Family and Other Accidents (32 page)

Jack squeezes his brother's arm tighter, feels the muscle and bone under his shirt. “Something like that,” he says.

         

Using the edge of the bathtub, Jorie props herself into a sitting position. Her father runs a washcloth under the chrome faucet and hands it to her.

“Shrimp salad?” he rubs her back. “Yeah, right.”

“I'm sorry,” she says, and he tells her it's okay, sits on the floor next to her.

Even before Keelie appears in the doorway, Jorie is aware of her pink smell, feels stuff spin-cycle in her guts again.

“Ohmygod.” Keelie says. “Daddy, she's totally trashed. At your birthday party.”

“Shut up!” Jorie hisses, twisting around, clawing at Keelie's shapely calves.

“Totally trashed,” Keelie says.

“I'm aware of that,” her father says to no one in particular.

“She gets drunk a lot, Daddy,” Keelie says. “You should probably know that. And she was voted Girl You Most Want to Fuck.”

“You're fat,” Jorie says. “Tomorrow I'll be sober.”

Lower lip trembling, Keelie runs out.

“Ke, wait—” Connor calls after her, but she's already out of the room; then to Jorie, “That was a really mean thing to say. Why do you do that?”

“It was funny though, wasn't it? It's kind of like Churchill—”

Her father sits back on the edge of the tub. His head is down and his jaw shifts, just like Keelie's does when she might cry.

“Daddy?”

Her father says nothing, stares aggressively at the hardwood floor. Instantly she's sober.

“What is it?” she asks.

“My brother was always there for me. It would just be really nice if the two of you got along.”

“Daddy.”

“Maybe helped each other out every once in a while, especially now.”

The toilet bowl becomes a crystal ball and she can see all of her father's people clearly. Her redheaded aunt and her father's brother, back at the party, naughty smiles on their faces. Jack squeezing Mona's hand as they dote over their spoiled son stabbing tuna rolls with chopsticks. She can see Keelie staring at the full-length mirror in her bedroom, pinching flesh from the swells of her hips, sucking in her breath until her ribs poke through, too worried she's not thin enough to notice her bedsheets have been rumpled. Jorie sees her mother curled into a ball on her bed, probably crying because Jorie forced her to remember what she loves. Her father is giving her these people, they are her legacy, but she has to ask anyway.

“Why does it matter more now, Daddy?”

His hands resting on his knees ball into fists. “You know.”

Two words, and she ages three decades.

This is her entrance into adulthood—not sex with Brandon, not the driver's license she'll get on her second try, not the acceptance letter from Harvard next year, nor the birth of her son in a decade and half. Her father is leaving her his people, bequeathing them to her when he goes, be it in thirty years, five months, or next week.

And because she knows that the minute she walks out of the bathroom door nothing in her life will be the same, she does the thing she did as a child, she reaches for her father's index finger and wraps her hand around it.

acknowledgments

I tell my students that everything we are is somehow a product of family, and I lucked out in that department. Thank you to my parents, Nancy and Michael Goldhagen; my sister, Jackie; and my grandparents, Fran and Irv Victor and Marcia Chesley.

I also tell my students they should check the acknowledgments page to see if a writer is satisfied with her agent. I dig mine. Alex Glass—you're my own little Jerry Maguire without Scientology. Likewise, I have nothing but good things to say about my editor, Kendra Harpster, and all the nice people at Doubleday.

Thank you also to Michelle Herman, my thesis director at OSU, whose support is always above and beyond. Some other fabulous folks I met at Ohio State: Lee K. Abbott, Erin McGraw, Stephanie Grant, and Bill Roorbach.

To all the scattered people in my life, who make me proud of my life: Lauren Asquith, Sheri Barrette, Andrea “AC” Baron, Mandy Beisel, Erin Brereton, Jim Bush, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Kae Denino, Matt Krass, Chris Coake, Terri Goveia, Alex Marcus, Andrea Mason, Julie O'Connell, Brian Romick, Jeremy Staadeker, Brett Stern, Jennifer Stevens, Ben Timberlake, Ryan Tracy, and David Victor.

Lastly, to Will Leitch, for making me want to be a better writer and a better person, and for helping me realize that the better person thing is of far greater importance.

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

a division of Random House, Inc.

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

Copyright © 2006 by Shari Goldhagen

All Rights Reserved

”Stealing Condoms from Joe Jr.'s Room” originally appeared in
the
Indiana Review

”By Being Young, By Being Nice” originally appeared in
the
Wascana Review
under the title ”Things She Wants.”

”The Next Generation of Dead Kennedys” originally appeared in
Confrontation
.

eISBN: 978-0-385-51768-3

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