“I mean,” says Philip, in a calm, awful voice, “that you shouldn’t have trouble finding somewhere to go. Rosemary told me the women at the group loved you.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Vee snaps. The women at the Jewish consciousness raising group—clearly Philip cannot say consciousness raising—loved Vee because Rosemary, without asking Vee’s permission, told them Vee’s story, the same story the two friends had still not discussed in any detail, and one of the women said, My goodness, you’re Vashti! and all the others oohed and aahed. Apparently Vee was living the story of some queen banished a million years ago in ancient Persia. But Vee did not know or care about any of this and was peeved that Rosemary had offered up her story. She did not love the women back, as Philip clearly hopes she did. She starts to explain this, how she is not going to live with one of the Jewish libbers, when suddenly Philip bolts upright on the couch, looks at her, and hollers: “We were fine before you came! Everything was fine!”
Vee takes in the hatred in Philip’s gaze. Something has slipped in him—he is nothing if not a contained man. “I don’t understand,” she says. “You’re fine now.”
Philip laughs, a whistling, scary laugh. Vee hears the children, somewhere outside. “Where is Rosemary?” she says, suddenly afraid, not for herself now but for her friend.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Philip covers his face with his hands. He stays like that as he takes a deep breath, then he rubs gruffly at himself and appears again, the skin under his eyes a startling, bruised blue. “You probably think she’ll tell you not to listen to me,” he says. “Tell you to stay. So stay right here. Wait. Hear it for yourself.” His voice has dropped to a monotone. “She’ll be home soon. She called a little while ago.”
“From where?”
“The hospital.”
“Why is she at the hospital?”
“She lost the baby.”
“No.” Vee drops to her knees.
“It started two nights ago.”
“My god.”
Silence. Then Philip says, “You’re so upset. Yet you haven’t even asked how she’s getting home.”
“I can go get her,” offers Vee.
“You’re too late. You weren’t here. A friend is driving her.”
“I could stay with the children, so you can go.”
“I’ll say it again. You weren’t here. You’re too late.”
Vee’s fingertips throb with returning heat. She lets out a wail. Then Philip is standing above her, snatching her up by the shoulders. “What gives you the right to cry,” he says, his face inches from hers, his eyes, on her chest, devastated and dry. “Who do you think you are?” Vee steps backward, out of his reach, but he’s on her again, his hands on her breasts this time, squeezing and pushing her away at once. “Get out,” he says. “Get the hell out.” She feels the shove coming. She understands that she will fly backward into the table behind her and that she and the weird sculpture will fall together into the wall. Then the door opens to Rosemary, and behind her the children, and behind them a white sky. The children have been running and are red-cheeked, gawking, the girl with a look in her eyes that sets Vee’s blood pounding. But it’s Rosemary whose face, pale as the sky, terrifies. “Lionel,” she says, addressing her oldest in a voice like an empty tunnel, “take your brother and sister upstairs. I’ll be right there.” She does not look at Vee as she tells her to pack. Vee does not look at Rosemary’s abdomen. Then Rosemary is walking up the stairs with excruciating care, matching her feet on each step, her hand white from its grip on the banister. And soon she’s gone.
MANHATTANLILY
For She Had Neither Father Nor Mother
Ruth is gone. It was sepsis, finally, one of the words Lily learned to dread, though sitting now with her brothers, in a bar a few blocks from the hospital, she cannot seem to feel what she imagined she would feel. Lily’s and Lionel’s spouses have taken their children home and to a hotel, respectively. Ian has called his boyfriend in California. He was crying when he hung up but sits silently now, sliding his whiskey through closed lips, while Lionel, clearly in shock, keeps talking. He says words he has already said, things like Four blocks from the hospital, three siblings, four hours dead and And then you called me and I still didn’t get it, I didn’t know how fast it would happen, I wouldn’t have brought the kids, I would have just gotten in the car … Ian was already in the city, visiting, but Lionel, who lives so much closer, missed Ruth’s last cogent hour. Lily called as he was driving, so he knew, but you can’t know such a thing until you know it. He talks. All three of them drink. And soon—Lionel announces—it has been not four but five hours since their mother died.
Lily finds herself thinking not of Ruth, or even of Ruth’s body, but of the hospital room itself, its steady blankness, like a clean sheet, before and as and after Ruth died, and of how strange it is that she and her brothers will likely never return to it.
“What happens now?”
The room had been a different room from the one Ruth had been in during her first hospitalization, but it had also, of course, been the same room, the room Ruth had known Lily had not wanted to leave but had her thrown out of anyway. Go home. As if she was not home, with Ruth.
“Lily?”
Lily feels Lionel’s glass nudging hers and looks up.
“What do we do now?” her brother says. “With her body, and her apartment, and her finances …”
His shock is in his eyes. It’s bigger than Lily realized, and more encompassing; he is shocked, she sees, not only that Ruth is dead but that she has died without leaving him instructions. That his sister is now the one likely
