All the Water in the World Read online

  I had counted up to twenty-six, almost to the corner, when one person pulled apart into two. They had been kissing. Robin had his arm across Mom’s shoulders. What a surprise! How funny to see them there. Her neck was bent, her shoulders shaking. As her head came up, I saw that she was laughing, not crying.

  Go and have a day out with your grandparents! I have work to do. Unfortunately! That wistful wave from the porch!

  My mother was holding on to his outstretched arm with both hands, not in the least worried about the wait. They had sneaked off the minute I was gone. They’d have the whole morning and part of the afternoon to themselves. A generous person would not begrudge them that. A generous person would be grateful her mother had someone. Whereas a person who had been unfairly singled out by the universe might think a hole had opened up into the future, where everyone was going about their business. Might even be willing Robin’s good-natured self to go away and leave my mother to me, who had her first, who belonged to her completely, who needed her more.

  My grandfather folded himself behind the wheel, chuckling about something or other. He’d insulted her coffee, but still Grandma was laughing and holding his cup aloft to prevent spillage, while behind their backs I could barely see my own hands, let alone the road or the cars, as we swung out into traffic, church-bound.

  • • •

  “Now, that’s what I call a church, Rose.” When I pointed to the steepled gray-stone on the corner, my grandmother’s arm came along with mine. We had been joined together for the walk down Tenth Street because she’s always loved linking arms, rubbing your back, resting her hand on your shoulder while she’s talking to you. When I got sick, she started doing it nonstop. According to Mom, this comes from losing her own mother when she was ten, but I like to think it’s me she wants to touch.

  “No, that’s Catholic. Ours is over there,” said Grandma serenely. “First Congregational.” What we were looking at was a box of blue glass floating on a concrete pedestal. The square panes formed a blade at the corner, and the clouds captured on their surface collided with the real clouds at odd angles.

  “Wow,” I said. “Very modern, Rose.” The building gave off a violet shimmer that made me feel observed, like those sunglasses where the person can see your eyes but you can’t see theirs.

  “The church is in the two lower floors,” said Grandma. “The upper part is offices we rent out.”

  “You rent them out?”

  “The church rents them out. That’s how it survives in this day and age. We built the building with that in mind.”

  “You built the building?”

  She gave me one of her looks.

  “So,” I said. “The church is concrete and the offices are colored glass? Isn’t that the wrong way around?”

  “You’re a quick study.” She smiled. “Always were.”

  “We used to look more Gothic,” Grandpa put in. He was ambling along unattached on my other side. “The first church had a bell tower.”

  “When was that?”

  “Eighteen sixty-eight.”

  “So you never actually saw it?”

  “Ha! I’m not that ancient. We’re on our third building now. Goes back to the Civil War. Services were once held in the Capitol.”

  “Why was that?”

  I like to feed my grandfather questions. He’s in love with information. Grandma is happy as long as she’s holding your arm. Grandpa is happy as long as he’s gifting you with facts, or digging up new ones.

  “The first minister was chaplain of the House of Representatives. And did you know that the church built schools for freed slaves?”

  Once we were inside, I made a beeline for the women’s room. Splashed water on my face and rubbed my concealer stick everywhere I could think of. Red around the eyes and gray under them. Do church people scare easily? I touched both birds in the earrings Mom gave me for my birthday. They sat on a silver branch running across each hoop. The tiny birds gave me courage. You look fine, said the person in my head. You will be fine. Lo and behold, I was fine. Able to enter with jaunty indifference a room full of strangers.

  I worked my way back through the adults, the little kids, a few teenagers milling about. A lady handed me a program and a stalk of some sort.

  “Oh, there you are, Maddy!” called Grandma, sounding anxious.

  “I see everyone’s got their palm branch.”

  “Frond,” said Grandpa.

  “Frond. I stand corrected.” I rolled my eyes. Grandpa grinned and poked me in the arm. I elbowed him away.

  “They’re ethically sourced,” said Grandma, taking my arm and tucking it to her side. After a minute I pulled away, pretending to search for something in my bag. I wasn’t going to tell her about seeing Mom and Robin at the dim sum. There were plenty of other things for me to be crying about.

  I followed them down the aisle of a sanctuary that was just as plain as the lobby. The blandness of the decor surprised me. Was there such a thing as taking humility too far? No carpet. No stained glass. Completely lacking in color except for a sea-and-sky quilt hanging behind the stage, where a piano and music stands were set up. In place of pews there were chairs, plus a set of polished wooden bleachers along one wall. My grandparents made straight for the second tier of the bleachers. People had left them a space and were turning to greet them.

  Grandma glanced at me from time to time, on the verge of making introductions, but I lowered my head to the program. The picture on the cover was reproduced from some tapestry. Jesus, the crowd, even the donkey were wearing the same worried look you see on newborn babies. Wasn’t this supposed to be the joyful day? The triumphant day? Couldn’t someone come up with a cheerful picture for the occasion? There was no shortage of cheerful people on the premises, in spite of their varying states of health. I counted two wheelchairs, a number of canes, and five people with hearing aids. One was a small girl with sunken eyes and a peanut-shaped head. She was laughing and doing cartwheels in the aisle until her dad told her to stop. Maybe everyone has something wrong with them, even if it isn’t visible. Maybe that’s why we were here.

