Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts (28 page)

“I’m nothing special, Mom. I’m no Hopkins.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She leans back in her chair. She’s wearing an old terry-cloth bathrobe over a nightgown. She was getting ready for bed when I rang the doorbell.

“You know what I mean. Hopkins is brilliant. I’m not. She saves lives. I…do Costco runs.”

“She’s a little crazy,” Mom says calmly. “You’re not. She lacks most social graces. You make people gravitate toward you. She’ll probably never have a husband or a family. One day—but not too soon, I hope—you’ll have both.”

I stare at her, jolted briefly out of my misery. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“When do I ever do that?” she says, and I’m surprised to hear myself actually laugh. She shakes her head, rakes her fingers through her gray-threaded dark hair, shifts in her seat. “I’ve never understood how you, of all our children, could have such an inferiority complex. Can’t you see that you’re the lucky one in this family?”

“If you call not being extraordinarily brilliant lucky.”

“If you’d stop feeling sorry for yourself for two seconds, you’d see how much easier most things are for you than for your siblings. Have you seen either of them at a cocktail party? It’s a disaster.”

“I know Milton can’t deal. But everyone adores Hopkins.”

“Many people admire her. Even more are grateful to her. But they don’t want to confide in her or go out for drinks with her.” She fingers the handle of her mug. “I’ve spent years watching you both when other people are around. People may listen to Hopkins because she’s got the stories and the expertise. But you’re the one everyone wants to sit next to. Like”—she casts about for an example—“like Jacob, for instance. The second you walk into a room, his face lights up. And he’s not the only—what’s the matter?”

I’ve buried my face in my hands. Words burst out of me before I can stop them. “I slept with him! With Jacob! At Dad’s apartment the night I stayed over. He was there, too, and we slept together. Right on Dad’s sofa!”

There’s a pause. And then my mother laughs. “Did you really?”

“It’s not funny! It was a huge mistake. A total disaster.”

“It does explain why he seemed a little off at dinner the other night.”

I grab a napkin off the table and wipe my nose with it. “He hates me.”

“I’m sorry I laughed,” she says. “But honestly, Keats, this is exactly what you’re supposed to be doing at your age. Trying things out. Sleeping with the wrong guy. Making stupid, unforgivable mistakes—and then forgiving yourself. I mean, if not now, when?”

“You’ve been doing a pretty good job of doing all that. And you’re not exactly twenty-five.”

“I know!” she says, clasping her hands to her chest with sudden delight. “It’s like that book we read when you were a kid, about the mother and daughter who change bodies—”

“
Freaky Friday
?”

“Right. You’ve been living the life of a middle-aged woman. I mean, that job of yours…” She sighs. “That job was meant to be done by a sixty-year-old woman who’s just happy to get out of the house because her husband was forced to retire and has nothing to do and is driving her crazy with all his little projects around the house, and she can’t take it anymore, so—”

“You’ve thought about this way too much. And it’s really a perfectly good job.”

She shakes her head. “Between that and being with Tom since forever, you’ve been living older than your years for too long. You need to get your youth back.”

“If I do, will you start acting
your
age? Let Dad move back in? Get a boring office job? Knit and bake?”

“God, no. I cut my own wild years too short. I’m owed a few more.” She cocks her head at me. “See? This is what happens if you don’t act out when you’re young—you do it when you’re my age. And I’m the first to admit it’s not a pretty sight.”

“You’re fine.” I release my legs and put my feet back on the floor. I start to say something, then stop.

“What?” Mom says.

“It’s just…” I hesitate, then say in a rush, “Why’d you call him the wrong guy?”

“What? Who?”

I evade her eyes and play with my mug, pushing the handle back and forth, watching the liquid slosh gently up the sides. “Jacob. You said I slept with the wrong guy.”

“I did?”

“You said that I was doing exactly what I should be doing at my age, like sleeping with the wrong guy. So that implies you think Jacob’s the wrong guy.”

“Oh, right. I guess I did say that. I just meant it in a general sense.”

“So you
don’t
think Jacob is the wrong guy?”

