Reunion: A Novel (15 page)

B
y three p.m., the entire gang is here. The ex-wives: Whitney, Joyce, and Louise. The widow: Sasha. The half siblings: Lily, Stan Jr., Lauren, Libby, Lucy, and Mindy. And us, the originals: Elliot, Nell, and me. It’s a bit of a madhouse in here. Nobody wants to leave the kitchen. All parties are like this. The living room, the den—it doesn’t matter how nice the house is or how nice the rooms are, people get nervous when they venture too far from the food and booze. Out there, with the sofas and couches and side tables, there’s too much opportunity to get lost. Or worse, to be cornered by a former stepmother. The half siblings, with the exception of Stan Jr., who is and always will be a monumental Republican pain in my side, aren’t really that big a deal. You can tell they want to be here even less than we do. They’re even more frightened of the living room and den, even more frightened than we are of being caught away from the others, being caught away from their fellow young.

Lucy, the ten-year-old, is getting to be a pest. She and Mindy are just outside the kitchen, sitting on the bottom step of the stairway that leads up to the bedrooms. I’m trying really hard to maintain a conversation with Lily, who’s been telling me about her one terrible season in the WNBA a few years back. But I keep overhearing Lucy’s high-pitched voice behind me. She’s picking on Mindy—“There’s so much space on your face” and “Why does your hair look like that?” and “You have warts on your toes” and “This house smells bad”—and I keep trying not to notice. Mindy is not my responsibility. She has an advocate here—her mother, whose house this is. It’s not my job to look out for her, but this Lucy chick is eating away at my nerves. I’m trying really hard to stay out of it—and trying also to make reasonably intelligent observations about the WNBA—but when I hear Lucy say to Mindy, “I was Dad’s favorite. He didn’t like you at all,” I realize I’ve had enough.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, excusing myself from the conversation with Lily and going over to the staircase, where the girls are still perched.

“Lucy,” I say. “That’s totally uncool.”

Lucy is petite and blond and tan. She’s wearing fold-over socks with lace around the edges. Her hair is in two perfect braids. She is everything I hate about Atlanta.

Mindy, who for the party has changed into lederhosen and a bow tie that I know for a fact belonged to my mother’s father, is close to tears, but she’s hanging in there. The little champ.

“Un
cool
,” says Lucy. “Un
cool
, un
cool
.”

“Are you taunting me?” I say, understanding that slapping a ten-year-old won’t go over well with this crowd.

“Are you
taunting
me?” she says.

Mindy reaches over and holds my hand. She gives me this baby-bird look of appreciation, as if to thank me for the masticated worm I’ve just offered her simply in being present. I pick Mindy up and look down at Lucy.

“You’re a brat,” I say.

“
You’re
a brat,” she says.

“And you weren’t Dad’s favorite,” I say. “Not by a long shot.” There’s a chance I’ve gone too far. There’s no rule that says an adult can’t make two children cry in one day. Though I’m sure there are rules that say you shouldn’t. I won’t be surprised at all if this one breaks down in tears too, or if she rats me out to mass-producing Louise. But I’m not sticking around long enough to find out. I turn and with Mindy on my hip—Mindy, my six-year-old half sister who is fast becoming my favorite person in the world—I make a beeline for the back porch, where we find Elliot and Nell.

“Beer?” says Elliot as we open the screen door. He holds up a bottle.

“No,” I say. I set Mindy down and she clambers over to Nell and sits in her lap. Little monkey. She’s like a little monkey the way she does that—scoots from adult to adult like she’s going from tree to tree.

Nell’s being icy, but with Mindy out here, she won’t say anything nasty. Note to self: six-year-olds come in handy when you’re looking to avoid confrontation.

I take a seat on the swing next to Elliot.

“This strikes me as fairly antisocial out here,” I say.

Elliot shrugs. “What’s the scene in there?”

“Lucy was beating up on Kiddo here,” I say, and stretch out my foot so that I can wiggle my toes in Mindy’s face. She scrunches up her nose and laughs.

Nell turns Mindy toward her. “Really?” she says. “Are you okay?”

Mindy nods. She seems unprepared or flat-out unwilling to tell on Lucy. Maybe it’s something about the proximity in age. Maybe a ten-year-old who’s closer in height is more threatening than a thirty-year-old who might as well be living up in the trees—that’s how foreign the perspective is.

