Within Arm's Reach (12 page)

“So, we’re being ordered around in our own house?” I say, in a half-joking tone. I don’t really see the point in fighting. This is the way these evenings unfold. I can’t see any other way.

“You’re moving out,” Gracie says. “It’s not your house.”

“You heard Uncle Pat,” my mother says. “Off you go.”

Obediently, we kids file into the kitchen, having outgrown our use to our parents. Gracie and I lead the group. Then there is Dina, wearing a too-short skirt that Gram has already commented on, along with Theresa’s daughter, Mary, and her son, John.

Gracie gets the tubes of colored frosting out of the refrigerator, and I get the sprinkles and the Red Hots and the pastel Easter mini-M&M’s out of the pantry. The cookies, stacked on cooling racks, are already on the table. We sit down to work.

John can’t take the quiet for long. He picks up the biggest and best-looking rabbit cookie and bites its head off. “Mmmm,” he says loudly. “This is some good shit, these cookies.” Then he laughs with his mouth open so we can all see the chewed remains of the rabbit’s head.

This is the way John has talked ever since he was twelve years old. He is nineteen now and still everything is “good shit” or “bad shit”; every sentence is prefaced by an “Oh man.” Gracie and I have a running bet on whether John is stoned all the time or just stupid. I actually think he’s both, but Gracie thinks he’s just stupid. I once heard Gram say to herself when she thought no one was listening, that she was glad Papa had died before it was clear what kind of man his only grandson would be.

Gracie and I exchange a look now—stupid or stoned?—our first real communication of the day, as Dina says, “John, you are so repulsive!”

Mary looks at the ceiling, which is, to her, heavenward. She is fourteen and claims she wants to become a nun. I suspect it is because you can move into a nunnery when you’re sixteen, and Mary just wants to get away from her family as quickly as possible.

Gracie, who seems more relaxed away from the adults, tries to make polite conversation. She says, “Uncle Ryan seems to be getting worse, don’t you think?”

“Oh man, he gives me the creeps big time,” John says.

“I don’t know why they don’t lock him up,” Dina says.

“Because he’s not a danger to himself or anyone else,” I say.

“I wonder who pays his bills,” Mary says. “I don’t think Gram can afford it.”

This is a question we’ve asked, in our cousin mini-gatherings, for years. “I bet they all chip in,” Gracie says. “And his church probably helps, too.”

“The shoreless lake,” Dina says, squirting red frosting eyebrows onto a rabbit cookie.

“The what?”

“That’s the name of his cult church, the Shoreless Lake. It’s such a weird name, I could hardly forget it.”

We are quiet over our cookies. I picture a shoreless lake, calm water stretching on and on, the land always receding in the distance, forever unreachable. I speed up my decorating, to try to block out the image.

“That church gives me the creeps, too, big time,” John says, and then eats the cookie he just finished decorating.

We nod in agreement, and Mary’s crosses jingle around her neck.

Just then there is a burst of laughter from the porch. It is intense and a little hysterical. We all recognize the sound. It means that the McLaughlins are now drunk enough, loose enough, to start telling stories from their childhood. Their stories are about outwitting baby-sitters and being rescued from the top branch of a tree by the fire department, and breaking bones falling off roofs and bloodletting battles between siblings over stolen wedding dresses and prom dates. There is nearly always some violence and the stakes are always high. My mother, Uncle Pat, Aunt Meggy, Aunt Theresa, Uncle Johnny, and even Uncle Ryan tell of a vibrant childhood and adolescence when life was lived right down to the bone.

My cousins and I used to love to hear those stories. When Gracie, John, Dina, Mary, and I were little, we would run to the room where our parents were when we heard that particular shout of laughter. We would crouch at the door, or behind a table, and listen as the stories were told, happy to picture our parents living such large lives. But at some point, as we got a little older, we began to hear the stories from a different angle, and with less pleasure. We realized that our parents and their brothers and sisters had lived those stories when they were
our
age, and that we had nothing to compare in our own lives. Our problems were normal and boring; we couldn’t come up with one exciting, knee-slapping story among us. We had fewer brothers and sisters, fewer brawls, fewer secrets. Our lives were not shaped by unbreakable Catholic rules and inescapable Irish history. We began to feel small, and although we never voiced the decision, at some point we simply stopped running toward the sound of the McLaughlins’ laughter. We stayed where we were, just out of earshot, and kept on doing whatever it was we had been told to do.

Tonight we bend over the cookies and focus on decorating. We pass around the different colors of frosting, try to stay within the lines of the cookies, and dot M&M’s where the rabbit’s nose and mouth should be.

There is still laughter rising and falling out on the porch when my father and Uncle Travis come inside for more beer. “You guys sure do take your work seriously,” Dad says. He rests his hand on my shoulder as he leans over to inspect the cookies. Travis picks up the egg-shaped cookie Mary has just spent twenty minutes decorating and bites it in half.

“Mmm,” he says, his mouth full. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

“Right?” John says, and laughs with a sound of relief. He pushes his chair away from the table with his long arms and stands up. He seems to be shaking off the somberness of us girl-cousins and the faraway laughter on the porch. “Oh man,” he says, “I can’t take all this sitting still.”

“I wanted to show that cookie to Gram,” Mary says, looking down at her hands. “That was my best one yet.”

Uncle Travis, who is not a bad guy, just an insensitive drunk, shrugs. “Sorry, kiddo. Hey, Doc, any new ideas on my bad knee? It’s killing me these days.”

“You need surgery.”

“Nah. I’m looking for an option that doesn’t require a knife. I’m not the kind of wacko who signs up to have himself cut open, I’ll tell you that much.”

“No? What kind of wacko are you?”

