Jill Eisenstadt

THE CARNAL EDUCATION

Ruth grips the rental car keys. She warns the girls to be quiet. “Grandma might be sleeping.” But her mother greets them on her feet. Ivory pumps. Ecru pantsuit. Newly frosted bob. She does not look sick. She even ushers them into the (usually off-limits) Living Room/Antique Store. So she staggers a bit from Ruth’s husband’s Big Hug. Everyone does. Sooner or later, someone will suffocate inside one of Matias’s rotating fleece jackets—the Red, the Green, the Blue.

 “Only ugly people need to dress up,” Matias insists if challenged. And after the week they’ve had… Ruth has no ire to spare for that Blue Fleece covered in cat hair. If her siblings want to smirk, well…

Fortunately, Ruth’s older sister, Ceci, is distracted by the newest item at Bev’s Antiques and Collectibles. “A copper time capsule shaped like a mini coffin?! Sold!” Ceci’s outfit—featuring velvet shorts—is even worse than Matias’s, but it’s her bulging eyes that grab you. Set to pop is how Ruth imagines them, two green Superballs set to boing from her face and bounce on the rug. 

On the rug, Ruth’s younger brother, Hal—baseball cap, blazer—is curled in a fetal position against the onslaught of his three small sons. So at least neither sister nor brother can overhear Matias tell Bev she seems “…Bev-er than ever!”

Bev shoots Ruth an amused look via a lift of her well-crafted brows.

Whether Matias is this cringey or sweet or even the same person in his native Finnish is the central mystery of Ruth’s marriage. It’s been nine years (two kids, a dog, and three moves), and the clues remain frustratingly few. Your average Finn is no hugger, that Ruth’s gleaned from her two visits to Lapland. Your average Finn shakes hands, even children’s hands. Matias picked up all his coziness here. Yet he avoids their DC neighbors, the way he says he was raised, in order to “give them their privacy,” and lobbied hard to name the girls Pilvi and Ditte after his only “likeable relatives.” So who is beneath the upbeat, techy exterior, his puns, his sci-fi paperbacks, his fondness for reggae? If Ruth really wants to know, she could quit pretending and actually learn his language. But it’s hard, but she’s busy, but, but… If Ruth really wants to know, wouldn’t she already know?

“Say hi to your sister,” Matias says. Beyond the expanse of furniture, Ceci’s waving like a toddler, opening and closing her fists. Matias blows her a kiss. Ruth salutes. Between the sibs is a wordless connection over the weirdness of this gathering, the gist of it, and its setting. When they were growing up, they would only go to the Living Room/Store if they were In Trouble, summoned for A Talk. That it’s Bev who’s now In Trouble and the grandkids who’ve been summoned makes the whole thing weirder still. Ceci has no children. Hal’s boys are strangers, even to him. As for Ruth’s daughters, well… after the week they’ve had…

“You’re acting so spacey,” says Matias.

Ruth jabs a finger at his sternum—eye-level in the high-heeled boots she stupidly wore with a twisted ankle. “I’m spacey? Seriously? When you—”

His cool blue gaze mutes her mid-sentence. It has that power. Ruth imagines setting a match to his curly, translucent lashes. 

“Have many times will I apologize? It was an accident.”

Accidentally, Matias downloaded a video of his genitals inside Ruth’s mouth onto their family computer. “What is this?” shrieked Pilvi—eight-year-old Pilvi!—happening upon the footage on the family Dell. Still reeling from Bev’s diagnosis (in fact, packing for this trip), Ruth ran toward her daughter’s high-pitched rasp, thinking, Tumor? Water bug? and a slew of possibilities in between, but not sex tape, God no! Until sliding in socks, down one, two, three wooden stairs, she limped over and saw it for herself, frozen on the 21.5-inch monitor. “What is it? What is that? Mommy!”

If you aren’t familiar with Matias’s penis—average size, two shades of pale, a single freckle on the neck—the close-up shot might look abstract. But Ruth’s wavy, once-blonde hair draped on either side of it is unmistakably Ruth’s once-blonde hair. 

