Now it was just family, sitting around the table. And though it was their wedding anniversary party, Milly saw that it was really nothing to do with them at all. The party had a life of its own, and was a memory in the making. Her and Jack’s role had been to provide the circumstances for them all to remember each other. To have these times of loud overlapping conversations and spilled wine and kids’ whining and laughter and blushes. Emotion so close to the surface, it got mixed up with the gravy and the way the coffee tasted. Her children had each other, and laughed at their parents. Knowing what she knew, that she’d not always be here, she was glad. Anyway, she’d never really got the hang of talking to grown-up children. Much easier when they were little.
The cake was in the middle of the table, a mess of lurid icing and crumbs. Under the table, the released dogs were happily licking, as if the floorboards had become edible. Ella Fitzgerald was singing about loving some damn man no matter what, but no one was listening – they were all talking at the same time. Jack opened another bottle, while Milly sat quietly, hands on her lap, looking bemused.
When a gap finally occurred, Elisabeth asked, ‘So, Mom. Fifty years. What have been the best parts?’
‘Me? The best parts?’
Milly stalled for time by fiddling with her napkin, wiping her mouth, taking a sip of juice from her wine glass. She was on her tenth juice. How had she got to this day? One thing had led to another, then another. Like moving from one house to another house, and she’d made the best of each house. Found the strengths, covered up the weaknesses. But she felt odd now, insubstantial. She felt like she’d been right here, in this day, all along. And she’d been in all those other places all her life too, headed to this day. All those times existed, somehow, simultaneously.
‘Mom? Tell us what you enjoyed the most. Please!’ asked Sam.
‘Come on, Milly! Come on, Mom!’ chimed the others.
Now, this room. Not anywhere else. These familiar dear people, looking at her. God, they could all use a good scrubbing, she couldn’t help but think. And a haircut.
‘I enjoyed raising you. All of you.’
She said this softly, doubtfully, and saw clearly the space they’d taken up in her life. That clump of years. That witnessing of babies metamorphosing into children, and then into unrecognisable adults. Of one baby who did not. That inheriting of two boys she’d only loved as an aunt before, then realising they’d somehow become her own. August was sitting next to her, so in her mind she scooped him up too, not because he was Jack’s son, but because he was lovable and he was there.
‘It’s been…such a pleasure to raise you all,’ she said, with more certainty. And looked sternly at the six children, one by one.
But they were all middle-aged people, like herself! Had they caught up with her and Jack? And who was that strange man, sitting next to Elisabeth? And that woman, her arm looped around Sam’s shoulder? Oh yes, the new boyfriend and girlfriend. Odd words to apply to men and women in their forties, but yes, that’s exactly what they were. And there sat Daniel, alone, and his wife God knows where. At least Donald was still with Charlotte, and Billy was still with Maria, thank God. But poor August was entirely alone again and looked neglected – wrinkled shirt, stubble-faced, a slackness to the way he sat. She knew most of her children thought it was pointless to devote a life to keeping a marriage intact, but she was proud today. Proud of her family gathering around the cake, with fifty years in pink icing inside a red heart. She felt she deserved a…well, an adult version of a Girl Scout badge. It had been such a long, bloody battle. This day represented a victory over all the forces of divorce. But look at their faces. Still waiting for her.
‘I have loved being your mother,’ she said seriously now.
‘Milly, honey pie,’ slurred Jack. ‘I think they mean the best parts of our marriage. As today is our fiftieth anniversary. Remember?’
A second of anger crossed her face, one eyebrow cocked. Some giggles from round the table.
‘All good times,’ she said. ‘And I thank God you are not dead, Jack.’
At this, after three seconds of silence, everyone laughed. ‘Here’s to you, Mom,’ they said, raising their glasses.
‘Here’s to love like yours.’
‘Here, here,’ said Jack, joining in. He may be mocked by his kids, but knew better than to let them know he cared. He’d had six glasses of wine. Love seemed irrelevant. It hardly mattered when compared to the fact of their tenaciousness. Hell, they hadn’t killed each other, and that was a miracle worth celebrating.
Then August put another record on – he was the only child who loved the old music. Harry James oozed into the room.
‘Not that old crap again!’
‘Sure some of my old Stones albums are still there. Or Grateful Dead.’
‘Put on something decent!’
‘Leave it!’ commanded Jack, and moved into the seat August had left empty, next to his wife. She was humming softly and Jack was swaying, and clicking his fingers. The music was as fresh, as cutting edge as ever. He couldn’t shake the feeling that their generation had done something no other generation had ever done. He and Milly sat alone on their island of nostalgia. Jack kissed his wife on the side of her head, and then on her mouth. She kissed him back, and August took a picture of them with his phone.
