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All Right Here (The Darlings)

By Carre Armstrong Gardner

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Nick was going to hate his birthday gift. Even as she taped down the ribbon and set the wrapped package on the kitchen table, Ivy Darling was already sure of this. It was a book of Mark Strand's poetry, and although she had gotten her husband a book of poetry every birthday for the six years they had been married, he had yet to open the front cover of one of them. That did not stop her from hoping, nor from appropriating the books for her own collection after a decent waiting period. Gifts, she thought, sometimes said more about the giver than the receiver. When you gave something you loved, and thought beautiful, you were inviting another person into your world. You were saying, Here is something that brings me joy. I want to share that joy with you. She couldn't help it if her husband had never been all that much into joy-sharing.
To be fair, it was also important to give something the other person actually wanted. With this in mind, Ivy had bought Nick a year's membership to the Copper Cove Racquet and Fitness Club, which he would love, as well as a bathrobe, which he needed. And of course the book of poetry, which he would hardly look at and never read.
She would give him the gifts when he got home from work, before they went to his parents' house for dinner. She did not want him to unwrap the things she had chosen in front of his mother, who would be hurt if her own gifts were upstaged. Nor did she want to give them in front of Nick's sisters, who would diminish them by being bored with everything.
She found the broom and swept up the scraps of wrapping paper, then emptied the dustpan into a plastic shopping bag and carried it to the back porch. The five o'clock sunlight flashed off the windows of the vacant house next door, making her squint. The place had been empty as long as she and Nick had lived there. It was a depressing sore on the pretty neighborhood: the house bleached and shabby in the mid-summer sunshine; the grass growing high against the warped and splintered front steps, unstirred by human movement. A faded “For Rent” sign sagged in one window. She turned her back on it and went inside.
She was sprinkling chopped nuts on top of the iced birthday cake, when she heard Nick's car in the driveway. She met him at the door with the remains of the frosting and a kiss.
“What's this?” he said, frowning at the sticky bowl.
“It's your birthday icing. Did you have a good day?”
He stepped around her and set his briefcase under the hall table. “It was all right. What are you doing?”
“Making your cake. We're going to your parents' for dinner, remember?”
He ran a hand through his thick hair. “I forgot. I was hoping to go for a run. What time do we have to be there?”
“Six o'clock. I wanted you to open your presents here first.”
He went through to the kitchen and began washing his hands, eyeing her over the tops of his glasses. “You're not wearing that to my parents' house, are you?”
She looked down at her t-shirt. It was yellow, with a picture of half a cup of coffee over the words Half Full. Below that, her faded cutoff shorts ended in ragged hems. “What's wrong with what I'm wearing?”
“You look like a slob.”
She gave him a gritty smile. “You say the nicest things.”
“I'm only saying it for your own sake. Don't you have anything with a little shape to it?”
“Yes, but it wouldn't be nearly as comfortable.”
“Come on, Ivy.”
“All right, I'll change before we go. But if we're going to be on time, you have to open your presents now.”
He dried his hands and turned to survey the packages on the table. “What'd you get me?”
“A present you'll love, a present you need, and a present you'll learn to love.”
“Hmmm...” he said, pretending to think. “A Porsche, a Porsche, and a book of poetry.”
“Close. Come on, you have to open them to find out.”
She sat down across from him while he opened the packages. She had been right on all scores. He was indifferent to the poetry, satisfied with the bathrobe and pleased with the gym membership.
“There's no excuse for me now,” he said, pulling his wallet from his back pocket and tucking the envelope into it. “I'll be in shape before you know it.” Nick, who was already in great shape, was the only person Ivy knew who thrilled to the prospect of more self-discipline.
“You look great just the way you are,” she said, standing and kissing him on the top of the head. “But if you want to half-kill yourself in the gym five days a week, knock yourself out. We should probably leave in fifteen minutes, unless we want to give your mother an ulcer.”
“Okay. Just...don't forget to change your clothes.”
