When the girls first arrived, Iris approached parenthood the way she did most things in life: systematically and pragmatically. That first night, she let them watch TV, turning the channels until she found something that looked like a cartoon. At eight o’clock she told them, “Time for bed.” She showed them the toothbrushes she had bought for them, one red, one green, and let each girl pick her color. She got them into their nightgowns and into bed, and then she bent and quickly kissed their foreheads before they could stop her. The next morning, she woke them up at seven, and though she always had just coffee and a piece of dry toast, she made eggs for everyone and she even ate some herself so that they would, too.
She bought a book about raising children and decided that hers would be a home of schedules, proper bedtimes, decent food, routine. She watched the other mothers in the neighborhood as if she were doing research. Elaine down the block sometimes spit on her fingers to wash her son’s face. Martina let her kids run through the sprinkler on her front lawn, but when one of them took off her bathing suit, Martina swatted her on the bottom. Iris noted what worked and what seemed less effective.
But she quickly began to realize that something was wrong. She had bought them separate beds so they would feel they had something of their own, yet they always curled up in the same one, Charlotte’s arm hooped around Lucy, the two of them like puppies piled together. “Us against the world,” she heard Charlotte whispering to Lucy. “Say it back to me.” And then Lucy did. They wore only the dresses they had unpacked, not the new ones Iris had purchased at Filene’s. Iris wondered who had packed those bags for them, who had thought to tuck in a small photo album hidden at the bottom. When the girls were asleep, Iris had looked through it, her hands shaking. There was her father, hugging a woman so young she could have passed for a college coed, the girls laughing beside them. Iris touched the photo with her finger. Riffling through the pages, she noticed how many of the pictures were of Lucy alone: Lucy playing the piano in a party dress. Lucy standing in front of an easel painting something. Lucy sitting on both her parents’ laps at the same time. Iris turned the page, and there was Charlotte, standing with her family, who were all hugging, but she was on the outer edge, like an afterthought. Her father was beaming down at Lucy. He had one arm around his wife.
She put the album down. Her father hadn’t changed. No wonder Charlotte seemed suspicious of her, and Lucy so warm.
But when she tried to take their hands crossing the street, Charlotte took Lucy’s and refused to take Iris’s. When she tried to interest them in a board game after dinner, proclaiming that Charlotte could even be the scorekeeper, Charlotte wanted to play only with Lucy. One night when Lucy wasn’t feeling well, she curled into Iris’s lap, and Iris sat there, overwhelmed. She rested one hand on Lucy’s yellow hair. She leaned down and breathed her in, this warm, sleepy child, and then Charlotte came into the room and jerked Lucy awake, pulling at her arm.
“Hey, hey—” Iris said, but Charlotte was tugging Lucy into the other room. “She’s my sister, not yours,” Charlotte said.
“Give them time,” the social worker had counseled when Iris called, near tears, to tell her she wasn’t sure how things were working out.
One night she heard Charlotte crying, but when she went into the room, Charlotte burrowed under the covers, turning her back. Iris touched the girl’s shoulders, her sweaty pajamas, but Charlotte kept still. “Charlotte,” Iris said. “Honey, I know it hurts.” Charlotte didn’t move, and Iris left the room.
SHE DIDN’T THINK the girls would ever love her, but her own feelings came as a surprise. At first, it was a smell—clean hair and baby powder, and maybe youth—and she couldn’t get enough of it. She grew to love the sound of their voices in the morning, like bells. When she watched them, she couldn’t help thinking how amazing it was, that here she was, with two little girls in her home. Every time she did something right—cutting the crusts off their sandwiches before they asked, serving Kool-Aid in a pitcher she’d drawn a smiley face on, so that the kids laughed—she felt a flood of joy. They were all things she had imagined doing when she had wanted to have children with Doug, and every time she did them for the girls, she couldn’t help thinking, I could have been so good at this. And then she would think, I’m good at this now. I can get even better. She saw it, and maybe one day the girls would, too.
Falling in love with children was different from giving your heart to an adult. Oh, it was so much better! She remembered the way she had fallen for Doug, how she couldn’t sleep because she kept thinking about him, how when she saw him she wanted to kiss him. Later she felt deep comfort that he was around. But it was love with edges and complications. Loving the girls brought her deep peace, something she could sink into like a blanket.
