The Gift Bag Chronicles (2 page)

“I know it’s early, but I had to talk to you.”

“We are talking.”

“In person.”

“Jennifer.” I sigh. “I’m in a suburb outside of Philadelphia, and I will be here for at least three more days. Either you can talk to me now or we can meet when I get back to L.A.”

“I’m putting the garters in FedEx,” she says, and I can tell by her tone she’s accomplished her mission. Made her problem officially my problem. “Call me when you get them.”

“Fine,” I say, my only thought to end this conversation and start the day — ostensibly one of my only days off — over again. Maybe even catch another hour of sleep.

“Honey.”

I look up. Helen, at the door with a tray carrying, if I’m not mistaken, a boiled egg.

“Well, I certainly hope you can take some time while you’re here to relax.”

“Mom,” I say, taking another hit of coffee, “I’m totally relaxed.”

I’ve made it as far as the kitchen. Not dressed and my hair in a ponytail, mascara smudged under my eyes, but I’m here, sitting at the old pine table in my old plaid flannel robe drinking coffee from one of our old Royal Doulton mugs while Helen tidies up the already surgically clean counters.

“Well, you know what I mean,” she says, leaning against the counter and crossing her arms and eyeing me like she used to, like I’m pretending to be sick to get out of going to school. “It just seems that ever since you got that big promotion of yours, all you do is work. I mean, how can it be that you spend half your time in New York —”

“Mom, I don’t spend half my time in New York,” I say, flopping back in the chair. “I just go there more frequently now on business.”

“I only meant that we’re less than two hours away, and somehow we’ve never met Charles.”

She has me there. Charles Evers, my former boss and now copresident at the agency — the E of DWP-ED/PR — and more important, my boyfriend, lives in Manhattan and where I technically live when I’m in town from L.A. Somehow, and I’m still not sure how this happened, but he —
we
— have never crossed paths with my parents until this weekend.

I mean, how long has it been — three years, plus or minus — that Charles and I have been together, although frankly, how does one carbon-date these things anymore? First time you sleep together? First time you go out? First time you start talking to each other regularly on the phone, telling each other things that you realize you are not telling anyone else?

It gets even trickier when you work together. As Charles and I technically did. Still do. I mean, when I started at DWP’s New York offices God knows how many years ago, Charles was the agency’s most senior publicist, just one notch below the three
founders. More to the point, he was the agency’s only good-looking heterosexual male under the age of sixty. Given how gay and female the publicity world is, he didn’t even have to be good-looking to get noticed. Just a Brooks Brothers shirt, rep tie, and his slightly mussed, slightly graying hair would have done it.

Not that I really noticed. Not back then, when I was a newly divorced, newly minted junior publicist running around like a maniac just trying to learn the job. It wasn’t until I made the leap out to L.A., got promoted to senior publicist, and the whole agency became ensnared in a very brief, very nasty little takeover coup with a rival agency, which caused Charles and me, together with our boss, Suzanne Davis, the original D of DWP-ED/PR, to band together and fight off the interloper, that I realized he was such a stand-up guy. And he liked me. There’s always that Sally Field moment when you realize, no matter what your feelings are, nothing’s going to happen until the guy decides he really likes you. Or at least is into you enough to ask you out. More than once.

So despite the fact that Charles still lives in N.Y.C. and I still live in L.A., we’re an item. Or as much of an item as you can be when you’re 2,800 miles apart. Which is most of the time, frankly. I mean, back when we started officially going out, I thought we’d be living together by now. Somewhere, somehow, we’d have a place together. Of course, back when I was at Brown, I thought I’d be married and have two kids by the time I was twenty-six. Still, I thought Charles and I were at least headed in that direction. But somehow it’s never been the right time. Or the right place. Or the right
something
. So now we spend most of our time on the phone, in e-mail, or via Charles’s favorite mode of expression, his Black-Berry. Am I the only girl in the modern world who’s fallen asleep staring at I
U on her BlackBerry, rather than having the sender in bed next to her? Cyber-love. Who knew?

Still, a decent boyfriend is a decent boyfriend, and Charles is, if nothing else, decent. He might also be developing a serious
workaholic attitude of late, with maybe a little control freak thrown in for good measure. But hey, plenty of women marry guys like that and wind up living happily ever after. At least it looks that way. In any event, I am not going to spend the first weekend I’ve managed to get Charles out to meet my parents — because if I’m honest about it, I would have brought him out here months, even a year ago, if he had made the time — dwelling on that.

“I know, Mom, and I’m sorry about that,” I say, debating whether I should have another cup of coffee or just quit while I’m ahead and hit the shower. I’m just deciding to head upstairs when I hear a car in the drive. I check my watch — now showing just past 10:00
A.M.
Philly time — and pray it’s Jack back from the course or errands or wherever he goes in the mornings and not Amy dropping by with Bevan. Bevan, my year-and-a-half-old nephew. Or as he was known in cattier circles, the prize-winning heifer.

“She’s raising him like she’s going to enter him in the Pennsylvania state fair,” Steven had said, staring at the photos I’d downloaded showing Amy holding a beefy blond toddler with, amazingly, a blue ribbon tied to his tufted hair.

