THE SKY CYCLED THROUGH darkness, then began to turn light again as Tabby entered her second day of labor. Lou leaned against the fence, her mind drifting. She’d meant to check in with Jamie last night, but she’d been so focused on Tabby she’d forgotten to call. Jamie had probably been too busy to chat anyway. Lou hadn’t realized until she’d moved in how exhausting it was to constantly care for small children, and she wondered how Jamie found the strength to do it day after day—to cook meals, clean up endless spills, and referee squabbles, to ease socks onto wiggling little feet and cajole reluctant kids to change into pajamas and brush their teeth and get into bed, to read storybooks and throw in a load of laundry before racing back upstairs to warn the kids to stop talking and go to sleep, to do the hundreds of other things Jamie did every single day, so reflexively she probably didn’t even have to think about it. A mother’s love could power you better than any race car’s motor, Lou thought.
“Doesn’t Mike help with this stuff?” Lou had asked Jamie right after she moved in.
“Usually, yeah,” Jamie had said. She’d been trying to wash Eloise’s hands, which had inspired a shrieking fit in Eloise, who’d had a temporary tattoo applied to her wrist and was worried it would wash off. Jamie had finally rubbed a wet washcloth against Eloise’s palms, made a game out of counting her teeth while she brushed them, and picked up and carried Eloise to bed when the little girl thrashed.
“We generally divide and conquer,” Jamie had said. “Mike reads to Emily and Sam, or he tidies up downstairs while I do the bedtime routine. I’m just trying to give him a little break now, because of . . . everything.”
Now Lou wondered if that was the only reason. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Mike had been sleeping in the basement, or that a few days earlier, when Jamie had been entering the kitchen and Mike had been exiting it, he had pulled away abruptly, as if he didn’t want to touch her even in passing.
It was obvious Mike was angry with her sister. But why? Lou wondered.
She puzzled over it for a few minutes, then gave up. She certainly was no relationship expert—just look at her history. The thought led her to wonder what Donny was doing at the moment. He and Mary Alice might be enjoying a late dinner, maybe pasta primavera or one of Donny’s other specialties. They’d probably opened a nice bottle of Chardonnay, and were talking about the upcoming wedding. She needed to send Donny an email, to see if he wanted to have coffee. She hoped Mary Alice didn’t mind if they stayed friends. Now that Lou was gone from the quiet, lovely apartment, she found herself reminiscing about all the things she’d liked most about Donny: the way he turned on classical music when he got ready in the morning and could always name the composer, the way he lined up his shoes when he came home from work, the left always touching the right, like they were a married couple settling in for the night.
She wondered again what had kept her from wanting to stay with him. He didn’t have any glaring flaws, so it had to have been her fault. She’d hit a limit with her two previous boyfriends, as well—something that kept her from turning the corner to real commitment. She’d even seen a shrink after Jamie suggested it.
“There isn’t anything wrong in talking to someone about things that you’re struggling with,” Jamie had said. “I think it’s kind of heroic, actually. Not many people are willing to do hard work on themselves.”
“Heroic?” Lou had said. “You’re giving this the hard sell, aren’t you?”
Because Lou had returned to college to study zoology, she was eligible for cheap on-campus counseling. It wasn’t like she had any pressing social obligation tying up her Thursday nights anyway. She’d made an appointment through the student center and gone in for a session. Lou figured they’d chat for a bit and maybe she’d get some sort of prescription—she wasn’t sure for what—but it hadn’t happened that way. The shrink had merely smiled at her, taken out a new legal pad and a freshly sharpened pencil, and sat down across from Lou.
Uh-oh, Lou had thought, feeling as if she was in for more than she’d bargained for.
“Tell me about your family when you were growing up,” the therapist had begun. She had close-cropped brown hair and slightly slanted brown eyes and perfectly manicured fingernails. She wore a chocolate brown wrap dress and matching heels, and despite her warm smile, she intimidated Lou.
“Growing up?” Lou had echoed.
“Yes,” the therapist had said.
So Lou had talked a little bit about Jamie and how they’d shared a room. She’d mentioned how she’d walked to school and had swum the backstroke for the neighborhood pool’s swim team for a few years.
“Were you close to your parents?” the shrink had asked.
“Sure,” Lou had said.
“What sorts of things did you do together?”
“Oh, you know,” Lou had said. “The usual.”
The therapist had set her pencil down on her pad, folded her hands, and waited. That was the thing about shrinks, Lou thought. They got paid by the hour, so they were perfectly comfortable with long silences. Silences didn’t bother Lou, either, but paying money for nothing did, so she tried to come up with something.
“Cereal,” Lou had finally said. “Jamie and I each got to pick a new box of cereal every week. Whatever we wanted—Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs. That was breakfast every day.”
“Mmm,” the therapist had murmured, and Lou had hidden a laugh, wondering if they learned how to make that noise in shrink school or from watching television.
“When something upset you in school, did you talk to your mom or your dad about it?” the therapist had asked after a long pause.
“Um,” Lou had said. “Well, I guess I mostly talked to Jamie. But I don’t get upset all that easily.”
The therapist had scribbled something on the pad. “Was your mother a stay-at-home mom?”
This Lou knew the answer to: “Yes.”
“Do you think she enjoyed doing it?”
Lou had frowned. “It’s hard to say.” She’d realized she was squirming and she tried to be still. The therapist was waiting for her to elaborate, so she might as well.
“I actually don’t have a lot of memories of my mother,” she’d said. “She died when I was twelve, so . . .”
The therapist had looked up suddenly. “What do you remember?” she’d asked.
“Almost nothing,” Lou had said. The therapist had waited. “Nothing, really.”
The therapist had just nodded and written something else in her pad.
“Is that strange?” Lou had asked. That was the thing about therapy; it made you curious about yourself. Which led to more sessions and more money for the therapists. Sneaky, that therapy.
“I wouldn’t say strange,” the shrink had said. “Sometimes we block out memories that can cause us pain. It’s the mind’s way of protecting ourselves.”
“Like selective amnesia?” Lou had asked.
“In a way,” the therapist had said. She seemed to have a Ph.D. in vague answers.
“Anyway, most of my memories are of Jamie,” Lou had said. “I have lots of them.”
“Your sister sounds special to you,” the therapist had said.
“Yeah,” Lou had said. “She is.”
They’d talked awhile longer, and the therapist had suggested Lou come back next week, and Lou had nodded politely and canceled the appointment the following day. And that was that for her flirtation with therapy.
Tabby climbed out of the pool and came over to stand near Lou, her muscular trunk stretching through the fence. Lou reached out and stroked it. An elephant’s trunk was magical—strong enough to uproot a small tree, and dexterous enough to pluck a single blade of grass. Lou thought Tabby might resume pacing, but instead, she stayed by Lou.
Lou looked into the beautiful creature’s eyes, which seemed endlessly wise, and she kept a hand on Tabby’s soft, rough trunk.
“Everything is going to be okay,” Lou promised, hoping with her whole heart it would be true.