Something Fierce (23 page)

“What, what?” he said through a shit-eating grin, nodding for her to slip into the next room. She kissed Seth on the cheek and left him to talk with Grandpa who was shouting something to him from across the room.

Dylan was a few years older than Kerri and though they had fought off and on, she was closer to him than his older brother Kevin or Uncle Ron’s daughter, Christina. “It’s so comically dysfunctional,” he said, like he was whispering a joke. “She’s even wearing Grandma’s apron.”

Her mother’s blatant and futile attempts to impress their grandmother had been a source of amusement between them for years. Relieved that this was what his impish look was about, she said, “I know. Poor thing’s been busting her ass all day.”

“Should I just tell her that she will never be the favorite? Ever. No matter she does.”

“I dare you,” Kerri said.

“I might do it,” he said, sucking the meat and stuffing off a clam shell. “Someone in this family has to keep it real. So are you banging any of your other professors?”

Kerri smacked his shoulder and looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. Sarah, Kevin’s oh-so proper wife, might have been. She was gathering up empty plates. They smiled at each other. Kerri hated her. Four or five years ago, Rebecca had asked Sarah’s expert advice—she worked with juvenile delinquents—on how to handle her out-of-control daughter. Sarah had suggested “tough love” and as a result, Kerri endured a horrific experience at a teenage boot camp. When Sarah left the room, Kerri said, “Nosey bitch,” then to Dylan, “he’s not my professor.”

“Maybe not now, but he was.”

“I met him at a book signing. He was
never
my teacher.”

“Right. Sure. Did you guys ever do it in the classroom? He ever bend you over his desk?”

Kerri pursed her lips and flipped him off; he laughed. Then, she asked, “So?”

“So what?”

“Do you like him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I can’t find anything to make fun of. I hate that.” Looking over her shoulder, his face screwed up in annoyance and he said, “Grandma! What the hell? Are you
trying
to get sick?”

“Hush!” their grandmother said, tottering toward them in a pair of hot pink high heels, her long, platinum hair teased high. She was wearing an evening dress that Kerri had never seen before. “It’s awful to get so old and ailing that you can’t enjoy real food anymore and your own grandchildren treat you like a child.”

“Aunt Rebecca made stuff that you can eat,” Dylan said. “Those clam thingies are strong. They’ll make you hurl for sure.”

Ignoring him, Grammy came up to Kerri and kissed her check. “How’s my princess?”

“Good, Grammy,” Kerri said. “Is that a new dress?”

“Jones of New York.” She stepped back to model it. “I got a deal. Practically stole it!”

“You look great,” Kerri said, noticing a napkin full of empty clam shells clutched in her grandmother’s fist. “How many of those nasty things have you had?”

“Shush!” Grammy said, laying a finger over her glossy red lips.

This was an all too common occurrence at their gatherings for the past several years. Though Grammy’s mind was as sound as ever, it had somehow become everyone’s responsibility to keep her from eating things that her mysterious condition forbade, which was most everything. A special meal—complete with appetizer and dessert—was always prepared for her, but she would often sneak the offending foods and end up being violently sick. Kerri had been under strict instructions from Rebecca to keep a special eye on her today, but as usual, Grammy had been too sly.

“No more, Grammy,” Kerri said, taking the bulging napkin from her hand. “Please.”

“Anything for my little princess,” she said, lightly running her fingers—the acrylic nails matching her shoes—through Kerri’s long golden locks. “Such gorgeous hair. I still can’t forgive your mother for the times she hacked it all off.”

Dylan snickered at this. He had been one of her worst tormentors, calling her “Doogie Howser” after a fresh haircut. Kerri gave him the evil eye and said to her grandmother, “That was a long time ago.”

Grammy sighed, still stroking Kerri’s hair, looking over her face. “Enjoy this time, little girl,” Grammy said, her eyes beginning to water behind the rose-tinted Christian Dior’s. This had become common too: Grammy’s sad speech about enjoying life. “What I wouldn’t give to be you again, young and beautiful. Life goes by so fast. One day you are—”

“Hey, guys!” Dylan’s high school girlfriend and now wife, Bethany said, interrupting Grammy by poking her head around the corner, “Dinner is served.”