“Lucy was just saying how she was Dad’s favorite and how Mindy wasn’t even on the radar,” I say.

“Man,” says Elliot. “Rough.”

“It’s not true,” says Nell, holding Mindy close. “Anyway, you’re
my
favorite.”

It’s probably a sign of shallowness that I like Mindy less when there are other adults around.

Elliot says, “Doesn’t matter what Lucy says. I was Dad’s favorite.” I can’t tell whether or not he’s joking, but it strikes me as a potentially inappropriate comment to make in front of Mindy regardless.

“You were,” says Nell. “Totally.”

“He was?” I say. “Really?” Probably in other families, families more nuclear than ours, this is a conversation that siblings have early and often. But I can honestly say that before this moment, it never occurred to me that our father had a favorite. It never occurred to me because I never cared.

“Oh, for sure,” says Nell, momentarily, it seems, forgetting that we are not on perfect terms. “Firstborn, golden child and all that? Nobody else stood a chance.”

Mindy is hanging on every word, but she’s smart enough not to speak. She knows speaking will remind the others—the grown-ups—of her presence and could therefore potentially stop the conversation. Eavesdropper, indeed.

“What about Mom?” I say. “Who was Mom’s favorite?”

“Nell,” says Elliot.

Nell nods. “It’s true. I was. I really was,” she says. “I’m so glad you knew that.” She kicks Elliot’s foot with her own.

“It was obvious,” he said. “She was addicted to you.”

What’s obvious is that Nell and Elliot have considered this before. Just like Lucy had considered it, so have Nell and Elliot. It makes me feel left out—like someone forgot to give me the booklet on how to be someone’s child.

“Whose favorite was I?” I say. I hate the sound of my voice.

“No one’s,” says Nell, shaking her head.

“That’s right,” says Elliot. “You weren’t anybody’s favorite.”

I can’t tell if they’re pulling my leg or if they’ve suddenly become the most callous siblings in the world. If they planned this as some sort of joke, it’s not funny.

I look to Mindy for some relief from this pig-piling. My face says,
Just give me something, kid. Anything. Even a lie. Tell me I’m your favorite. Tell me I’m the best. You don’t even have to mean it.

But she says nothing. She’s too mesmerized by the discussion of adults to dare speak out of turn.

Peter. I used to be Peter’s favorite. But I’ve put an end to that.

I
n the middle of the insanity that is my father’s wake, here’s a lesson I’m trying to teach myself: scan, process, react. It’s how Elliot, when I was fifteen, taught me to drive.
Scan
the current environment,
process
what you’ve detected, and then
react
accordingly.

Obviously, though, I’m not talking about driving.

I’m talking about life. I’m talking about evaluating
before
acting.

What I’m saying is this: even before sneaking outside and dialing Rita’s number, I weigh the pros and cons—and, yes, the cons are many, including but not limited to a) the three healthily poured glasses of white wine I’ve already had this afternoon, b) the fact that Nell and Elliot seem to be ganging up on me more than usual and in front of all my stepmothers, and c) I’m feeling slightly fatalistic given the state of my marriage and the state of my bank account and the state of my father’s skull, which has put me in a perhaps unstable state of mind—and I decide regardless in the phone call’s favor.

When Rita answers, I say, “Do it.” That’s it. That’s all I say, no greeting, no nothing.

“Do what?” she says.

“Have sex with that kid.”

I’m standing behind the garage, watching the back porch, making sure nobody is within earshot.

There’s a muffling on the other end of the phone, something like the rearrangement of a device from one ear to the other. I hear a door open, footsteps, then another door close.

“Hello?” I say. “Are you there?”

Crouching in hiding, whatever the circumstances, always gets me a little manic, a little excited. My heartbeat starts to speed up and I think,
Life, life, life.

There’s more silence—enough silence for me to think again,
Life, life, life
—then Rita says, in a whisper, “What are you talking about?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m out,” she says. “I’m in public.”

“Are the girls with you?”

“No,” she says. “I dropped them off at camp this morning.”

Of course. The girls are at camp, and Rita is all alone.

“Have sex with him,” I say. “Tomato-plant guy. Get it over with.”

“Are you drunk?” she says.

“Holy aphid,” I say, crunching ice into the receiver. “Aren’t people getting tired of asking me that?”

“Do you really want an answer to that question?” she says.

“Touché,” I say. “Are you with him right now?”

“No,” she says.