“Where did you find—never mind.” Reaching over to turn off the screen, her hand was intercepted by a different Pilvi. No more feigned ignorance (innocence?). It was as if she’d just now grown into her father’s chilly eyes. 

“Why would you ever do that? Mommy!” Add to this Pilvi’s naturally straight (one might say haughty) posture and the strength with which she was squeezing Ruth’s wrist—

Nauseated. “We, we were just playing a game, Truth or Dare, you know, daring each other to do crazy stuff.” 

Here, Pilvi tossed Ruth’s hand aside and rose. She wore wings—sheer, pink wire things, left over from her Halloween costume. She had her wand too and flew off, using it. Her curse: “You are too disgusting, Mommy.”

Since then, Pilvi hasn’t spoken. This is how she’s always punished Ruth, starting at two with the birth of baby Ditte. Meanwhile, Daddy is never shunned or blamed. Evidently, the new sister, and now this video, have nothing at all to do with him.

“It’s not fair,” Ruth pulls Matias aside to complain. “Why do I have to be the disgusting one?” From across the room, she scans Pilvi’s face for signs of corruption. The child seems fine, in fact delighted to be reunited with her elusive Aunt Ceci. Ceci’s given the kids office supplies—plainly lifted from the ad agency where she works—and the girls decorate each other with pastel Post-its while the boys devise novel ways to weaponize Scotch tape. Clearly the Superballs they brought are deficient gifts. Which brings her back to Pilvi and the blowjob video. “It was your camera,” she reminds her husband, “and your dick and your mistake. But I’m the disgusting one?” 

Matias laughs and laughs. His long nose gets involved. “You gave me the camera, Ruth. A great gift, by the way, a great vacay.” 

After months of failing to conceive child number three, Ruth’s doctor recommended a getaway. To relax, to make sex fun again. Sex was fun again when imagining this getaway (planned to coincide with their fall birthdays). Maine isn’t far. Bermuda? But in the end, work and childcare conflicts downsized the trip to an overnight at a Marriott five minutes from home. A total buzzkill is how Ruth would characterize this jaunt. But Matias can’t stop raving about it. 

“Hot stuff!” 

“Not to Pilvi. Pil—”

Matias slides a hand into the back pocket of her Levi’s. “To Pilvi, we are the same disgusting.” He cups her butt through the denim, “Also, I love to be disgusting with you.” 

“Kids!” Bev calls from a massive beige couch. Only Pilvi halts (Pilvi, who’s now seen porn, parental porn! The rule-follower in her must find their adult transgressions intolerable).

Matias breathes into Ruth’s neck. “Let’s Marriott.”

“What?”

“Close by here, I saw one from the car.”

“Kids!” 

By now, Ditte is also waiting attentively. So “kids” really means boys, and boys really means Joel. Joel, Hal’s oldest, and his next-born, Liam, are planning to make little Bobby eat a whole Post-its pad. The four-year-old giggles obliviously as they pin his limbs.

“Cut it out,” Hal warns, not looking up from his phone. Joel rips off a paper square and shoves it into Bobby’s mouth. “I said, cut it out.” A second sheet is brandished, a third, etc. 

It’s Ceci who finally intercedes. Aunt Ceci to the rescue! Ruth’s jealous and impressed. She herself wants little to do with other people’s children. Being childless must motivate Ceci, but Ruth’s convinced there’s more, that her sister is, essentially, a better person. Even Ceci’s famous bullshit is well-intended. There she goes, saintly palm outstretched as a receptacle into which Bobby spits bits of gluey yellow pulp. 

“Come sit,” Bev calls into the hubbub. The sibs wince in unison. “Come sit” was what Bev said back when you were In Trouble and summoned for A Talk. Once, at fifteen, after Ceci came and sat, Bev confronted her with a receipt from the drugstore. On it, Ceci had scribbled “3 missed periods” and a phone number. “Oh, that’s for my friend, Lisa,” she lied. And that was that. No further questions. No concern for Lisa expressed. Bev just handed back the paper. She was free to go. On her way out, Ceci caught Ruth eavesdropping and remarkably, she cried (those swollen eyes!); she confided. It was the most intimate the sisters had ever been, so Ruth has to wonder if it’s on Ceci’s mind too. Unlikely. Bev’s plea for the kids to “Come sit” is stoking a more immediate anxiety.

