Ramona Ausubel - Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

“I hadn’t even thought about it,” Fern said. She helped herself to the pie. The sugar was smooth on her tongue. She pictured the children in Edgar’s care. Fern took pleasure in the thought that he would screw things up, that a note would be sent home from school reminding him of whatever he had neglected. The children would be fine, though, she told herself. They were not babies anymore and could ask for what they needed. Edgar’s mistakes would not be deadly. He could figure out how to make the lunches, the dinners. Anyone could survive a few weeks without a mother.

—

After the wedding, Fern and the giant had driven to her house, empty and quiet, and she had run inside, changed out of her wedding gown and gathered some clothes and creams, made up her children’s beds. She had also found herself taking some clothes from each of the children’s drawers, a shirt from Edgar’s. It was not habit that had made her pack for the family she was leaving behind but it felt more practical than nostalgic. To mend the tear, she would need both pieces of torn cloth. Fern had written a note. Edgar, I have to go away for a few weeks. Whatever else you’re doing, I need you to take care of the children. The boys like peanut butter for lunch and Cricket likes tuna fish. Please get everyone to bed on time. I hate you right now. Love , she wrote. Fern did not leave this note on the refrigerator or the kitchen table or the bed, or any of the other places her children might have found it. She was not leaving it for them, after all. She left it under the lip of Edgar’s box of watches, on his high dresser, well out of reach of small hands.

But Edgar had not seen the note because he had left just after Fern in her white dress and he had not written his own note to say that he was going away because the whole purpose of a mother was that she was always there without having been asked. Because Edgar could not imagine the absence of Fern. He had driven the now familiar route, knocked on Glory’s door and she had let him in and asked him how it had gone with Fern, with the flowers and the news that he was going away for a while. “I gave her the flowers,” he had said.

“Did you tell her you were leaving?”

“Not exactly. She was wearing a wedding dress.”

“A wedding dress?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to tell her. You can’t help that she’ll be angry, but you can keep her from worrying. Call right now.” Edgar had tried but Fern had not answered. He had lied to Glory and said she had, sensing that Glory, in order to set out on this journey, needed to hear that he had done at least this small thing. Whenever doubt tickled at the back of Edgar’s throat, which it did every fifteen or twenty minutes, he reminded himself that his wife had easily chosen comfort over love, objects over him. He could not imagine his future without Fern, but she was going to have to be willing to sacrifice. A few weeks apart would make clear how much he was worth to her.

And the children? Edgar remembered a day on the island, sailing with them across the cove to the harbor where they ate half-shelled clams with cocktail sauce on the dock while they watched the old rusted fishing boats unload crate after crate of lobsters. Cricket slurped raw clams and Will wished for a lobster pot so they could feast every night and James said, “Maybe we should buy a boat big enough to live on forever.” They were such brave and wild and perfect little people. He wished they could have been with him, though he knew this made no sense. Wasn’t he trying to run away?

—

The giant and Fern drove in silence. She looked into the backseat of Mac’s big brick-red station wagon to check on her children and the backseat kept being empty. She knew they were not there but the timer in her body still went off — Cricket must be hungry, Will must be thirsty, James is getting tired. She had never left them for more than a few hours and the thrill of it would carry her for a while, the sheer idea of a single body, responsible for only itself. But already she could tell that this idea was a lie. Their little ghosts had followed her and always would. They had been born into the bigger world yet here, still in their mother’s body, was the shadow of each. Fern understood only hours into her journey that no matter how far she traveled she would never be alone again. It was half comfort and half terror.

Fern looked over at the giant, his huge hand on the steering wheel, the air conditioning blowing his hair. She wished he was Ben but he was not. She resented him for it.

Fern said, “Who are you anyway? What do you do?”

“I work as a security guard at a bank. Basically I just read novels all day and chat with the tellers and eat snacks. It’s a good job.”

He sounded sincere but Fern still felt sorry for him. She had been bred to believe that menial work was meant only for those who were not smart or fortunate enough to do better. “Has anyone ever tried to rob the bank?”

“Never. We’re a small bank and I’m a big man. My hope is that between those two things we will avoid it.”

It got dark. Mac said, “Would you mind getting us a room?” and handed her cash.

Inside the motel room the giant sat down on the king-size bed — the motel had had only one room left — which sank beneath him. There were actual rats in the walls. The rats sounded as if they were carrying out a great overturning of their society, a revolution of claw and tooth. Fern had almost always stayed in real hotels with bellhops and concierges there to offer a suggestion for good steak, good booze. If Edgar refused the job, refused Chicago, this would be their life. She had done the calculations while driving: they could sell the house and buy something tiny, use the difference to pay for the basics. At least she thought this seemed possible. Fern had never had to keep track of money and she had no sense of what they spent and when, no sense of the difference between what was needed and what was only desired. Maybe, ten years from now, she would come to think of a room like this as a great luxury. Or else Edgar would give in and they would buy their own island, their own jet. That those were the two most likely scenarios made her life seem unreal.

Fern opened the well-worn leather suitcase monogrammed with her mother’s initials. The gathering had been rushed and she wanted to neaten. The ironing board was tucked into the wall and Fern unfolded it and heated the iron. She set it to steam and listened for the bubbles. No part of her body felt true or real, no part of her head. She called her own house and the phone rang and rang. She imagined her family out for pizza, Edgar trying to disguise her absence with food and soda. She hoped Cricket had done her homework. She wished she had included a reminder about the special soap Will needed to use to clear the rash on his back and the old freedom songs James had recently begun to love.

Mac turned the little silver knob on the television and the thing came to life. He lay down, put his shoe-feet on the bed, the volume on too high. The newsman, his hair pasted to his head, his mustache thick, said, “One wonders — could such a crime have been prevented, if only someone had spoken up?” Fern could not see the screen, but she knew there was a picture of a little girl who had washed up on the bank of the Charles. She had seen the news already. The girl’s hair would have been full of crabs, her skin grey, but all they showed was the yellow tape.

Fern gave herself the time it took to pee and wash her hands to cry.

The mother of the dead girl came on screen and said, “She was going to be a fairy for Halloween,” and her whole body collapsed, as if everything within it had been liquefied. Fern thought of the long list of things she knew would undo this woman: favorite doll, too-small bathing suit, baby shoes, stack of thumb-worn books, hair in the shower drain, hair in the bed, hair twisted in the weave of the rug.