The Misfortunes of Others Read online

“How are you feeling, Missy?” Missy was his pet name for her, from his childhood. Maya was five years older and had practically raised him after their parents died. He patted her shoulder and took her hand in both of his own. “You don’t look any different.”

  Maya’s gaze softened as she looked at her reprobate younger brother, the black sheep of the family. “I feel different, Snooks. I feel really terrible most of the time. I have my good moments and my bad moments. I’m just so tired that sometimes I feel like crying. I lie on my side and look out the window at the weeping willow on the lawn, and I think things like, ‘Someday winter will come and the snow will cover the ground,’ stuff like that. My brain doesn’t seem to be working. I feel much stupider than I used to.”

  “Hormones,” her brother said sagely. “Hormones. Hormones make you stupid.”

  “I suppose so.” Maya stuffed two pillows behind her and leaned back. “It’s just that Bernard and I were so excited about this whole thing, having a baby and everything, and now that it’s happened I sometimes wish we had never started. I feel like I’m trudging uphill on a long road leading nowhere. I lie on my bed and I feel like saying, wait a minute, I didn’t know it would be like this, but I know the universe doesn’t care. Nobody cares. Everybody thinks it’s so cute when I feel bad, because I’m not really sick. I’m just pregnant. Just pregnant!” She scowled. “You and Bernard wouldn’t last a day, feeling like this.”

  Snooky looked at her thoughtfully. “You have it bad, Maya.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve allowed yourself to become bitter. I blame it on Bernard.”

  Maya bristled. “Bernard? Why Bernard? He’s been terrific, slaving away downstairs for me, doing all the shopping and running the house.”

  “I blame Bernard. Bernard, as you apparently have not noticed, is not a good slave. He has too independent a spirit. He is not a good cook and, even though he loves you, he has his own work and cannot wait on your every need. What he did to the shrimp tonight, Maya, no poor helpless invertebrate should have suffered.”

  Maya smiled at her brother. Looking at his face was like looking into a mirror, a younger, male reflection of her own. They had the same thin crooked nose, hazel eyes and pale skin. They had the same golden-brown hair, which Snooky wore brushed back casually and Maya wore sweeping her shoulders in a pageboy. They even shared the same aristocratic bone structure. “And you feel you can correct this situation?” she said.

  “I, Maya, am the perfect slave. If this were an eighteenth-century English mansion, I would be the butler. You will do nothing; I will do everything. I am used to that from my previous visits.”

  “You are a good cook, I’ll give you that. Not that I feel like eating anything.”

  “That will change. I have noticed that most pregnant women, after the first few months, seem to have no trouble eating.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Come on downstairs. I have a few things to give you.”

  In the living room, a large open area with a high ceiling, exposed wooden beams and a picture window overlooking the willow tree in the backyard, Maya sank into an overstuffed chair while Snooky opened the suitcase. It was filled to overflowing with stuffed toys, rattles and mobiles.

  “A stuffed platypus,” Snooky said, lifting it up for inspection. “You don’t get to see this every day, do you? Pink and blue matching stuffed bears. A dinosaur.” The dinosaur was an attractive forest green. “The trendiest kind of mobile. They say these black-and-white designs are good for the baby’s ocular system. I think they’re a little hallucinogenic, myself.” There was also a very charming little rattle shaped like a star, a mobile with stuffed animals that played “Send in the Clowns,” a newborn outfit covered with smiling cows, a tiny pair of socks (“the baby will be born in the fall”), three receiving blankets in pale blue, green and yellow, and a jack-in-the-box.

  “Very nice,” said Maya, when Snooky was finished. “Thank you very much. How in the world did you manage to buy all this stuff today?”

  “I rented a car at JFK Airport and stopped off in a baby store on the way up here. I told them I was expecting to become an uncle soon and I wanted the best of everything.”

  “We don’t even have a nursery yet to put this stuff in,” Maya said fretfully. She picked up the tiny pair of socks and gazed at it. A cold fear gripped her heart. “I don’t think I can handle this, Snooks. All this responsibility. Look at these socks. They frighten me. They frighten me, Snooky.”

