The Other Half Page 3

  “Everyone says they can’t cope with things like that. Until they have to. Then they do.”

  “Sure,” says Jo. “You know what I was most proud of when I changed my first diaper? That I only threw up twice. And that I didn’t actually throw up on the baby. And this is the easy part, I’m told, because the poop is relatively contained and they’re not moving around too much. Then they get older and figure out how to get themselves naked. Imagine how well that’s going to go with those sheepskin rugs Sebastian bought when he was going through his hygge phase.”

  I hold up both hands in surrender. “Okay, what the hell, Brosephine? Why are you dunking on Sebastian? Why don’t you just come out and say it that you don’t want me to have a baby with him? Should we cancel the wedding as well?”

  Jo groans. “No. God. Ignore me. I’m tired, and scratchy. I love Sebastian. You know I do. And he’s good for you. Keeps you from sliding into total unwashed nerddom. He’s just…I don’t know…”

  “What?”

  “Not someone I can imagine coping with poop.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You do know how gay sex works sometimes, right?”

  She laughed and scrunched up her nose as she pulled the baby off her nipple. “Oh, don’t you try and gross me out,” she says, quickly zipping up. “I’ve passed a placenta. That’s hardcore nasty.” Artemis wrinkles up her tiny, toothless face. “What? Are you giving me gassy face now?”

  “It can’t be that bad,” I say, afraid to ask Jo outright if she’s struggling. It would only make her defensive, even if the shadows under her eyes are the color of an eggplant and the apartment looks like a bomb has gone off in a baby store.

  “I’m not sure what it is right now,” she says. “I haven’t had enough sleep to meditate on my emotions. At this stage I’m taking it day by day.”

  “You make it sound like someone died.”

  “Someone was born. Why should that be any less traumatic? That’s a whole new person that didn’t exist until now. There’s bound to be the same kind of heavy duty adjustment involved, especially when the person is small, helpless and farty.”

  “And cute.”

  “Obviously.” She glances down at Artemis, who sits propped upright between her mother’s hands, face screwed up in one of those baby expressions that tell you exactly what they’re going to look like should they be lucky enough to live to a hundred. Near invisible eyebrows and no teeth. Her mouth is a soft, gummy crumple.

  “Can I take her?” I ask.

  “Sure.” Jo tosses me a cloth. “Here. Put the muslin over your shoulder. She’s been in a feeding frenzy all day and you never know which end it’s going to come out of. You want some coffee?”

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

  She hands over the baby, who feels like a small and extraordinarily precious sack of potatoes. “There you go, bunny-boo. Go to Uncle Chris. Try not to puke on him too much.”

  Artemis looks up at me. Actually looks at me. All the other times I’d held her up until now, her eyes had been kind of vacant, with that wavering, newborn gaze they all have, before they have the brain development to focus. But now she’s looking right at me.

  “She’s looking at me,” I say, following Jo into the kitchen and immediately feeling bad that I hadn’t offered to make coffee the moment I’d walked in.

  “She does that, now. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Cool? It’s amazing. Look at those big brown eyes.”

  Artemis gurgles and blows a couple of spit bubbles, which I take as a warning that something is on its way up. I settle her on my shoulder, with her chin under the muslin.

  “They’re almost black, aren’t they?” says Jo. “You should have heard Mom when she was first born. ‘Oh, she’s so dark’. She’s so goddamn deracinated these days.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “You’re not,” she says. “You take after Dad.”

  “Really? Because I don’t see me running off with a younger woman any time soon, least of all one who still dots her i’s with tiny hearts. Anyway, how is his midlife crisis a Jewish thing? It’s like a rite of passage for even the waspiest American male.”

  “The Seven Year Itch,” says Jo, immediately filling my head with a picture of Jake the intern, standing over a subway grate in Marilyn’s white dress. “God, older men are gross. Twice as gross when it’s your Dad. I wonder what Shelby’s getting out of it?”

  Shelby, our twenty-seven year old stepmother. “More money to blow on scented candles and mermaid toast, probably.”

