Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts (13 page)

It occurs to me that the sooner I get dinner on the table, the sooner this mistake of an evening will come to an end, so I excuse myself and head toward the kitchen.

When I get there, I realize that Jacob has followed me in.

“Can I help?”

“You know how to toss a salad?”

“Gee,” he says, “I’m not sure. Maybe you could draw a diagram for me?”

I’m not in the mood to joke around. “The dressing’s in that bowl. Just whisk it a little more before pouring it on, will you?” I bend down to take the lasagna out of the oven where it’s been staying warm for the last half hour. I put it on top of the stove and peel back the tinfoil. The cheese is bubbling and it looks pretty good.
At least I didn’t ruin the food
, I think.

Jacob says in a low voice, “I’m sorry I misinterpreted your invitation, Keats. I guess I just assumed that since it was your birthday party, you wanted your dad here.”

“It’s no big deal.” I go to the refrigerator to get out the bowl of Parmesan cheese I grated by hand earlier that day out of some crazy Suzy Homemaker belief that I shouldn’t buy it pre-grated. Ninety percent of the time I eat takeout Chinese food and pizza for dinner, so why I insisted that everything be homemade and top quality tonight is beyond me. It made sense earlier. But not now, not when I’m thinking I just want these people out of my house. Including Tom. Especially Tom.

Why did he have to point out Jacob’s mistake? He’s supposed to be the host, for god’s sake, and make people feel welcome in our home, not make them feel bad about a minor misunderstanding. Especially not when it was going to make an already awkward evening even more awkward.

“I’m actually really happy to have my dad here,” I say. “The only reason I didn’t invite him in the first place is because I know he doesn’t like to go out much.”

“He really wanted to come tonight,” Jacob says. He’s poured the dressing on the salad and now he’s tossing it carefully, gingerly. When Tom tosses a salad, lettuce flies everywhere, and if I complain, he grins and says, “I can’t control my own strength,” but Jacob just gently scoops and tumbles the leaves with the servers. “He’s been kind of—” He searches for the right word. “Kind of nostalgic, I guess. Wistful. I think he misses being with his family.”

“He didn’t spend any more time with me when he was still in the house.”

“I know. It’s not logical. But something about moving out has shaken him up.”

“Then I’m especially glad you brought him tonight.” I glance up in time to see the relief on Jacob’s face, so maybe I’ve fixed the damage Tom has done.

“So how do you know Cathy?” he asks. “I’ve never heard you mention her.”

“Through work. She’s so nice, I wanted us to become better friends.”
Man, I’m smooth. A born matchmaker.

“Cool. Salad’s all tossed. What else can I do for you?”

“Carry it into the dining room, by which I mean the table in the living room.”

“Got it.” He picks the salad up. As he moves past me, he leans his head in toward mine and whispers, “If you’d just told me it was a setup in the first place, Keats, I’d have known not to bring your father.”

I whisper back, “But would you have come?”

“Yeah,” he says, a little sadly. “I can use all the help I can get.” He leaves the kitchen.

* * *

“So,” Tom says when all our guests have gone, “think they hit it off?”

I’m looking around the kitchen. How did five people make so many dishes? I wish I hadn’t used separate plates for the salad. “They barely said two words to each other.”

“That’s because your father never stopped talking.”

He has a point. Dad orated at dinner. That’s the only way to put it. If people were bored, he was oblivious to it, although both Cathy and Jacob looked convincingly interested in whatever he was saying. Not Tom, though. He’s never found my father particularly fascinating—and I kind of love him for that because most of the time I don’t, either.

It worried me that my father said he was tired and needed to get home when it was still pretty early. We had just finished eating the lasagna, so I rushed out the flourless chocolate cake—it had taken me twenty minutes that afternoon to whip and fold in the egg whites—and everyone sang a quick and tuneless “Happy Birthday to You.”

Dad handed me an envelope with an iTunes gift card inside. I thanked him but the gift had to be Jacob’s idea. No way Dad even knows what iTunes is.

