looking down because they wouldn’t have had to. But without either of them noticing, that moment had passed. Motherhood had passed. They got this instead.