At the time, everyone\u2019s partner had the same name\u2014David.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There was no good reason for it. Initially, we joked that the name had been in vogue the year they were born, but that couldn\u2019t be true: the Davids were set apart in years, the youngest being Alena\u2019s boyfriend at nineteen, and the oldest being Audre\u2019s secret, at fifty-eight. Perhaps the first of the sisters to procure a David\u2014Audrey, at thirty-two, who had been courted for eight months by an age-appropriate David at the swimming club where she tuned her finely muscled thighs every weekday evening\u2014had set some kind of subconscious example for the rest. Whatever it was, within a year of Audrey\u2019s formal introduction of the First David to the family, Adalyn and Alena had both found Davids of their own, followed by Ayla, and then, when they all turned to Audre, the eldest, thinking wouldn\u2019t it be funny if she found someone after so long and that person turned out to be a David, too, it came out that she\u2019d been carrying on with a married man this entire time, their father\u2019s wife\u2019s orthopedist. Who, of course, was named David.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There were five of them, Audre, Ayla, Audrey, Alena, and Adalyn. It\u2019d just been Audre and Ayla at first, but their father\u2019s second wife had come packaged with the indomitable Audrey. When Wife #2 passed quite suddenly from belatedly discovered leptomeningeal disease, he brought the three girls, aged twelve, seventeen, and twenty-one, to get their meningitis vaccinations, which, no two ways about it, was where he met the woman who was to be his third wife. Me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By the time the twins arrived, it\u2019d been decided that they\u2019d continue the tradition of names beginning with A. Myself, I thought it\u2019d be nice to break away. Didn\u2019t mind a Darby, or a Christine. But the older girls sensed my discomfort and pressed down hard, insisting on keeping with convention. In private, I consulted with their father. You already have an Audre and an Audrey. Are you sure? <\/em>Truthfully, I was afraid he\u2019d mix them up. He wasn\u2019t getting any younger, and his memory had never been crystal. The thought of five similarly named girls wandering around in that big house just seemed like a trap. You want to know the worst part? Ask me my name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Call me Anita<\/em>, I said, before the battle lines had been drawn. I was only twenty-three, I had no peers to consult with. All my girlfriends had found men still on their first go. Later, they\u2019d say: you should have established authority first thing. Don\u2019t try to be their friend. Where was this advice when I was first inducted into the family? Not yet hatched, I suppose. Anyway, being authoritarian wouldn\u2019t have worked. And the girls knew it. Anita<\/em>, they\u2019d say, we\u2019re out of eggs<\/em>. Or, You\u2019re so cute<\/em>\u2014Anita<\/em>. Wielded at a distance, as if to remind me that my presence in the house was but a passing amusement to them. Even the twins didn\u2019t anchor me: the other wives had come and gone, too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Audre, the eldest, is saying it now. Don\u2019t mind Anita, she takes a while to process things.<\/em> The way she always says it, Ah-ni-ta, the ta<\/em> a harsh spit. I look to David, but he is of no help. He\u2019s in that spot men eventually all find themselves in, between enamored and guilty. It\u2019s the first we\u2019re hearing of the affair, and looking at Audre, I can\u2019t shake the feeling that there\u2019s a smugness in her eyes, a certain challenge in the set of her chin. She crosses her legs, her hand snakes into his. I can\u2019t believe how reckless they\u2019re being. Life can\u2019t be lived on a whim. And yet. David is one of my oldest friends, and I had no clue. Even though it\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve had to see him for my herniated disc, I meet him and Celine at least once a month for lunch. Celine. Oh god, Celine. I look at him again. His eyes are pleading. I can tell he\u2019s asking permission to smile, to take Audre\u2019s side. So, it\u2019s that fresh. A fifty-eight-year-old man, still hanging on the tail end of his mistress\u2019s every sentence. Audre says it again: Earth, earth to Anita.<\/em> And laughs. It\u2019s the laugh that does it for me. I put a hand on my husband\u2019s lap, turn to my old friend and orthopedist, David, and say, You know, darling, we should all have lunch<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The lunch is set for the first Friday of the following month. We can\u2019t do weekends, because then Celine will want to know where her husband is. The other four girls and their Davids have flexible schedules and somehow make it work. In the lead up to that lunch, I often wonder if Audre regrets announcing the relationship to her father and me in that way. I turn that analytical eye on myself, too. What is it in me that drove me to propose that disaster, lay that trap?