Cathy gave me a small knit beanie in dark green. There was no tag on it, so I asked her if she had knit it herself, and she said with horror, “God, no! Why? Does it look homemade?” I assured her it was great and put it on. It was itchy, but I was worried it would hurt her feelings if I took the beanie off, so I left it on, reaching up surreptitiously to scratch underneath it when she wasn’t looking.

Jacob and Dad left as soon as they’d eaten their cake, but Cathy stayed for a while longer. Too long really. It wasn’t late, it was just that both Tom and I were ready for the evening to be over. But she had finally found her voice (now that the guy I wanted her to make an impression on was gone) and chatted away happily about the class she was student teaching and how at least five of the kids didn’t speak any English and how she had invented some sign language to communicate with them. And by “invented,” she seemed to mean that she used the same universal gestures for writing and walking and listening that anyone would use.

Tom and I did our best to smile and look interested, and when she finally sighed and said, “This was so lovely, but I probably should go grade papers,” we did our best not to look
too
relieved.

I pulled the beanie off and tossed it on the table the second Tom closed the door behind her.

“So what do you think I should do now?” I ask Tom as we stand there in the kitchen surveying the damage. I feel discouraged.

“Let’s get a load of dishes going and leave the rest for tomorrow.”

“No, I mean about Jacob and Cathy. Do I wait to see if one of them asks me for the other’s phone number? Or should I try to talk to them, push them a little bit?”

“Keats,” he says wearily, “you put them in the same room for an entire evening. If they want to see each other again, that’s up to them. Your work is done.”

“I know, but they’re both so clueless.”

“They’re adults. They can figure it out. Anyway, why do you care so much?”

“I don’t. But they both seem kind of lonely.”

“Jacob chooses to spend all his free time with an old man. You can’t do that and expect to have a social life.”

“But it’s my father he’s spending time with. If he didn’t, I might have to. So that means I owe him some help.”

“Which is what you gave him tonight. You’re done.” He puts his arms around me. “If you really want to take pity on someone, I could use that massage you offered me a few nights ago.”

“But it’s my birthday.
I
should get the massage.”

“It’s not your birthday. That was four days ago.”

“It’s my birthday dinner night.” He looks skeptical. “Fine. We’ll compromise. You give me a massage.”

“How is that a compromise?”

“Yeah, about that…I’ll figure out an answer while you’re rubbing my back.”

“You always win,” he says amiably.

“When I win, you win,” I say, coaxing him along toward the bedroom, abandoning the dishes until the morning.

“How do you figure?”

“Shh,” I say and throw myself facedown on the bed. “Don’t talk. Rub.”

8.

W
hen I check my e-mail the next morning, I have one from Milton. He’s CC’ed Hopkins on it. It’s short.

Mom was in bed all day
.
Still there.

That’s all, but that’s all he needs to say.

I e-mail them both back.
Should we do anything?

A minute later, Hopkins’s response comes:
I’ll take care of it. I’ll call her shrink and see if he thinks we should play around with her meds. I think we can cut this one off quickly.

It’s a relief to leave it in Hopkins’s hands, but I can’t shake the worried, sick feeling—too many childhood memories of anxious days spent waiting for Mom to emerge and be herself again.

Tom comes into the living room where I’m still staring unhappily at the computer and says, “Everything all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” I say and get up and go into the bathroom to get ready for work. What’s the point of talking about it? His mother goes to a resort in Arizona once a year when she feels like she needs a break. It’s not that he wouldn’t understand or be sympathetic, it’s just that I’m sick of being the one with the messed-up family. Anyway, maybe Hopkins is right and this one won’t be bad. She should know, right?

* * *

Sure enough, Milton e-mails us late on Tuesday afternoon.
She’s up. Quiet. But up.

And when Mom calls me at work two days after that, she sounds like herself. Her speech is back to its normal rhythm—well, maybe just a little slower than usual—as she informs me that she found a box filled with some old letters of mine. “Can I toss them?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what they are.”

“You want me to look through them while I’ve got you on the phone?”