  Sound of the Bell.

  All Glory, Laud, and Honor.

  Responding and Sending.

  I stood up and sat down when Grandma did, and watched the ministers swish up to the lecterns, a bearded man and a woman with close-cropped hair. They had on black floor-length robes draped with purple satin. Kind of weird in an up-to-the-minute place like this that built schools for freed slaves. People must still want the ministers to look special, even if they make a point of putting their lecterns on the same level as the chairs. Or else what makes it a church and not just a bunch of people in a room?

  The call to worship gave way to the silent prayer. Heads were lowered. Meek voices filled the room. I closed my eyes and tried to clear a special place in my mind. Sneak a look down. Nail polish coming off. Sneak a look sideways. Grandpa’s brows were raised behind his glasses, while Grandma’s were bunched in concentration. I did not want to see them like that. Sneak a look at the program. No matter where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome Tough and Tender Days Ahead. Don’t forget to validate your parking ticket. My mother and I were prone to attacks of hilarity on the most earnest of occasions. I missed her. I needed her now. She could go to brunch with Robin whenever she liked. I closed my eyes and opened them again. The prayer was over. People were coughing, the offering plate was circulated by a boy in a baseball cap, while up onstage three musicians dressed in black took their seats.

  I was close enough to see the musicians preparing their instruments. The pianist pumped his pedals. The clarinet player rotated his barrel and blew on the holes. The cellist drew her bow through a cloth and laid the cloth on the floor. She prodded her strings, fiddled with the keys, and brought her hand to rest on the slope of the wood. By some freaky coincidence was it Robin’s C-Major Trio? No, selections from the first and third movements of the A Minor. All was ready. Tuning up had finished. The ministe
rs had withdrawn to their chairs in the front row, the black tails of their robes sticking out. Fingers were poised. The bow hand was arched at the far end of the bow.

  They began calmly enough. The cellist had a sweet idea. The piano, then the clarinet, considered it, took it over, gave it back. Before long they were playing with their whole bodies. The pianist hunched over, pulling his fingers reluctantly off the keys. Comically the clarinetist puffed out his cheeks. As the music zigzagged upward, one of his hands tried to fly off and conduct. I leaned forward, afraid for him. But no, he wiped the hand on his leg and replaced it just in time. The room swelled with music. The melody swirled and pranced, passing between the instruments, picking things up and, as the section drew to a close, setting them down.

  They began again, quick and sharp. The pianist was in a world of his own, but the other two exchanged meaningful looks. Soon the cellist and her bow were in a frenzy, her black hair swinging side to side, beating out the time. Not gently, the cello’s neck was gripped, the strings were pinned down by the dramatic vibration of her curved fingers. The melody loosened and tightened, climbed up and up, turned back on itself. The clarinetist had hold of a long sinuous passage. He was following it around to see where it would go, arching his back to make his body more available to the music, almost lifting off the chair. At the last minute he descended. The pianist finished with a stack of chords that made his hands pop off the keys. The cellist bent her head.

  People exhaled and shifted their feet. No applause, no whistling, no standing ovation. To go through all that and get so little in return! I longed to rush up to the musicians and confess to something. The woman minister stepped to the lectern and said thank you on behalf of everyone, and thank you to the director who had made this possible, and the musicians tramped down some steps back of the stage. I sat in light-headed silence. Had I ever really listened to music before?

  My grandmother gave me an everyday smile, covered my hand with hers, and mouthed, “Weren’t they good!” My grandfather had removed his glasses and was peering at his program; music had never been his thing. Oh well. I was alone with it. I did not mind. I did not feel alone. I felt the opposite of alone.

  The rest of the service passed me by. The final hymn I didn’t even attempt to sing. I was thinking about my mother and Robin, kissing at the dim sum. That miserable girl in the car seemed like someone I used to know, who I felt sorry for but no longer agreed with. I thought about the keys and tuning pegs and strings, and the tender, practical way the musicians treated their instruments, like a kind of second body.

  As the minister delivered the benediction, head down, one arm stretched out, I thought about the concentration of the musicians when they played. It was not like what happened during the silent prayer. They were practicing a different form of privacy. This is completely personal, they seemed to say, but we’re all in it together. We urgently need to tell you something, and we are going to keep on telling you and telling you and trying to convince you that all of these sad, hopeful things we’re saying are true, even though you won’t understand it any more than we do.

  I left my palm frond on the seat and led the way up the center aisle. What were the true things? One of them was this: Music can break free from the instruments and live a life of its own.

  Right in front of us, in her father’s arms, was the cartwheel girl. She stared at me from her small strange eyes. “Hey!” she yelled as if hailing me from a great distance. “What happened to you?”