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Was I conscious of what I was doing? The girls think so, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just shy of a decade later, at their father\u2019s funeral, Audre will say, flatly, while picking at a cucumber and egg sandwich, Now you\u2019re free, Anita<\/em>. She doesn\u2019t clarify, but we both know she\u2019s referring to that lunch. I don\u2019t want to look at her, so I stare at her sandwich instead. Cucumber and egg, her father\u2019s favorite. Deceptively simple, but hard to get right. The cucumbers have to be pickled in rice vinegar, sunomono style. And the eggs boiled for ten-and-a-half minutes, then whipped with kewpie mayonnaise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Friday comes, I spend all morning perfecting the sandwiches, then arranging them on the lunch tray. When my husband tries to steal one, I send him out for fruits. It\u2019s a last-minute decision, and I give him a list of what I want, in order of priority: mango, and if that\u2019s not available, then jackfruit, or rambutan. I can only breathe easy when I hear the car pull out of the driveway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He returns with the first set of Davids. He found the twins wandering around the market with them, trying to settle on an appropriate gift. They tumble out of the car, all limbs and laughter, and together the Davids present me a massive bouquet of wildflowers. Double the size for double the girls, they say. As for my husband, he\u2019s found the mango, my first choice. I peel and dice it, populating the table with small dishes of yellow flesh, when Audrey walks in with her David. They\u2019ve brought wine, and I feel defensive as I send her to decant the bottle into a carafe.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then, Audre and my old friend David arrive. They come empty-handed, as if to assume the position of host and hostess, as if to claim this lunch as thrown for their benefit. The younger Davids giggle nervously; the twins must have given them the background. I don\u2019t let it get to me. I offer them a drink, which the traitor David accepts. We all take our seats, and wait.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ayla flies in half an hour late, corresponding David in tow, and looks disappointed that we\u2019re all still civil. Anita, David, David, Anita<\/em>. Dad<\/em>. Ayla has a laugh like a horse. It puts you on edge. To ask her why she\u2019s late would be to offer her an opportunity to humiliate\u2014No. We return to the conversation at hand, which vaguely, but also clearly, includes dear, absent, hapless, betrayed, Celine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don\u2019t even like Celine. If you asked me directly, I wouldn\u2019t be able to name one compelling thing about her. We met in church, after my wedding, when the twins were still germinating secretly under the frou-frou of my corset. She was a friend of the family, inducted by Wife #2. So I inherited her. She\u2019d pressed her husband\u2019s card into my hand, told me to call if I ever needed company or orthopaedic work. What kind of woman outsources friendship to her husband? Though it\u2019s true that Celine\u2019s David and I got along swimmingly. From our first appointment, I knew. He had the reassuring air of an anchor, weighty and rooted, from which Celine ballooned. Even though she was absent in that treatment room, David\u2019s steadiness conjured her; it made you, a female, feel safe. In friendship with him, you were sexless, and could release yourself from the trappings of charm. Very quickly, over the course of treatment for a pinched nerve, David and I became close friends, bedrocked on his commitment to Celine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Where is she during this lunch, Celine? She is back at the church, cross-stitching bible verses on the dresses of dolls, to be distributed at the Christmas service in two weeks. Every perfect and good gift is from God above. James 1:17. Poor, boring, good Celine. She\u2019s been doing this for years. There isn\u2019t a family within a hundred-meter radius without one of those dolls. When children bring them home, the idea is that they\u2019ll carry these verses with them too, and, worrying the dolls over and over, that the verses will catch, and grow. That she\u2019ll plant these beacons of morality in homes all throughout town. That\u2019s Celine for you. She\u2019s been volunteering at the church for as long as I\u2019ve known her, and even after the divorce, she will stay. But we will go. We will drive twenty minutes more to attend Sunday service at another church, which is helmed by a fire-and-brimstone sort. I look at her David, who is no longer hers, though she does not know it yet. He\u2019s looking at Audre, my oldest. The others are all looking at me, at him, at Audre, their gazes flickering between us, as if afraid to miss the slightest blink.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Audrey\u2019s David gets up to pour the wine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m sure the twins drink, but in front of me, their faces are stone as the carafe passes them over. Everyone remarks on how similar we are, how perfectly they take after me, but already the twins must be keeping secrets from me, maybe even from each other. Their Davids will only last one and three months more, and then they will refer to this period as the Davidic era, and laugh and laugh and laugh.