Lava Falls Read online

  Akasha cried when he told the story to his dads on the phone later that night. “I think it’s fair to say he had hate in his eyes. Hate.”

  “That’s not hate, son,” John said. “That’s fear. They can look just the same.”

  “I almost took Zoey with me. I’m so glad I didn’t. It would have been like exposing her to toxic radiation.”

  “I’m sorry,” John said.

  “We love you,” Ray said. “Megan loves you. And our miraculous granddaughter thinks you make the sun and moon rise.”

  John and Ray were relieved, in a way, by how the experiment had turned out. Akasha had been hurt, but in a quick, surgical way. The principal had shown his colors immediately. It was over now. He and Megan and Zoey could get on with their lives.

  But Akasha wasn’t finished. Next he found Francine. She was listed everywhere a person could be listed, including the phone book. She shared lots of information about her life on a couple of social media sites. She lived in Brooklyn and was a nurse at St. Vincent’s.

  “A nurse? A real one?” Ray asked.

  “What other kind is there?”

  “An aide or something.”

  “No, a real nurse.”

  “She made her choices,” John said.

  “I want you to be a part of this,” Akasha said.

  “You don’t want to do this,” John countered.

  “Okay,” Ray said.

  Akasha, Megan, and Zoey came to New York for the weekend. On Friday night they all had dinner with Mindy, who now lived in her own apartment and clerked for a high-end bath products store. Years ago, John and Ray had set up a retirement account for her, but though she was pushing seventy, she refused to retire. She loved her job. The eastern European accent, coupled with her assertive personality, had helped her win several sales awards. Mindy had intensified rather than mellowed over the years. Megan found the woman frightening.

  “Here, here, here!” Mindy barked, clapping her hands with each word, and then thrusting her arms at the baby. Megan instinctively shrank back, clutching Zoey.

  Akasha said, “Let go, sweetie,” and transferred Zoey from Megan to Mindy. No one else got to hold the baby the rest of that evening.

  By prior agreement, they did not tell Mindy about the following night’s meeting with Francine. “Just don’t,” John had told Akasha earlier in the week. “It wouldn’t be fair to her.”

  “Trust us,” Ray said. “You’d give her a heart attack.”

  On Saturday morning, John claimed he had work to do and retreated to the office. Ray shooed Akasha and his family out to the park and obsessively cleaned the already clean apartment. John thought the meeting should be businesslike with nothing more than coffee and cookies. But Akasha bought enough hors d’oeuvres to make dinner for ten and laid them carefully out on the coffee table.

  Francine arrived a few minutes early, wearing a pair of nice jeans and a pale yellow cashmere sweater. She had a good winter coat, which Ray took from her. Megan was still in the bedroom nursing Zoey. Akasha did not hug Francine or even extend a hand. He said, “Thank you for coming.”

  She nodded, tried to speak and couldn’t.

  Ray ushered everyone into the living room while John got drinks.

  Akasha sat blinking, staring.

  Francine said, “So. Thank you.”

  “It’s okay?” Akasha asked.

  Ray closed his eyes, unable to shut out the picture of Akasha in the car seat, on the bus bench.

  John bustled in with glasses of wine and handed them out. He said, “Okay, so let’s start with why you never followed through seventeen years ago.”

  “Dad.”

  “This is awkward, son. We may as well do facts first.”

  “He’s a lawyer,” Akasha said to Francine.

  She smiled and said, “I know.”

  Ray dredged his mind for something softer to say, for a way to steer them onto an easier path of getting to know one another.

  “He’s right, though,” Francine said. “I’d welcome the opportunity to explain a few things. It’s a good place to start.”

  “Shoot,” John said.

  “Dad,” Akasha said. “Lighten up.”

  “So John and Ray told you I found you when you were nine?”

  Akasha nodded.

  “I was . . . I guess desperate is the right word . . . to be in your life. And to make whatever amends I could make. I wanted to be your mother. On the spot, right here in this living room, I came up with an idea. I’d finish my education here in the city. I’d get a chance to be in your life. I asked them to pay for this.”

  Akasha looked at Ray and then John. “You didn’t tell me this. You left stuff out.” The anger in his voice pissed John off. He stood up.

  Francine ignored John and spoke directly to Akasha. “Of course, it sounded entirely self-interested. Like I was using them. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that they would never believe that my motives were anything other than selfish. And they were selfish. I wanted you.”

  Francine took a sip of her wine. “I might have been able to get past worrying about their misunderstanding me. But after that evening, seeing everything you had, especially all the love you had, I realized that the selfish part would be my intruding in your life. You were safe. And happy. You are so loved. I realized I would be an obligation. Or worse, an anchor.”

  Ray reached for John’s hand and pulled him back onto the couch.

  “But,” Akasha said, already visibly awed by his mother. “You moved to New York and got your nursing degree, anyway.”

  She nodded. “I wanted to be available. Completely available. For this moment.” Her face spasmed. She regained control and said, “I have a nice apartment. I live alone, but I’ve been seeing Sterling for nine years. He’s a community college teacher. Life is, for the most part, good.”

