Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts (22 page)

“All I want is for you to be happy, Keats. And if I were certain that your happiness lay with Tom, I wouldn’t say another word. But given how young you are, there’s a very good chance that he’s not the right man for you, and if that’s true, I want you to realize that sooner and not later, when you have kids and a house and a mortgage and a life together that’s painful to untangle.”

I whip around. “You’re judging me because of
your
mistakes. And that’s not fair. I’m completely different from you.”

“Not as different as you might think. When I was twenty-five, I thought I knew everything, too.”

The toast pops up. “How wonderful for you that you’re so much wiser now.” I throw the slices onto a plate. “I’m going to go hang with Milton for a while.”

“Good,” she says. “He needs the company.”

“You think?” I take the toast upstairs. Milton and I play several rounds of
Call of Duty
, and then I come back downstairs and Mom says, “Your father just called.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Much better. He’s starting to really sound like himself. For better or worse. He did have a request for us, though. Since Hopkins is supposed to get in late tonight—”

“Oh, is she? I didn’t know that. No one tells me anything.”

“—he asked if we could all have an early dinner together tomorrow. Says he has something important to discuss.”

“Can I bring Tom?”

“That would be up to your father. He’s the host.”

“And he invited
you
?”

“He said I
had
to be there. I want to see Hopkins, so that’s fine with me. Oh—I’ll have to cancel my other plans.”

“Another date?” She nods. I raise my eyebrows. “Who is it this time? Donald Trump?”

“It’s Paul again.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Paul? Yuck. What happened to Michael?”

She laughs. “And you accuse me of intruding into
your
personal life.”

14.

I
n the midst of my misery, there’s one small ray of relief. I never told Tom what happened in this very apartment last week, so he can calmly walk into the room where Jacob and I rolled around naked together. If he knew—

He doesn’t. Thank God.

This proves I was right not to tell him.

But it doesn’t help with my internal distress. To be back here so soon with Tom…the guilt and shame rise up again as sharp as they were that very first night.

It almost ruins my excitement at seeing my sister. It’s been about four months since I last saw her on Christmas Day, but that was brief—Tom and I were at the house just long enough to open gifts, and she was gone the next day—and so much has gone on with Mom and Dad since then that it feels like it’s been a lot longer.

She greets us at the door to Dad’s apartment and gives me a hug, then tells me I look tired.

Hopkins is tall and thin, angular like Mom but without Mom’s unexpectedly wide hips. She’s narrow all over. Even her face is long and narrow, and so are her nose and elegant eyebrows and her ponytail. She’s pretty—at least
I
think so; Tom doesn’t agree, maybe because she’s so decidedly ungirly. I’ve never seen her wear makeup or do anything with her hair other than wear it straight down on her shoulders or up in a ponytail. And she dresses terribly in shapeless dresses or dowdy skirts or jeans that are too short. Right now she’s wearing khakis that gape at the waist and sag at the butt and a dark blue oxford shirt that looks like it came from the men’s department. Everything about her screams, “Notice my brains, not my looks.” She doesn’t need to fuss over her clothing or wear mascara: she’s Hopkins Sedlak, the smartest, most powerful person in any room, no matter what she’s wearing.

She shakes Tom’s hand and gives him a cool kiss on the cheek. “I can’t believe you guys are still together after all these years,” she says before leading us over to the coffee table area, where Mom and Dad are already sitting.

Milton’s not there. I ask Mom about it, and she claims he “almost” came, which probably means that she asked him to come, he said he’d “think about it,” and then when it was time to leave, he said, “Not this time but maybe the next.” It’s never the next time. I wish she’d just confront him, force him to realize he’s always postponing joining the human race, and then just drag him along. But she never seems to have the energy or the time—or maybe the inclination—to do that.

Dad’s apartment is a lot messier than when I was there last. There are papers, journals, and electronics (a laptop, a BlackBerry, an iPad) scattered over every surface and even some dirty clothing on the floor. Hopkins has changed the landscape of the place.