She found her mind crowding with ways to make the girls happy. When they started school, she bought them enough pretty dresses so that they could each go two weeks without repeating one. She stocked the house with games they could play together, like Go to the Head of the Class or Sorry! She laid the bounty out on the bed so that it would be the first thing they’d see when they got home from school. She would stand at the door, watching them fingering the fabrics or eagerly tearing plastic from the games. Lucy always ran to her and hugged her, but Charlotte remained aloof.
One day, Iris showed up at the elementary school to walk both girls home. Lucy broke free from her first-grade class and ran to her, as usual, her arms wrapping tight around Iris’s waist. Iris laughed out loud and ruffled Lucy’s hair, and then Charlotte’s third-grade class appeared and Charlotte ran over, too. Iris noticed another mother glancing at her, smiling. The other mother must have been in her late twenties, in dungarees and a tight top. “Your granddaughters?” the other woman said, and Iris stiffened. She felt Charlotte watching her, but what she was supposed to say, that these girls were her half sisters?
“They’re my daughters,” she burst out, and the other woman looked startled and then shuffled away. Iris was annoyed with herself for reacting, for taking it so personally. The girls’ father had been older, too. How was this different? But then she felt a small hand, a starfish, grasping hers. She looked down, and there was Charlotte, her eyes clear and shining, holding on to Iris’s fingers.
At school, on the bulletin board, kids had written the ages of their parents. My Daddy’s 22! My mom’s 28! My mom is 19! (That one made Iris do a double take.) And there in the corner was Charlotte’s handwriting. Iris is 103! Everyone thought it was funny, but Iris felt her face flame, and when no one was looking, she took the piece of paper down.
Still, she couldn’t deny that she was older. In a sea of blonds and russets, her hair was frosty white. At the playground, her knees buckled when she tried to hoist Lucy up the ladder for the slide, and her back hurt pushing both girls on the swings. She could hardly throw a ball, and the one time she did, it hurtled out into a street full of cars. The girls always ran ahead of her, stopping short at the street when she called to them.
During the day, she missed them, but she couldn’t nap. There was too much to do. Laundry piled up. She had to go food shopping, because she was trying to find foods they liked, and so far it was only spaghetti, fried eggs, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. At night, when the girls were asleep, she was exhausted, but when she sat down to try to read, her mind crowded. They were so small, so young. How could she possibly protect them?
She rented a little cottage in Falmouth for two weeks in the summer so they could go to the beach every day, and the only time she didn’t worry was when they were in the backseat of the car, in their pajamas, watching drive-in movies until they fell asleep. Iris never paid attention to the movie but instead listened to their soft breathing, watching their peaceful, sweet faces in her rearview mirror. When they went to the beach, she made sure to stake a spot close to the lifeguard before slathering the girls with sunscreen. When they wanted to go in the water, Iris went with them, her eyes glued to their small bodies. Charlotte cautiously picked at shells and refused to go into the water deeper than her hips. “There’s jellyfish,” she insisted. “I see sharks.” Lucy, though, was like wildfire. She wouldn’t wait after eating her hard-boiled egg, her cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off, but ran into the water until it was up to her neck, ignoring Iris’s frantic waving and the whistle of the lifeguard. She stayed in so long her lips turned blue.
Iris read the papers. She knew how dangerous the world was. Children were run over by cars. They were struck by lightning. They drowned. She had to watch the girls every second, and yet she began to notice that her eyes weren’t as good as they used to be. One day, she and the girls were at the beach, and Charlotte and Lucy had run down to the waves. “Stay where I can see you,” Iris said, following them, but she had to squint to keep track. The lines blurred. And then she saw a pair of kicking legs, Charlotte diving into the water and pulling Lucy out. Lucy bent over, bracing her hands on her knees, coughing water. Iris’s heart tumbled. She ran down to the water. “Are you all right?” she asked, panting. When she touched Lucy, the girl’s skin was clammy and pale.
“Charlotte saved me!” Lucy said. Charlotte was busy brushing off Lucy, her hair wet pinpoints on her collarbone. “Charlotte,” Iris said, and the girl looked up at her, blinking.