Ceci is checking the price tag on the couch leg. “Are you sure? That’s real suede, Mom.” 

Hal shouts, “Shoes off!” Only then, removing the six miniature Keds, does Hal seem to register Ruth’s arrival. “Ruth! Matt! Girls! Hey!” 

“Hey,” Ruth says.

Matias leans down into the scrum for a shake. 

Matias does shake, just not with females. Females get the hugs and kisses. Hal’s the

same. When Ruth introduced her future husband to her little brother, they were in the ocean, right here, outside the window. And even then, treading rather rough water—Matias, meet Hal. Hal, Matias—both of them felt compelled to reach across the chop and shake. Men!

Bev keeps up a steady pat on the empty cushion beside her. Pilvi and Ditte also wait, but more patiently. Ruth’s both proud and dismayed at their female urge to please. With their staticky yellow hair and wrinkled travel dresses, her daughters look like dolls atop the massive furniture, well-loved dolls, but still… Pilvi sits in her typical regal manner, no part of her back touching fabric. Perennially pink-faced Ditte snuggles against Grandma, shrinking and blinking as the now shoeless boys hurl themselves at the couch. 

Bev begins with a lift of her tiny, jiggling arms. “I have sad news.”

On “sad,” Ceci bursts out a sob and bolts. 

Ruth and Hal exchange smiles. Classic Ceci. When she’s gone, Bev turns to a stack of books on a thin table behind the couch to extract… is that? Their old, green edition of Peter and Wendy! Ruth assumed the beloved book had been sold off long ago. “You might know this as—”

“Peter Pan!” Hal yells. 

Ruth shushes him. “She’s talking to the kids.”

But Bev says, “Hal is a kid, my kid, my baby,” which the actual kids find hilarious.

“Daddy baby,” Joel chants. “Daddy baby. Baby Daddy.” Joel’s the only child from Hal’s first marriage and the only one in a vest. (“What can I say, he really likes vests,” Hal told Ruth the last time she saw the boy, last year. On that occasion: red vest. Today’s vest: lavender.) Ruth can’t help thinking Pilvi’s first penis sighting was supposed to feature Joel or another of these boy cousins, an incidental peek through a swim trunk fly or a game of doctor. She assumes she’s mishearing her mother saying, “Peter Pan was always Hal’s fave.” 

“Hal’s?”

“He brought his hanger hook down to the beach to harass mermaids.”

Mermaids! Five little heads swivel toward the sea view.

“Are there really?” Little Bobby. 

“What do you think?” Joel.

“Can we see those?” Ditte, still shaggy with Post-its.

“You’d need a wetsuit today.” Hal’s two cents, lest anyone forget he was a former wetsuit model. 

“Nnnoo—That is so… no,” Ruth finally manages. Peter and Wendy was her favorite. Everybody knows that. “I wrote my fucking capstone on Mrs. Darling as she applies to de Beauvoir’s theory of feminist existentialism! I… I… I credit my whole dramaturg career to that play whenever I give speeches. It was a play first, by the way!”

“Why are you shouting at us?” Bev whispers.

And Hal, “You give speeches? To who?” 

Matias grabs Ruth’s hand, a reminder: composure. “Don’t forget.” Hal being here at all is a big (rare) deal for Bev. Hal being here with his kids, a miracle. Then again, fuck him. When was the last time Hal asked about Ruth’s work, or Ruth, at all? All boys grow up, except one, Hal, a fact his two ex-wives understandably don’t appreciate. Maybe Bev’s brain is already compromised by disease. Still, Ruth needs her to admit, “I was Peter Pan. Hal was Old Yeller.” 

Inexplicably, Joel grabs each of his brothers in a headlock, one on either side. Liam plays dead. Bobby bites. “Settle down,” Bev snaps. She’s speaking to the boys but looking straight at Ruth.

