Excerpt
Like Family
1Caroline Caruso was standing in waist-high water, adjusting her goggles and wondering why her friend Ruth was so late. Ruth was usually at the pond before her, sitting on the sandy beach and wearing a fleece over her bathing suit on even the warmest mornings. Ruth called this “super heating,” and she’d taught Caroline that it was the trick to cold-water swimming. “You just get yourself so hot all you want to do is jump in the water,” she’d instructed. Ruth was right about super heating, the same way she’d been right about pretty much every aspect of country living.
Ruth had lived in the Hudson Valley forever, while Caroline—a Manhattanite whose previous definition of a small town was Boston—had only been in Radclyffe for a few months when she met Ruth. She’d had a lot to learn, and Ruth had been a kind and candid teacher. Buy your corn from Lucerne’s farm stand but drive the extra ten minutes to get your blueberries from Norlack’s. Always go to the dump right before it closes so the manager will have no choice but to help unload your recycling. Volunteer at the community center tag sale if you want your kid to get a speaking part in the town play. Avoid all restaurants other than Dairy Barn between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and avoid even Dairy Barn over the Fourth of July. Caroline had lived here for almost seven years now, and Ruth had been right about everything.
Had Ruth texted to say she wasn’t coming? Caroline considered getting out of the water to check her phone, but she knew there would be nothing—there was no cell service at the pond, even though it was only a few miles from town. Seven years in Radclyffe and Caroline was just now getting used to how much could change in a few miles, or even just a few blocks. In the ten-minute drive to the pond from her neighborhood of clapboard houses and yards filled with pollinator-friendly plants and lawn signs pledging allegiance to a wide range of both political causes and youth sporting teams, she passed a Michelin-starred restaurant, the library, an aura photography studio, a VFW club, and a Hannaford supermarket with mediocre produce but surprisingly decent cheese. Then the road narrowed and, crossing over a small bridge to follow a bend in the river, made a gentle turn toward low hills and fields dotted with weathered barns. As a child, Caroline had thought of valleys as fictional places (Rivendell) or cultural ones (Silicon, San Fernando), never quite understanding their actual geography. Now here she was, nestled between the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains, and she felt—and this feeling still surprised her, every day—held in place by the landscape, comforted by its edges, the containment of its geological borders. How green was my valley, she’d often think as she drove, not ever having read the book or seen the film of that name, but knowing, somehow, the depth of sentiment the phrase conveyed.
Just as Caroline was getting ready to pack it in, Ruth came running down the path. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said, pulling off her sweatshirt. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a swim cap and goggles, then knelt in the sand while she stuffed her wild curly hair under the cap. She waded in, gently splashing handfuls of water onto her chest and shoulders.
Caroline hugged Ruth. “You’re warm,” she said. “Did you superheat in the car?” Sometimes, when they were in a hurry, they’d just drive to the pond with the heat blasting. Less enjoyable than a warm chat on the beach, but still effective.
Ruth shook her head. “I was rushing,” she said, a strange, stressed expression on her face.
“Are you okay?” Caroline asked.
“Not really,” Ruth said.
Caroline’s face must have shown her alarm because Ruth quickly said, “I mean—yes, I’m okay, I’m fine, everyone is fine, totally fine, it’s just—well . . .” Ruth didn’t seem to know where to begin.
“We don’t have to swim,” Caroline said. “Let’s go back on the beach and talk.”
“No, no, I want to,” Ruth said. “This could be our last swim of the season. This water is already freezing.” She lowered into the water up to her shoulders and shivered a little, then gently pushed off into a glide and kick, her head still above the calm water.
Caroline pulled her goggles down around her neck and began swimming sidestroke so she could look at Ruth. Her muscles fell into the ancient rhythm of “pick the apple, put it in the basket.” After a few moments, Ruth switched from breast to sidestroke too.
“I have to tell you something and I don’t want you to judge me,” Ruth said.
“Okay,” Caroline said, pulling her strokes a little harder to warm up.
“No, really—really don’t judge me,” Ruth said.
“Jesus, Ruth, what is it?”
“God, I don’t know where to start.”
“Start in the middle,” Caroline suggested. This was something she and her husband, Mike, said to their son, Luca, who was seven years old and had an extremely underdeveloped sense of narrative timing. Caroline and Mike could often finish eating dinner and load the dishwasher before Luca got to the point, on the rare occasions that there was a point.
“Okay,” Ruth said. She took a breath and exhaled a tiny batch of bubbles into the water. “So, you know how Siddha has a different donor than the other kids?” Ruth and her wife, Wyn, had four children, although Ruth had had their oldest, Siddha, on her own, a few years before she married Wyn.
“Yeah,” Caroline said.
“And you know how I told you that Siddha’s donor wasn’t exactly a donor, I mean that I—”
Caroline interrupted, wanting to speed this along. “You had sex with him. Without meaning to get pregnant.”
“Right, right,” Ruth said. “But you know how I’ve always said I didn’t know the man I’d slept with? The thing is, I did. I mean, I do—I mean, I did. I knew him. He knew Siddha when she was a baby.”
“Oh, wow,” Caroline said. She could hear the anxiety in Ruth’s voice, and she wanted to be careful, but she also had a lot of questions. “Does Siddha want to meet him now?”
“The thing is, she can’t, because he’s dead. He died in September, but we just found out last night.”
Caroline stopped swimming. “Oh, Ruth—oh god, Ruth! Why are you telling me this in the middle of the pond?”
Ruth stopped too, and they both started to tread water. “It gets worse.”
Caroline made what she hoped was a calm and supportive face, although what she was really thinking was that she wished she had a pool noodle for the buoyancy this situation was beginning to require. She looked back at the shore, which seemed farther away than she would have liked.
Ruth said, “Siddha got a letter yesterday, from his attorney. I mean, Wyn and I got a letter, but Siddha opened it, and the letter says he left her something in his will. And so there we are, it’s almost dinner and the little kids are in the kitchen, and Siddha bursts in with this letter, and she’s like, Who’s this guy who left me something in his will? And Wyn and I—”
“Can I ask who he is?” Caroline said. “I mean, what’s his name?”
“Elliot Jenkins—no, wait.” Ruth stopped. “It’s Elliot Shepherd or something like that.”
“You don’t know his last name?”
“It used to be Jenkins, but then he changed it, I guess when he got married? I don’t really know. He owned the hardware store in Barton Falls. Please tell me you didn’t know him.”
“I didn’t know him,” Caroline assured her. “But Barton Falls is so close. You never ran into him?”
“He moved to North Carolina when Siddha was one, and just moved back up here a few years ago.”
“Did you know he was back?”
“Sort of. I mean yes, but I hadn’t seen him. I knew that he was married and had two kids. I guess he’d cleaned himself up?”
“In what way?” Caroline asked cautiously.
Ruth sighed. “I think he got sober. He was a serious alcoholic. That was the reason I felt like I had to just cut it off. I mean, I always figured we’d tell Siddha eventually, like when she was eighteen, you know? The way the other kids can find out who their donor is then, which, of course, was stupid logic, a totally false equivalency, but it was working for us. Emphasis on was.”