Her smile felt grittier this time but she did as he said, reminding herself that he was only trying to protect her from his mother, who had a finely-tuned radar for her daughter-in-law's every shortcoming, fashion or otherwise.

Nick's parents lived across town, never a long drive even at the time of day considered rush hour in bigger cities. For three-quarters of the year, Copper Cove was small, even by Maine standards so that now, in June, when the tourist season had filled the beach houses and hotels along the water, the town still did not feel crowded. Cars moved lazily along High Street, pulling in at Cumberland Farms for gas, and at Blue Yew Pizza or Salt Flats Seafood for supper. Traffic, Ivy was sometimes surprised to realize, was just not something you ever thought about here.
At Nick's parents' house, his sister Tiffany met them at the door. “Oh, it's you.”
“We thought we might show up,” Ivy said. “You know, since it's Nick's birthday party and all.”
“Happy birthday,” Tiffany said grudgingly. “Everyone else is already here. The guys are watching the Red Sox game with Daddy.” She aimed this bit of news at Nick. “And Mumma's in the kitchen,” she added, a clear hint that Ivy should join her mother-in-law there, and not join her sisters-in-law at whatever they were doing.
They followed Tiffany through to the kitchen where Nick's mother Ruby was emptying fish market bags into the sink.
“Oh wow, lobster,” Ivy said. “Thanks for having a birthday, Nick.”
“Nicholas!” cried his mother, turning from the sink and drying her hands on a towel. “Happy birthday, Sweetheart.” She tipped her cheek up for a kiss, smoothed down the sleeves of his shirt, and straightened his collar. “Thirty-two years old!” Ivy thought of a plump, pretty wasp buzzing around a pie at a picnic.
Ivy set her cake carrier on the sideboard. “I brought the cake.”
“Wonderful.” Ruby brushed imaginary lint from Nick's shirt front. “What kind is it?”
“Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.”
Ruby turned from Nick and eyed the cake as though Ivy had said it was made of sand and seaweed. “Oh...” she faltered. “I was afraid one cake wouldn't be enough for all of us, so I did ask Sue to make a cheesecake to go along with it.” She smiled damply at her son. “You know how Nick loves cheesecake.”
Ivy felt her nostrils flare. As a matter of fact, Nick did not love cheesecake. He preferred carrot cake. It was one of life's long lessons, however, that objection with her mother-in-law would be fruitless. She felt her mouth twitch in a rictus grin. “Can I help with dinner, Ruby?”
“You might set the table. We'll use the good china. The cloth is on the ironing board in the laundry room. You'll have to put the leaves in the table, but Nick can do that for you.”
Nick trotted off to find the extra leaves and Ivy, having retrieved the tablecloth, began counting out forks and knives from the sideboard. The familiar task calmed her. “It's quiet around here,” she observed, as her mother-in-law added salt to two enormous canners full of hot water on the stove. “Where is everyone?”
“The men are watching television, and the girls are looking at Sue's new scrapbook.”
Nick had three sisters. His family, the Masons and hers, the Darlings, had always belonged to the same church. In her growing-up years, none of Nick's sisters had seemed to object to Ivy as long as she had been just another girl in Youth Group. But from the moment Nick had brought her home as his girlfriend a decade ago, Sue, Angela and Tiffany had circled the family like a pack of she-wolves guarding their kill. Together, they presented a solid, hostile wall designed to keep Ivy on the outside. They whispered with their heads together when she was in the house, and stopped talking when she came into a room. They planned sisters' shopping trips in front of her, and did not invite her to come along. When Nick and Ivy married, and a family friend hinted that the groom's sisters might want to throw the bride a shower, they were offended and told Ivy so, with the greatest of umbrage.
