It turns out her mother and father’s house is the only place within one hundred miles worth visiting. And since she’s been away, one of Deb’s brothers has married and another has just proposed. Her mother has been busy with wedding planning or fighting about wedding planning—“I know what I’m doing. This isn’t my first rodeo,” her mother complains, and it’s the first time Deb can ever remember her mother saying the word rodeo.
Nobody in her family, it turns out, cares a bit for rats or Deb’s research.
Violet has had another child in the two years since Deb has been away and she is very close to popping with another. And though she is bedridden due to high blood pressure, her legs so swollen and doughy that when a finger is pressed to her skin a print remains behind like with unrisen bread, she is in incredible spirits, better than Deb has seen her since she’s been married.
When Deb says as much her sister laughs. “It’s springtime! And wedding season! There’s just so much hope, isn’t there?” She grunts as she sits up and sips some of the tea that their mother has placed on her bedside. She makes a face. “No sugar. Doctor’s orders.”
“What’s sugar have to do with high blood pressure? Isn’t it salt they worry about?”
“Ah,” Violet answers, grimacing again and setting the tea down. “That would be the gestational diabetes.”
“Geez, Vi,” Deb says. “You’re a walking emergency.”
“Unfortunately, there’s not much of that these days. Walking, I mean.”
Deb shakes her head but doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t forgotten how their last conversation about pregnancy ended.
“I’m glad you’ll be here for a few weeks,” Violet says quietly. “It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other.”
“I know,” Deb says. Guilt eats at the edges of her words. “It’s the project we’re working on. I can’t really say too much about it.”
Violet puts up her hands. “I won’t ask a single question about it. All I care is that you’re happy.”
Deb wipes her face clean of expression. “Of course I am,” she says. “I’m at Harvard.”
“And you’re a big CIA hot-shot to boot.” Violet grins at Deb’s expression of disbelief.
“How did you—?”
“Peter hinted as much. He wrote to tell us that, in case you don’t make it clear enough, we are not, under any circumstance, to ask about any of the research you’ve been doing. That if you start to talk about it, we’re to cut you off.”
“What? Peter said that?”
Violet nods and adds, “And Mother is friends with the wife of a college dean who told her all about some of the experiments going on in the psych department, including work with a certain secretive governmental agency. With Peter’s warning, Mother put two and two together pretty quick.”
“Peter thought I was going to blab? I don’t even like the research we’re doing! Why would I spend my free time talking about it?”
“You don’t like what you’re doing?”
Deb falters. She’s just told her sister she’s happy. But now Violet knows about the experiments—thanks to her untrusting, untrustworthy husband. If she’s careful with her words, she can tell Violet all about her rat woes without giving her any more information than the college dean’s wife already let spill. She’s tempted—but shakes her head. “You’ve got enough going on, Vi. I don’t want to worry you.”
Violet’s groans. “Jesus, Deb, not you, too.”
“What?”
“I’m not so fragile that words can hurt me. They’re just words. Air. Sound vibrations hitting the innerworkings of my ear. Electrical signals in the brain. In fact, I’m so bored from sitting here all day that I might actually go insane if something interesting doesn’t happen soon. That’s the real danger. Now tell me: what’s going on at Harvard? And why did you lie to me about being happy?”
For a moment, Deb gets a glimpse of old Violet: set-jawed and gaze-piercingly in charge. A woman with the kinds of words that collect what she requires. A teacher demanding an answer from her pupil. Deb’s oldest sister expecting nothing more or less than the truth from her.
And so Deb tells her everything. About the rats and experiments, the thematic apperception test and her interest in cognition. And about what she’d learned from their mother—about their father’s affairs. “And about your pregnancies, Vi,” Deb says. She can’t look her sister in the eye.
Vi’s brow furrows. “What about my pregnancies?”
“Mother said you don’t have much choice in becoming pregnant. That he, you know, kind of forces the issue, in a way.” Deb hates how fumbling she sounds and normally her sister would say as much—“With precision!” was her motto when Deb was a chatterbox six-year-old—but Violet has gone quiet.
“Huh.” Violet’s face is blank. Deb can’t tell if she is upset or relieved or angry. “When did Mother say all of this?”
“Years ago, at this point.”
“Huh,” Violet says again. She cracks her swollen fingers, one knuckle at a time, then says, “She’s never said anything like that to me before. What else did she say?”
“She implied if wives don’t satisfy men’s needs, they might stray, like with her and Father.”
“That’s probably true,” Violet says, swinging her legs over the side of the bed with a groan. “Help me up, would you?” She grabs Deb’s hand and sits up, stretching her neck, then twisting her body, her spine cracking a vertebra at a time. Her body is one big joint, watery with fluid, gaseous with air bubbles, ready to pop.
