It isn’t until Deb is back at college that she will do the math of her own family: Deb and her seven siblings. On average, less than a year apart.
Her father’s affairs make sense, now. Deb had found out about the other women after snooping through her father’s office when she was twelve years old. Deb brought the letters to her mother who read them, carefully re-folded them, and told Deb to hide these wherever she’d found them. And not to tell her siblings.
For years, Deb had thought her mother a weak, stupid woman intent on blinding herself to truth.
But the truth is this: the other women were the concession to their marriage—the way her mother kept herself healthy, if not emotionally, then physically at least. She could sate his unending desire and stem the flow of children as long as she gave up the notions of loyalty, truthfulness, and devotion.
It makes Deb wonder what other quiet ways her mother has taken care of her needs over the years—the doctor’s visits she might have made, falling asleep on cold metal, waking up empty and bleeding. What teas or pills she might have swallowed. What silent, unspeakable lengths she went through then that she might pass along to her own daughter one day.
When Deb returns to school and visits Dr. Abrams, her naked body curls into a question beside his. “Peter,” she says and he growls sleepily in reply, an arm flung over his eyes. “If I were to undress and stand before you completely naked, would you try to touch me?”
Peter lifts his arm and looks at Deb. His brows furrow but his smile is tentative, playful. “Is this a trick question?”
“It’s not. Answer truthfully.”
“I imagine I would try to touch you, yes,” he replies.
“And if,” Deb says, “I were to ask you to stop, would you?”
“Of course I would.”
“If I approached you, naked, and began to kiss you, then decided I didn’t want to pursue any further—action…would you stop?”
“Yes, of course,” Peter says, concern etching his features. He sits up. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Say I haven’t had sex with you for weeks. Would you try to force yourself on me?”
He shakes his head vehemently. “I would never force myself on you.”
“Would you cheat on me?”
“No, Deb, I wouldn’t,” Peter says. Then, carefully, he adds, “Although, if we stopped having sex, I would hope to have a conversation about it. Especially if I’ve done something wrong.” He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. His voice is anxious when he asks, “Has someone hurt you? Have I hurt you? You can tell me.”
Deb shakes her head. She can’t be sure Peter is telling the truth. Not because Peter is purposefully lying, but because, until he is faced with these situations, he doesn’t truthfully know how he would react. Deb can’t imagine Violet would have married a man who didn’t allow her body the rest it desperately needed. Her mother couldn’t have known that the man she said I do to would say I will and I will and I will to countless other women.
Deb props her arm on her hand, the sheets pulled tight around her body. “I hope you know,” she tells Peter, “that I don’t want children. Not now and not in a year or five years or ten. I won’t change my mind. If that’s a deal-breaker, then we might as well call the whole thing off now.”
“It’s your body, Deb. Your decision.”
And he means it, so much so that at the end of the year, Peter asks her to marry him. His work is his child and now it’s becoming Deb’s. Peter has just accepted a new position at Harvard, and his state-of-the-art lab is something many psychologists, including Deb, only dream of. “Come with me,” he says to Deb. “Be my wife and my research partner.”
Deb fears a no to one would be a no to both, so she says yes.
They hold the wedding in her parents’ backyard. A small affair, with Deb’s immediate family and a few of her classmates. Her sisters and nieces are her bridesmaids. Some of Peter Abrams’ colleagues attend, though there is no small amount of awkwardness since Peter is moving jobs partly because of his relationship to Deb: his student. To have a tryst with a student was one thing—to marry your tryst was irresponsible and career-jeopardizing. The dean of the college had suggested the move as a chance at a fresh start.
Deb wears a simple white dress that tucks into her waist and falls in clean, elegant lines to the floor. Violet’s fingers make quick work of Deb’s hair, curling it away from her face in soft, blonde waves. She pins the veil to the top of Deb’s head and covers the pins with sprays of baby’s breath and white teacup roses.
“Beautiful,” she whispers, pressing her lips into the top of Deb’s head. Their eyes meet in the mirror, and for a moment, Deb is a child again and her sister is in high school, busy with her exams yet still finding the time to quiz Deb on Latin idioms or read to her before bed each night.
“I never thought this day would come,” Violet says, her voice wobbly.
“Me neither,” Deb replies.
“Don’t cry,” Violet says. She takes a deep breath then smiles. “We’ll ruin our makeup.”
At the reception, there’s baked white fish and ham, finger sandwiches and cucumber salad, oysters and lobster and a cocktail called the Pink Garter with lemon juice, Grenadine, and a splash of gin. Deb rarely drinks, except tonight, when she tips back cocktail after cocktail, the lemon sour on her tongue, the gin an herbal balm.
The night is warm. The heat builds within the tent, the candles adorning the tables flickering and sizzling with the desperate bodies of moths. Deb dances with abandon, the rumba, the mambo, the foxtrot. Violet has left the children with a nanny, and she and Deb grab hands, swinging themselves around the dance floor. Their chests heave, sweat pours down their faces, and they sing along with the band: “She’s a real sad tomato! She’s a busted Valentine!”
The band plays the Andrews Sisters next, a slower song, and Violet and Deb fling their arms over each other’s shoulders.
“Your new husband won’t mind if I steal a slow dance?”
“Ama et quod vis fac,” Deb says, smiling sloppily.
I’ll be with you in apple blossom time. I’ll be with you to change your name to mine.
“Love and do what you will,” Violet murmurs. “A good motto for marriage.”
One day in May, I’ll come and say happy surprise that the sun shines on today.
Deb says into her sister’s ear. “Not just for marriage. For life.”
What a wonderful wedding there will be. What a wonderful day for you and me.
When the song finishes, the sisters unravel themselves from each other.
“I need a drink!” Deb yells over the opening notes of the next song, a quick, wild tempo to offset the former song’s slow beat. The sisters head to the bar, and Deb orders another Pink Garter. “You should try one,” she says to Violet, but Violet shakes her head and puts a hand to her stomach.
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
Deb’s eyebrows raise. “Oh.”
“I wanted to wait until after the wedding to tell you.”
“Another one, then?”
“Yes, Deborah, another one,” Violet says.
Deb takes a long sip of her drink. She grins stupidly and looks at Violet. “Isn’t it all just exhausting?”
Violet’s hand slips from her stomach. “Excuse me?”
“You know what I mean—” Deb says. “You get pregnant, and we pretend to be happy for you.”
Something in Violet’s face slams shut. “Apologies for tiring the bride on her wedding day,” she says. She kisses her sister roughly on the cheek and returns to the dinner table where her husband sits with his leg propped on his knee, chatting jovially with their father.
Deb considers going to Violet and apologizing, but the heat and drink and her wild fear of the future and its infinite, terrifying iterations pushes her toward her new husband instead. “Dance with me!” she demands, dragging Peter by the arm. They thrash and fling themselves wildly at each other on the dance floor then later in the bedroom for the rest of the night.
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