The next day, Jack was mildly depressed and spent the day hiking. There had been a time he’d felt sorry for himself because his wife could not join him on hikes. The plan had been to be one of those couples who did everything together. He’d adjusted long ago, but today for some reason, he felt sorry for himself again. Not only that, Jaspy and King were very disobedient. Still puppies, but still. They kept running off and he had to resist the urge to not call them back. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he kept mumbling to himself. He had drunk too much last night. It was so hot, the sky was white, too hot for blue. Everything looked ugly and dirty. He walked till his muscles ached and the sun burned the places not covered by his old hat.
Milly felt energetic and excited, as if in some delayed reaction to the prospect of having a party. She decided to clean out the hall closet. And the refrigerator. It was satisfying, throwing junk away and creating space. Temporary, of course, since she could easily visualise the clutter accumulating again. But still, it was satisfying.
KILLING ANTS
FIVE YEARS EARLIER
July 14th 1997
Dogtired Ranch, Mendocino County 2:13pm
Here they were again: Dogtired Ranch. Would this be the last time? There had to be a last time one of these times. It was a hellish drive, longer every year. They’d both wondered if last summer had been the last time, but here they were again. It seemed to Milly that last times always made that decision themselves. No warning, just the retrospective awareness.
It was good to be back, she told herself. Flies circling endlessly, yellow jackets buzzing all day and mosquitoes buzzing all night, beer tabs being ripped off. Coconut sunscreen and smoking barbecues. The sandy beach, in the curve of the river. Cold for swimming, but perfect for sunbathing. A timeless place. The sense that, despite all the noise and movement from the beach, all the laughter of the poker-playing men in the shade, the wives’ overlapping gossip about their marriages and everyone else’s marriages, the fourteen-year-old bikini-clad girls pretending to ignore the fourteen-year-old whooping-it-up boys, and above it all the children’s giggles, screams, tears – despite all this humanity, time was not moving here at Dogtired. Or if it was, it was moving like maple syrup on a cold day. The only age group missing was the eighteen-to thirty-year-olds. Dogtired was not for everyone.
They always booked the same log cabin, the same mid-July weeks.
‘We always go to Dogtired in July,’ Milly had told the checkout girl in United Market yesterday, as she stocked up on food for the trip. ‘Every summer. It’s an old MacAlister family tradition, every summer,’ she’d repeated proudly, forgetting it had begun as a desperate measure the year her sister, Louise, fell crazy in love with Coffee Enema Bob (he swore coffee enemas cured everything including cancer), and gave her sons to her sister without a backward glance. That first summer had been hell. Four kids crammed into the back seat, and in front, Billy (when he was Willy) on her lap. Louise’s boys had been so pale, so quiet. So polite. Milly remembered washing Danny’s pee-sodden sheets daily. She’d felt as if they were all floating, and she was supposed to tether them to earth again somehow. They’d needed a miracle, and Dogtired had been it.
There had been a time when Milly had lain awake at night, fretting about the possibility of Louise’s ex-husband emerging, stealing those poor boys from their beds. It made her slightly ashamed because he wasn’t a bad man, but she’d imagined blocking the door with her body. Her dogs would attack his legs and her children would fell him with cast-iron frying pans. She never got further than that, never actually disposed of the body.
There had been a time she’d yearned for her sister to return, but then one day she realised she’d begun to dread such an eventuality. A secret dread. She’d have to act over the moon, but, oh, it would break her heart. The boys had become, by a process she couldn’t understand, her own children. She could not lose them too, she told herself, then listened to the too and remembered poor cold Charlie.
Ah, Charlie!
Ah, Danny and Donald! Ah, Louise!
Her sister could attract nice men, but had never learned the knack of appreciating them. Always chased the bad boys. Maybe a missing gene, certainly nothing she could help. Milly remembered racing down to the train tracks with Louise, their thongs (were they called that anymore? Hadn’t thongs become string underpants?) slapping the sidewalk. Her sister was always going closer to the thundering freight train, and daring Milly to do the same. Louise’s saucy hip and shoulder wriggle to the caboose man, and his amazed look. She always did that, no matter what the caboose man looked like. As if she was the Shasta County Homecoming Queen, served up just for him. She’d had a red gingham skirt that she wore all one summer, the summer she was fifteen – full from the tiny waist, made of the lightest material, so when she ran, or it was windy, anyone could see her underpants.
It had been almost thirty years, but Milly still couldn’t think of her sister without a clear recollection of her own first reaction to the news. She’d wanted to shake Louise hard. Slap her. Typical no-class Louise. Louise had written postcards and letters over the years, asking for news of her sons, and for forgiveness. One of the early letters:
Billie: I’m sorry, sis, but I don’t see how I can come back now. I’m a rotten mother. Obviously. Mom was a rotten mother too, we just didn’t get it. Thought she was normal. She was hard, Billie. You don’t like to think of all those times she was drunk and just didn’t care. You don’t even remember feeling scared! That time she fell in the kitchen and just lay there in a puddle of her own piss till we came in for breakfast. But I remember, and I see her in me. I’m okay, I’m not saying I’m a bad person. But I am not a decent mother. Danny and Donald are better off with you. I know you’ll see the sense in this. But I got to say, I miss you more than I can say.