“Thank you. Dear God, thank you,” Iris said. She hugged Charlotte tightly, and this time, Charlotte let her. Iris could feel the girl’s heart pounding under her skin, and suddenly she knew just what to do, and it would help both of them.
Iris waited until they were home, all three of them in the park, Lucy swinging, Charlotte beside her. “You know honey, you were a big help to me at the beach with Lucy,” Iris told her.
“I was?” Charlotte looked cautiously over at Iris.
“Lucy’s far too young, but you—well, how would you like to be my big-girl helper for everything?”
“Really? You would let me do that?” Charlotte twisted around excitedly.
“Of course. I count on you, honey,” Iris said.
SLOWLY, GRADUALLY, CHARLOTTE began to open up to Iris. When she helped Iris set the table, she told her about how her teacher always wore silver bobby pins, how she had told the class she liked to square dance, and how she smelled like old shoes. At the park, instead of hanging out with her own friends, Charlotte sat beside Iris to watch Lucy run around like a colt. Charlotte helped Lucy dress and pick up her toys. And when Charlotte grew a little older, she began to help Iris with dinner, to help cleaning up.
Iris loved them. Oh God, she loved them so much. But when Lucy skinned her knees, the first person she ran to was her sister, not Iris. She realized they didn’t belong to her, even though she belonged to them. She would do anything for those girls.
But one night, a year later, when Iris was out at a PTA meeting, leaving the girls with a sitter, she came home to find the babysitter running around outside after the girls, who were carrying their suitcases. “Charlotte! Lucy!” Iris called, and the girls skidded to a stop. Charlotte’s mouth opened.
“You came home—” Charlotte said.
“Well, of course I did. I told you I was going to the PTA—”
“No, you didn’t! You didn’t!” Lucy cried.
She paid the sitter and took the girls inside and sat them down. “Don’t you know that I’m not going anywhere? That I love you?” Iris said.
Charlotte looked doubtful, and Lucy shrugged.
“I have plans for us,” Iris said. “We’re going to go to the mountains in the spring, and next summer, maybe we’ll go to Maine.”
The children were so still Iris could hear their breathing. “Don’t you know we’re a family?” she asked.
“We have different last names,” Charlotte said. “That’s not really a family.”
Iris hesitated. “Would you like to have the same last name?”
“What do you mean?” Lucy asked.
“Well, I could adopt you,” she said. “If you wanted me to.” Neither of the girls moved, and for a moment Iris thought she had made a terrible mistake. Maybe they wouldn’t want that at all. Who was she to adopt them? They had had parents, and they might think she was threatening that tie.
“For real?” Charlotte said.
IRIS MADE A big deal of it. She bought both girls new dresses and something special for herself, a slim-fitting blue jersey sheath, and they all stood before the judge, who solemnly shook Charlotte and Lucy’s hands when the process was done. “You see?” Iris told them. “No one’s going anywhere. We’re family now. We’re all Golds.”
It made a difference, that adoption. Lucy loved saying her new name, over and over: “Gold, Gold, Gold,” she proudly told everyone. And Charlotte’s face gradually lost that pinched, worried look. “You can call me Mom, if you like,” Iris offered, and she told herself it didn’t matter that neither girl ever did, because look at what love was in her house now. Look at her family.
BUT THEN THE girls became teenagers, all arms and legs and curves, and shockingly lovely. Though every time she told them that, they looked at her as if she were insane. She gave them each their own room, their own door to shut, and the only way she knew they were inside was by the music that blared behind the walls. When they left for school, she would sometimes find herself in their rooms, standing in the center of the teenage debris. She lifted up a T-shirt and examined it and put it back exactly where she’d found it. She tried on a ring or a bracelet and put it back, too. It was as if these were all clues that would help her understand who they had become.
She lifted up a strip of photo-booth shots. Lucy’s hair was wild and yellow as butter, and though Iris bought her brush rollers and magazines that had diagrams for hairdos, Lucy just let it go free. When Iris tried to suggest they visit Clip and Curl, Lucy’s face darkened, and she smoothed her hair with her hands, over and over, until Iris let it go. At thirteen, Lucy could walk down the street with Iris, and men stared at her, with Lucy none the wiser, continuing to chatter about school to Iris. Charlotte also had no idea how lovely she was, but it concerned Iris that Charlotte always looked so worried, especially when she had such a beautiful smile.
