If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (26 page)

“Maybe not. Now that he knows what a huge price he’d pay for something like that.”

“And anyway, I won’t trust him anymore so I’ll be waiting for him to cheat on me whether or not he actually does. And that
alone will make me miserable and ruin everything.”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I just lay down and listened to her funereal music until I realized it was way past Noah’s
bedtime and he was still up watching TV.

We came back to the LA house the day before New Year’s Eve. My mother threw an annual New Year’s Day open house party, and
so the next couple of days were a whirlwind of food shopping and cooking and cleaning. Her temper, never particularly slow
to rise, got sharper with every passing hour, until she was yelling at everyone who crossed her path to “stop wasting time
and at least help me get this house in shape!” The house looked clean enough to me, so I just stayed out of her way.

On New Year’s Eve, just another day of party preparation as far as my mother was concerned, she came across some cooked chicken
that she had asked Noah to cut up for her that he had left out on the counter. “How long has this been out?”
she asked, carrying the bowl of chicken pieces into the family room where the rest of us were watching East Coast coverage
of the countdown. It was past eight and the party in Times Square was in full swing. “Noah, do you know?”

He shook his head, eyes on the TV. “I don’t remember.”

“The chicken feels warm,” Mom said. “I don’t know if I can use it now.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I said. “Just stick it in the fridge.”

“I can’t risk giving my guests food poisoning.”

“Worse that happens is they lose a pound or two. It’s all good.”

She wasn’t amused. “You need to teach your son to finish what he begins. Wouldn’t kill you to remember that, either.”

“Why are you yelling at me?” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s just the point. You don’t do anything. I could use a lot more help right around now but all you do is sit around all
day, staring at your computer or the TV set.”

“Fine,” I said. “What do you want me to do? Just tell me and I’ll do it.”

She shook the bowl of chicken at me. “That tone isn’t helpful.”

“I’m just asking you what you want—”

“Some help!” she said, her voice rising. “I just told you!”

“What kind of help? I’m willing to do whatever you want, but you have to be more specific.”

“You know what I’d love?” she said. “For once I’d love for someone to do something around here without being pissy about it.”
She turned on her heel and left the family room.

“Did you see that?” I asked Melanie. “You always think I start things but that was all her.”

“She’s just on edge because of the party. She gets this way every year.”

“And yet somehow she never takes it out on
you
.”

“She’s nicer to me because I’m
not
her daughter. That’s just how it works. You’re more patient with Cameron than you are with Noah, and I’m the opposite. It’s
the distance—you don’t care so much when it’s not your kid, so things don’t annoy you as much.”

I considered that then shook my head. “I think she just hates me.”

“You think Grandma hates you?” Noah said, looking up from the TV.

Rats, he was listening. “Not really. I was just saying that.”

“Do
you
hate
me
?”

“Hmm,” I said. “Let me think about that.”

“Mo-om!”

I grabbed him and hugged him hard against me. “Nah. I kind of love you.”

He squirmed away. “I can’t see the TV.”

“Another beautiful Hallmark family moment,” I said. “I could cry.”

Gabriel dropped off Nicole and Cameron the next morning, as planned.

“You going to come back for the party?” I asked him as I greeted them at the door. Melanie was in the shower.

“Should I?” He was looking a little forlorn, his big, round face slightly droopy.

“Yeah, you should,” I said and hoped I was right about that. “Hey, any news from your brother? He’s in Turkey, right?”

“Just a mass e-mail saying he’s having fun and is crazy busy.”

I had gotten that same e-mail. “Sounds like it’s going well. So maybe I’ll see you later?”

He nodded and turned to go, then said over his shoulder, “But tell Mel she should just text me if she doesn’t want me to come.
I’ll understand.”

“I’ll tell her.” I said good-bye and closed the door.

Nicole had already joined my mother in the kitchen and was busily rolling forks and knives up in napkins for the buffet. Cameron
and Noah were eating cereal at the table together, and my mother was racing wildly around, banging cabinet doors, whisking
food violently, checking the temperature of various things that were cooking—and generally freaking out.

I slipped away before she could take some of that frantic energy out on me and went upstairs to find Melanie.

She had just finished showering and I told her about my conversation with Gabriel while she rubbed her wet hair with a towel.
When I was done, she said slowly, “I guess it’s okay. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a mistake. But if he wants to come, he should.
I’m not going to tell him not to. It just might be weird… and people know we’re separated now so that could be weird for
them
… Maybe I should just tell him not to come. But the kids would be so happy to have him here and he knows a lot of our friends
at this point. And I want people to see we’re still friends. But I’m not sure how
I
feel—”

“It’s up to you,” I said, cutting her off, and I left to take a shower.

The party guests consisted almost entirely of friends of my parents who wanted to exclaim over how grown-up I’d become and
how tall Noah was. As far as I was concerned, both comments simply revealed what liars they all were. I endured it for as
long as I could, but when Louis Wilson walked in the front door with his tall, statuesque wife, I fled into the kitchen.
Making polite conversation with Noah’s (and my) principal just wasn’t something I was at ease with. Maybe in another fifty
years or so.

My mother had hired a couple of servers to help at the party. I spent some time comparing tattoos with one of them—she had
more, but admitted to regretting a couple—and then lingered in the kitchen, assisting them as they got the food in and out
of the oven and onto serving trays.

Noah had escaped upstairs much earlier. My mother always insisted that her grandchildren politely greet the first guests—not
that Noah actually said anything, since he became determinedly mute in major social situations—but after that, she got too
busy to keep track of them and Noah was able to sneak up to my parents’ bedroom and watch TV. Cameron joined him there a little
later, but Nicole stayed downstairs for the whole event, eager to help pass food out or chat animatedly with the many adults
who exclaimed over how adorable she was in her bubble dress and curled hair.