  Zoey, still in the bedroom with Megan, shrieked.

  “You’re a grandmother,” Akasha said.

  Francine nodded, and both Ray and John wondered if her stalking had reached all the way up into New England these past years.

  Akasha stood to go get Megan and Zoey, and that’s when the key turned in the front door lock.

  “Oh, shit,” John said. “Mindy. How many times have I asked you to get the key back from her?”

  “Right. You try.”

  “She still has a key?” Akasha asked.

  Ray shrugged. “She likes to do stuff like drop off cakes on our birthdays.”

  Mindy shut the door behind her, threw the deadbolt, and unwrapped her scarf. “So! Good evening, everyone!” she said with too much bluster.

  Francine got up and gave Mindy a hug.

  John leapt back to his feet.

  Ray closed his eyes and shook his head.

  Francine escorted the older woman to the couch and helped her sit.

  “What’s going on?” Akasha asked.

  “You—?” John glanced around himself as if looking for an object to hurl at Mindy.

  Ray sat back and laughed out loud. Already he looked forward to hearing how this alliance came about.

  “She once lost a baby, too,” Francine said. “Before she came to this country.”

  Mindy made her shushing sound. “Sss. Sss.”

  “Okay,” Francine said, taking Mindy’s hand. “Another story for another time.”

  “You had a baby?” Akasha said.

  “Sss. Sss.”

  Megan came shyly into the living room holding Zoey, who gurgled and then shrieked again. Akasha’s face lit up with his beautiful smile, and everyone looked at him looking at Zoey.

  John remained standing, swaying a bit with the weightlessness of shock. Mindy’s betrayal undermined everything, including his own curdling lies. “How dare you—” he breathed into the room, but everyone ignored him. He stepped around the coffee table and reached for the baby, prying her away from Megan. Finally, John had everyone’s attention.

  “Anyone who—” he said for the
thousandth time.

  “Loved Akasha that much?” Ray asked.

  The words sluiced away John’s indignation. He stood in the middle of the room, a man holding his granddaughter, nothing more, nothing less. His lies on Akasha’s behalf hadn’t been half as potent as Francine’s patience or Mindy’s arbitration.

  John carried the infant to Francine and gently handed her over. He’d never seen arms so full.

  The Antarctic

  The fight left both sisters drained, sad, and confused about the future of their relationship. Each realized in its wake that for half a century they’d been each other’s bedrock, the assumption upon which their lives rested. Together they’d navigated girlhood in their small northern Illinois town, found and lost adulthood loves, managed their mother’s Alzheimer’s, their father’s stroke, and now they lived together, along with the menagerie of three dogs, eight cats, four birds, and whatever other beasts needed shelter at the moment. The animals were technically Regina’s province, and Janet had a small wing of her own in the back of the house, with a bathroom and its own entrance, where she could and did take refuge, but practically speaking, she shared responsibility for the animals. After all, Regina had taken her in, too.

  As children they’d had squabbles, as all siblings do, and of course there were irritations as adults. Regina’s tendency to deny and control, for example, could irk Janet, and Janet’s recent inclination toward impulsiveness, random behaviors that had no purpose, rankled her sister. But the deep truth of the matter was that they loved, and even liked, one another. The living situation was companionable and surprisingly easy. The fight seemed to erupt out of the blue.

  It had been eleven years since the truck had hit and killed Janet’s husband, and she realized with a start one morning that not only did she no longer feel any grief—to be truthful, she hadn’t in about ten years—she was getting bored. She’d turned fifty this year, and for so long the loss of her husband had been the defining moment of her life, the primary lens through which she saw herself. Others, too, viewed her through Doug’s death. A tragedy. If she never heard that word again, she wouldn’t mind. He left her with an unexpectedly large financial debt, a tangle of feelings, including, yes, grief, but also a shameful sense of liberation. Rebuilding her life—an expression she also wouldn’t mind losing—had consumed this decade. She’d learned about managing finances, developed a robust roster of clients who used her science writing skills, and made new friends, primarily online since their town rarely offered anything new on that front. She was considering joining a gym.

  Regina, for her part, had bucked up under the responsibility of sheltering her sister. She’d lived alone since the end of a brief, early marriage, and in any case, she wouldn’t have considered saying no. She viewed it not too differently from how she viewed taking in injured and otherwise unwanted animals. Someone had to do it.

  As it turned out, the arrangement proved more than satisfactory. Practically speaking, it was nice to share the household chores, and since Janet worked from home, she was available to care for the animals during the day. Regina became especially glad for her sister’s companionship, a human voice amid the cawing and barking and mewling, when seven months ago Maury left the clinic and her at the same time. They had been coworkers for fifteen years, and lovers for twelve.