“I know he’s milk-fed, but she’s actually raising him to enter Episcopal Academy, where Barkley went, followed by Swarthmore, where they both went.”

“I think she’s the one who wants the prize,” Steven said.

“Well, that’s true,” I say. “Mother of the Year.”

“And you, all but barren.”

But then, as my best friend, Steven gets to say things like that.

The kitchen door swings open. Jack, thank God. “Hey, gals,” he says, pushing in with all his blustery paternal energy, the testosterone ballast that has kept our family on more or less even keel all these years. “Alex, how’d you sleep?” he says, pausing first to kiss Helen on the cheek and then coming over to give me a kiss on my head.

“Fine, Dad,” I say, smiling up at him.

“She had an early call,” Helen says, arching her eyebrows slightly. “I was just saying, I hope she can stop working while she’s here, since we don’t get to see her all that often.”

“Well then, what do you say we get this weekend under way this morning and shoot a quick nine and grab some lunch at the club?” Jack says, doing what he alone seems able to do, thread the impossibly narrow needle between Helen’s shifting moods and the reality the rest of us live in.

“You two go ahead,” Helen says, pushing off from the counter. “I have too much to do before everyone gets here. Besides, Amy’s coming over to drop Bevan off this afternoon while she runs some errands.”

“Oh, you’ve got to see him, Alex,” Jack says, reaching in the refrigerator and emerging with a brown bottle of pills. Or maybe it’s vitamins. I can’t tell from where I’m sitting.

“I saw him at Easter, remember?” I say, watching Jack. I’ve never seen him take vitamins. Well, other than a gin and tonic. And pills in our family had been largely limited to aspirin taken only in emergencies. Nothing in a brown bottle that needed to be refrigerated.

“Oh, that doesn’t count, they change so fast at this age,” Helen says, filling a glass from the tap and handing it to him.

I watch my father knock out two pills or whatever they are and down them. I’m about to ask what he’s taking when I think better of it. At least while Helen’s in the room. Besides, it’s going to be a long weekend, and I’ll have time to get the scoop from Amy. The one good thing about her living back out in the suburbs again. Better intelligence about our parents.

“Well, Mom, if you’re sure you don’t need me for a few hours,” I say, pouring one more hit of coffee.

“I need you to keep your father company,” she says, which strikes me as not something she would normally say. “By the way, when
is
Charles arriving?”

“He’s going to call,” I say, heading up the stairs, cup in hand, wondering suddenly if I have anything suitable to wear on the course. If I brought anything other than flip-flops and mules, and if my clubs are still in the basement. It’s been so long since I’ve done anything that didn’t involve work, I’ve completely lost track of that part of my wardrobe. I mean, when was the last time I actually wore a bathing suit? On a beach? “He’s going into the office for a few hours and then catch a three o’clock train,” I add. “Four at the latest.”

“Well, just so long as I know he’ll be here for dinner.”

“He’ll be here for dinner,” I call down. “Hey, Dad, are my clubs and shoes still in the basement?”

“No, your mother had a garage sale and we got rid of the clubs, but I think your shoes are still there.”

I stop in my tracks. I haven’t played in years, but my clubs had been a birthday present from Jack during my freshman year in college. Just a set of irons and two drivers in a little plaid bag, but during my summers home he and I had played nine holes every weekend and I’d actually gotten pretty good.

“You got rid of my clubs?”

“Honey, when was the last time you played?” Helen says. “You can borrow Amy’s.”

“You threw out my clubs but you kept Amy’s?”

“She plays more often than you do,” Jack says.

“She never plays.”

Helen sighs. “Well, not now that she’s had the baby.”

“We’ll get you a set of ladies’ graphite at the club. Better than what you had,” Jack says.

“That’s not the point,” I say, realizing that between my redecorated room and now the missing clubs, there’s almost nothing in the house that belongs to me anymore. “I can’t believe you just threw out my clubs. Without even asking. What if I wanted them in LA.?”

“You play in L.A.?” Jack says.

“Honey, I’m not going to stand here on Labor Day weekend
and argue about a set of old golf clubs,” Helen says. “Time moves on. Whether you want it to or not.”

I’ve been here what, six hours, four of which I’ve been asleep, and already Helen and I have resumed our old battle positions. It’s like my own version of
Groundhog Day
, where I’m reliving the past over and over again.

“You’re right, Mom,” I say, turning back upstairs. “They’re just old clubs. Not worth arguing about.”

“Are they on your case yet? Have you had some quality time with the heifer? Have you launched the watch yet?”

I’m back upstairs, door closed, cell in hand, Steven on the line. I used to hide all my reading from Mom. Now, I’m hiding all my work. “Yes, no, and no, although the weekend is only just starting, so I could still send out a distress signal from my wrist,” I say, heading for the bed, phone in one hand, coffee in the other. Steven had gotten us the latest Hollywood must-have watches last Christmas — stainless steel monsters with built-in transmitters that call rescuers in emergencies. Like terrorist attacks or hijackings. Or the Barneys sale. Ever since he’d accidentally summoned the coast guard during a charter cocktail cruise off Maui, he’d insisted I wear mine whenever I traveled.