As Charlotte and Lucy grew up, they grew away from Iris, and she felt her hands helplessly grasping at air. The girls didn’t care that she had experience in life, that she might know something that could help them. Iris had known girls like Lucy, who came to rely on the attention of boys. And she herself knew what it felt like to worry over everything, the way Charlotte did. But when she tried to help, to encourage Lucy to study, Lucy just sighed and went to wash her hair. When Iris told Charlotte to take a break from studying, to come with her to check out the sale at Filene’s, Charlotte shook her head. “I can’t,” she insisted.
The girls didn’t seek her out as much, which she understood. They needed space. They were becoming young adults, and this separation was supposed to happen. The only problem with it was that she hadn’t realized it would hurt. She began to notice that something had changed between the sisters, too. It saddened her. Lucy did her homework on her own, whereas before, Charlotte would always help her. Now, when Charlotte drifted by, college catalogs bunched to her chest, Lucy covered her papers with her hand. They had their own friends, their own secrets and problems, and they no longer even watched the same TV programs or played a game of Scrabble together. Their once close relationship seemed to be shut out by the doors they each kept closing.
One day, Iris caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Her face was wrinkled as a dishcloth. Her eyes bleary. Her hair, wrapped around her head in a corona of braids, had thinned with the years. She cupped one hand to her face. She was in her seventies. Imagine that. Seventies. How could such a thing be possible? She couldn’t pretend anymore that she was just an older-looking mother.
What really broke her heart was that the girls would be going soon. Charlotte was so smart she had gotten into Brandeis, her first choice, on a full merit scholarship, too, even though Iris had put aside money for her. Brandeis was just ten minutes away by car, but Charlotte wanted to live on campus, and Iris wanted that experience for her, too.
Lucy, though, was another story. How would that girl manage out in the world? Lucy brought home failing report cards. “She could do better,” Lucy’s teachers told Iris, but when Iris tried to talk to Lucy about it, Lucy threw up her hands and said, “I’m not Charlotte!” Lucy would have to get a job, but when Iris suggested the Katie Gibbs secretarial school, Lucy looked at her as if she had told Lucy they were going to adopt a pet python.
The girls would be gone. And how she would now spend her days was completely beyond her. Some mornings she lay in bed, trying to catch her breath, her head spinning. She knew it was just depression, the mind altering the body, and she would have to rally her strength to put a stop to it.
Iris found herself in town, shopping for towels for Charlotte to take to Brandeis with her, when she passed the old travel agency. It wasn’t Fly Away anymore but was now renamed We Give You the World, which she thought was a terrible name. She pushed open the door, and a young man in a suit beamed at her. “Paris, am I right?” he said. “Or maybe a beach.” He tapped the air. “I’m thinking a tour for you, right?”
“Solo,” she said, and he nodded as if solo were his idea and not hers.
The last time she had done this, she had been so happy. Just touching the brochures had made her heart skip. She couldn’t wait to roam the cobblestone streets of the Marais, to see the curve of the Seine, the majesty of Notre-Dame. But now what she yearned for was Lucy curling into her lap, or Charlotte sitting beside her on a park bench talking about her day in detail. Well, life went on. You had to fill the spaces as best you could.
Ten minutes later, her purse was overflowing with brochures about Paris, London, and Rome. Already her step felt more lively. Iris would go somewhere when Lucy was settled. She’d stay in a little hotel on the Left Bank. She’d walk around and visit museums and sit in the cafés and eat éclairs until she burst.
Inspired, Iris took herself to Grover Cronin and bought two new bathing suits, both with skirts, and cover-ups. She bought a pair of raspberry-red slacks with a zipper on the side and stirrups, and some cotton sweaters, and then a new suitcase in a rich fake leather. Goodness, it felt as if she hadn’t shopped for herself in years.
Two weeks later, Lucy had vanished, Charlotte was living at Brandeis, and Iris wasn’t going anywhere.