People stopped arriving after the first couple of hours and started leaving after the third. By five o’clock, all but a few
of my parents’ closest friends had left.

My mother came into the kitchen then to pay the servers and let them go. She spotted me cramming a broken mini-quiche into
my mouth. “So this is where you’ve been hiding,” she snapped at me. “A lot of people left saying they’d been hoping to talk
to you but couldn’t find you.”

“I thought I was more useful in here.”

“Well, you weren’t. I wanted you out there.” She made a big show of handing the servers their check and some cash for tips,
just to make her point that she had adequate help. She headed back to the living room after that, barking out a brusque “Come
join us!” as she left. It was an order, not an invitation.

Fortunately Melanie came into the kitchen a few seconds later, which gave me an excuse to stay where I was. She dropped down
into a chair. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “Trying to keep the conversation going with some of Dad’s professor friends…”

“I think they only ever leave their offices for this one party,” I said. “Their caves, I mean.”

“Did you see Professor Orton? He had a big tag sticking out from his shirt collar and there was this orange stain right in
the front of his pants.”

“Yuck.”

“He never showed up,” she said.

I looked up from the cupcake I was tearing in half. “Huh?”

“Gabriel. He didn’t come to the party.”

“Weird. He said he was going to unless you told him not to.” I popped a piece of cupcake into my mouth.

“I guess he changed his mind.” She twitched her shoulders irritably. “It’s probably for the best.”

Later that evening, she called me into her room as I was coming up the stairs. She was sitting on the bed, staring at her
computer, her half-packed travel bag open next to her, since she and the kids were going back to their house that night.

When I came in, she shifted her laptop toward me. “Read this.”

I crouched down so I could see the screen. It was an e-mail from Gabriel.

I didn’t say anything at first, just reread it a couple more times. “Wow,” I said finally. “That’s quite an e-mail.”

“I know.”

“Would you consider doing what he wants? Getting back together? You could do the marriage-therapy thing.”

“I don’t know.” She rubbed her temples. “Sitting in some therapist’s office, being reminded over and over again that my husband
fell madly in love with another woman… not my idea of fun.”

“A good therapist might get you past all that.”

“Maybe.” She dropped her hands. “But then there’s the whole timing thing. I mean, if he had just written this right at the
beginning, said that he couldn’t bear being separated from me, that he realized Sherri was nothing to him. Instead he waits
until that whole thing runs its course. For all I know, she broke his heart and now he’s coming crying back to me because
he thinks I’ll take him back in. So, what—no consequences for everything he’s done? That’s not right, is it?”

“No.” I sat down on the edge of her bed. “But”—I stopped and made sure I was going to say it right—“There’s the issue of right
and wrong and then there’s the practical stuff like you
miss him and he misses you and that makes me think that maybe you should just forget about right and wrong.”

She twisted her mouth uncertainly. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

“Well, think about it.”

She managed a bleary smile. “I can promise you that this is
all
I’ll be thinking about for a very long time.”

S
he called me the next day from her house to let me know she had agreed to host Tuesday’s meeting of the Event Hospitality
Committee. “Do you think I should get the pastries from Huckleberry or Clementine?”

“I don’t know or care,” I said. “But I think you should shellac them. Since no one actually eats anything, we might as well
just keep reusing the same ones.”

“You’re not very helpful. Oh, my god, you know what just occurred to me? Marley Addison might come! She might actually be
in my house!”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s likely. Given her attendance record.”

“Just promise me you’ll come early,” Mel said. “I don’t want to do this alone.”

Tanya, Melanie, and I had all met with the head of Crackerjack Catering right before break to finalize the Casino Night menu,
and Tanya was pleased to announce at Tuesday morning’s meeting that the meal would be soupless, as she had specified. In addition
to no soup, the menu included swedish
meatballs, hamburger sliders, puff pastry savory pies filled with spinach and cheese, and crudités.

Maria Dellaventura was in charge of the alcohol. “I’ve spoken to the bartending company and they’ll be mixing pitchers of
vodka martinis. We’ve got a ton of champagne, too—well, sparkling wine, actually, but same difference—and red and white wine.
I’m ordering it all from one of those alcohol warehouses—they gave me a bulk discount but because of that, we can’t return
anything that’s not drunk, so we’d better all do our part and drink a lot.” She smirked. “Should make it a fun party, right?”

“Ha, ha,” Tanya said stiffly. Linda Chatterjee just looked blank. Carol Lynn was checking her cell phone and didn’t hear what
Maria said. I laughed, Melanie smiled, and Marley—

Marley didn’t respond at all because she
wasn’t there
. Big surprise.

In an impressive display of hope over experience, Melanie had ordered (and had me pick up on my way) five platters of muffins,
scones, and biscuits from Huckleberry Cafe. Five. Count them. Five. Platters. Of pastries. For six women. Six women who didn’t
eat. “You are certifiable,” I told her when I carried the first two into her house. She was too busy fretting about how her
house looked to respond to that. “It’s so small compared to the other women’s houses,” she said, looking around. “And so big
compared to the shacks ninety-nine percent of the world lives in,” I said. I loved her little house. It was warm and comfortable,
and Gabriel had an amazing collection of Mexican art, so every wall and corner was filled with colorful and eye-catching statues
and paintings.

As I manfully did my part to eat as many buttery-rich sweets as my stomach could handle, the conversation moved
on to a more general discussion of the upcoming event. Tanya didn’t approve of the invitation the Event Coordinating Committee
had sent out. “Too big and too square—it cost them extra postage on every one, and I just don’t think it makes sense to spend
money like that in these times.”