  “Oh sure. Blame the woman. She’s not that bad.”

  “She’s a human Ugg boot,” I say. “She breaks out in heroin sweats if she goes a day without Instagramming her frappucino and hashtagging it coffeeaddict.”

  Jo laughs. “Sebastian photographs his coffee.”

  “No. Sebastian Instagrams green tea. And that cleanse juice that looks exactly like fresh snot.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Oh, well that makes it perfectly acceptable, then.”

  “He’s an actual model, Jo. Instagram is part of his brand. And why are you being so mean to him lately?”

  “I’m not. I’m just saying. If you’re going to drag Shelby for being a basic white girl, then you should also admit that your fiancé is—”

  “—not a girl,” I say, gently patting Artemis on the back.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Focus on the wrong part to distract attention, just like you always do.”

  Artemis hiccups. I feel something wet. “Oh God, is that…”

  Jo takes a peek at my back. “Yeah. I did warn you that could happen.”

  “Oh, it’s happened. Dramatically. Has she overshot the muslin?”

  She laughs. “Hell yeah, Bro. By a country mile. It’s practically down to your waist.”

  Artemis makes another gurgling noise. It sounds suspiciously wet, and Jo is making no secret of enjoying someone else being covered in baby vomit for a change.

  “Help me,” I say.

  Her phone rings. “One second,” she says, still laughing, and picks it up without looking. “Hello. Baby Puke Central. Who’s calling?…oh, hey Dad.”

  The smile drips off her face so fast that my stomach takes a lurch. I hear Dad’s voice faintly saying something about bad news and wonder if I’m about to join my niece in throw-up land. My first thought is Mom, but then Jo covers the phone with her hand and says, “Aunt Becky died.”

  3

  Jody

  These people are assholes.

  Some of them I know from family photos, others from descriptions. The cute honey blonde in the too-high heels has to be Becky’s latest sister-in-law, Shelby, the midlife crisis wife. I know that the good-looking black couple who seem to be joined at the hip aren’t a couple at all: they’re brother and sister, twins. I’ve seen younger editions of them grinning gap-toothed from photos above the fireplace. The tall blond guy who looks like he escaped from Rivendell is Sebastian, the model, and I know that because Becky couldn’t stand him.

  “He’s so empty,” she said. “And bland. Like eggs without salt. The worst thing is that he’s perfectly polite and all, which makes me feel like an even bigger bitch for disliking him.”

  So I feel weirdly pleased on her behalf when I catch Zoolander partly uncovering one of the mirrors so that he can check himself out. I’m not sure if this constitutes sacrilege, since Becky was secular and all, but I’m pretty sure it falls under the umbrella of tacky. Or maybe he’s part parakeet: he thinks his reflection is company and gets nervous if it’s no longer there.

  I lurk out of sight beyond a bookcase and watch him primp the front of his pale gold hair. The boy twin catches him at it and angrily twitches the sheet back over the mirror. The sister stirs her seltzer as she examines the books on the shelves.

  “These shelves are falling down,” she says. “I don’t remember the place being this dilapidated.”

  “She had cancer,” says the brother. “I hardly think decorating was high on
her list of priorities.”

  “It’s still beautiful,” says Sebastian. “Imagine what you could do with a place like this. It’s got great bones.”

  The sister shoots him a mean look, and he sidles away on the pretext of mingling. Becky’s stamp of disapproval feels that much more warranted now that I see how he’s sizing the place up, mentally picking out colors for the dining room and imagining the Better Homes And Gardens magazine spread. Becky had no kids, so it was a done deal that the place would go to the twins.

  “Great bones,” says the sister, once Sebastian is out of earshot. “Is that his idea of a compliment?”

  “Oh my God, Josephine. Leave him alone. What is your problem with him lately?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” says the brother. “How can you not know?”

  She sighs. “Okay, so this is going to sound super flaky…”

  “You? Flaky?”

  “I know. Believe me, I know how dumb this sounds, but it’s like some kind of weird twin alarm keeps going off in my head when he’s around.”

