“They’re bouncing off the walls,” said Jess, “all cooped up in here.”
Clara ignored her. Jess thought her wisdom was applicable to everybody. She and Adam now owned a sprawling summer place beside a lake, and she was insisting that Clara and the kids come up and stay for a week or two.
“Honestly, can you imagine?” Clara reported to Nick.
But he looked confused. “Why not?”
Clara was aghast. “Because of all the reasons I already told Jess that we couldn’t.” She shouldn’t have to explain it to him too. Because the kids would be a handful. Because taking care of all of them in a space that was somebody else’s would hardly be a holiday at all. Most of all, that it was exhausting, all that trouble to escape to somewhere else, when they were perfectly happy where they were.
She told Jess they couldn’t manage it.
“But youcan,” Jess insisted. “It’s all about mindset.” Since quitting her job the year before, she’d founded an online bookshop called Chloe & Olivia, which dealt in rare first editions by women authors, and now she spent her mornings doing yoga and meditation. Jess thought everything waspossible. It never seemed to occur to her that such boundlessness might be the exclusive purview of women whose husbands made six-figure salaries.
“Plus the car won’t make it,” Clara reminded Nick. Their car, fourth-hand, was mostly decorative, parked in the laneway out back. When her sister gave it to them, it was barely running. They kept it primarily to assure those who became unduly distressed at the idea of people with children who didn’t own a car—“You’ll see,” people (Jess) kept telling Clara when she was pregnant with Lu, the same way they’d been so sure that she and Nick would need to make the baby sleep in another room, or else let her cry at night, which Clara never had and never would. Anyway, they didn’t need a car. Everything they needed was within walking distance, and everything else was accessible by transit, and they never went anywhere anyway. Which was just fine; have you ever tried to leave the house with three babies?
But Jess refused to give in. Adam was going to be in the city working most of the summer, driving up on weekends, and he was willing to bring them and all their gear. “There will be room in the van,” Jess said, and there would be, because they owned not one van but two, each large enough to transport an entire sports team. Clara had never been sure of the point of such vehicles, except perhaps to make it impossible for friends to decline invitations to the cottage.
“Well, good,” said Nick, when Clara told him this. “Because maybe I don’t want to decline. It’s been ages since I had anything like a summer holiday.” Clara thought about how sofas don’t get summer holidays, how sofas are on duty all the time. Nick said, “Come on, it will do you good to get away.” He knew that Clara was nervous, afraid of any changethat might upset the careful arrangement of their domestic life. “We can do this,” he said. And in those rare instances when Nick didn’t take her side, he tended to be right. She’d follow his lead.
Jess sealed the deal with a promise: “We can go swimming again. Think of it—a cool lake just steps from the door.”
But not once did she ever mention that those steps descended from a cliff edge. The cottage—which was in fact a six-bedroom house, far bigger than their place in the city—was perilously perched, offering awesome views of sunrises and night skies and glittering water, but those forty-seven steps down to the dock and the beach were forty-seven steps on a staircase that had seen better days and was its own kind of death trap. Never mind the cliff itself. Clara was now the mother of three mobile, danger-prone, impulsive children. Why hadn’t it occurred to Jess that the edge of a cliff might not be the ideal location to bring them to?
—
The drive up went smoothly. The twins stayed asleep. Lu babbled happily in her car seat, Clara beside her, passing her toys and books and her sippy-cup, all of which she insisted on throwing on the floor and then demanded be returned to her.
Nick sat in the front with Adam and they talked, though Clara didn’t know what about because the music was playing and she couldn’t hear them. This had been annoying at first, but she let it go and tried to appreciate the scenes sweeping by outside. They were lucky, she knew this. They’d never had a family vacation before. She was trying to be positive, trying to feel she hadn’t been coerced into this. She was still nervous about having all her children in the van, hurtling through space at such terrifying speed. There were so many upsides to never going anywhere.
But Adam was a safe driver, and the kids were fine. Clara kept handing Lu animal crackers, which seemed to keep her happy. They were going to stop for wild blueberries at a roadside stand just after the highway exit. Clara insisted that Nick pay for the blueberries, even though they were so expensive. Economics were different up here. But it was only for a week, and she would go with the flow.
“It’s a bit much, I know,” said Adam, as he parked outside the three-car garage. They had bought the property in a foreclosure, construction finishing just before the bottom fell out of the economy again. Nobody had ever lived in the house, and now it belonged to Jess and Adam. They took no responsibility for the grandeur. Their bedroom had come with a whirlpool tub set in a bay window with dramatic lake views. Clara had watched an online slide show left over from the real estate sale.
The house was just visible up a path through the trees, and Clara heard a door slam. There were voices, and somebody running, and mosquitos buzzing already. The twins were starting to wake up now that the car had stopped and Clara waved the bugs away from them as she unbuckled Shadoe from her car seat. She’d peed through her diaper, Clara discovered, holding her on one hip anyway—thank goodness there was laundry here—as she released Pauly from the other seat. Nick was dealing with Lu and all their stuff. Jess had come out with her kids, everyone in their bathing suits.
Bella said, “Somebody smells like pee.”
“It’s me,” said Clara, because now it was.
“I’ve been reading the news,” said Jess, gathering up the bags and suitcases that Nick and Adam were unloading from the back of the van. “I have to say it’s kind of ominous. They’re appointing a new Supreme Court justice and his name is Brett.”
“Brett?” Clara followed Jess up to the house, with its heaping window boxes and wraparound porch, complete with a swing. “NotourBrett.” Clara was recalling the Drama Society director from so many years ago. Brett Bickford. One time on stage he’d stuck his tongue in her ear.
“I don’t think there was much risk of our Brett becoming a Supreme Court justice,” said Jess as she led them inside. The house was new and shiny and just understated enough that what was most striking was the scene through the huge windows lining the walls in every room.
“But how could anyone named Brett become a Supreme Court justice in the first place?” Clara asked. “I mean, I’m sure there are some fine Bretts out there, but that just doesn’t seem appropriate.” The kitchen was huge and it opened onto a deck that showed off the lake in dramatic fashion. The sun was shining, sparkling on the water, and there were windsurfers and sailboats and you could hold the whole picture in a glance.
Clara’s kids, meanwhile, were taken in by the open space and smooth wooden floors that were so good for sliding, discovering that they could stretch out their arms and touch nothing. Shadoe was lying on the floor and spinning around on her bum, which was wet now, Clara remembered. Not good news for hardwood, so she dug through the diaper bags to find supplies with which to change her.
“And he’s pro-life,” called Jess. “Another one.”
“Of course he is,” said Clara, polishing away the dampness on the floor with a clean onesie. It had been almost two years since the most devastating election, one that had upended so many standards and precedents and any adherence to general decency. Terrible people had been elevated to positions of power, and there was such a string ofhorrifying headlines that Clara had almost ceased to be outraged by it all. “Once upon a time, that would have been something to be embarrassed about.”
“They’re chipping away, little by little, bit by bit. All those things we took for granted.” Jess sat down on the couch while Clara changed Shadoe’s diaper. “I never thought it would come to this. Didn’t even think it was a possibility.”
Setting Shadoe back on her feet and watching her immediately set off, Clara said, “It wasn’t until I finally had my kids that I really knew what the stakes were, what the choices I’d made reallymeant. How significant and pivotal they had been.”
“We’re going backwards,” said Jess. “Such a slippery slope.”
