Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts (32 page)

Somehow I stumbled or was shoved into making the right choices. It doesn’t give me a lot of faith in my own judgment.

* * *

If I thought Dad would exclaim in surprise and delight at the sight of Milton at the entrance to his apartment, I was in for a disappointment.

He opens the door and says, “Ah, Milton, too,” so calmly that you’d think his son visited him every day. He pats our arms as we enter and offers us a half a muffin left over from his breakfast that morning. “I’m afraid I don’t have much else. Jacob’s going to go to the supermarket for me in the morning.”

“How is Jacob?” I ask casually as we all sit down around the coffee table. Dad’s gained some weight in the last month, and his gut is spilling out over his belt again, which can’t be good for his heart health. So much for Mom’s hope that he’d start exercising and getting in shape.

 “He’s fine. He’s hoping to get his dissertation done before December, so he’s been working hard and hasn’t been around quite as much. But we work quite effectively by e-mail. He’s still the best researcher I know.”

“Have you met his girlfriend?”

“Jacob has a girlfriend?”

“He does?” Milton says. “You didn’t tell me that, Keats. What’s she like?”

“She’s nice. Oh, wait, Dad, you met her! I totally forgot. She was at my birthday dinner. Cathy. With the red hair.”

“Oh yes. The rawboned girl.”

Only my father would describe someone that way. “Yeah.”

“He hasn’t mentioned her.”

I’m stupidly glad to hear that. At least she hasn’t invaded this part of his life yet. Not that she
shouldn’t
. Just…I’m glad she hasn’t. Especially since my being glad doesn’t hurt anyone.

21.

A
t first, Hopkins says she’s way too busy to come to Boston at all this summer, but Mom puts her foot down and says she
has
to. For once in her life, she’s feeling sentimental and needs to see us all under the roof of that house one last time. Hopkins grumbles to me in e-mails about how annoying Mom’s being but finally says she can fly in on a Saturday—our last one in the house before we move the following Thursday.

Because we’ve already packed up her room and thrown out her horrible mattress, Hopkins says she’ll stay at Dad’s and bring him over to the house with her. They arrive while Mom and I are carrying in the Italian food she picked up for dinner and I run upstairs to tell Milton they’re here. He joins us in the kitchen a few minutes later.

Hopkins eyes his clothing: jeans, shoes, a shirt with buttons. “Look at you,” she says. “You’re practically a member of the human race.”

“Practically,” he agrees and sits down next to Dad in the breakfast booth.

I laugh.

It’s different being with my family now. Easier.

It’s funny. I always thought Tom protected me from them, and in a way he did, but only by creating a wall between me and everyone else. Now as I stand in the kitchen, pouring wine into plastic cups because all the glasses are packed, I feel comfortable with my family again. I mean, they’re all crazy as lunatics. That won’t ever change. But where they are feels like home again.

“It’s good to see you down here.” Dad pats Milton on the arm.

“Uh-huh,” says Milton. “What are we having for dinner?”

“Pasta,” Mom says. “But we’re waiting to eat until Jacob gets here.”

“Can I have some wine?” Milton asks. “I’ll be twenty-one in three months.”

Mom says, “I thought you’d never ask,” and pours some into a small glass. “See what you think.”

He takes a sip and makes a face and puts it down. “The reason why I wanted this is that I’m sort of celebrating.”

“What are you celebrating?” I ask.

“I won something.”

“What?”

He doesn’t look at anyone in particular, but he’s smiling. “A game design contest. It’s cool because professionals look at your work and critique it, and one of them said he wanted to talk to me more about mine.” He nudges my arm. “That guy at the comic book store told me about it in the first place.”

“He did?” I had been standing there the whole time and hadn’t heard a word about a contest. “When?”

“We’ve been e-mailing.”

“Oh. That’s great.”

“I started making the game a long time ago, but then when I found out about the contest, I started working a lot harder on it so I could get it done in time.”

“It’s great news.” Mom’s beaming.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got even bigger news,” Hopkins says, looking up from her phone. “I wanted to tell you guys in person. One of my clients is donating a fortune to the hospital with the condition that they name a conference room after me.”