  “Twin alarm?”

  “Yes.” She lowers her voice. “Remember that time when you were away at scout camp and I woke up in the middle of the night – over seventy miles away – and freaked out because I thought something bad had happened to you?”

  “And I turned out to have appendicitis?”

  “Yes.”

  “I definitely don’t have appendicitis,” he says. “Unless I grew a backup appendix somehow, and I don’t think that’s ever happened.”

  “Chris, I’m serious. You know I don’t believe in this shit, but you have to admit – nobody ever explained the appendix thing. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a mess of post-partum hormones or what, but I keep having this feeling when I’m around you two lately.”

  “Well, everything is fine with us. Better than fine, actually. He’s been really…attentive since he got back from Italy.”

  Italy. Nice work if you can get it. My beer is empty and I wander into the kitchen to find another. Nobody asks me who I am. They’re all too into their own conversations.

  “…it’s a stick style – I want to say 1870’s but I’m not sure – but it should definitely be on the register of historic buildings…”

  “…like, it’s mainly modeling right now, but I’d like to get into theater one day…”

  “…I was up half of last night shelling hard boiling fucking eggs. The whole kitchen smelled like a giant fart…”

  This is Becky’s house. This is Becky’s funeral. And nobody is talking about Becky.

  I don’t want another beer; I want to be alone, to the point where I can hardly even face the thought of elbowing through all these people to get upstairs. I know there’s an escape route here, the old servants’ staircase. I have to move a recycling bin to get to it, and when I pull the knob I’m immediately afraid it’s going to come off in my hand. The door is so stiff it might even be painted shut. Then, with a noise like someone ripping off a Band Aid, the thing gives and I’m in.

  Right away I regret it. The tiny stairwell smells of dead mice and there are so many cobwebs I half expect a boulder to come rolling down the stairs, Indiana Jones style. Nobody has been in here for years, maybe decades. The small stained glass window is so dirty it may as well not be here at all for all the light it lets in. When I mount the stairs the treads creak and groan. The wood feels mushy, and there’s a moment when I wonder if I’m going to make it to the top without putting a foot through a step and getting trapped in here. I’d be screaming and screaming, but nobody would hear me because they were too busy talking about themselves, and I’d die a slow death from dehydration.

  Sure, this house had great bones, but like those of its owner they came down with cancer and are now falling the fuck apart.

  The staircase comes out in the old dressing room. I open the door and step into the master bedroom. It’s seen better days. The big brass bed sags in the middle, so that when you’re in it you have to adjust your center of gravity and turn to face the outside, otherwise you feel as though you’re somehow sleeping downhill. There’s dust on the nightstands. Becky didn’t come up here towards the end. She couldn’t handle the stairs. The wardrobe door hangs open. I tried to fix it to sit flush a dozen times, before I finally realized that it was the floor that was making it uneven. Poking out through the gap – like some refugee from Narnia – is the sleeve of her favorite fake leopard fur coat. My eyes hurt. It was dusty on the stairs.

  I go to the nightstand and open the drawer. Books, pills. A fuzzy blue sock discreetly pulled over a vibrator. But then I find what I’m looking for, ready rolled and bagged. I could get into the hard stuff, since it’s all here – a junkie’s wet dream of Percocets and Oxy – but I’ve seen too many people take up the needle because they couldn’t pay the pill mill doctor any more. I’m a four-twenty man. Always have been.

  I light up and look out of the window. The bedroom overlooks the backyard, where I didn’t cut back the roses for the winter. There was still one red rose left in the middle of an unseasonably warm October. You could smell it from six feet away, one of those old fashioned damask roses whose seeds were probably carried over here on a ship from Britain, by some thin-skinned English lady who told herself she could only stand the colonies if she could somehow recreate her old garden on the other side of the ocean. I couldn’t cut it. Wouldn’t cut it. It was the going to be the last living rose Becky ever saw, so I left it, and left all the rest, too. Just threw up my hands and let nature do what the hell it wanted, because why not?