I had forgotten what a slob she is. When she lived at home, she’d shove off her shoes the second she didn’t want them on her feet anymore, and I spent most of my childhood either tripping over her sneakers or picking them up and putting them to the side. No one else ever bothered. It wasn’t just her shoes, either. She left a trail of food and tissues and papers behind her wherever she went. I once complained to Mom that Hopkins made the biggest messes in the house and never helped clean up, and Mom shrugged and said, “She has more important things on her mind”—like she was
proud
of Hopkins for not taking the time to toss out her own peach pits.

Dad’s enthroned in one of the armchairs. His face is still pale and thin, but he’s sitting up straight, he’s dressed, his hair is combed, and he looks better than he has in weeks. I ask him what this meeting is about, and he says, “All will be revealed in time.”

I offer to clear the coffee table, but when I pick up Hopkins’s laptop, she instantly jumps up and grabs it from me. I pile up some of her papers and follow her into the office where the sofa bed is open, sheets all rumpled, the blanket tangled. While we’re alone in there, I ask her why she thinks Dad wanted everyone to come tonight.

She says, “You’ll see,” in a way that makes it clear Dad has already told her. He told the daughter who
wasn’t
by his side when he was hospitalized. It hurts, but it’s not Hopkins’s fault, so I swallow the hurt and ask her what’s going on at work these days.

 “It’s been absolutely—oh, hold on a second.” She pulls her BlackBerry out of her pocket and peers at it. “Sorry, Keats, I have to take this. You go on and join the others and I’ll be right out.” I had forgotten how different her voice is from mine. It’s low and flat with very little intonation. It’s a lecturing voice, not a conversational voice. As I leave the room, she’s rapping out a toneless “Hopkins Sedlak” into the phone, which I guess is how she answers it.

I usually just say hi.

“Ever hear the one about the prodigal daughter?” I say to Tom when I come to sit down next to him on the sofa.

“Isn’t it a son?”

“Not in this case.”

“Huh?”

Before I can explain, the door opens and Jacob walks in with two restaurant takeout bags.

I stop breathing for a second. I had no idea he was coming. I’m paralyzed with horror at the thought of how this moment would have played out if I had told Tom about what happened. Thank god I didn’t. Thank god I didn’t.

Mom rushes forward, takes one of the bags, and kisses Jacob on the cheek. Hopkins wanders out of the guest room with the BlackBerry clamped to her ear and waves at him. I stay on the sofa with Tom who calls out a genial greeting.

When Tom settles back down, I feel the sofa cushion shift ever so slightly under me, and unwillingly, I flash back to the other night, Jacob’s body on mine, my hands pinned, my mouth and legs open and eager. There’s an alcoholic haze over it all, but I remember it pretty clearly.

I reach for Tom’s hand and put my head on his shoulder. That’s when Jacob comes to join us around the coffee table. I want to sit up straight but am worried he’ll think I’m moving away from Tom because of him, and that’s the last thing I want him to think, so I keep my head on Tom’s shoulder, but it’s getting uncomfortable—my neck is aching—and I feel stupid, so I finally go ahead and sit up, but I can’t look anyone in the eyes.

I leap gratefully to my feet when Mom says she needs someone to help her set the food out. I follow her into the kitchen where she worries out loud that Indian food might be too rich and spicy for Dad, but as we peel back the foil tops to the containers, she sees that Jacob ordered mostly plain tandoori chicken and white rice. “I should have known he’d be careful,” she says, pleased.

“Because he’s so perfect?” I say. “Because he never does anything wrong? Oh no, not
Jacob
.”

She stares at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” I avoid her eyes, pretend to be busy folding up the tinfoil. “It’s just—why is he always at our family get-togethers?”

“Ask your father. He’s in charge tonight, not me.” She pulls a stack of paper plates out of a bag. “Oh, good—Jacob got these, too. There aren’t nearly enough plates here for all of us—I’m sure it never even occurred to Larry to think about that.” Napkins and forks come out of the same bag. “I’m so glad Hopkins made it, aren’t you? I feel like there’s a huge weight off my mind. The other doctors might have missed something, but if Hopkins says he’s fine, he’s fine.”

I murmur something, an assent, I guess.

She goes on. “I’ve got to take her to get her hair cut, though. Did you see how long that ponytail is? I bet it reaches her waist when it’s down.”