  “Don’t worry, Maya, I’m here now. I’ll take care of everything. I’m wonderful with babies.”

  “Since when are you wonderful with babies?”

  “Since you decided to have one. Hello, Bernard.”

  Bernard had wandered into the room, sweating slightly from the heat in the kitchen. It was the middle of March, an unseasonably warm day. He was followed by a small red mop whose tail beat furiously when it spied Snooky.

  “Misty!” cried Snooky, picking up the dog and dangling it in front of his face. “It’s little Misty! How are you? Ready for a little brother or sister? Give me a kiss, Misty.”

  The dog licked his face luxuriously.

  “I don’t see how you can let her do that,” said Bernard. He went to the picture window and cranked open one of the glass panels.

  “Misty loves me,” said Snooky. “I have a way with women. They come under my spell, and all is lost for them.”

  “Sweetheart,” said Maya, “look at what Snooky brought for the baby. It’s really too much.”

  Bernard looked over the pile of pastel animals, clothing and blankets scattered over the floor. “You’re right. It really is too much.”

  “It frightens me, Bernard. It makes the whole thing seem so … so real.”

  “It is real,” said Bernard, in his pragmatic way. He stood next to the window, hoping for a breeze. “You can take over in the kitchen now, Snooky. I’m done in there. What’s this?”

  “It’s a jack-in-the-box, Bernard. Didn’t you ever have one?”

  “Of course I had one,” Bernard said irritably. He sat down on the floor and tentatively wound it up. The box played a manic “Here we go round the mulberry bush” several times in succession, then the top sprang open and out popped a little clown in Scaramouche attire, all gaudy tatters and purple velvet scraps. It bobbled there in front of Bernard’s face, giving him a poignant lopsided grin.

  Bernard, for the first time that day, smiled. It was a slow smile that seeped over his face like sewer water.

  “I like this,” he said. “It’s the first thing you’ve ever brought us that I’ve liked, Snooky.”

  “There’s no telling what it is you’ll like, Bernard. There’s simply no telling. I try my best.”

  Bernard put his hand on top of the little clown’s head, pushed it gently back into the box, and cranked the handle again. Once again the tune played, the top sprang open, the Scaramouche popped out.

  Bernard smiled. He pushed the clown back in, closed the top, and happily cranked the handle.

  On the fifteenth repetition, Maya motioned to Snooky and the two of them left the room. Behind them they could hear “Here we go round the mulberry bush” played in an uneven, clanging tone, then a clatter as the doll sprang out. Maya could imagine Bernard’s smile.

  “No waste,” said Snooky, clearing the table in the kitchen and getting down to work.

  “No waste?”

  “Yes. Whatever the baby doesn’t like, Bernard will play with.”

  Dinner, when Snooky finally served it an hour later, consisted of a Creole shrimp and rice dish (“I had this in a tiny little restaurant up in a tree house in the middle of a palm tree grove—good, isn’t it?”), a French bread which he had dug out of the freezer and drizzled with garlic, and a large eggplant which he had cooked, split down the middle and sprinkled with herbs. Maya ate one small portion of the shrimp dish, a few bites of the eggplant, and turned slightly green when offered the garlic bread.

  “No garl
ic, thanks, Snooks. I’m not up to it. I have morning sickness all day long if I eat the wrong stuff.”

  Snooky was penitent. “I didn’t think, Maya. I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again. Garlic, how stupid of me.”

  Bernard happily consumed three large helpings of the shrimp casserole, most of the garlic bread and at least two-thirds of the eggplant. He said little. Bernard never did say much, particularly at meals. Snooky passed him what remained of the bread.

  “Finish it off, Bernard. Finish what you’ve begun. God, watch him eat, Maya.”

  “I don’t like to watch anyone eat these days.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about putting on a lot of excess weight with your pregnancy, Missy. I don’t think you’ll get the chance. Who’s been cooking for you the last couple of months? Not Bernard?”

  “Yes, Bernard,” said Bernard.

  “Pitiful. What’s it been, Maya? Canned beans every night?”