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a common enough name.\u201d This is Audrey\u2019s David, the wine-pouring David. He says it apologetically; he\u2019s a therapist with a reasonable attitude toward everything. \u201cI was in school with two other Davids, myself.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cBut all five!\u201d I say. He just shrugs: everything about this situation is unusual. The twins interject. Alena, older by twelve-and-a-half minutes, punches her David in the shin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI picked you because<\/em> of your name.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adalyn: \u201cAnd me, because it\u2019d be funny.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The twins glance at each other, and say, perfectly synced: \u201cWe\u2019re collecting Davids.\u201d They dissolve into laughter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m embarrassed. I say, \u201cWhat one does, the other has to do. You should see their rooms. It\u2019s a compulsion.\u201d I mean to say that with them, everything is a game, but that their playfulness is simply a byproduct of a sheltered youth and shouldn\u2019t be taken to heart. Their Davids don\u2019t seem to mind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Therapist David sets the carafe down and settles back into his seat. I can see Audrey resting a hand on his thigh, gratefully. He speaks directly to Ayla\u2019s David, the latecomer, making general, safe inquiries about his family. I find myself leaning forward. I know nothing of Ayla\u2019s David. I hadn\u2019t paid him any attention.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOne brother. Older. Nathaniel. And then I think my mother just went down the Book, picked the most normal sounding name out of the lot. Nathaniel\u2019s other brothers in the Bible were all things like, Shimmy, or somet\u2019n.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cShimea.\u201d It\u2019s my friend David. Just like that, Celine is with us, again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ayla\u2019s David looks at him with interest. \u201cYou a deacon, or the like?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNo, an orthopaedist. But I attend.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I can\u2019t help it, I snort. It\u2019s very funny. And I know David has said it for my benefit, establishing a private bubble between us, of warmth and banter. For a moment, I feel like nothing has changed. But when I look up, it\u2019s Audre smirking, Audre amused. Audre, just two years my junior, with her limp, dirty hair, which she shaved off once, after I ran my hands through it, absentmindedly petting her head as I introduced her at a gathering as my oldest step-daughter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n David relents. He tells Ayla\u2019s David: \u201cIt\u2019s a good name, it means beloved.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ayla\u2019s David looks vaguely comforted. \u201cMy mother said he was a king.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cAnd a womanizer.\u201d Audre is smiling now, audacious, as she leans into David\u2019s chest. She hasn\u2019t even touched her wine. How could they do this to Celine? To me? I reach for another sandwich, pick at it. Technically, Audre has known David for as long as I have, though they\u2019d never spoken outside of absolute necessity. But two years back, I\u2019d rung David and asked if he could please have a quick look at Audre\u2019s wrist, which had been giving her trouble. Carpal tunnel was easy enough to diagnose, and she really just needed a prescription. I remember ringing him again to complain, afterward. Audre hadn\u2019t even thanked me. She treats me like a secretary,<\/em> I told him. She always has.<\/em> My old friend David had hummed on the phone, then said it\u2019d been tendonitis. Not carpal tunnel. Though the two were so similar that they were easily mistaken, one for the other.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We are done with lunch. The sandwiches I\u2019ve so painstakingly labored over, demolished. The mango, gone. Audre turns to my David and squeezes his bicep, bringing it sharply into existence. I blink, stunned.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe strudel,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He smiles at us, then goes to retrieve it from his car. So they did bring something after all. They\u2019ve kept it in the boot, a surprise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s your favorite,\u201d Audre continues, in David\u2019s absence. She\u2019s speaking to her father. As if I\u2019m not there. \u201cDave and I drove way out of town to get it. It was his idea; he knew you\u2019d been craving it.\u201d Dave? I hear a waver in her voice, I look at Audre more closely.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But a buzz of distractible excitement has settled over the table.