  My grandmother took my elbow from behind to steer me away, but I was smiling at the girl, my first real smile of the day. Let everyone look at me, or pretend not to. It didn’t matter. It did not matter in the least.

  • • •

  Back home I found my mother curled up on the sofa, reading, her head tipped down so the cords of her neck were exposed. She looked at me with peaceful eyes. That’s what a Sunday away from your sick kid will do for you. I laid my legs across her lap, wiggled my stocking feet to get her to massage them, and told her church had been awesome.

  “What was so awesome about it?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “The music was out of this world. Epic.”

  She smiled, kneading my toes in her hands. What made me happy made her happy, even if it went against her atheistic principles.

  “Arches,” I said. Absentmindedly she obliged. “Ankles!” I barked when she made as if to return to her book. The pressure of her hands gave me the feeling that, for that moment at least, everything was all right. Everything was being held in place. It would have been a great unburdening to cry. For my tantrum on the way to church. For Brahms and the three musicians. For my mother’s strong grip and the pleasure passing through me as if my body were as good as anyone else’s. Instead I closed my eyes and vowed to the universe that I would be the kind of person who wished everyone well at all times, especially my mother, who didn’t deserve any of this.

  When Robin wandered in, I told him it had been the A-Minor Trio.

  “I know the one,” he said, seating himself a well-judged distance away from the two of us. “An unusual piece. Clarinet and cello. They say it sounds as if the instruments are in love with one another.”

  “Well, I loved it.”

  “Will you go again?” Mom wanted to know.

  “Oh yes. I’ll probably be born again.”

  “Not in that church you won’t.”

  “Oh yeah? What if I’m planning to?”

  “It’s not that kind of place. I bet your grandparents were pleased to have you there.”

  “Thrilled,” I said. “Ecstatic. I’d like to hear more Brahms.”

  “I’ve got the CDs,” said Robin. “HashtagJustSaytheWord.”

  “Actually,” I told him, “I want to hear it live.”

  • • •

  After that, I went to church from time to time to confuse my mother and make my grandmother happy. I got used to the congregation and they got used to me, though I never grew to like the prayers. I closed my eyes and roamed around in my thoughts until the musical performance began. At home Robin and I organized our own concert series, for the good weeks between treatments. My requirement was that we had to be able to see the musicians up close. This ruled out the Kennedy Center and the other big concert halls, whose front-row seats were beyond our budget. Instead we opted for chamber music at museums and libraries. We heard Beethoven at the Phillips Collection, and fifteenth-century French at the Shakespeare Library; at the Kreeger Museum it was Mendelssohn, and at the Renwick, Haydn’s quartets.

  Sometimes it was just Robin and me, sometimes the three of us went. Robin sat back with his arms folded, wearing this proud look. If my mother came along, she scanned the room to see if she knew anyone, and from time to time she squeezed my knee and whispered, “Isn’t this fun?”

  What they didn’t know was that I came for the solitude. I always sat forward to see the musicians take care of their instruments before they played. When they were about to start, I was seized by the longing to be alone. It was like getting to the best part in a good book: I wanted no one in my line of sight. The others had to be present, but at a certain point I made them drop away, until, in the middle of a room packed with people, I might as well have been sitting there completely on my own. Waiting for the music to part company with the instruments. Wing its way out of time, out of reach.

  Eve

  6

  “Who is Maddy?”

  It was the kind of question all parents ask themselves, not only when the baby arrives, but forevermore. Where did she come from? How did she get here? Norma shaded her eyes at the lake. Of course that’s not what she meant.

  “My daughter,” I said in a rush, afraid I was losing her. “Maddy’s crazy about nail polish.”

  “I’d love to have a daughter,” said Norma wistfully. “At our house it’s all PlayStation and G.I. Joe.”

  “You might have gathered that Robin is not Maddy’s father.”


  She glanced over. “He’s not?” Clearly she had gathered no such thing.

  “Maddy didn’t have a father, growing up.”

  “But she has a stepfather.”

  “We’ve been together three years. It’s amazing how well they get along. Considering how late he came into her life.”

  “In my experience,” Norma said, from what I could see was a deep need to reassure, “children accept whatever situation they find themselves in. It’s their normal.”

  “She used to miss him,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Her father. He left before she was born.”

  When we met, I was doing my master’s in museum studies at GWU and Antonio was finishing his doctorate in neurobiology. He came from the north of Spain. He had the build and fairer coloring of the Basques, though he was born in the mountains farther east. He spoke four languages. Happy as he was to take advantage of our higher education system and to perfect his English, he never planned to settle here. I presume he now heads some world-famous research team back in Spain.

  “Oh,” said Norma. “It’s pretty common, but sad.” She checked my eyes to make sure she was on the right track.

  Was sad the right word? We had known each other for a year and a half when Antonio passed his oral exam with no conditions. That night we washed down tapas with large quantities of red wine and collapsed into bed, high on his pass and on each other, and although the foil packet lay in plain sight on the bedside table, neither one of us reached for it. That was the beginning of Maddy.