Ivy liked people—all kinds of people—and in general, people liked her back. She was unused to having her friendliness met with such stubborn, protracted rejection, and at first she had been bewildered by her sisters-in-law's antagonism. “They hate me for no reason,” she had once wailed to her own twin sister Laura. “I can't understand it. It's like being in eighth grade all over again.” By the time she and Nick had been married a year, however, she was wiser. Nick's mother Ruby adored him, and this was at the root of her daughters' treatment of Ivy. Nick's sisters were not horrible to her because of anything she personally had done; they simply resented Nick for being their mother's favorite, and were punishing Ivy for being his wife. It was a situation Ivy had gotten used to.
More or less.
When the lobsters were ready, Ruby sent her to call the family to the table. She found Sue, Angela and Tiffany upstairs, in Angela's old bedroom, looking at what appeared to be paint chips from a hardware store. When they saw Ivy, they stopped talking.
“Yes?” said Angela, who was Frank's middle sister, tucking the paint chips under one leg.
“Your mother says come to the table.” She would not give them the satisfaction of being asked what they were doing.
“Thank you, Ivy. Tell Mother we'll be there in a moment.” Angela stared at her until she took the hint and went back downstairs to the kitchen.
Nick's father Harry had muttered a long, rambling grace and the family were cracking their lobster claws when Angela rapped her fork against her water goblet. “Everybody! Everybody,” she called, half-rising from her chair. “Vincent and I have an announcement to make.”
“Angela, that goblet is crystal,” her mother protested.
“Well it's an important announcement, Mother.”
Some blessed instinct of self-preservation warned Ivy of what Angela was about to say and gave her a heartbeat of time to compose herself for it.
“Vincent and I...” Angela looked around the table in delight, “are pregnant!”
It was evident that Sue and Tiffany already knew, but that to the rest of them it was a complete surprise.
“And here's the best part,” Angela said, looking at Vincent and gripping his hand atop the tablecloth. “We're having the baby at Christmas! My due date is the twenty-fourth, but the doctor says if I haven't had it by then, he'll induce me so the baby can be born on Christmas Day. Won't that be so much fun?”
“Tell them how you planned it, Ange!” Tiffany said.
Angela looked around, ready to implode with pride. “Okay, ready for this? We knew we wanted to have the baby at Christmas, right? Because...so meaningful. Just like Jesus. And obviously, that meant we would need to get pregnant in March. But I didn't want to get really gross and fat while I was pregnant. So last January, I went on this diet--”
“I remember,” said Ruby, frowning. “I didn't approve. You're thin enough as it is.”
“Right,” Angela snorted, “I thought so too, because that's what everybody tells me? But then I thought, Just wait until nine months from now. So I went on this diet, and got down to a size four, which was my goal, and then we got pregnant. Now it's just gotten warm enough to go to the beach, and...look!” She stood up and turned sideways, smoothing her t-shirt down over her stomach and Ivy saw what she had missed before. A small, but very definite baby bump.
“So...showing, right? But still cute!” Angela beamed around at them. Ivy stared back. She felt powerless over her own facial expression and could only hope she didn't actually look as though she wanted to vomit all over her lobster tail. Angela was impervious to disapproval. She bubbled on. “You should see my maternity swimsuit. It's so cute! And by having the baby in December, I'll totally have time to get back in shape by next beach season!”
Vincent, a caustic CPA who sipped black coffee as incessantly as most people breathe oxygen, said, “Tell them about the nursery.” It turned out that the paint chips Angela and her sisters had been looking at were for the nursery, which would be done in a Beatrix Potter theme....
It went on and on. The problem with Angela and Vincent reproducing, Ivy thought bitterly, was that they would create another person every bit as narrow and self-absorbed as themselves. Sometimes, the world—or at least Nick’s family—did not seem large enough to hold another person like that.
Nick had little to say on the drive home.
“The woman from Family Makers e-mailed me yesterday.” Ivy spoke at last, breaking the silence. “She asked if we would consider foreign adoption.” She looked at her hands, but watched Nick from the corner of her eye.
He kept his own eyes on the road, and did not answer her.
Which, she reflected, her heart lying in her chest as cold and heavy as one of Ruby's lobsters, was more or less an answer in itself.

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