The Wednesday Sisters(18)

“And Jim, he just curls up around me in bed when he gets home, and he puts his hand on my . . . on my skin, on my belly, and he . . .” She swallowed once, twice, still with her eyes closed, tears spilling from her unparted lids. “He sings.” The last word spoken so softly I wasn't sure of what I'd heard. “He just sings, words I don't even understand,” she said in the same almost inaudible voice. “He just sings to his baby son as if he's still there.”

I set my hand on Ally's foot under the blue blanket. Outside, a car accelerated. A train whistled. One bird scolded and another cawed. Ally pulled her other foot up, tucked it beneath her leg, still under the blanket. She blew her nose and tossed the tissue on the bed. She leaned forward, and for a moment I thought she might get up, but she only pulled another tissue from the box. Something in the way she held herself made me feel she wanted us to leave now, that she'd drained herself and wanted to be alone. That she regretted, already, telling us about Jim. That she felt she'd shown us something about him she shouldn't have shown anyone.

I took a tissue, wiped my eyes under my glasses, blew my nose.

Brett frowned but made no move to leave. After a long silence, she asked where Carrie was, and whether she was okay.

Ally's hand tightened around her tissue, and she looked away from Brett, to the shaded windows. It was a moment before she whispered, “She's . . . she's . . .” In the park, a child called for her mother—not my Maggie. Ally closed her eyes, tears streaming again. “. . . my sister's,” she whispered.

I patted the sad hump of Ally's blanket-covered foot encouragingly, giving her space to say more. But it was Brett who spoke, who said, “She's at your sister's. Good. Good.” Then, after a moment, “All week?”



WE ALL CALLED ALLY that next week to see if we could bring her groceries or take Carrie off her hands for a few hours, or if she just wanted some company, but the answer was always no. We suggested we meet in the park Thursday or Friday, or the next Monday or Tuesday, mornings we had church or school volunteer work or the like that we usually hated to miss. I took her a tuna casserole, which she accepted reluctantly, without asking me in. Kath made fried chicken and potato salad, which is what you do in the South, she said, but she swore she didn't think anyone was eating anything at all in that house. “I wouldn't be eating, either,” Linda said, remembering the parade of dishes brought to their door in the days after her mother died—trays of cold cuts, Jell-O molds, pastries, and lemon cake. The dishes had filled the refrigerator, the freezer, the countertops, turning awful shades of green and yellow and brown before her aunt Maud finally threw them into the garbage, casserole pans and all.

Ally didn't show up that next Wednesday, or the next or the next. We went to her door, tried in vain to coax her out, and we talked about it endlessly—wasn't there something we could do?

“Maybe she thinks she can't have a baby,” I said.

“But she has her li'l Carrie,” Kath said. “Of course she can have a baby.”

“It may be Rh incompatibility,” Brett said as I sat frowning, not sure what more to say. “She wouldn't have had a problem with Carrie, but in that first pregnancy she would have developed an immunity to Rh-positive babies that would cause her to miscarry subsequently.

They have a vaccine for it now—I saw an article about it in Time this summer—but it's brand new.”

“Three miscarriages,” Linda said. “I guess that would make you wonder.”

“But she couldn't have had three,” Brett said. “Carrie is barely two. I think that was just her being overwrought.”

That was the third week Ally didn't show at the park, the week she didn't even answer the door when we rang the bell, even though we knew she was home.

We were at Brett's that morning—a Friday, not a Wednesday. Brett had invited us to her house to watch the Apollo 7 launch. We sat on the carpet, as close as we could get to the TV screen without blocking each other, our children in our laps or sitting with their noses practically pressed to the screen.

“That's Cape Kennedy, in Florida,” Kath explained to Anna Page. “You've been there, though you don't remember. Your daddy and I took you there on vacation one summer, when we lived in Nashville.”

“With Lee-Lee and Lacy,” Anna Page announced with confidence, and Kath had to say no, little Lee and Lacy had not been born yet.

Anna Page, unfazed, turned to Maggie and the twins and announced that she had gone all by herself to Florida, with her mom and dad and not with Lee-Lee or Lacy. Linda's Julie, not to be outdone, insisted that she had, too, and without Jamie—her twin—or J.J. “Didn't I, Mommy?” she said, and Linda was forced to distract her, turning her attention back to the television, where they were counting down the last few seconds.