She waves an airy hand. “Oh, I love Jacob, you know that. And if you want to marry him in ten years, I’ll perform the ceremony myself. But any man is the wrong man for you right now. You need to spend some time alone, Keats. Get to know yourself. Seek out new experiences and new possibilities. Then, when you’re thirty—or forty—you can think about finding the right guy.”

“Thirty or forty?” I repeat with horror.

“There’s no rush.”

“Most women your age would want grandchildren.”

“I do,” she says. “I really do. And let’s be honest—you’re my best and possibly my
only
hope for them. But I can wait.”

“Hold on.” My phone’s vibrating. It’s been doing that on and off since I got there, but I’ve been ignoring it. I pull it out of my pocket and see I’ve missed four calls and seven texts. All from Tom. I show Mom. She sighs but doesn’t say anything. I put the phone back in my pocket.

Eventually I say into the quiet of the kitchen, “Was it awful, telling Dad you didn’t want to be married to him anymore?”

“I suspect,” my mother says slowly, “that it wasn’t all that different from what you just went through. Minus the tears—your father isn’t the crying type. But the anger, the resentment, the hurt—all pretty much what you experienced. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do.”

“I’m sorry I made you feel bad about it.”

She salutes me with her tea mug. “Welcome to the Heartbreakers of America Club, Keats. It reads a lot better than it lives.”

“I never want to go through that again.”

“Me neither.”

I close my eyes and let my head rest back on the chair. “I’m exhausted. I want to crawl into bed and sleep for a million years.”

“Go ahead. You’d better use Hopkins’s room, though, since Milton’s taken over yours. I have no idea if the bed’s made or not.”

“I’ll check.” I get up, but she catches at my arm.

“Keats, I’m serious about this. I don’t want you to become one of those women who go straight from one guy to the next because they’re afraid of being alone. Sooner or later in life, everyone’s alone. You need to get comfortable with yourself now while you’re still young, so you don’t make unnecessary compromises later out of fear.”

I promise her I’ll try and go up to bed.

There isn’t a single book in Hopkins’s room that I can read to get my mind off of Tom, just stacks of the comparative religion tomes, anatomy textbooks, and science journals she was already reading back in junior high. I’d kill for the distraction of a junky romance novel, so I slip into my old room thinking I’ll steal one off the shelves, but Milton’s asleep on the bed in there—still wearing his sweats and the shoes he put on that afternoon, like he was suddenly overtaken with exhaustion—so I leave quickly and empty-handed.

As tired as I am, I can’t get to sleep until past dawn. The mattress is awful—both thin and lumpy—and I’m not used to sleeping alone. I toss and turn for hours and then fall asleep so late that by the time I wake up again, it’s almost noon, and when I make my way downstairs, Mom’s rushing around, getting ready to meet Irv at a museum.

“A museum?” I say, sitting in my sweatpants and tank top at the breakfast booth, idly watching her search for her purse and coat. “That’s your idea of a date? Walking around a museum?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s boring. It’s what old ladies do.”

“Just check in on Milton, will you? Make sure he gets some lunch at some point.” She leaves.

I watch some TV and think about doing some packing, but I’m not really in the mood to poke through dusty old books and papers. I’m bored and restless. And lonely.

I have my MacBook with me, so I fool around online for a while, but when Izzy IMs me, I quickly close the computer. I have no idea if Tom’s talked to Lou yet, and I don’t want to have to pretend everything’s normal—or tell her I left him.

I try talking to Milton, but he’s playing some incomprehensible (to me) online game and says he can’t stop until he either wins or dies. “Kind of like life,” I say. He doesn’t respond, just peers at the screen and taps at the keyboard. I don’t blame him. I don’t know what I meant by that, either.

* * *

So you see, it’s not fear that makes me get in the car and drive to Jacob’s that evening.

It’s not what Mom’s worried about, that I’m afraid of being alone. It’s nothing like that.

It’s boredom. I’m so bored I could bang my head against the wall just to be doing something.

And also I want to see Jacob. I want to be face-to-face with him and tell him what happened. I want to see his expression when I say I left Tom for good.

Just thinking about it makes me feel kind of light-headed and excited.

See? Not fear. Other emotions entirely.