“She’s old enough to get her own hair cut if she wants to, Mom.”

“I know, but she never gets around to it. She’s too busy doing other things. I always take her while she’s in town.”

Why does this bother me? As I put serving spoons in the food, I try to figure it out. It has something to do with the weird mixture of idolatry and infantilizing that my mother shows toward Hopkins, like she’s someone whose brain is so overdeveloped she can’t be expected to function like a normal human being. Mom’s that way with Milton, too.

It’s like the very fact that I’m able to take care of myself proves how not brilliant I am. How ordinary.

It’s not fair. Do I need to be incompetent to be considered in their intellectual league?

I’m still seething about this when my mother tells me to call the others in to eat.

I go back into the living room. Hopkins is sitting at the edge of the sofa, talking in her rapid, expressionless way to Jacob and Dad, who are in the armchairs. Her back is basically to Tom, even though he’s sitting next to her and listening. “Neurologists owe all their knowledge to the nail gun,” she’s saying. “If it weren’t for stupid people shooting nails into their own heads, we’d never have figured out the different regions of the brain.”

“You’d still have strokes,” Jacob says.

“Strokes are good,” she concedes. “Bullets help, too.”

“Strokes are good?” Tom repeats from behind her. “How can a stroke be good?”

No one responds to that.

“Who was the guy who got the iron rod through his head and lived?” Jacob asks Hopkins.

“Phineas Gage,” my father instantly cuts in. “It’s such a great name. So memorable. A novelist couldn’t have come up with a better one.”

“
That
he remembers?” my mother says to no one in particular. She’s come up behind me without my noticing. “He can’t remember my maiden name or anyone’s birthday, but he can remember that?”

“Wait, who’s Phineas Gage?” Tom asks.

No one responds to that, either. It’s like he’s not even there. Hopkins just keeps addressing Dad and Jacob. “If you really want to learn something new about the brain, you should just hire someone to run down to a construction site and start shooting nails at every head he sees.”

“That must be why they wear those yellow helmets,” Jacob says. “To protect themselves against rogue neurologists.”

Hopkins laughs. “Some people just don’t appreciate the spirit of scientific inquiry.” Those two seem to be getting along well.

“Some people don’t like taking nails to the head,” I say. “Anyway, isn’t that the point of all our modern imaging equipment? To learn about the brain without actually damaging it?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Hopkins says, and now it’s Jacob’s turn to laugh. A little too generously, like he’s making some kind of point about where his allegiance lies, about which Sedlak daughter he approves of.

“Fine,” I say. “You go shoot some nails into someone’s head. Just come eat first. Dinner’s ready.”

Tom’s up and across the room before the words are out of my mouth. He has his plate filled before the rest of us make it to the kitchen. Once we’ve gotten our food, we all gather around the coffee table again, Tom and Mom and I at one end, the three others at the other end.

I chow down mechanically, not particularly enjoying the food, eating out of nervousness, not pleasure. As soon as I stop shoveling in rice and chicken, I feel sick to my stomach.

Hopkins is ignoring her own barely touched plate in favor of punching away at her BlackBerry—e-mails or texts, I assume. They’re probably all wildly important. Every time she hits
send
, she’s probably saving someone’s life or at least his memory.

I keep reminding myself of that as the meal continues and I find myself wanting to snap at her to stop playing with her phone and actually eat
something
, for god’s sake. It’s not just that her food is getting cold. If I’m being honest, I have to admit that I’m jealous of the fact she’s so much thinner than I am, jealous that she seems to be indifferent to eating. It’s always been like that. She’s never cared about meals, had to be reminded to eat when she got busy or was studying. I’ve never in my life forgotten to eat, and if food’s in front of me, I’m eating it. It’s why I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t wish I could lose five pounds.

She finally puts the phone down, and starts telling Jacob and Dad about the case she’s been working on (and probably e-mailing about)—the young mother with the repeating strokes. I can tell Mom is dying to hear what she’s saying. She keeps her head cocked in that direction, and while Tom tells her about some of his plans for his dad’s business—he wants to expand more in the direction of supplying uniforms and linens instead of just laundering them—her nod is more impatient than interested.