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m momentarily confused, until I hear Ayla explaining to her David: \u201cIt\u2019s this place we used to go to, as kids. It\u2019s by our first house, when we were still living with Mom. We haven\u2019t had it in years<\/em>.\u201d She turns to her older sister. \u201cHow\u2019d you know it\u2019d still be good? I wouldn\u2019t dare. I\u2019d be so afraid it\u2019d disappoint.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before Audre can reply, David returns with two long boxes of pale yellow. He heats it up in the oven for ten minutes, then the strudels are unveiled with ceremony, one apple, one mango. He looks at me apologetically. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know you\u2019d be serving mango.\u201d Puts a slice of the apple strudel on my plate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s warm. I can see the glazing winking at me, the brushed sugar melted slightly from the heat. Beside me, my husband digs his fork in, bringing a big wedge up to his mouth. He\u2019s delighted and seems to have no compunction about the scene unfolding before him. We\u2019re all adults here<\/em>, he said, when I\u2019d raised my objections in private. What they choose to get up to is their business<\/em>. He chews loudly. The twins exchange glances of wonder: the strudel is very good. Still? Ayla is smiling, so it must live up to memory. A David, not my David, is exclaiming, asking for the baker\u2019s address. I look back down at my slice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nobody really understood, when I married my husband. Of course, you could argue that those were different times. These days, a girl can go with a man twice her age without the world blinking, and separate just as easily. Not I. Sometimes, when you look back on your life, you think to yourself: what else could I have done with the options that I\u2019d had? Back then, I knew how people talked, but I\u2019d been determined to weather it through. I married for affection, but, yes, also for agency. And haven\u2019t I played my part? I remade myself in the image of a perfect wife, I committed to becoming a step mother when I was barely past twenty myself, I\u2019ve always been faithful, even when I\u2019ve had occasion to stray. I stayed. People can say what they want, but I gave myself and the twins a life not otherwise possible, and there\u2019s no shame in that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A year after his funeral, Audrey will call me. My overachieving, perfectly sculpted middle child. She wants my recipe for the cucumber and egg sandwiches. She\u2019s tried pickling the cucumbers several ways, but can never quite get it how he liked it. Of course, she admits, it could just be her memory. After all, so much time has passed. It could be that they were perfectly ordinary sandwiches, and she\u2019s inflated them in her mind over the years, enhanced by her step-father\u2019s enthusiastic appreciation. I give her the recipe; there is no longer reason for me to withhold. A few days after that, she calls again. They are exactly as she remembers. Perfect.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I invite her back to the house, where I live alone. The twins, who everyone said resembled me so, have flown the coop. Ayla married her David, and they\u2019ve moved to Germany. Audre and I keep out of each other’s way. When Audrey shows up, I am surprised to see that she is very pregnant. It hadn\u2019t worked out with therapist David precisely because he wanted kids and she didn\u2019t, but I suppose the right person can correct a wrong situation. Her new husband is apparently very nurturing. As we sit together, eating sliced cucumber, Audrey asks to see the dolls again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How does she know I wouldn\u2019t have tossed them? She reads the question in my eyes and says, You\u2019ve always been one to punish yourself, Anita<\/em>. Her smile is mirthless and tired.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After the strudels are done with, there\u2019ll be a moment of awkward limbo, a pause. Then, someone, one of the twins\u2019 Davids, asks to see their room, picking up on an earlier thread. We all troop upstairs, my husband and I, the five girls, their Davids. Push open their door. Enter the room. The twins are vibrating with mischief, excitement. Nothing is serious to them yet, they have no skin in the game. The world bears no stakes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It had once been two rooms, but we knocked the middle wall down, so the effect is that of perfect symmetry. A long room, folded in half, one side leaving a precise imprint on the other. Their beds, desks, even the random entrails of their mess, mirrored exactly on each side. I turn and see Audre\u2019s hand on my David\u2019s lower back, rubbing it slowly, an act of intimacy that makes me feel awfully vulnerable.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But by then it is already too late.