I’ve never been to Jacob’s apartment, so I have to look up his address in my mother’s address book. She must be the only person left in America who doesn’t have a computerized contacts list. The book literally says “Addresses” on its felt cover and has a tab for every letter of the alphabet, but that’s where the organization stops. Mom has crossed out and rewritten so many phone numbers and addresses for people over the years that entire pages are scribbled out.

There are three addresses for Jacob. One’s an apartment in Somerville—that one’s been crossed out—and one’s in Texas. That must be his real home. Or the closest thing he has to it. The third one is also a Somerville apartment, but this one isn’t crossed out, so I assume it’s still viable and copy it down.

I shower and blow my hair dry and take some time picking out a pair of jeans and a silky top from the stash of clothing I brought over the night before.

I stop by Milton’s room to let him know I’m going out. He nods indifferently and doesn’t look up.

I lock the front door behind me, go out to my car, put the address in my GPS, and feel more nervous than I think I’ve ever felt in my life as I drive the twenty-five minutes it takes me to get to Somerville. Once I’m off the Turnpike, I see lots of couples out walking or waiting in front of restaurants.

I feel lonely. With Tom, I was part of a couple. I was normal. Without him, I’m something alone and strange and different.

 A Sedlak.

It takes me a while to find a parking space near Jacob’s building. It’s that kind of neighborhood—tons of graduate students crammed into small apartment complexes. Every tenant has a car, but each driveway only has room for one or two, so the streets are packed with the spillover.

I finally find a space two blocks away that may not be entirely legal—it’s right on the edge of someone’s driveway, maybe goes over it a couple of inches—but they can definitely get out and I’m sick of circling.

It’s a cloudy, gray twilight, and I feel underdressed without a jacket. I shiver a little as I walk the two blocks to Jacob’s place. Even so, it feels good to be outside after being stuck in the grimy house all day.

I make my way back to his building. The door has been propped open, so I go in and then up a flight of stairs and find his apartment. Its number is spray painted on the door with the kind of stencils you can buy at a hardware store.

I take a deep breath. I feel winded, but not from the steps. From forgetting to breathe. The truth is I’m scared, which is silly. It’s just Jacob.

I knock. I wait.

Footsteps. So he’s there.

The door opens. Yes, he’s there. Wearing his usual button-down shirt (blue this time) and khakis.

I’m glad he looks like himself. I’m glad to see him. I’m glad I came.

“Hi,” I say, nervous but glad.

He looks startled. “Keats? What are you doing here?”

Before I can answer—“Keats?” says another voice. Someone else is there. She comes forward. It’s Cathy.

Wait—it’s their second date, and she’s already hanging out at his place?

But maybe it’s more than their second date. I haven’t spoken with her recently about him. Maybe they’ve seen each other a lot in the last week. Maybe they’re always together when they’re not at work.

Maybe they’re in love.

I want to throw up.

“Hey!” she says enthusiastically. “I didn’t know you were coming over!”

“I didn’t, either,” I say. They both look confused.

I don’t know what to do now. I wasn’t expecting him to have any guests, let alone this one. I say, “I, uh, just needed to ask Jacob about something.”

Jacob is studying my face. I probably look pretty distressed. I know I
feel
pretty distressed. “What’s wrong?” he says anxiously. “Is it your father?”

I grab blindly at the excuse. “Yes. Dad is—” I stop. Dad is
what
?

“What’s wrong?” he asks again, more urgently.

“I don’t know. He asked for you.” I lick my lips because they’ve gone dry. I can’t believe I’m lying. Why am I lying? I’m just so thrown by Cathy’s presence, I don’t know what I’m doing.

I thought Jacob would open the door, and his face would light up, and I’d tell him about me and Tom, and then things would just work themselves out somehow. But instead Cathy’s here, and all Jacob can think about is my father—the one Sedlak he truly cares about.

And now I’m deep into crazy and have to keep going. “He—it’s almost like he was having some kind of breakdown. He got really upset and said he had to see you. I don’t even know why.” I realize there’s a hole in my story, so I make a clumsy attempt to cover it. “I tried your phone, but you didn’t answer.”

“Really? You tried me?” He’s pulling the phone out of his pocket. “I didn’t feel anything.” He checks it. “No missed calls.…You sure you have the right number for me?”