Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts (7 page)

I stop myself before I can finish that negative thought. It’s the snob in me coming out, making me want to criticize something that’s perfectly lovely, just because it’s the kind of thing other people do, not my cerebral, crazy family.

I tell Izzy she’s amazing and the house looks fantastic, and she smiles, pleased.

We end the tour back in the living room. The guys actually notice our arrival, but only because it’s between innings and there’s a commercial on.

“Where have you been?” Lou says to Izzy, accusingly. “We’re starving.”

Izzy cuffs him on the shoulder and turns to me, laughing. “Can you believe these guys?”

“No.” I reach out my hand and haul Tom to his feet. “I really can’t.”

We go to a restaurant where the baseball game is playing on a TV over the bar. The boys sit on the side of the table facing the TV. Izzy and I sit on the other side and share a huge salad.

4.

A
t work on Monday, I get an IM from Milton telling me to call Mom, which is exactly the kind of twisted, backwards way messages get delivered in my family. I call the house, and Mom answers and immediately says, “I had a great idea.”

“How nice for you.”

“You know how I’ve got to figure out what to do with all the extra furniture before we move? Well, I’ve decided I’m going to let you kids pick out whatever you want—tables, books, artwork, whatever—so when it’s time to move, I’ll know who gets what. And then I can get rid of anything I don’t want with a clear conscience. I want to do it as soon as possible, so I can start taking stuff to Goodwill next week.”

“Is Hopkins coming?”

“It’s not sounding too likely. Not in the near future anyway. She’s just got too much going on at work. But I’ll ask her what she thinks she might want and pick out a few more things for her. Anyway, I thought maybe you could come over for dinner tonight and look around. Do you have plans?”

“Not that I know of, but I should check with Tom.”

“By all means,” she says, way too politely.

* * *

Tom groans into the phone. “We just saw them two days ago.”

“Says the man who sees his father every day.”

“He pays me to do that.”

“I’d happily skip it, Tom, but I’m worried that if I don’t tell Mom what I want right away, she’ll give everything to Hopkins and Milton.”

“Do your parents even own anything valuable?”

“They’re not paupers, Tom.”

“I know, but—” He doesn’t bother to finish the thought. His parents’ home is filled with bright new furniture and bright new paintings and bright new knickknacks—they both came from pretty rough backgrounds, so when their company started doing well, his mother was determined to make her house look like something she’d only seen on TV until then. She’s left her past firmly in the past, and Martha Stewart has nothing on her, whereas my parents haven’t bought a new piece of furniture or—let’s be honest—thoroughly cleaned the whole house in decades.

Tom says, “I really don’t want to go, Keats. We just saw your family. Enough’s enough.”

“Is it okay if I go without you?”

He doesn’t like that idea, either. “I thought we were going to have a nice quiet dinner alone tonight.” Of course, he did. When
don’t
we have a nice quiet dinner alone together on a Monday? Or a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday for that matter?

“You’ll survive,” I say.

“I’m sorry I actually enjoy having dinner with my girlfriend. I must really be some kind of pig, wanting to spend time with you.”

“A very codependent pig, yes.”

The truth is, I never know whether it’s better to have Tom with me when I see my family or not. When he’s with me, I feel cushioned from their craziness, safely cocooned in my happy, normal life with him, but his presence adds some tension because they don’t appreciate him.

It’s pretty much a wash.

We come to an agreement: I’ll go to dinner by myself and leave as early as I can.

* * *

When I pull up in front of the house, I see a couple of other cars already parked in front. One I don’t recognize, but the other is Jacob’s.

I let myself in and head toward the kitchen where I hear voices.

Jacob’s sitting in the breakfast booth, talking to some man with a big back. The big back stands up and turns around when Jacob greets me.

The guy is probably over six feet tall with broad shoulders and hammy legs in jeans that are belted under a substantial stomach. I’d put his age at sixty, give or take a few years: his hair’s gray and pulling away from the temples, but he’s still got a decent head of it and the tanned and healthy looks of a guy who plays golf or goes sailing every weekend.

Maybe it’s the boat shoes on his sockless feet that make me think that.