Then here comes weepy Ceci carrying tissues in a decoupaged box that for all Ruth knows could be the work of an 18th-century Italian artisan or something Hal made in the fourth grade. “Peter Pan!” Ceci brightens. “Where’s that been? God, we read the thing to death,” sending the word death throbbing through Ruth’s injured ankle. “We were always acting it out too.” Death, death. It flutters in Ruth’s abdomen. “Remember pretending that swimming was flying?” 

“Are you kidding me?” They are the ones who have to remember, “I was Peter Pan. Hal was Old Yeller. You were Harriet the Spy.” 

Now it’s Ceci and Hal exchanging smiles.

Matias clutches Ruth’s hand harder. It is soothing to have him to hold on to. He gets it. She wishes they could just take off for the Marriott or, better yet, home.

“I’m ill,” Bev says, and all at once she looks it. Through the cosmetics, something dull and yellowish is seeping. “And I wanted to tell you kids myself.”

Pilvi raises her hand. Ditte raises her hand. “Ill is sick,” Pilvi says. Goody good.

“Ill is sick,” Ditte repeats.

Obviously, instantly, Ruth feels guilty. Wronged and guilty. Worried and queasy and guilty, plus the ankle pain. She removes the boot, peeks at the swollen, veiny joint. 

“Now who falls ill in Peter Pan?” Bev asks.

Again, Pilvi’s hand. Ditte’s. Bev, ignoring them.

“Tinker Bell!” Pilvi says. Ditte says. 

Pilvi pinches her sister’s fleshy thigh, “Quit copying!” Then she goes on narrating how “Tink’s light gets less, less till she can’t fly. She just lies on the ground like a candy wrapper.”

“A candy wrapper?” Joel asks, nervously.

Bev kisses his crewcut. “Luckily, Peter knows just what to do. Who can tell me…?”

Pilvi pulsates with the effort not to answer, to let the boys have a turn. But all three flat, freckled faces are utterly blank. Could they possibly not know the story, not even the Disney version? “You have to believe in fairies!” Pilvi eventually bursts. “Clap if you believe!” 

Barrie worried that no one would clap. For this reason, the original script includes instructions for the musicians to put down their instruments so as to have their hands free. But the whole audience clapped. They clapped wildly, as has every audience since, as does everyone now in the Living Room. Ceci with solemn, over-the-head claps that make her shirt collar rise. Hal, ironically, rolling his suspiciously dilated eyes. His boys, raucously (hands and feet); Liam burping on the upbeats. Bev claps for herself, cupping her palms for extra sound like she taught Ruth. Only Matias has his long hands shoved inside his Blue Fleece as he stands there watching his daughters clap. It’s those little, crimped faces, Ruth guesses, they alone betray just how grueling it is to really, really believe, in anything.

Later, squished into Ruth’s girlhood bed, with their daughters asleep below them on an air mattress, Matias resumes his Marriott pitch. “You’ll leave a note. We’ll drive over. Tomorrow we’re heroes, bringing the bagels.” He scissors his white-haired calves to demonstrate how they clear the end of the bed.

“Watch my ankle,” Ruth says, and, “I can’t just vanish. How would my mother feel?”

“Your mother? You mean Bev…? After her ‘story’ today, it’s hard to be caring.”

“I know, right? Peter Pan was so not Hal’s—”

“No, no. I’m talking about Tinker Bell, Bev equating her sickness with Tink’s. She sees our girls are fairy crazy, with their fairy everything, the fairy books, the fairy stickers…”

Ruth flashes on Pilvi’s wings backlit in computer glow. You are too disgusting—

“…the fairy lights, the fairy clubs, games, shh right now, do you hear…?” In the quiet, the faint waiting music of Rainbow Fairies still streams from Pilvi’s handheld device. The buoyant tune is oddly sedating; Ruth drifts. In the game, the girls (fairies) are on a mission to stop The Evil Peanut from killing allergic children. “See?” Matias’s thumbs are gently tapping the rhythm on her temples. “They are even dreaming of fairies.” 