  “You underrate him, Snooky. You’ve always underrated him. Bernard can be quite a good cook, when called upon. He’s made me some delicious meals.”

  “Oh, please. What does that mean? Scrambled eggs?”

  “I make very good scrambled eggs.”

  “Anyone can make very good scrambled eggs, Bernard. It doesn’t require any talent. What else have you served? TV dinners?”

  Bernard bristled. “I wouldn’t serve Maya TV dinners. There are a number of things I make that are good. Things I learned how to make when I was living on my own.”

  “Name one.”

  “Beef Stroganoff.”

  Snooky was surprised. “Really? Beef Stroganoff? Is it edible, Maya? Yes? I owe you an apology, Bernard. I didn’t realize you had such hidden talents. I’ve never seen you make beef Stroganoff.”

  “I’ve never made it for you,” said Bernard pointedly.

  “And—correct me if I’m wrong here, Bernard—I bet you never will. Coffee, Maya?”

  “No, Snooks.”

  “Bernard?”

  “Yes.”

  Bernard grunted in satisfaction when Snooky served him coffee and dessert, bananas fried with brown sugar and honey. He settled down to eat, bearlike, a large dark bearded man hunched over the table, humming softly to himself.

  Maya picked dispiritedly at her dessert. “I can’t do it, Snooks. It looks delicious, but I can’t eat it. My appetite isn’t what it used to be.”

  “You never ate much, Missy. Don’t worry. I know somebody whose appetite appears to be unaffected by the recent turn of events.”

  Bernard hummed happily to himself.

  Snooky, who also never ate much, pushed his serving and Maya’s across the table at his brother-in-law. “No waste,” he said, and sat back to drink his coffee, watching Bernard with amusement over the edge of his cup.

  After dinner Maya took Snooky upstairs to see the nursery.

  “It’s not in very good shape yet,” she said on the way up the tortuous flight of stairs. “It’s the extra bedroom on the second floor.”

  “The one that always had all the junk in it?”

  “That’s right. Bernard cleaned it out. Now we’re trying to decide what color to paint it.”

  They passed Bernard’s study, Maya’s study, and the master bedroom. Maya went to a door at the end of the hallway and flung it open. “Here it is. What do you think? Use your imagination.”

  Snooky stood in the doorway for a long time, looking around the room. “Well … it’s clean, at least.”

  The room was immaculately clean, all the boxes removed, the dust swept away. It was a small room with a slanting ceiling and a pretty view of the fir trees and sloping lawn at the side of the house.

  “It’s not so bad, is it?”

  “The wallpaper will have to go.”

  “I know that.”

  The wallpaper, inherited from the previous tenant, was a loud splashy floral design in metallic hues of silver, orange and green.

  “I’ve never understood what people will put on their walls,” said Snooky. “I wouldn’t wrap a gift in that paper. And what about the floor, Missy?”

  The floor was covered with peeling silver-toned linoleum tiles.

  “Bernard’s going to pry up the tiles and refinish the floor. There’s a nice hardwood floor underneath that, if you can believe it. Oak, like the rest of the house.”

  “And the curtains?”

  “Well, of course we’re going to replace the curtains,” Maya said crossly. The curtains in question were a faded chintz which managed to clash with both the wallpaper and the floor. “You’re not being very appreciative, Snooks.”

  “I’m sorry, My. It’s a beautiful room. Look at that view. It’s just that it’s going to need a lot of work.”

  “We know that. Bernard’s going to do it himself.”

  “Bernard?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Bernard, in his spare time, when he’s not waiting on you or writing his books, is going to strip the wallpaper, paint the room, take up the tiles, refinish the hardwood floor, buy fabric and make nice new curtains?”

  “That’s right.”

  Snooky crossed his arms. “It’s too bad that the human gestational period is only nine months, Missy. You’re going to need a lot more time than that before this baby arrives.”