“No, don’t.” I was a counselor in training for a couple of the years Tom and I were dating, and I didn’t have e-mail or phone privileges, so he wrote me long letters. I don’t know if those letters are in there, and I don’t even remember if there was anything that racy in them—I think he mostly talked about his job working for his dad that summer and what movies he’d seen—but they’re private, and I don’t want my mother reading them. “I’ll go through them next time I’m home.”

“I can’t just leave everything lying around for you all to go through at some unspecified later date,” she says irritably. “I’m trying to get this house in showing condition and I can’t sit around waiting for you and Hopkins to take time out of your busy lives to help out for once.”

Normally I’d snap back, but given her current fragility, I keep my temper. “I’m sorry you’re overwhelmed, Mom, and I know Hopkins hasn’t made it home yet, but I really have been doing my best to help.” It’s frustrating because I
know
her. She’s not actually working that hard. She’s seeing a big job in front of her and panicking about it rather than just working through it. That’s the reason our house is and always has been a mess: instead of attacking the problem slowly and steadily, she looks around, flips out at how much there is to do, flings her hands up, and complains to anyone who’ll listen that it’s an impossible task. That panic may even have triggered this last depressive episode. “I’ll come pick up the box, if that’s what you want.”

“That would be— Oh, wait, I just remembered. I’m going out to dinner near your place tomorrow night. I could drop it off. And maybe a few other things, too.”

“Why do I have a feeling I’m about to have something dumped on me that no one else wants?” I say. “Like the dining room table? Or Grandma’s old dresser? Or Milton?”

“Now that you mention it…” At the sound of her laugh, I release the breath I’ve been holding through this whole conversation—if she can laugh, she’s okay. “He’s very easy to take care of, just feed and water him once a week.”

“Nice try.”

“So did you have a good time on Sunday?”

I’m confused by the abrupt change of topic. “On Sunday?”

“Your birthday dinner.”

Shit. Who told her about that?
“It wasn’t really my birthday dinner. It was just dinner.”

“Your father said it was a birthday celebration. I think it’s great that you invited him. He needs to get out more. I just wanted to know how it was, that’s all.”

And to let me know that you know you were excluded, that I invited Dad and not you.
“It was totally last minute,” I say hastily. “And my real birthday celebration was with Tom, on my actual birthday.”

“Did he get you anything exciting?”

He carved my name into his flesh. Does that count?
“A necklace,” I say.

* * *

When she drops off the box at our house, she’s not alone. I answer our door and she’s standing next to some guy I’ve never seen before, a guy with thick gray hair and a handsomely craggy face. They’re both holding boxes. “Hi,” Mom says brightly. “Keats, meet Michael Goodman. Michael, meet Keats.”

Michael raises his box slightly. “I’d shake hands, but…”

“Come in,” I say, “and you can put it down.”

He does—they both do—and then we shake.

Tom enters from the bedroom, where he was watching TV. “Oh, look who’s here,” he says with a questioning glance at me. I had forgotten to tell him Mom was dropping by, and he’s wearing sagging sweats and a stained, worn-out T-shirt.

Michael introduces himself, and it’s their turn to shake hands.

“So where are you two kids off to this evening?” I ask.

“Kurosawa retrospective in Coolidge Corner,” Michael says.

“A little
Throne of Blood
action?”

“
Rashomon
actually, but I’m impressed. Most kids your age don’t know Kurosawa.”

“I learn just enough about stuff like this to make it sound like I’m more sophisticated than I actually am.”

“Have you ever seen a Kurosawa movie?”

“A couple, but only because she made me.” I nod in Mom’s direction.

“You?” Michael asks Tom, who shakes his head. “What kind of movies do you like?”

“I’m an action junkie,” Tom says. “James Bond, Jason Bourne—that kind of thing.”

“Kurosawa’s a great action director,” Michael says seriously. “
Seven Samurai
was the inspiration for a lot of Westerns that came after it.”

“Yeah?” Tom says. “Cool. I didn’t know that.”

I can’t stand the expression on my mother’s face—the politely bland mask that suggests she can’t let her actual feelings show when Tom’s talking—so I say abruptly, “You guys should probably get going if you’re having dinner before the movie.”

“Right,” Michael says, glancing at his watch.

I wave my finger at him. “Just make sure you get her home by ten.”