two
Morning comes too soon. The adults and older kids are still in bed, but the little girls are noisily rummaging around the kitchen and looking for something to eat. I change out of my nightgown and head downstairs to take care of them. Starting today, Sam and Beth’s girls will need a lot of care.
Seeing my nieces always brings me joy. This morning, the girls are dressed in matching pink-and-purple-striped pajamas, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Claire is tall for her age, chubby and, as foretold by the old wives’ tale, the firstborn takes after her father’s side of the family, the Korean side: dark hair, dark eyes and full, round cheekbones. Meanwhile, little sister Ally is Claire’s opposite: petite and small-boned, her delicate features and fair coloring reflecting Beth’s Scandinavian heritage, her wide-set almond-shaped eyes serving as Sam’s only apparent contribution to the pixie-child. “My fairy-tale princess,” Sam calls her. Yet despite their physical differences, the two girls are inseparable, best of friends, two peas in a pod.
Joining Claire and Ally this morning are the two youngest Lindstrom cousins, who look like juvenile versions of Botticelli’s Venus with their cascading golden curls and soft hazel eyes. Their long white sleeping gowns evoke the goddess’s alabaster skin, but instead of emerging from a scallop shell, they’re wearing floppy SpongeBob SquarePants slippers.
“You make the best Mickey Mouse pancakes, Auntie Hannah,” Claire says. The other girls nod and murmur in agreement.
“Oldest first,” the taller Botticelli says when the pancakes are ready. She holds her plate closest to me, inciting whiny protests from the other three.
“Yes, oldest first,” Sam says, appearing out of nowhere and grabbing the first pancake straight from my spatula. “Bacon and chocolate chip, my favorite!” he exclaims. He folds the pancake into quarters and wolfs it down whole.
“Dad!”
“Uncle Sam!” the girls scream in outrage. “No fair!”
“Yeah, Sam, no fair,” I say. “The girls have been patiently waiting. You cut the line.”
Sam leans in to give me a peck on the cheek.
“My bad,” Sam apologizes unconvincingly. He grabs another pancake from the griddle and skitters out of the kitchen.
I rub the greasy kiss with the back of my hand. No one ever gets mad at Sam—or at least no one ever stays mad at him. Ever since he was a boy, Sam’s had the ability to simultaneously outrage and charm everyone around him. It isn’t just his good looks either. In fact, when we were growing up in suburban Buffalo, people didn’t quite know what to make of his looks. My brother wasn’t the fair-haired Adonis that most people thought of as handsome, but he wasn’t hard on the eyes either. It wasn’t until high school, when Sam got contact lenses and started working out, that people began to take real notice. Today, Sam can’t walk down the street without someone coming up to him and saying, “Hey, aren’t you that guy from Lost?” or “You remind me of that Asian dude who won Survivor, but even better looking.”
I make sure the girls get settled at the dining table, which has already been set with utensils, fresh fruit and a pitcher of cold milk. “Don’t get chocolate on your pajamas,” I warn the girls.
“We won’t, I promise!” Claire says.
My stern look is quickly replaced with a smile. I have a terrible poker face.
I shuffle back to the kitchen, pour a cup of Italian roast with two lumps of sugar and walk over to my brother on the living room couch.
“Here you go,” I say. “Just the way you like it.”
“Thanks, Hannah,” Sam replies absently. He takes a long sip and groans in almost erotic pleasure. “Ah, just what I needed. What would I do without you?”
I don’t bother to answer.
“How did it go last night?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“How did Beth sleep?”
“Oh, that,” Sam says. “Not so good. I don’t think she got much sleep. I went by her room around one in the morning, and her light was still on.”
It’s always struck me as odd that a married couple like Sam and Beth sleep in separate bedrooms. Sam complained to me about it when Beth was designing Le Refuge but seems to have accepted the arrangement.
“I walked in and saw she was up,” Sam says, “sitting in her bed and going through all her precious photo albums.”
Beth is famous for making Shutterfly photo albums for every occasion in their life: Claire’s and Ally’s birthday parties, their fabulous vacations to Paris and Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii, the Lindstrom family reunions.
“I told her to take an Ativan and Ambien and go to sleep,” Sam says.
Ativan and Ambien. I am well acquainted with the combination.
“She was still sleeping when I got up this morning,” Sam says. “And don’t worry, I made sure she was breathing.”
Sam’s offhand remark makes me wonder: In Beth’s situation, would death by sleeping pills be better than what lies ahead?
“Auntie Hannah,” the girls shout, “can we have seconds?”
There, in an instant, is my answer. Beth has two young girls to live for. Everything else pales in comparison.
My poor hips feel stiff getting up from the deep-cushioned couch. Nothing about this day is going to be easy.
“No more Mickey Mouse pancakes,” I say. “Who’ll help me make silver dollars?”
When the girls finish breakfast, they run laughing across the lawn to wake their older cousins, leaving me alone in the kitchen to clean up. I’m stacking the leftover pancakes on a cooling rack when Sam walks in.
“You can throw those in the garbage,” Sam says. “We’re leaving in an hour anyway.”
“Claire and Ally can eat them in the car,” I respond. It’s hard to imagine throwing away perfectly good pancakes. My parents grew up hungry in postwar South Korea and taught me it was a sin to waste food. Anyway, the girls will need a snack for the long drive back to Princeton.
“Well, after you’re done, can you go upstairs and check on Beth?” Sam asks. “I need to take a shower and get myself ready.” Sam makes a hasty exit. His feelings are clear to me, and they have nothing to do with his ablutions. He doesn’t want to be the one to wake Beth in case she’s still asleep.
When Sam was a young boy, one of my responsibilities was to get him up for school. Entering his bedroom every morning and seeing his wiry body curled up like a fiddlehead, I’d take a moment to wonder: Where is he now? What exotic world is he exploring? What exciting adventure is he having? With a heavy heart, I’d nudge him awake to face the cold light of day.