  Snooky moved his stuff, what little of it there was, into the third-floor bedroom under the eaves which was always his when he came to visit. The bedroom was hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, poorly insulated and completely primitive, but it had a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside, a wooden four-poster bed and a dormer window with a comfortable window seat, all of which helped (in Snooky’s mind) to make up for the inconvenience. True to his word, he danced attendance on his sister, cooking her meals, making her little snacks to tempt her appetite, doing the shopping for the household and running errands. Maya relaxed gratefully into this pattern. Bernard, as Snooky had pointed out, was, despite the best will in the world, not a good servant; he did not enjoy doing the shopping and was not a gifted cook. After a few days of pro forma protests, Bernard also relaxed into letting Snooky run the household. He steamed off the wallpaper in the nursery—a long and laborious task—and then began to spend more time in his study, wrestling with his latest book, the story of a wayward lobster who gets lost during the annual migration.

  “A tragedy, really,” said Snooky when he heard the plot line. “A tragic tale. Not unlike Hamlet.”

  Bernard glanced at him sullenly.

  “What made you decide to switch to arthropods?”

  “Nothing.”

  Bernard’s books were for children ages three to seven, and were mostly concerned with kindly sheep and dashing, daredevil rats.

  “There must have been something,” Snooky pointed out reasonably. “Some precipitating cause.”

  “I read about the lobster migration. It sounded interesting.”

  “We went out for seafood one night,” Maya told her brother later. “Bernard saw the lobsters in the tank and felt sorry for them.”

  “He’s a good man, Maya. Strange, but good. What’s the lobster’s name?”

  “I don’t know if it has a name. Bernard hasn’t been able to concentrate on his work, because of the baby and everything. And I haven’t been in the best of moods. It affects his work when I’m not feeling well.”

  “Oh, come on. As far as I can tell, the tides affect Bernard’s work. I’ve never seen him work well. He’s always complaining about something or other.”

  Maya was complacent about this. “That’s true. That’s the way he is. It’s not easy, what he does, you know, Snooks.”

  “It’s easier than working for a living.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I wouldn’t. The observer’s point of view, that’s all. And how about your work, Maya? What are you doing these days?”

  Maya looked grumpy. “I’m supposed to be doing an article on Exocoetidae.”

  “On wha
t?”

  “Exocoetidae. Flying fish, you moron. You took science in college, didn’t you? You did go to college, right? Didn’t William and I pay for that?”

  “In more ways than one.” Snooky’s college career had been less than illustrious. His older brother William, who had graduated summa cum laude, president of the senior class and valedictorian, had watched in disbelief as Snooky edged his way nervously through his college years, doing poorly in some classes and brilliantly in others, a seemingly random pattern of success and failure. He had graduated with no fanfare, no awards, no speeches to give and a set determination never to attend an institution of higher learning again.

  Maya smiled. “You were awful. You used to skip classes and come to visit me instead. William would call your room at school and you were never there. Remember the answering machine you rigged up for him?”

  “With the message that said, ‘I’m not here, William, I’m out cutting classes and sleeping around’?”

  “You are an awful brother to him. You both know exactly how to drive each other over the edge.”

  “That’s a fraternal privilege, Maya. Something you wouldn’t know about, would you? We’ve both spared you over the years.”

  “Bernard doesn’t think I’ve been spared. He thinks both of you are good for nothing, and I’m caught in the middle.”

  “Well, maybe he’s right. You were born in the middle, and you’re sort of stuck there now.”

  “I guess so.”

  “So you’re doing an article on flying fish? How fascinating.”

  “It would be if I could finish it. So far I’ve written, ‘The flying fish, family Exocoetidae, live chiefly in tropical waters and possess long pectoral fins which resemble wings.’ That’s it.”

  “A short article, but a good article.”

  “I’m going to lose my job,” Maya said fretfully. “Lose my job, lose my health, lose my sanity. Lose my mind.”

  “I think,” said Snooky wisely, “that it’s time for some celery.”

  They went downstairs to the kitchen, which was filled with shifting diamonds of sunlight from the old-fashioned leaded glass windows which lined the walls. Snooky made his sister a cup of herbal tea and gave her a plate of celery stuffed with cream cheese and sprinkled with paprika. “Here you go.”