If only, Ruth prays. Please, please let Pilvi be dreaming of fairies. The girl’s knobby limbs are spread diagonally on the mattress below, forcing flush-faced Ditte to sleep balled up under her sister’s armpit. The two are close unlike Ceci and Ruth (which surely added import to their Flying as Swimming game), but they fight constantly over who gets to “be” the Pink Rainbow fairy just as Ceci and Ruth vied to “be” Peter’s Tink. Barring parental intervention, the older (Pilvi and Ceci) are the invariable victors. Ditte resorts to Lavender (the nearest color). Ruth resigned herself to inhabiting Tiger Lily or Wendy. Ah, but Mrs. Darling is the avatar for Ruth now. To be able to tidy up your kids’ minds each night, just imagine “pressing this to your cheek as if it were nice as a kitten,” “hurriedly stowing everything bad out of sight.” 

“…And those notes Pilvi is always writing to invented fairies,” Matias says. He’s been talking this whole time! “‘Dear Toy Fairy, do you like the pink Barbie Jeep? I do!’; ‘Dear Snow Fairy, please give us a snow day tomorrow.’” (Here, he interrupts himself to repeat his oft-repeated theory that this Fairy Mania stems from Bev’s early decree that the girls be raised Jewish-ish sans Santa, sans Resurrection. In his unsolicited opinion, “It leaves them short on magic.”)

“You’re pissed at Bev, okay. Can we sleep?” Ruth feels glued to the bed with fatigue.

“At the Marriott—” 

“Matias, please. She’s sick.”

“Dying.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know the girls won’t be saving her, and then what? They’re thinking, I should have clapped louder or—”

“Wait.” Ruth hadn’t thought of that. It wasn’t the best story, considering. “I see.”

Matias kisses her throat, a little too gladly. “So we can go—”

“Ohh!” Here it comes, the whoosh of adrenaline Ruth’s been stifling all day. “Are you dense? I’m not leaving her! So she messed up. You think Tinker Bell is so traumatizing but a video of my mouth on your junk is just—?” 

“Love,” Matias laughs. Again, he’s laughing! “Pilvi will understand that eventually.” He presses his hot cheek to her arm. “Ruthie, please.”

“Get off me.” Her scalp is sprouting sweat.

“Oh, c’mon. I didn’t beat you. That’s not a picture of your black eye. I’m not throwing a razor at your—”

“Stop!”

He’s licking the side of her neck, tonguing her ear. On his breath, the smell of the ribs they had for dinner is overlaid with some Australian toothpaste they used from Bev’s known stash of stolen travel toiletries. When Ruth turns her head away, he palms her chin and tilts it back toward him. His forced kiss catches the corner of her mouth only.

The room is tilting. “What was that about?” 

“Love, I keep telling you. Love, love.” He wedges his palm between her thighs. “For the

new baby we’re making.”

Ruth leaps off the side of the bed; ow, ankle. Even then, he’s tugging at the waistband of her sweatpants, groaning, “Please, Ruthie. Can’t we just—?” 

Go. Be glad you can’t really see those eyes of his in the dark. 

Hal is lying on the Living Room rug, vaping weed. He wears Matias’s fleece over his sports jacket. Sarcastically? Maybe he’s cold. “You’re limping,” he says. “Beautiful Ruth is impaired.” Only his forearm bends to offer the pen.

She kneels and accepts it, trying hard to act casual. But she’s shaken; she’s shak-ing.

“Old Yeller was dope,” Hal says in a consoling tone. 

“It’s not that.” Nonetheless, her eyes locate Peter and Wendy back on the thin table behind the couch. Hal would know what to call that thin table. Even Ceci could take an educated guess. But Ruth has long eschewed all details of the family biz. Unlike her sibs, she hated living in a store where customers, sometimes herds of them, could barge in unannounced. The desk on which you were doing your homework might be sold right out from under you, though Ruth also hated that desk (bed, dresser, table, lunchbox, chair), how it wobbled or listed, its rusty bits, its creakiness. Even worse was the icky fact that it had all once belonged to other people, dead people. Ruth prefers new things. Her home is full of new, functional things.

“What’s that thin table called?” She asks Hal anyway, for something to say. “Behind the couch?”

“Console… or sofa table. Hall table, could be.”

