The Cousins (4 page)

“You realize we’ll never be able to afford anything like that again,” Melissa said. “Unless we all get together.”

What a fantasy, Olivia thought. I wouldn’t do it.

“They should never have sold it,” Jenny said. “Nobody asked us.”

“We couldn’t have afforded it then either,” Olivia said reasonably.

“Why did they sell it?” Jenny asked. It was a rhetorical question by now. They all knew the answer. It was too much trouble. Too expensive. People had died.
The kids will never keep it up.

“They should have asked us.”

They crunched the last of their ice noisily, the way they had done when they were children, and laughed when they realized they were doing it. “How did you feel being an only child?” Jenny asked Olivia.

“I didn’t mind,” she said lightly. “I figured there weren’t any more kids for my mother to make neurotic.”

Neither of them tried to deny this to be nice; they knew how overprotective Lila had been. But Olivia had wondered many times how it would have felt to have a brother or sister, neurotic or not. Somehow she had always fantasized this person as a brother. They would have been the best of friends. Two children, a boy and a girl; a warm and manageable size for a family, in her opinion. Dick and Jane without Spot—oh, well. It had never occurred to her that she might have had a sister.

“I hated being an only child,” Jenny said. “Do you remember how I used to sit on the back porch swing with my dolls all day and pretend they were my children?”

Olivia nodded.

“Having children was the most significant thing that happened in my whole life,” Jenny said. “You go into a hospital alone and you come out with another person.”

“I know,” Melissa said. “I felt that way, too.”

“How many more are you going to have?” Olivia asked.

Jenny looked at her aghast. “No more. I’m not crazy.”

A picture flashed into Olivia’s mind of Jenny holding one of her children as an infant—was it Sam, the firstborn?—at a family party. Jenny was still overweight from her recent pregnancy, her face round, and the baby was chewing on her cheek. How large her face must have seemed to him, like a planet.

“I was afraid to have kids,” she said. “I was sure I’d be a bad mother.”

“At least you knew it,” Jenny said.

So now I’m everything my mother warned me about, Olivia thought. No parents, no siblings, no children, no husband . . . but I have Roger. He’s my husband, my brother, my family. And it may sound crazy, but we have our dogs, and they’re our children.

“Where are Grady and Taylor?” she asked, looking around.

“They’re going to drive up tomorrow,” Jenny said. “There’s no point in their spending money on a hotel.”

“It’s a long trip,” Olivia said.

“The way you drive, yes,” Melissa said. “The way Grady drives, forty-five minutes.”

“Do you think Grady’s gay?” Jenny asked. It was a subject the cousins often discussed. It seemed to Olivia that they spent a lot of their time together gossiping about the family, particularly Grady.

“I asked him once,” Olivia said. “I told him I wouldn’t care, I just wanted him to be happy, but he said he wasn’t gay; he couldn’t have a relationship or get married because he couldn’t trust anybody.”

“None of us would care,” Jenny said. “It just seems a shame he has to hide it from the family.”

“Well,” Melissa said, “he’s thirty-five and doesn’t go out with women, and his male friends are all fifteen years younger than he is—do you remember when he came back from that trip and showed us pictures of that hunk?”

“Aunt Julia used to say they were friends from school,” Olivia said. “Grady would have been in prep school when they were six.”

“Does Taylor know?”

“She’d have to know, wouldn’t she?”

“But he lives with Miranda, or whatever her name is, that actress.”

“Used to.”

“They broke up?”

“I heard.”

“Are we sure it was a romance?”

“Well, they lived together. She was supposed to be his girlfriend.”

“Maybe it was a phase.”

“Aunt Julia wouldn’t have cared if he was gay. Why is he so secretive?”

“Well, stuntmen. That world is so macho. Did you ever hear of a gay stuntman?”

“I’ve heard rumors.”

Grady. They shrugged and sighed. They had wrung the subject dry, until the next time.

“It’s hard to be in this family and not be born a Miller,” Jenny said.

“It’s hard even if you are one,” Melissa said.

They all smiled at each other, a little ruefully. “But harder if you’re not,” Melissa said to Olivia. “Your mother didn’t like my mother. She never accepted her.”

Olivia was surprised that Melissa knew. Nobody had liked Hedy, the sharp-tongued outsider sister-in-law, but she hadn’t thought Hedy noticed. “I guess.”