“Are you telling the truth?”

“No,” she says.

I nod like I’m some kind of guru, which I’m not and I know I’m not. “What you’ll realize,” I say, and now I’m headed off the map, now I’m headed full speed and without warning into uncharted territory, the words coming even before the thoughts are fully formed, which is exactly the kind of behavior I’m trying to avoid, “is that all men are giant babies.” Am I thinking of Elliot? Am I thinking of my father? Am I thinking of Peter or Billy? The answer: I am thinking of you all. I am thinking of every single one of you and, at least at this very minute, I mean every word I’m saying. “You think there’s something special about him, about this kid who knows that tomatoes grow better in coffee cans than in planters. You think you don’t love Elliot anymore. You’re wrong.”

Again there is silence.

“Rita,” I say, and now, heading back to charted territory, having weighed this, having taken this in my palm and measured its texture and worth, I say very carefully, “this is something I know about.”

“Wait,” she says, also slow, also steady. “Firsthand?”

“Yes.”

“Peter cheated?”

I cough and crouch lower. “No.”

It’s taking her a minute to process what I’ve said. It’s nobody’s first guess that the woman is the one who’s stepped out—even another woman who is currently contemplating such a move for herself.

“Oh,” she says after a minute. Then: “
Oh
.”

“You get it,” I say.

“When?”

“This year,” I say. “End of last year, beginning of this year.”

“And?”

“And Peter found out.”

“When?”

“Last month.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“How are things now?”

“He wants a divorce,” I say.

Now there is dead silence on the other end. Not just regular silence, but bone-dead, big-eared, long-fingernailed silence.

“Wait,” she says. “You and Peter?”

“We’re splitting up.”

“Does Elliot know?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t know. Only if Nell’s told him.”

“You told Nell but not Elliot?”

“It’s not really a time to be concerned with etiquette,” I say. “But no. I didn’t tell Nell. Peter did.”

“Kate,” she says. “You have to tell Elliot.”

“Yes,” I say. “I know. But we’re dealing with other things at the moment.”

“Of course,” she says. And of course I feel guilty because of course, yes, we
are
dealing with other things, but no, they aren’t really that dire. Stan’s dead. Nothing is changing that fact. My impending divorce, Rita’s potential infidelity—none of these things changes the state of Stan’s cranium, which, hopefully, is being rebuilt as Rita and I speak, since the viewing is T minus twenty hours and counting.

“But what you’re advocating for me…” she says.

“Listen,” I say. “You’re talking about leaving Elliot. You’re talking about walking away from a beautiful, stable home where three kids—and two parents who happen to adore those kids, even if they don’t adore each other at the moment—live. All I’m suggesting is—if you think you’re going to leave him anyway—why not test the goods of the guy you think is all that first? Test the waters, and if you still want to leave, then leave. Just don’t be all high and mighty about it. Things are going to get dirty in a divorce. They might as well get dirty now. Especially if there’s a chance the dirt might save everything.”

“And you think Elliot would be okay with that?”

“No!” I say, spitting out a little wine accidentally and then wiping it from my chin. “Of course not. He’s going to hate it. You can tell him or not tell him. But what I know is, he wants you. And he’ll forgive you if it means you’ll stay. Kids change everything.”

“Have you talked to him about this?”

“No, Rita, I haven’t.” I’m shaking my head as if she can see me, as if she were right in front of me, which, now that I’m thinking of it, I wish were the case. I wish she were here to hug me, to hold me. Whatever kind of hug Nell was talking about—a hug just to say
Here I am. Here I am. Here I am
. But she’s not here. She’s nowhere close to here. “No,” I say again. “And I’m not going to. I’m just throwing it out there. I just thought I’d weigh in on your life as a way to get a minute’s respite from mine.”

I remember like it was yesterday: Peter said, “Just answer the question.” I said, “But first you have to know that—” He said, “Answer the question.” I said, “It’s not that simple.” He said, “Yes or no?” I said, “Peter, please; there was so much pressure; you weren’t listening to me.” He said, “Yes or no?” I said, “Please, don’t; I felt so lonely.” He said, “Yes or no?” Finally I looked at the floor and said, “Yes.” He said, “Billy? His name is Billy?” And on and on it went.

“Oh, Kate,” says Rita.

“Yeah,” I say, still crouching outside the garage, still watching the house like a thief. “I know. I know. I’m a mess.”