For a moment, I reel from the blast of familiar emotions: awe mixed with jealousy that Hopkins is so amazing and I’m not. She’ll have a room named after her, and she’s only thirty. By the time she’s forty, she’ll probably have a hospital wing named after her. By fifty, a hospital. I’ll be the sister of the famous Hopkins Sedlak for the rest of my life, and I honestly don’t know whether to be proud of that fact or crushed by it.

But then I glance over at Milton and see how his face has gone closed again—no more smile—and something else cuts in. Something new.

Annoyance.

Why couldn’t Hopkins just have let Milton have his moment? Why did she have to blow his news away with her bigger news? He never gets to have news. She always has news.

But then I realize that while Dad is exclaiming proudly—if quietly—over Hopkins’s announcement, Mom’s response is much more reserved. “That’s great,” she says flatly before turning back to her son. “Milton, I want to hear more about your game. Did you come up with the entire concept?”

“Yeah.”

“Are there animals?” I ask. “Is it cute? Or violent?”

“Sort of both.”

Mom says, “Please tell me it’s not one where people are shooting at each other.”

“Just a little bit,” he says. The smile is back on his face.

Hopkins returns her attention to her BlackBerry, looking vaguely annoyed that her announcement hadn’t caused the stir she was hoping it would.

Milton’s deep into describing his game—a Disneyland-like theme park has been hijacked by extraterrestrial aliens so the people who run the rides have to organize a resistance and fight them—when the doorbell rings.

“That must be Jacob!” Mom says brightly and looks at me. Since moving back home, I’ve been the official door opener because Milton ignores the doorbell and she’s lazy.

I get up and leave the kitchen.

I take a deep breath in the foyer before I pull the door open.

Yeah, it’s Jacob. Just him though. No Cathy.

“Hi,” I say. I step back to let him in, putting space between us, not sure how to greet him anymore, not sure if a hug from me would be welcome.

“Hi.” He enters but lingers by the door uncertainly. “You remind me of someone I once knew. This girl with a crazy name. Keats something-or-other. She probably doesn’t remember me. It was a long time ago.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s been like a month, Jacob.”

“Feels longer.” He holds out his hand. “Good to see you, Keats.”

“Same here.” I shake his hand, and then we both lean forward, and I kiss him lightly on the cheek. I gesture down the hallway. “They’re all in the kitchen. Come on.”

“Hold on.” His gray eyes flicker up to my face, then away again. “While we’re still alone, can I just say really quickly that I’m sorry?”

“What for?”

“You know.” He jams his hands into his pockets. “The last couple of times I saw you…I wasn’t very nice.”

There are a lot of things I could say now, but I choose the fairest one. “You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. I acted badly.”

“You were in a tough spot. I could have had more sympathy for that. I
should
have had more sympathy for that.”

“Thanks. It helps hearing you say that.”

“Good.” There’s a pause. “That’s all. I wanted to clear the air. So we could be friends again. I want to be friends again, Keats.”

“Me, too. Very much.” We stand there in silence for a moment. Then I say quietly, “I’ve missed you.” I quickly slip away and head toward the kitchen, not meeting his eyes.

* * *

We eat on paper plates in the dining room, now stripped bare of everything but the table and chairs, which my mother’s taking with her to the new apartment.

After we’ve done some damage to the pasta, Jacob says, “I can’t believe how much packing you’ve done since I was last here, Eloise. You look like you’re in good shape for the move.”

“Keats gets most of the credit for that,” Mom says. “She’s been working like a maniac. My job is to keep her in coffee so she has the energy to keep going.”

I hold up my hands. “See? Packer’s calluses.”

“Packing doesn’t give you calluses,” Hopkins says.

Does she think I’m a total moron? “I know. I was just kidding.”

She shrugs and pushes her plate away—as usual, she’s only eaten a few bites—and then sits up with sudden energy. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I haven’t told you this yet, Keats! Your ex called me the other day.”

“Wait—what? You mean Tom?”

She nods and leans back in her chair, everyone’s eyes on her, and it occurs to me that she always makes that happen one way or another, that my sister
needs
to be the center of attention. I used to think it wasn’t something she asked for, that tribute was just paid naturally to her because of her gifts. But she really can’t let a moment pass without being noticed.