“They didn’t like my father either,” Jenny said. “He always felt like an outsider, and I identified with him. I always felt like an outsider, too.”

“Why?”

“I had different values.”

“Well, I’m the one they don’t approve of now,” Olivia said. “I take care of animals instead of people.”

“They think you’re too independent,” Jenny said. “It scares them. But they don’t approve of me either. They think I’m too stingy.”

Everyone knew Jenny bought her children’s clothes at Goodwill and cut their hair herself. She also cut her own hair and was pretty good at it, and proud of it. All her children went to public school, and when dividend checks came in from Julia’s they were given to charity or put into the savings account. Unlike the rest of the family, she and Paul lived completely on what they earned.

“My mother said if I don’t spend my money she’s not going to leave me any,” Jenny said.

“She actually said that?”

“Yes. So don’t feel bad.”

“Well, I do.”

“You have to remember one thing,” Jenny said. “No matter what, they will always love you. They will
always
love you.”

The little girls came running back from the beach then, all sandy, apparently not jet-lagged, herded by their exhausted fathers. Jenny’s three, Didi, Kara and Belinda, flung their arms around Olivia and nuzzled into her, and then threw their heads back to look at her, grinning with joy. Melissa’s Yael hung back shyly and glanced away; and Nick’s Amber, with an expression of total disinterest, didn’t even know her. Well, three out of five isn’t bad, Olivia thought.

“Are you sure you really want to go out and get pizza with us?” Jenny asked. “Won’t you be bored?”

“No, I’ll love it.”

When she went up to her room to change there was a message from Roger. “Gone for a bite, will be asleep when you get in, have fun, call you tomorrow.” She felt a momentary pang of homesickness for him. She wished he had thought to page her at the pool.

He called in the morning and woke her up. “I woke you, didn’t I,” he said. “I wanted to be sure to catch you. I’m going out to do some errands.”

“My alarm is going to go off any minute,” Olivia said. He sounded busy and lively and not very sorry she wasn’t there, but of course it was three hours later in New York and almost time for lunch.

“What have you got planned for today?” he asked pleasantly.

“The service and bar mitzvah, then back to the hotel to recover while the kid counts his money, then the big dinner party in the hotel ballroom. The family won’t speak to the friends, the kids won’t speak to the grown-ups and everybody will have a wonderful time. What are you going to do?”

“Saturday stuff. Work out. Maybe buy some shirts. Watch the game.”

“If you buy shirts, use my charge card at Julia’s,” Olivia said.

“Since you don’t use it.”

They chuckled at each other, more a shared sound of affection and memories than because it was funny. “I miss you,” she said.

“I miss you too, but you’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Late.”

“I’ll see you then. I love you.”

“I love you.”

He hung up and she dialed room service for coffee. Now that she knew he was safe and sound and loved her, she felt liberated, ready to enjoy her day, glad he wasn’t there so she didn’t have to worry about whether or not he was bored.

At the temple Olivia slid into the seat next to Grady. Sitting between Grady and her husband Tim, Taylor was wearing a long flowered dress that looked like something from
Little House on the Prairie
, and she looked about twenty-five even though she was thirty-three. She leaned over to Olivia. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked nervously. Olivia realized it was probably her first bar mitzvah.

“Nothing,” Olivia said. She smiled at Grady, who gave her his curly little smile, the one that held secrets and mischief and sweetness; and at Taylor’s husband, Tim, who smiled back trying to look dignified and nodded, his long hair tied neatly in a ponytail under the yarmulke he had been given.

Taylor pointed at Tim and Grady and smiled, too. “My two men,” she said.

Kenny was in the front row; Olivia recognized the back of his head. Then, rushed and slightly late, a couple dressed in ethnic clothing came down the aisle looking for their seats. The woman was wearing a sari, which did not disguise the fact that she was a Bronx blonde, and the beaming little man was wearing a black Nehru suit with an embroidered pillbox hat. They were Gloria and Tenzing. Gloria had lost some weight and her skin was radiant; she looked better than Olivia had ever seen her. They disappeared into one of the front rows and the service began.