  Regina sometimes lay awake in the earliest hours of the morning, thinking about Maury, his fresh pink cheeks, his sandy curls, his long, pale limbs. His haunted eyes. Of late she’d spent as much time in these darkest moments thinking about her sister. Her impulsiveness had become more pronounced. Demanding might be too strong a word, but she expressed her views more forcefully and seemingly without forethought. She brought exotic fruits home from the grocery store and went to movies in the afternoon. She’d begun talking to strangers in public, about nothing whatsoever, like whether or not they used the clumping kind of cat litter, which the sisters absolutely did not in their household, and for good reason, so why would Janet discuss it with a stranger, other than a desire to engage that person in conversation about anything? In the stillest part of the night, Regina feared that Janet might move out.

  Then, in November of last year, when the sky was flat and gray, and only a few red apples hung hard and near-frozen from the tree in their backyard, they had the fight.

  “I’ve had the most disturbing thought,” Janet said at the breakfast table. It was their custom to eat a boiled egg each, and with that Regina had toast with butter and jam, while Janet had a bowl of Raisin Bran. They did not usually speak at this hour, other than an exchange of information necessary to the day. So Regina simply ignored Janet’s mention of a disturbing thought. Certainly it could wait for the evening.

  Janet continued anyway. “It occurred to me that I could see the end of my life. A straight shot through, like looking out a window and there, a short distance ahead, was The End. Capital T and capital E.”

  Regina put down her half piece of toast and took a sip of coffee, regretting that it was still too hot to drink quickly. She could carry the cup into her bedroom, but she wanted to finish the toast. And anyway, she tried always to choose kindness, so she said, “I find that image comforting, not disturbing.”

  “I was sure you’d say that. But I don’t. The idea that there won’t be a single surprise from here to the end . . . Oh!” she wailed, causing Regina to set down her coffee cup and pay closer attention.

  “Well, what is it?” she asked.

  “The idea. That this is it. You and me—and you know I love you, Regina—but this routine life of ours. Breakfast, work, dinner, bed. Endlessly, unchangingly, for another, say twenty or thirty years. I can’t bear it.”

  Regina thought that a person who’d lost her husband to a drunk running a red light would have more sense than to think there were no surprises in life. In fact, Regina had thought that she was doing her sister a favor by providing constancy, that very “routine life of ours,” to assuage the trauma Janet had suffered eleven years ago. She knew that Janet was grateful, but there was something irritating about her dissatisfaction. After all, there were so many in need. Maybe, Regina thought, she would bring home that cockatoo someone had left on the clinic porch. Janet would enjoy him.

  Janet watched her sister’s face, and with growing consternation saw that she was not getting through to her. Of course Regina enjoyed the certainty, the solid footing. She probably thought of her own death with satisfaction, the same way one might think of one’s bed at four in the afternoon, savoring the thought of getting into it at the day’s end. More, Janet could just hear Regina saying in the not too distant future that she’d had quite enough of this adventure called life, thank you very much, and turning off her own light. Yes, suicide. After all, she’d euthanized any number of animals in her practice, and Regina was zealous in her belief that there is no distinction between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. “We are animals,” she liked to remind people, annoyed at the human race’s incessant need to think of ourselves as higher.

  It was aggravating. She used this insistence on being an animal to keep distance between herself and other people. To keep herself cloistered here at home with the beasts.

  “The mail carrier accidentally delivered the McAllisters’ mail to us yesterday,” Janet carried on, and Regina was glad that she’d changed the subject. “There was a brochure for a voyage to Antarctica.”

  Maybe Janet just needed to chat more. Since Maury had left, Regina knew she’d sunk into a silent melancholy, taken advantage of her sister’s comfortable presence. Maybe she’d been selfish, blind to Janet’s need for a bit more interaction. And yet, Regina drew the line at early morning conversation. She poured out the rest of her coffee and rinsed the cup, shoved her uneaten toast down the disposal.

  “I think we should go,” Janet said.

  Regina pretended she hadn’t heard and picked up her keys.

  “Regina!” Janet nearly shouted. “You don’t need to leave for work for another fifte
en minutes. I insist you talk to me about this.”

  Regina turned slowly, a hot flash rising on the word “insist.”

  “You work too hard,” Janet said. “You never take a break, have any fun.”

  “Paying good money to be locked up with a bunch of strangers and heaved about on the open sea is my idea of hell.”

  “Imagine seeing real penguins and seals!”

  “Imagine crossing the Drake Passage at our age.”

  “I’m fifty and you’re fifty-two,” Janet said in a low and slow voice. “We’re not dead.”

  “Go!” Regina said. “Go! Leave me here in peace. I would love a bit of time to myself.”

  “You’ve become a drudge, Regina. No one will want to be around you. You only know how to relate to animals.”

  “And animals are all I want to relate to.”

  “Well, that’s obvious. You’ve nearly lost touch with the English language altogether. You grunt and, perhaps if you’re happy, which you haven’t been in months, chirp a bit. You’re becoming downright misanthropic.”

  “And you’re becoming one of those silly women who will talk to anyone about anything at all, even when you have nothing to say, as if the sound of your own voice is all that keeps you alive. You look desperate, Janet. To a plain stranger you look desperate.”

  “Well, at least I’m honest in my appearance then, because I feel desperate. You live this subterranean life, refusing human comforts, pretending that all you need are the beasts. You’re becoming a beast.”