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The twins run up to David, their eyes shining. They see him as a funny old family friend, and throughout the lunch, they\u2019ve been watching him with growing amusement as he affects a veneer of cool, trying to keep up with the younger boyfriends. I\u2019ve seen them exchange glances at his occasional stumble and looked away, burning from secondhand embarrassment. But David has taken it in stride, played along. He doesn\u2019t blink until that moment. In their hands, the twins hold a pair of Celine\u2019s dolls, worn soft from years of attachment. Do you remember,<\/em> they say. Do you?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A decade later, in that same room, Audrey will turn the dolls over in her hand, flip one of their dresses up. Along the hem: James 1:17. Every perfect and good gift is from God above. She reads it out softly. They really take after you,<\/em> she tells me, finally. She puts a hand on her belly, and asks: Can I have this one?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The strudel, it turns out, has gone bad. Perhaps it is the fact that it has been sitting in the car throughout lunch, cooking slowly. Perhaps it is the burden of what it was called to do. After Audre\u2019s David, Celine\u2019s David, my David, mine, throws up all over the doorway of the twin\u2019s room, something shatters. My friend David sees the flash of dismay in Audre\u2019s eyes and in it, his own pitifulness reflected. The twins snatch the dolls away.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By the time the mop is retrieved and the cleaning cloths wrung and sponged, it is already over. The hopefulness of the afternoon has been punctured. An air of frailty overcomes David. He puts one hand on each twin\u2019s head heavily, first Adalyn, then Alena, without seeing them: they are the same to him. Says goodbye to the rest of us, politely. Audre climbs into the car with him and they drive off a little way, before parking behind the church and separating quietly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He is a good person, my David. He returns and confesses everything to Celine, who cannot forgive him. They file for divorce shortly after, and David transfers to a different clinic, out of town, for the remainder of his practice. Neither of them speak to me again; they ignore my calls. I respect them for that, at least. And if there are any significant developments in Audre\u2019s personal life after that, I am never privy to them. Whatever relationship we might have had is lost with that lunch party.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But all of that is later. Before the end, the apple strudel sits, untouched, on my plate. Everyone has already gone for seconds, and it\u2019s becoming uncomfortably clear that I don\u2019t mean to eat mine. My husband, who\u2019s already had a slice of the apple, then the mango, then the apple again, tries to make a joke of it. \u201cIf you\u2019re not eating that.\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The only David that really exists in that room is quiet. He\u2019s looking at me, and I know in his face I will see that same pleading expression, betraying his naive desire for everything to be okay. Despite the disaster of the affair. Despite the fact that this is a small town, that it cannot last. Despite the fact that we have an unspoken understanding, he and I, of solidity, of accountability. Our friendship built on the assurance of things being exactly as they should.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In that moment, if I take a bite, he thinks, it will somehow all work out. It will resolve itself. He cannot possibly believe this, but he does.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am not looking at him. If I see that plea in his eyes, my resolve will tremble. I know this much about myself. I am not looking anywhere, except resolutely at my plate, where the shiny slice of pastry sits.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Already the twins are scheming. Already the die is cast. My hands twitch by my sides, and I grip the edges of my skirt to steady them. Audrey, my perfectly poised child, gets up and begins clearing the plates. She gestures to her David, who collects the glasses and carafe. There\u2019s a scraping of chairs. Everyone is up, now, except me, starting the dishwasher, cracking jokes, whipping the dishcloths between them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My friend David gets up too, to use the bathroom. He hesitates, then leaves a kiss on Audre\u2019s forehead, a chaste compromise. It\u2019s just Audre and I now. I raise my eyes, we look at each other. I am shocked to see that her gaze is fierce, fervent.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cMum,\u201d she says, her voice controlled and low, and suddenly I can see that I\u2019ve gotten it all wrong, but that it\u2019s too late, and has been too late for some time now, \u201cplease.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the time, everyone\u2019s partner had the same name\u2014David.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6610,"template":"","categories":[9,48,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6603","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-fiction","category-literary-features"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n