There was the adult table and the kids' table even though the kids now ranged in age from Timmy at sixteen to Kevin at twenty-eight and included two wives (and an undercover forty-year-old). Kerri was annoyed that Christina, her least favorite cousin, had positioned herself on the other side of Seth. She’d been monopolizing him since she’d found out that he’d once back-packed across Europe. She and two of her girlfriends were planning a similar adventure, and she was full of questions.

“Don’t encourage her, Seth,” Grandpa shouted from the adult table, “that’s too dangerous of a trip for young girls in this day and age.”

“When would have been a good time for a girl to see the world on her own?” Christina asked in a voice that set Kerri’s teeth on edge.

“Never,” Grandpa said. “The world’s always been a treacherous place for pretty, young girls.”

Seeing Christina smile at Seth like they were sharing a private moment, made Kerri want to pick up the knife next to her plate and plunge it into her cousin’s eye. It often fascinated Kerri how quickly and easily something like that could be done.

“What are you smiling about?” Seth asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, squeezing his thigh under the table, so he would think it was something sexual. If he pressed her later, she would tell him that she was thinking about the embarrassing effect his voice had had on her earlier. He wouldn’t see the humor in what she’d really been smiling about so there was no point in telling him.

“Bon appétit!” Rebecca announced as she started the platters of striped bass and bowls of spinach salad and mustard-soaked green beans bobbing around the table.

“This looks incredible,” Seth said to her, but Kerri was noticing Grammy at the head of the adult table, shaking her head no as Rebecca put a specially prepared plate of bland food in front of her. Face ashen, eyes downcast, hands folded on her lap, Grammy was heading for an episode. By not watching her grandmother close enough, Kerri had failed her and now they were all going to pay the price. Grandpa leaned toward her, whispering something, rubbing her back.

“You okay, Gram?” Timmy asked.

Grandma looked at him, her eyes full of unspent tears. “Enjoy life, Timmy,” she said, and then looking around the table, added, “All of you. Enjoy it, especially the simple pleasures of eating, enjoy it while you can, be thankful for it.”

The rumble of conversations gave way to the silent nodding of heads and clearing of throats. Those putting food on their plates took their time, grateful for a task, those without the comfort of such an activity, took long sips of their wine. The only sound was the sorry clink and scrape of silverware. “Life goes so fast,” Grammy continued, a tear rolling down her face. “One day you are as young and pretty as you girls,” she said in the direction of the kids' table. “Newly married or falling in love or planning a trip, and then, before you know it…”

Kerri knew what was coming. They all did. Except for Seth who was about to find out. The silence was heavy, everyone taking small bites and chewing their food as if eating were serious business that required great concentration. Kerri didn’t need to see this again. She began to disappear, to sink down into a quiet darkness. Before she was fully gone, she heard Seth trying to restart the conversation. He complimented her mother on the fish and asked about some ingredient in the stuffed clams and where the recipe came from.

How he knew that there was a story there, Kerri couldn’t imagine, but there was—a lighthearted and funny one that involved Grammy—and as Rebecca told it and Grammy added to it, the whole table listened. They were a grateful audience, laughing in the right places and fueling the story with comments and questions as though they’d never heard it before. Even from down in her hole, Kerri admired the power Seth had to make things okay, to lift the heaviness in a room and absorb the chill, to make everything light and warm again. Where did he learn to do that?

But as the conversation shifted from Kerri’s mother and grandmother and began to break up into semi-private exchanges around the room, Kerri saw Grammy stand at the head of the table, steady herself and make her way through the dining room, shuffling close to the wall as those in her path slid their chairs against the table and asked over their shoulders if she needed assistance. By the time Grammy reached the bathroom at the end of the long table, the room was so quiet that they could hear her knees crack as she knelt before the toilet. From where Kerri sat, she could see Grammy’s long, white-blonde hair trailing down her back. One of the pink, high-heeled shoes had slipped off of her nylon-covered foot and fallen on its side. There was a gag. Then a dry heave. And another. And then the vicious eruption as the contents of Grammy’s stomach roared up her throat and splashed into the commode.

Even Seth, Kerri thought sinking deeper into the darkness, couldn’t fix this.