Antiquing is Hal’s calling. It interests him. And since substance abuse dashed his modeling career, he’s made some good money at it. But he always seems sidetracked by some other scheme: Driving around selling (stolen?) frozen Wagyu beef from the trunk of his car. Cryptocurrency explainer. Crafting piñatas of Instagram influencers. All he’ll say is, “Everyone needs a side hustle.”

“But you’re selling antiques too?” Ruth asks hopefully.

“Just the stuff I lift from Mom… JK.”

At this point a normal person might elaborate or, if deflecting, ask Ruth about her own work as a teacher and dramaturg. She’s missing an opening night (Greek tragedy, set in 2016) to be here, but why should he care; no one else does. She has to ask after Hal. That’s what she and Ceci were raised to do. “How are you?”

“Bev-er than ever,” He smirks.

“Hah. Hah.” He heard Matias after all.

“Cheery guy, your hub. Waaay too chatty for a Nordic, but I like the earnest vibe.” 

“Might be a front,” Ruth says, still rattled by Matias’s unusually pushy behavior. Where had it come from? His dad, like Ruth’s, had died long ago. And Ruth barely knows his aloof, rashy mother. The woman visited once, directly after Ditte’s birth. (“She’ll talk soon,” was her wisdom re Pilvi’s refusal to speak to Ruth. “But don’t expect her to ever forgive you.”) Is it dramaturgy that causes Ruth to see so much subtext? Or is it something about the week she’s had?

They smoke on, rating Bev’s recent acquisitions. The copper time capsule, oxidized to a lovely, mottled green-brown is second only to a Victorian brooch made with real human hair. Ruth teases Hal about lying on the floor “like a candy wrapper” around so much fine furniture, though she’d have done so too. “Like how unruly do you feel getting high in the Living Room?”

“Extremely.” Hal bares his overly whitened teeth. “How ’bout a BJ, Ruthie?” 

“Oh god.” The video. He knows. 

“I was sure Ceci made it up, but judging by your reaction…”

“You’re making fun of me.” 

“Duh.”

“Duh?”

“That’s from hanging around small boys all day. I’m not used to it.”

“Not used to seeing your kids?” Ruth instantly regrets saying. “Sorry.”

“Bitch.”

“I deserve it. Girls and work, that’s all I do now. Two beers at a cast party is like… wild.”

Hal laughs. “I keep imagining, what’s-her-face, your daughter—”

“Pilvi.” He doesn’t know her name. Plus, he’s laughing! “Matias thinks it’s funny too.”

“Not funny,” Ruth says, standing. On her limp out, she snatches Peter and Wendy off the console. Console. Consoling? Alas, she doubts there is any connection. 

“You’re not taking that.” Hal thrusts an arm out to block her. “That’s a signed first edition worth—” Oops, said too much. He looks away, shrinking under his hat. No wonder Ruth hasn’t seen the book in a while. Bev must have had it locked in the safe.

Ruth waves it over his face. “And you were planning to…?”

“Bury it,” Hal decides, wiggling his toes on the time capsule.

The next day he will convince Bev to let them dig a hole in the side yard, near some rose bushes, now in remission, just thorns. That is, Ceci will dig a hole while the rest of them stand around in the wind, arguing about when to dig up the time capsule. Hal will suggest five years, the sooner to cash in on the valuable Peter and Wendy. Ceci will want “sixty-one years,” Mom’s age. Ruth will prefer the grandeur of a century.

Once the hole is ready, Ceci will hand out more Post-its and pens to write “predictions.” Bev will use Hal’s back as a writing surface and Hal, Ceci’s, and Ceci, Matias’s, and so on like an inane, immersive theater piece whose plot pivots on all the things no one’s saying and concludes in Bev giggling, “I’ve been hoodwinked. That’s no time capsule, that’s an infant’s coffin!” The boys will then attempt to fit themselves inside, sending the Post-its flying. All but one vision for the future will have to be redone.

