Ann Patchett - Commonwealth

But in 1971 it was decided that the children were old enough to go it alone, or that Cal at twelve and Holly at ten were old enough to wrangle Jeanette, who at eight needed absolutely nothing, and Albie, who at six needed everything in the world. At the airport, Teresa handed over the tickets Bert had sent and put her children on the plane to Virginia without suitcases, a bold maneuver she would never have attempted when Bonnie or Wallis was on duty. Let Bert hit the ground running, she thought. They needed everything: he could start with toothbrushes and pajamas and work his way up. She gave a letter to Holly to give to her father. All four of the children needed to have their teeth cleaned. Jeanette, she knew, had cavities. She sent copies of their immunization records, putting a check mark beside all the boosters that were due. She couldn’t keep taking off work to run to doctor’s appointments. The doctors were always late, and sometimes it was hours before she made it back to the office. The second Mrs. Bert Cousins didn’t have a job. There would be plenty of time for her to take the children shopping, to take them to doctors. Holly fainted whenever she had a shot. Albie bit the nurse. Cal refused to get out of the car. She had wrestled with him but he had braced a foot against either side of the car door and wouldn’t get out and so they missed his last booster. She wasn’t sure if Jeanette had had her shots or not because she couldn’t find Jeanette’s immunization records. She made note of all of this in the letter. Beverly Cousins wanted her family? Have at it.

The children were seated across the aisle from one another, the boys on the left and the girls on the right, and each was given a set of junior airman wings, which only Cal refused to wear. They were glad to be on the plane, glad to be free of direct supervision for six hours. As much as they hated to leave their mother — they were unquestionably loyal to their mother — the four Cousins children thought of themselves as Virginians, even the youngest two, who had been born after the family’s move west. All of the Cousins children hated California. They were sick of being shoved down the hallways of the Torrance Unified School District. They were sick of the bus that picked them up on the corner every morning, and sick of the bus driver who would not cut them a break, even thirty seconds, if they were made late by Albie’s dawdling. They were sick of their mother, no matter how much they loved her, because she had on occasion cried when they returned to the house after missing the bus. Now she would be late for work. She went over it all again in the car as she drove them to school at terrifying speeds — she had to work, they couldn’t live on what their father gave them, she couldn’t afford to lose this job just because they weren’t responsible enough to walk to the goddamn corner on time. They blocked her out by pinching Albie, whose screams filled the car like mustard gas. More than anything they were sick of Albie, who had spilled his Coke all over the place and was at this very moment kicking the seat in front of him on the plane. Everything that happened was his fault. But they were sick of Cal too. He got to wear the house key on a dirty string around his neck because their mother told him it was his job to get everybody home after school and make them a snack. Cal was sick of doing it, and on most days he locked his sisters and brother out for at least an hour so that he could watch the television shows that he wanted to watch and clear his head. There was a hose on the side of the house and shade beneath the carport. It wasn’t like they were going to die. When their mother came home from work they met her at the door screaming about the tyranny of their situation. They lied about having done their homework, except for Holly, who always did her homework, sometimes sitting Indian-style under the carport with her books in her lap, because she lived for the positive reinforcement her teachers heaped on her. They were sick of Holly and the superiority of her good grades. Really, the only person they weren’t sick of was Jeanette, and that was because they never thought about her. She had retreated into a silence that any parent would have asked a teacher or a pediatrician about had they noticed it, but no one noticed. Jeanette was sick of that.

They reclined their seats as far back as they could go. They asked for playing cards and ginger ale. They reveled in the sanctuary of an airplane which was for the time being neither in California nor Virginia, the only two places they had ever been in their lives.

Fix would take his week’s vacation to be with Caroline and Franny when they went to California in the summer, whereas when Bert’s children arrived in Virginia, Bert told Beverly his caseload at work had mysteriously doubled. Bert worked in estates and trusts law in Arlington, having decided the life of an assistant district attorney was too stressful. It was difficult to imagine how so many people needed new wills drawn up on the very day his children arrived. He sent her to the airport alone in the station wagon. He had thought that he was going to be able to pick them up himself but at the last possible minute a motion that no one was expecting had been filed, and not only could he not get to the airport, it really didn’t look like he was going to make it home for dinner. Beverly had picked Bert’s children up at the airport before, but in reality she had been going to pick up her mother or Bonnie or Wallis who had kindly agreed to come and visit her on a free ticket. It had been such a joy to see any one of them getting off the plane that she could very nearly overlook the children. She would lock arms with her mother or sister or dearest friend and together they would shepherd the lambs through baggage claim and out to the parking garage. It had been something to look forward to.

But now Beverly felt oddly paralyzed as she waited at the end of the jet bridge alone. When all the other passengers had disembarked, the stewardess brought the Cousins children out and she signed for them. Four little stair-steps, boy-girl-girl-boy, each one a glassy-eyed refugee. The girls gave her a disappointed hug at the gate while the boys hung back, walking behind her to baggage claim. Albie was singing some indecipherable song, possibly Cal was too, though she wasn’t sure, they stayed so far away from her. The airport was noisy and crowded with happy families reunited. It was hard enough to hear herself think.

They waited at the baggage carousel and watched the bags rotate past. “How did the school year turn out? Did you make good grades?” Beverly launched the question to the group but the only one who looked at her was Holly. Holly made A’s in every class except for reading and there she’d made an A-plus. Beverly asked if the weather had been good when they left Los Angeles, if they’d eaten on the plane, if it had been a good flight. Holly answered everything.

“The flight was delayed thirty minutes out of the gate because of traffic on the runway. We were twenty-sixth in line for takeoff,” she said, her little chin lifted up, “but we had a good tailwind and the pilot was able to make up most of the time in the air.” The part that divided her pigtails was wildly uneven, as if it had been made by a drunken finger rather than a comb.

The boys had wandered off in opposite directions. For a second she caught sight of Cal standing on the conveyor belt of a luggage carousel three carousels away, gliding by with the bags from Houston. No sooner had she seen him than he hopped off to avoid the charge of an oncoming skycap.

“Cal!” Beverly called out over the crowd. She couldn’t yell at him, not publicly, not at a distance, and so she said, “Go get your brother!” But Cal looked back at her as if it were some weird coincidence that his name was Cal and this complete stranger had said something to someone who was also named Cal. He turned away. Jeanette stood just beside her, looking at the strap of her little shoulder bag, staring at it. Had anyone had this child tested?