He’s greeting me heartily, a little too heartily given the fact I have no idea who he is. “You must be Keats! ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ and all that. You’re probably sick of hearing that.”

“Not really.” I shake the hand he’s extending toward me. It’s huge, his hand—fleshy and twice the size of mine. “Not all that many people go around quoting Keats.”

Jacob, who’s also risen, smothers a smile at that.

“He was my favorite,” Mom puts in. “Well, after Hopkins, of course. And you can’t ignore Milton. The poet, I mean.”

Yeah, you can’t ignore the poet. Just the real kid who has his name.

Anyway, now I’m glad Tom’s not with me. He hates the way my parents named us, thinks it’s the biggest piece of pseudointellectual bullshit he’s ever heard and tantamount to child abuse. For a couple of years, he tried to convince me to call myself Kiki, but as much as I agree with him that my given name is ridiculous, it’s still my name. Plus…
Kiki
? That was the best he could come up with?

“Good thing for your kids you’re not an e.e. cummings fan,” the man says, releasing my hand to turn to Mom.

“I love him actually. But even I couldn’t be that cruel to my own child.”

They share a smile.

“And you’re—?” I say because they seem to have forgotten that no one’s introduced him to me.

“Paul Silvestri.” The big palm extends toward me again with the apparent intention of shaking a second time. Seems like overkill, but I surrender my hand while I shoot Mom a
who the hell is this guy?
kind of look.

She just says brightly, “Dinner will be ready soon. Meanwhile, we’ve got wine and cheese. Keats? A glass?”

“Yeah, I’ll have white. Jacob, I have a quick question for you. Come here.” I grab him by the hand, pull him to his feet and into the hallway, and practically pin him against the wall. He’s wearing his usual khakis and button-down shirt.

It must be easy to be Jacob and get dressed in the morning.

“Who is that guy?” I hiss at him, even though I have a pretty good guess and that’s why I’m reacting like this.

But he confirms it for me. “He’s your mom’s date.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“I guess she wanted you to meet him. He seems nice.”

“That’s easy for you to say. She’s not your mother.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, and I remember that his mother’s dead. So’s his father. Jacob’s had some bad luck in his life.

“Sorry,” I say. “I just meant it’s not as weird for you as it is for me. Why didn’t she warn me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought she told you everything.”

He sighs and gives me a look of frustration tempered by patience. I bring that look out in Jacob a lot. “Just relax. Give him a chance.”

“I’ll try. But it’s weird.”

We head back into the kitchen. “I know you’ve had a lot to get used to lately, Keats—”

“Yeah,” I say, cutting him off. “I think everyone should feel sorry for me.”

“Too bad. No one does.” He walks away while I snatch a full glass of wine out of my mother’s offering hand.

* * *

There’s a place set for Milton at the dinner table, but when we all go to sit down, he’s nowhere in sight.

“Where’s the boy genius?” I ask.

 “He’s coming down,” Mom says. “He needed to finish something up first.”

 “He always says that. And then he waits to eat until after we’re done, so he won’t have to sit and make conversation.”

“That’s not true,” Mom says with an uncomfortable glance at Paul. “I often eat dinner with him.”

“Well, I don’t. Give me a sec.” I get up and leave the dining room.

Upstairs, I knock loudly on Milton’s door and then barge in.

He looks up from the computer with a startled expression. “What?”

“It’s dinner. You have to come join us.”

“I already told Mom I’d be down soon.”

“Dinner’s now. Save what you’re doing, or I swear I’ll unplug everything.”

He heaves a huge, aggrieved sigh and keeps tapping.

“I mean it, Milton.”

“I
know
. I’m saving it! Jesus, Keats.” Another moment of tapping and then he finally gets up and follows me downstairs. He’s wearing black sweatpants that are too small for him—his stomach hangs out over the waistband—and a T-shirt that says,
COME TO THE DARK SIDE, WE HAVE COOKIES
.
I can picture my mother buying that for him, thinking it would make him laugh and giving it to him and then him tossing it in his drawer with an indifferent shrug.

But who knows? I can never tell with Milton—maybe it did make him laugh.