But first there’s tonight. Upstairs, Pilvi is on her knees inside Ruth’s childhood closet. Same dim orange lighting, same cedar chip/cardboard odor. In place of the old dresses and dance gear is a lot of hotel loot—bathrobes and washcloths, doorstoppers and hair dryers. An enormous bag of tiny toiletries now lies across Pilvi’s thighs. From this, by some unknown rationale, she is choosing items to place in a growing circle on the floor. Soap from the Hilton Luxor hotel. Shaving cream from the Club Bali Hai Moorea. Portuguese moisturizer. What began as Bev traveling to collect for work quickly became Bev working to travel… to collect herself? It’s appealing this image—her mother with a lover in another time zone, herself with a lover also. The two concepts—mother, lover—aren’t usually allowed to co-exist. But this fantasy dies from the reality of the closet. Ruth’s daydream moves to Bev in a foreign hallway, snatching little chocolates from a housekeeping cart. 

“Hey, Pilvi.” She says, “Don’t eat that chocolate, okay? It might be really, really old.”

No response. Pilvi adds body wash from a Marriott to a space by her hip. 

“Good hygiene is underrated.”

Nothing.

“Pil?” Ditte is mumbling behind them, “Pil?” Aglow in a slice of closet light, her chubby arm sweeps the empty place in bed. Even asleep, she is chasing her sister.

“Should I have another baby?” Ruth hears herself ask.

“Oh.” Pilvi’s face blooms, droops. “No, Mommy! What if it’s a boy?”

Well, she spoke! What else matters? Relieved, hot, mystified, Ruth forces herself to mention the video. “That was smart to tell Ceci, Pil. It’s good to talk.”  

Pilvi lays down a toothbrush wrapped in cellophane by her foot. “We didn’t talk,” she says. “I just told her.” 

“Oh. Okay, what’d she say?” 

“Grown-ups do lots of gross stuff. Just don’t think about it.” 

“That’s good advice… Right?”

Pilvi shrugs.

Ruth chooses a no-name sewing kit from the bag and adds it to the circle. “For Peter’s shadow.” 

A hint of a smile, then Pilvi checks herself, remembering.

Asleep on his back, mouth wide, Matias seems so boyish, so harmless. Ruth creeps past him and out, down the hall, into her mother’s white room. As usual, Ceci has beaten her to it. But… hold on. She’s rising, making space for Ruth in the bed. Ceci might just not want the middle spot, but Ruth opts to think otherwise. Her sister is being kind. Her sister is allowing her to lie next to their mother. Unexpectedly, it’s easier this way. Ceci’s hair smells both clean and like chlorine. Bev’s, like this all-white room, like nothing.

“This is nice,” Bev says. “Now all we need is Hal.”

Hal, Hal. The two of them fawn and scramble, but it’s always Hal. Ceci begins to cry again. And again, Ruth recollects her at fifteen, weeping outside the Living Room. Those wet, green eyes, bugging out of her head. Ruth takes a piece of her sister’s dark hair and twirls it around her finger. Ceci sobs harder. “No one touches me anymore.”

“Sorry I acted nuts before.” Ruth says, twirling faster. “But I’ve had… a week.”

Bev reaches across Ceci to stroke Ruth’s wrist. “Ah, we understand, you think I don’t see everything that’s going on with you, but I know.” Uh, not Bev too! That fucking video. “I can tell when my own daughter is pregnant.”

“Congrats,” Ceci murmurs like she could tell too. Probably also Matias and Hal and Pilvi, probably everyone but Ruth could see. “Number Three! Lucky.” 

Ruth draws her mother’s icy hand to her chest. For years she detested Bev whenever she thought about poor Ceci having to figure out that teen pregnancy without her mother. Now, it occurs to her to wonder how it felt for Bev to royally fuck up like that. Because she’s pretty sure she knows. 

“I’m scared,” Ruth says. “Are you scared, Mommy?”

“What are you talking about. She’s Bev-er than ever!” Ceci drapes a leg over Ruth’s. 

“Ow, careful, my ankle.” 

“This is nice,” Bev says. “Now all we need is Hal.” 

JILL EISENSTADT is the author of the novels From Rockaway (Knopf, Vintage Contemporaries, Back Bay Books), Kiss Out (Knopf), and Swell (Little, Brown and Company). Shorter work has appeared in BOMB, Elle, Lit Hub, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Town & Country, and Vogue.