Olivia had never had a religious education because she had refused to go to Sunday school, and her parents didn’t push it, although they would have if she were male. She thought Jason looked like Gloria as a nervous teenage boy. He had been studying and preparing so long for this morning. His hands were shaking but he looked very proud. She didn’t know any Hebrew, but still she felt a part of her cousin’s rite of passage, of the importance, the tradition. She could sense how alien Grady and Taylor felt to the whole event, and therefore to the family, and it made her a little sad.

Jason had finished his prayers and was making his speech. Now that he was speaking English, Tim began signing for Taylor so she could follow it.

“I have a pen pal my age who is a Russian
refusenik
who recently emigrated to Israel with his parents,” Jason said. “We’ve been writing to each other for a year. My rabbi arranged it as part of our school studies program. Through our relationship we’ve both learned a lot about other people. Although our lives are very different, in many ways we’re alike, too. What I am going to do is take one third of the money you have all been so kind to give me as gifts, and donate it to help develop my friend’s little town in Israel, where the need is great.”

A soft rustle and sigh went through the room: surprise, admiration. What a mature young man, what a nice thing to do. Grady raised an eyebrow at Taylor.

“In conclusion,” Jason said, “I want to thank my father, and my mother, and Tenzing, who has been like another father to me.”

How sweet, Olivia thought. Another father. Her throat closed up and she tried not to cry. Knowing only the bones of family scandal, it had never occurred to her that they all got along so well.

The bar mitzvah was over and they filed into the next room where a table had been set up with little glasses of wine for the adults, grape juice for the children, and cookies. Everybody was milling around. Kenny was beaming, proud and happy, his arm around Jason’s shoulders. Gloria came plowing through the crowd to Olivia.

“Do you remember me? I’m Gloria.”

“Of course I do,” Olivia said. Does she wear the sari on treks, she thought, or does she wear jeans?

“You’re looking very good,” Gloria said.

“So are you.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Yes.”

“Nobody ever understood my relationship with Kenny,” Gloria said. “I thought somehow that you did.”

“Maybe I did,” Olivia said.

“Kenny and I were always best friends,” Gloria said. “We still are. Kenny can’t do anything without consulting me. He’s always on the phone—what should I do about this, about that. That’s why he never remarried. He’s too dependent on me.”

Maybe if he remarried he wouldn’t have to be, Olivia thought, but she nodded agreeably.

“I know no one ever forgave me for running away,” Gloria said.

“Kenny and Jason did,” Olivia said. “That’s all that matters.”

“You’re right,” Gloria said, pleased. “I knew you would understand.”

They stood there looking at each other. There wasn’t that much to say.

“Well, it was nice seeing you,” Gloria said.

“You, too.” And she was gone, back into the crowd again.

“Was that Gloria?” Grady asked. He had Taylor in tow and was translating for her. Olivia could see Tim in the corner talking to Uncle Seymour.

“Yes,” Olivia said.

“We were saying,” Grady said, “that you should come visit us sometime. Now that we’ve got you to come this far.”

“I’ll try. You know I’d like to.”

“I’d love you to see my new house,” he said. “It’s right up in the trees. You can stay in the guest room. I’ll take you for a ride on my motorcycle.”

“I don’t know about that,” Olivia said. “I can’t ride a motorcycle.”

“You just hold on to me.”

“He has a beautiful house,” Taylor said. “Or you could stay with us.”

“Do you ride motorcycles, too?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I ride horses. Are you scared of them?”

“I only deal with small animals,” Olivia said.

“Remember you’re invited,” Grady said. “Thrills and spills.” He gave her a wicked grin and she thought how sometimes, just for an instant, he did remind her of his father.

“Do you guys ever see Kenny?” Olivia asked.

“No.”

“But he lives so close.”

“We just don’t.”

“Nobody in the family has ever seen my house,” Taylor said.

“They haven’t seen mine either,” Olivia said. “It isn’t even new anymore.”

“I never hear from anybody,” Taylor said. “Nobody cares about the half-breed in California.”

Poor Taylor, Olivia thought. She hoped Taylor was only kidding, but she knew she wasn’t. “They do care about you,” Olivia said. “Nobody calls you because they don’t have a TTY, but the other cousins almost never call or write to each other either. And you don’t write them. It’s nothing personal.” She remembered what Jenny had said:
They will always love you
. “That’s why we have to come to these family events, to keep up.”