I introduce him to Paul who gives him the same kind of heartily enthusiastic greeting he gave me. Milton shakes his hand with a confused look in my direction. He doesn’t know who Paul is or why he’s here. I just shrug at him. I can’t exactly explain it myself. We both look at Mom. She smiles blandly and says, “Sit down so we can eat.”

Milton sits next to me and bites his fingernails while he waits for the food to be passed: he never knows what to do with his hands when they’re not on a keyboard. His eyes dart around the dinner table, but the second anyone addresses him directly, he looks down at the plate in front of him and barely responds.

Paul tries to engage him in conversation, but it’s hard work.

“What do you like to do in your free time?”

“Stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Computer games mostly.”

“Any game in particular?”

“Not really.”

A few more useless attempts, and then Paul gives up and, with noticeable relief, turns his attention to me.

“So, Keats, your mother tells me you work in the English department at Waltham Community College.”

I nod. Not much to add to that.

“Do you like the work?”

“It’s okay,” I say because it is. Okay. The work is easy, the people are pleasant, and the hours are reasonable, but the pay sucks and there’s no mobility.
Okay
sums it up perfectly.

“Are you thinking of going back to school one day?”

“Why do people always ask me that?”

“Because you’re young and smart,” my mother says, “and you’re a glorified secretary.”

I scowl at her. “I know I’m a disappointment, but not everyone can be a world famous neurologist.”

“No one’s asking you to be a neurologist.” Mom glances over at Paul, as if to gauge whether the familial argument is off-putting or not. He smiles at her reassuringly, and she adds, “Ambition isn’t a bad thing, Keats.”

“Excellent point, Mom. Maybe you should find some of your own.”

She lifts her chin. “I raised three kids entirely by myself.”

“
Very
ambitious of you. And very original—no other women your age have raised children. You really pushed that envelope, didn’t you?”

“Keats,” Jacob warns me in that pseudofraternal way of his that sometimes I respect and sometimes I loathe.

“No, she’s right.” Mom takes a sip of wine. “I probably should have been more ambitious for myself, Keats. I regret dropping out of graduate school, but at the time it felt like I didn’t have any other choice.”

“You’re still young,” Paul says to her. “There’s plenty of time for you to do that now.”

I raise my eyebrows skeptically.

“Thank you for the encouragement,” Mom says to Paul very pointedly. “I don’t always get it at home.”

“I totally think you should go back to school,” I say. “I’ll just believe it when I see it.”

“I’m already taking a class.”

“Yeah, I know. Creative writing. You planning to write a novel, Mom? Like everyone else in the entire universe?”

“Hey, hey, watch it,” Paul says jovially. “I’m taking that class, too! Don’t be too hard on those of us with literary aspirations. They may be foolish, but they’re all we’ve got.”

“No, it’s great,” I say politely, because you have to be polite to strangers. “Is that how you two met?”

“Yep.”

“Do you critique each other’s work?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you have kids?” I ask since he seems willing to answer any question.

“Four,” he says proudly. “Two boys and two girls.”

“All with the same mother?”

He shifts uncomfortably. “Actually, no. My oldest son has a different mother than the younger ones.”

“So how many times have you been married?”

“Only twice!” he says with a desperate gaiety.

“More wine?” Mom says. “Anyone?” Paul instantly says yes and drains his glass, then holds it out. Mom tilts the bottle to pour him a new one, but only a few drops come out. “There’s another in the kitchen. Jacob, would you—?”

He’s already on his feet. “Got it.”

“Can you start a pot of decaf while you’re in there?” I call after him. Since he’s already up.

Milton says, “May I be excused?” He’s eaten a couple bites of chicken and a big mound of pasta. Mom had bought the meal already cooked at an Italian restaurant, and then served it on platters like she’d made it herself. But since we’d all hung out in the kitchen before dinner, everyone saw her replate the food, including Paul, and I wonder why she didn’t just serve it in the tins. No one was fooled into thinking she’d cooked: all she did was make more dishes to clean.

“I’d like you to stay down here,” Mom says to Milton, “so you can pick out some furniture for yourself. And then we’ll have dessert.”

“What’s for dessert?” Milton asks.