“What do you mean? You think your husband has cheated on you?” Has Peter cheated on Deb? She mostly acquiesces when he asks for sex, but there have been times when she’s said no, plenty of them.
“Not at all,” Violet says. “His needs remain satisfied.” She gestures bitterly down the length of her swollen body—her ankles so puffy they spill onto the tops of her feet, the deep blue veins inching up the backs of her legs like thick, painful earthworms. She looks up at the ceiling, willing the tears into retreat, her chin wobbling.
“Vi,” Deb says. “Tell me. Is there anything I can do? I know I was so horrible to you about your pregnancies in the past, but I was young and stupid. We can’t let this happen to you again. There has to be a solution to all this!” Deb throws herself to her knees. If she wasn’t so utterly despairing, considering what might happen if her sister is put through this again, the way her body rebels more with every pregnancy, she would cringe at her own naked desperation, so much like the women characters in her childhood books, swooning with emotion. She puts her head in her big sister’s lap where Violet’s fingers, by instinct, begin brushing through the pale clouds of her hair. She coils Deb’s hair absentmindedly the way a young girl in love might twist her hair, thinking of the one she loves. Her face is distant, dreamy, and for a few minutes, the sisters sit that way, Violet with her hands anointing her sister’s head, Deb erupting in goosebumps at their familiarity.
“There is something you can do,” Violet says after a while.
Deb sits up instantly. “Anything.”
Violet smiles. “Help me to the bathroom.”
“Of course!” Deb scrambles to her feet and helps Violet heave herself up. They waddle to the bathroom and Violet eases herself onto the toilet where she trickles for a moment. “Damn it,” she mutters.
Deb hasn’t left Violet’s side. “What’s wrong?” she asks, handing Violet toilet paper.
Violet starts to stand but trickles some more. “This! I just—” Violet says, then giggles. “It’s just—” She bends in half and the force of her laughter brings on a fresh trickle. “Jesus H. Christ!” she howls, more urine escaping into the toilet.
Deb stands there, stricken, unsure of what to do, but then her sister’s laughter catches. Soon, she’s unrolling handfuls of toilet paper, one for each of Violet’s trickles, and the sisters shriek with laughter at the game they have devised, listening with bated breath for the tinkle of water, erupting with giggles when it comes. When she thinks she is finished, Violet tries to stand but pees on her pants—“On them,” she giggles, “not in them. There’s a difference.”—and it sends the girls into fresh fits.
When Violet is truly finished and Deb tries to flush, the toilet clogs with all that toilet paper. “Oh my god, oh my god,” Deb chants, reaching for the plunger while Violet stands beside her doubled over and howling. When the toilet bowl begins to overflood, Violet yells, “Abandon ship!” and waddles toward the door. Deb ditches the plunger to wrap an arm around her sister’s torso and helps her escape the flooded bathroom.
When Violet has changed into new pants and fresh underwear, they sit on the bed, Deb leaning her head against her sister’s shoulder, the pair of them giggling every now and then like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Violet reaches for Deb’s hand and presses it into the hill of her belly. “Feel that?” she asks, the thing beneath the skin of her belly thrashing like a hooked fish.
“How could I not?” Deb asks awe-struck, a little queasy. “Does it hurt?”
“Sometimes. Here, this’ll really freak you out.” Violet presses the palm of Deb’s hand hard into her belly where she feels a hard knot the size of a peach. “That’s her butt.”
Deb fights the urge to snatch her hand away the way she might if she was touching something unbearably hot. “That’s really—strange,” she says.
Violet smiles. “It is.”
For a moment, the sisters sit in silence. Then, Violet says, “I do have a favor to ask.”
“Of course. What is it?”
“Come with me to the delivery room. I know it’s abnormal, but I could get my doctor’s approval especially if we say you’re studying to become a doctor.”
“Wrong kind of doctor.”
“I know. But still. I want you there with me.”
Deb has a sinking feeling that this is her sister’s attempt to convince her of the miracle of birth and the joys of motherhood. She can already feel herself steeling against all of her sister’s arguments—yes, she’s precious, so small, what a beautiful thing, a mother’s love, the psychology of her devotion, the animal instinct of her tenderness. A thing to behold, Deb will tell her, from a safe and unattached distance. The labor and delivery room is not the time or place to explain the many reasons why she never wants children, not the least of which is that she’s seen what motherhood has done to Violet. Plus her career has careened so thoroughly off course, even without the help of toddlers messying everything with their tight, sticky fists. Will her sister understand that?
Violet senses Deb’s hesitation. “I promise I won’t pee on you.”
“Liar. There’s no way you can promise that, not after what just happened in the bathroom.”
“True.” Violet smiles then sighs. She slips Deb’s hand off her belly and interlaces their fingers.
Deb squeezes her hand and says, “I’ll be there. In the delivery room. If you want me there. And if your doctor will let me.”
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