W
hile Grammy heaved and
gagged
, Seth felt inexplicably removed. He’d slipped outside of himself and was merely an observer of a dreadful moment. It was as if he were invisible, like he could wander unnoticed around the room and view the scene from different angles. He noted that Kerri, for example, was quiet and didn’t seem shocked or particularly upset. Timmy simply left the table without a word while Rebecca stared straight ahead with an expression that reminded Seth—oddly—of a little girl whose birthday party was just ruined. Again. The rest of the guests sat in silence, helpless, mortified, not assisting the poor woman, not saying or doing anything other than looking down at their plates and waiting for it to be over.

Except for Dylan. He ate with gusto…and was smiling.

Smiling.

It was like they were all reluctant players in a black comedy and Dylan, unable to keep from grinning, was the bad actor of the bunch, breaking character, simply unable to play it straight. When Grammy let out a particularly long, shrill fart, he covered his mouth with the cloth napkin and closed his eyes as if to keep from losing it entirely. Then, under control again, he reached for his wine and catching Seth’s eye, slightly raised his glass and mouthed the words, “Bon appétit!”

Seth should have—and normally would have—felt terribly sorry for the old woman, who Kerri had told him was dying and yet here, detached from the moment, it felt like he were witnessing a…a…

…performance!
Some other part of his mind declared.
A goddamned performance that she kicked off with a pitiful monologue reminding everyone to cherish life while making it impossible for anyone to do so and now she’s closing the show with the memorable, gut-wrenching scene: Poor Grammy Pukes.

There were four bathrooms in the house, Seth thought. Four. Even though there appeared to be no emergency, Grammy chose the one in the dining room. And she didn’t close the door.

They somehow got through the rest of the dinner where the wine flowed like a river whose current mercifully carried them out of the present moment and delivered them all safely into the living room where Grandpa and Grammy were on the couch, holding hands and the rest of the family sat around the room in what was more or less a big circle. Grandpa was telling, mostly for Seth’s benefit, but to the delight of everyone, of the trials and tribulations that accompanied being the husband of a very beautiful woman while Grammy, fully recovered now, beamed beside him. Kerri, her hand boldly on Seth’s lap, was sitting next to him on the floor, also beaming.

“Grammy was a MILF,” Dylan said drunkenly, interrupting Grandpa’s story of a man who tried to slip his wife a note when they were grocery shopping. Aunt Karla shot her son a look and Bethany smacked him.

“What’s a milk?” Grandpa asked.

“He’s just being a smart aleck,” Bethany said, hitting her husband again.

“You laugh,” Grandpa said, waving a crooked finger at Dylan, “but I am not kidding. Everywhere we’d go, I’d have to fight the men off: the grocery store, restaurants, church for goodness sake!”

“So the guy really tried to put the note in Grammy’s purse?” Timmy asked, getting back to Grandpa’s story.

“With her husband and three kids in tow!” the old man said indignantly, sweeping his arm, to indicate himself, Kerri’s mother, Aunt Karla, and Uncle Ron. The story ended with Grandpa slamming the guy into a wall of canned soup and his audience laughing, picturing or remembering the scene.

Seth was still unplugged, hiding behind a frozen smile, unable to experience the story with the same romantic sweetness that everyone but Dylan seemed to be caught up in. As with the stories that had preceded this one—the waiter that tried to pick Grammy up when Grandpa went to the restroom, the insurance man, the house painter—that other part of Seth’s mind had plenty to say.

So we are supposed to buy that his darling wife had no role whatsoever in luring these men in? That she was so remarkably beautiful that men could not resist trying to seduce her regardless of the circumstances? Once or twice, sure, men can be incredibly stupid when it comes to women, but dozens of times, year after year? Bullshit. Bull. Shit.

“You’ll have stories of your own,” Grandpa said to Seth, “if you’re lucky enough to wed this gorgeous granddaughter of mine.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Seth said. The words just came out and everyone in the room laughed.

“Of course,” Grandpa went on, “being a writer and having lived in Los Angeles and all, you probably have plenty of stories already.”

“I do,” Seth said. He wasn’t so far outside of himself or too deep into his cups to realize that he was being prompted to entertain the group with a story or two of his own. Even as he quieted that inner voice and searched for a story he could tell without revealing his age, he hated himself for doing it, for being “nice,” for taking care of people he didn’t even really know, for going along with Kerri’s huge and ridiculous lie in the first place.
You are lost,
the angry, internal voice snapped.
Take a good look at that poor old man trying to turn a lifetime of lies into something he can live and die with. That will be you, buddy boy. That’s the only place this road goes.