“It’s okay. Tough times in publishing, with the economy. Not a lot of new contracts,” he said.
“You don’t have a contract?” Mike raised his thick eyebrows. “I didn’t know that.” He looked then at Ana, as if seeing her as something new: imperative to his brother’s survival.
“Let’s not talk about work!” said Jennifer. “How is parenthood? At long last! Do you absolutely love it?” She lowered her voice: “Come on, can I ask that?”
“Jenn—” said Mike, flicking her toe with his finger.
“What? Come on. We know you guys were trying. The circumstances aren’t ideal, of course, but now you get to be a mom and dad! You get to parent!” Ana noted the verb: “to parent.” Something to do, not to be.
“I know this is going to sound weird, but Ana, he really looks like you! It’s crazy! You have exactly the same eyes.”
“Really?” said Ana. “Well, they’re brown, I guess—”
A chorus of screams burst forth into the living room, followed by three bodies.
“Finn’s a fairy! He’s a fairy, Mommy! And we’re the queens who are taking him to our kingdom to do our bidding!” Sophie, at six, was the eldest. On her head she wore a crown of toilet paper. In her hand, she waved an elaborate wand dangling beads and stuffed hearts. She was followed by Olivia, age four, who also wore a toilet paper crown, wielding a Barbie in each hand.
“These are the elves!” she cried. Finn looked pleased, toddling to James and leaning on his legs.
A look passed between the two girls—as if a switch had been hit—and Sophie began chasing Olivia, who responded by screaming happily, which made Finn scream, too, joining the chase. “Attack! The fairy is attacking!” bellowed Sophie as the three raced in figure eights around the couch. Then James noticed that Finn had a juice box in his hand; he reached to grab it just as Finn slipped out of the line and wrapped himself in the curtains. The curtains were so shining and sumptuous that Ana imagined tearing them from the wall and lying down in their silky arms.
“Get the fairy! Get the fairy!” screamed Olivia.
“Girls! Girls!” cried Jennifer.
“Finn! Don’t pull the curtains!” cried James, alarmed at the sausage shape in the golden fabric, straining at the top of the rod. He jumped up to try and undo him, to rescue the juice box before the inevitable stain.
“My elf!” wailed Olivia, stopping suddenly, holding in her hand the head of one Barbie, grasping its naked torso around the stomach. The adults breathed in, anticipating. Olivia screwed up her eyebrows, her jaw dropped to her chest, and a sound escaped, like a pig with an ax at its neck. Rivulets of snot and tears sprayed through the air. Ana leaned backward.
Jennifer and James went into the fray, untangled and soothed, calmed and hugged. Ana took a drink of her wine. Midsip, she recognized that her isolation might appear unsavory, and she reached for a coffee table book on an “Edvard Munch and the Uncanny” exhibit, as if to appear preoccupied.
“We saw that show in Vienna,” said Mike, leaning across, shouting over the diminishing din. “A bit dark for me. I bet James would like it.” Ana flipped to the back of the book, stopping on an etching by a German artist she had never heard of named Max Klinger. She recognized one of the German words in the title, Kind, and her body stiffened. A woman in a full garden, carpeted with grass and rimmed with furry bushes and tall trees, lay resting on a bench, her eyes closed. Beside her, a hooded baby carriage. But the carriage was empty, the blankets had tumbled onto the ground. A path from the blankets, trampled by feet, revealed a figure in the distance, walking away from the mother. In his arms was an unfurling bundle, too small to be deciphered, white and unseen. Ana put her finger on the path, traced its line. She felt, again, that strange flutter, a feeling of ascension.
James and Jennifer had been successful. When the screams had slowed to whimpers, and the whimpers to whines, the two girls curled up on either side of their mother like cats. Jennifer stroked the head of each: “There, there. Silly queens.”
Ana put the book down on the table. She wondered if the girls had seen it. It seemed to her now as inappropriate as pornography. She drank her wine quickly.
“Uncle James, how come we never see you on TV anymore?” said Sophie.
James pulled Finn a little closer.
“I got fired,” said James.
“On fire?” asked Finn, and everybody except James laughed.
“Why?” asked Sophie.
“That’s a complicated question.…” interjected Jennifer, but Mike tilted his head, as if equally curious. Ana felt her body reassembling into something normal, the effect of the picture beginning to cease.
“It’s okay, Jennifer,” said James. Addressing Sophie, he said: “I’m too old for TV. It’s a job for young people. You should be on TV.” He leaned over and tickled her. She laughed. Ana had never seen him so engaged with his nieces.
“I know. I could be on TV,” said Sophie.
“Sophie was amazing in the Thanksgiving play. I know all parents think their kids are great on stage, but it was really striking. The teacher said she has a natural aptitude for theater,” said Jennifer.
“Now we’re adding acting lessons to the roster,” said Mike, in the part of exasperated father.
“I played an aboriginal person,” said Sophie. Ana laughed.
Sophie snatched a remote control from the coffee table. She hit a button and a large, wood-framed abstract painting—red and blue swirls on red and blue swirls—moved to the side with a gentle whoosh. A large flat panel TV appeared.
“Jesus, Mike, how James Bond,” said James.
“I know. It’s extravagant. But now or never, right?”
“Sophie, we don’t need the TV on,” said Jennifer. “You can watch upstairs if you want.”
But Sophie clicked, and the TV came to life. There, across the screen, was James’s former colleague, Ariel, each strand of her long straight hair clearly outlined with the perfectionist brush of high-definition television.
“I worked with her—” said James.
“What? Is this your show?” asked Jennifer.
Mike said, “Sophie—turn it off—”
“No! Let’s see Uncle James!”
Ariel was sitting in a hotel room across from a famous singer, a block-headed young man with one raised eyebrow.
“Who’s that?” asked Ana.
“The new Frank Sinatra,” said James.
“Really?”
“He thinks he is,” snapped James.
Ariel was breathless. “Just tell me, seriously—is this song about any particular girl? Or is it about girls in general?”
“This is news?” James shouted. “This is documentary?”
The singer chortled, winking and shifting in his seat, his nonanswer running atop the video clip: the singer in the rain, embracing a tall blonde. “What can I say? When love hits you, it hits you!”
“This is a fucking national news program,” said James.
“James, watch the language—” James turned from Mike’s pious face.
“Soph, turn it off—” said Jennifer.
Ana placed her wine carefully on the table. On the screen, Ariel threw back her head and giggled. Jennifer grabbed the remote out of Sophie’s hand and clicked the TV to silence.
“You can’t be surprised, James. TV’s always been this way. You were just this unusual little exception,” said Ana. She gestured to the blank screen. “This is what people want.”
“People don’t know what they want. Give them shit and they’ll eat it,” said James. Olivia giggled into her hands.
“Jimmy! Language!” said Mike. The painting moved slowly and smoothly, until finally it had covered the entire TV with red blur.