  The maples have lost their leaves now. The water in the ornamental pool has turned to brownish slime, and the pissing cherub – whose dick has run dry – wears a brand new toga of green ivy.

  The bedroom door opens and I startle. It’s the twin brother. “Oh, sorry,” he starts to say. “I didn’t realize there was any…” He sniffs the air. “Is that weed? Are you smoking weed at a funeral?”

  When in doubt, brave it out. “You want some?”

  He looks across the room at me for a moment, then closes the door, pressing his back to it like he’s trying to barricade us in. “I think maybe I do,” he says, sounding surprised that he’s even saying it.

  “Here.” I hold it out to him and he crosses the room to take it. He’s not much taller than me, but he’s big somehow, so broad across the shoulders that his black-framed hipster glasses give off a Clark Kent vibe. Maybe he came up here looking for somewhere to take off his glasses and strip down to his spandex. He has the anxious look of someone who spends way too much time trying to save the world.

  “Thanks,” he says, and takes a deep lungful. Too deep. “Oh shit. Haven’t done that in a while.”

  He takes off his glasses and wipes the corners of his eyes before going back for more. This time he holds down the smoke, holds it in and hands back the joint. “Sorry,” he says, although I don’t know what he’s apologizing for. “I don’t think we met?”

  “No. We didn’t. I was her gardener.”

  His eyes stray to the window. He has enough manners not to say it, but I know he’s thinking it: the garden looks like shit.

  “I wasn’t very good at it,” I say. “You?”

  “Nephew,” he says. “And also not very good at it.”

  I can’t help but think she called the ambulance because she didn’t want to die alone. And I want to hate him for that, but at least he has the decency to admit he wasn’t there for her.

  “Well, you know,” I say, passing back to him. “Everyone’s busy.”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “You don’t have to say that. I know I suck. I was too wrapped up in my own shit to drive five hours to see how she was doing. Believe me, I know I’m an asshole.” He takes another toke and blinks at it, smoldering between his fingers. “Wow. This is…”

  “Good shit. I know. Very smooth, light on the paranoia.”

  “Cool,” he says. “So any paranoia
I experience after smoking it?”

  “Yeah, that’s probably your own shit going on.”

  “Good to know. Or not.” He sits down on the edge of the bed and offers it back to me. I take it and sit down beside him. What is he doing up here? He’s got that Legolas-looking boyfriend wandering around downstairs, but he must have come up here for a reason. Maybe – like me – he was sick of listening to people talk.

  He smells good. Something expensive, no doubt. I picture him and the boyfriend brushing their teeth together in front of one of those big vanity units, the ones where you don’t even have to share a sink. They make a good-looking couple, no doubt about that. His skin is lighter than his sister’s, and he has dark freckles across his nose and cheeks. He wears his hair in short, natural curls, with what looks like one of those trendy fade cuts growing out at the side. His hands are big, but soft. I think he works in publishing or something.

  “So,” I say. “You’re the one that’s getting married.”

  “Yep.”

  This is my cue to say ‘congratulations’, but he doesn’t seem like he wants to hear it. In fact he looks sad. Sure, this is a funeral, but you can summon a smile for the prospect of a wedding, right? It’s like the circle of life, or some such shit.

  “You don’t sound too excited,” I say, hitting a huge wave of déjà vu. I wonder how Madison felt when she sobered up. Hopefully the old Mind Wipe worked better for her than it did for me that night. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head: I’d never seen anyone die before.

  “I am excited,” he says. “He’s beautiful.”

  Eggs without salt. It’s like Becky’s whispering it right into my ear. She knew this wasn’t right, and I think he does, too, otherwise he’d have more to say about the man he loves.

  “And?” I say.

  “And what?”

  “He’s beautiful and…insert adjective here, you know? There’s gotta be more than beautiful. Nothing stays beautiful forever. Not even this house. It was beautiful once, but now it’s…” I reach out to stub out the joint in a candle holder. The bed groans beneath us.