“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you until now! He wanted to ask me if I’d speak to you on his behalf. Isn’t that amazing? He said he knows we haven’t spent a ton of time together, but that you’ve always valued my opinion—thanks, by the way, I’m honored—and that it would really mean something to you if I said you should get back together with him.”

I put my head in my hands. “God,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t feel bad, Keats. I had the best time. We had a
great
talk. I told him that if he wanted me to sell you on him, he’d have to sell himself to me first, and he gave it an
incredibly
valiant effort. There was a lot of really sweet stuff about how much he loves you, how no other guy could ever love you as much as he does—oh, and he promised not to molest any more little girls in the future if you take him back—”

I raise my head. “That’s not funny.”

“Just kidding about that. Obviously. But the rest is true, I swear. He also said—”

“I don’t want to hear it. Seriously, Hopkins. It’s all kind of painful for me. I don’t want to make fun of him.”

“But I wasn’t mean at all! I was incredibly nice. I let him talk for like twenty minutes. I even took notes.” She starts punching at her phone.

“Please—can we just talk about something else?”

“No, no, wait—hold on—” She’s frowning down at the screen. “I promise you this is totally worth it. I want to make sure I get the phrasing right. I think at one point he rhymed
statutory
and
masturbatory
—”

“Shut up, Hopkins.”

Someone else said that, not me. I turn, surprised. People don’t talk to Hopkins that way.

But Jacob just did.

Hopkins looks up from her phone. “Oh, come on,” she says. “That was another joke.
Obviously
. Seriously, Keats, let me read you some of the actual stuff he said—”

“She asked you to stop. So stop,” Jacob says.

“He was Keats’s boyfriend for like three billion years, right? I don’t know why she’s suddenly lost interest in him.”

“This isn’t funny,” I say. “I feel bad for him. I’m sorry he bothered you, but please let’s not make fun of him now.”

She opens her eyes wide—between those big eyes and her angular face and the way her hair is pulled so harshly back from her brow and temples today, she looks a little like a salamander at the moment. “
He
called
me
. If I’m going to be forced to endure the teary lamentations of your idiot ex, I should at least be allowed to get some amusement out of it.”

I’m a little stunned. This is my big sister. The one who’s loomed so large at every stage in my life and whose praise and attention I’ve always craved. And she’s acting like an asshole. “Fine,” I say. “If you’re not going to stop, I’m leaving.” I stand up.

My father says to my mother, “It’s nice of the girls to squabble like teenagers. Makes me feel young again.”

“A thoughtful gesture,” she agrees absently, her eyes on me. “Keats, sit down.”

“If she’s going to keep going on like this—”

“She’s not.” She turns to Hopkins. “That’s enough. No one is enjoying this.”

“
I
am. Anyway, you should be grateful to me, Mom—you were always complaining about how you had to put up with his boring moronic stories at every family dinner for the last decade.”

My mother evades my eyes. At least she has the grace to flush.

“He
owes
you some entertainment. Listen, just listen to this.” Hopkins studies the BlackBerry. “I swear these are all direct quotes. ‘Keats was my universe.…She made life worth living.’” She looks up. “I know, I know, it’s clichéd, but let’s not judge him too harshly. It obviously came from the heart. Oh, and then he says—”

Two chairs scrape back in unison. One of them belongs to me. The other is Jacob’s. “Hold on, Keats, I’m going with you,” he says as I head out of the room.

“What is everyone’s problem?” Hopkins asks with an aggrieved tone to her voice. “Okay, fine. I’ll stop.”

But I keep going because it feels good to walk away from her. Oddly powerful.

And also…Jacob’s following me.

So I keep going, all the way to the stairs and up those, and then down the dimly lit hallway—good thing Milton left his door open and the lights on because it would be even darker there without that—and up the second set of stairs to the pitch-black attic. I grope blindly along the wall at the top of the stairs, trying to feel the light switch.

It’s so dark that Jacob actually bumps into me. “Sorry,” he says and quickly drops down a step. “Didn’t realize you stopped.”

“I’m trying to turn on the light.” My hand finally lands on the switch, and I flick on the overhead light. I step up into the room, and Jacob follows me.