Gracie hits me in the arm, but Uncle Travis just laughs. “You’re ballsy, girl.”

John laughs, too, trying to wedge himself into the banter. “Hey, funny. Listen, Uncle Travis, how about if I have a beer? Just one? Mom won’t care.”

My father’s hand presses down harder on my shoulder. Meggy and Theresa are close, meaning that Theresa lets Meggy boss her around on a daily basis. It also means that Travis has been the one steady man in John and Mary’s lives. He is almost a father to them, the emphasis on
almost
. My dad would like to step in here and tell John he can’t have a beer; I can feel that through the weight of his hand, but he can’t speak up because he has no right. He only sees John once or twice a year. He is a barely known uncle, and nothing more.

“Sure, John, but just one.” Uncle Travis hands John a can with a wink.

This is one of those moments when we are painfully, clearly, different. Different tastes, different manners, different socioeconomic classes. Everyone in the room feels it, and is uncomfortable. It is nearly impossible to believe that we belong to the same family, until we hear Gram’s voice at the door. The sound turns each of our heads, wraps us all together, puts us back into our proper places. Under the sound of her voice, we are again, simply and only, Catharine McLaughlin’s children, sons and daughters-in-law, grandchildren.

“It’s getting cold out there,” Gram says. “Do you mind if I join you?”

AND WITH THIS, the third and final phase of the family gathering begins. Gram’s children follow her into the house, and a chill has fallen over their clothes and faces. They have apparently left the childhood stories behind; perhaps one among them has already turned mean. The people who are going to get drunk are well on their way.

We uncover the cold dinner the caterers left on the dining-room table: a cooked ham, fruit salad, macaroni salad, potato salad, loaves of bread, and miniature sandwiches. We put out large paper plates, with real utensils. Papa couldn’t stand to eat with a plastic fork and knife, and we still always use real utensils. With the plates loaded with food, we sit scattered around the living room and eat off our laps. I try to figure out who has been drinking too much, because that roster always changes. This time, I choose Mom first, because her cheeks are red, and she keeps looking up from her plate with a stupid grin. She gets emotional when she is drunk, and sentimental is always the first stop. My suspicion is confirmed when she crosses the room for another serving of macaroni salad and stops to squeeze Gracie’s shoulder and mine.

“I just want to thank you girls for throwing such a wonderful party for the family,” she whispers, just loudly enough so that everyone hears her.

Gracie and I smile and nod politely. Everyone knows we did not throw this party. We reluctantly agreed to let it take place here, and that was only because Gram asked. I just hope everyone knows that we know our true involvement and that we don’t think we’re any better than we are. I hope they know that I wanted this gathering to take place anywhere but here. I want that now more than ever because I have stumbled upon yet another unexpected negative. Watching the family sit where I have been living, breathe beer and wine into my air, crisscross my space, put my forks into their mouths, has made the usual identity crisis—the question of who am I this year with these people compared to who I was last year and how much do I have in common with these men and women who share my blood—even more acute. It does not help that Gracie has removed herself and left me alone. It also does not help to know that my memory will undoubtedly brand this day, and this sight, into my brain. I will not ever be able to walk into this house without thinking of this onslaught of McLaughlins and the shaky way it has made me feel. Thank God I am moving out. Thank God it is soon.

“Ryan, why aren’t you eating?” Theresa asks.

Ryan is sitting in his wheelchair with his hands folded, pointedly not touching his plate. “Nobody said grace. I refuse to eat food that has not been blessed. Something terrible is bound to happen.”

This stops most of us, forks in the air, mouths full.

“Goodness,” Gram says, “you’re right, Ryan. Please, someone say grace.”

“Grace,” John says, and gives an open-mouthed laugh that falls off in the middle when he realizes no one else is amused. He follows up quickly with, “Dina was smoking out front.”

“She most certainly was not,” Meggy says, without even looking at her daughter.

“That’s right,” Dina says, reeking of Marlboro Lights.

“I’ll say grace,” Pat says.

Everyone sits up straight. Mom points her goofy grin right at him and I watch her eyes fill with tears.

“Lord, please bless this food and bless this family. Amen.”

“That’s my brother, man of few words,” Johnny says, and I put him on the drunk list, too. I imagine that with all the antidepressants he’s on, he probably doesn’t have to do much imbibing to get a buzz.

“Pat said all that needed to be said,” Gram says. “Son, you do remind me of your father.”

Gram spoke with a gentle air of apology, but Pat still took the comment hard. No one else would have been able to tell, but our years of family gatherings have boiled down to hours of studying one another locked in either awkward silence or awkward conversation. We all watch Pat’s shoulders draw back. We know he will leave soon. The party is just about over.

Gram puts her plate down on the floor beside her foot. She has seen the sign, too. She’d better say what she has to say before her audience disperses. “While you all finish your meal, and before we eat the lovely cookies my grandchildren have made, I’d like to say a few words.” She folds her hands in her lap. “I want to thank each of you for coming. It has been a few years since we’ve all been together as a complete group, and this gathering was important to me. I think it is important for us as a family. Since Patrick died our family has drifted—”

With the mention of Papa’s name, whatever is frozen in Pat freezes a little deeper. Perched on the folding chair, he looks as if you’d have to use an ice pick to get at anything living inside him. This unnerves me, because I suddenly realize that I have this tendency in myself. I know I have looked like Pat does right now, frozen and locked away, unreachable. I know that deep in there he probably feels smug and safe. But he’s wrong. He’s not safe; he’s dead. I don’t want to look like that. I don’t want to be sitting like a Popsicle on a folding chair in the middle of this family when I am fifty, completely alone, with no kids and no husbands who stick.

“Are you all right?” Gracie whispers.

I look down and see that my knees are shaking. My legs look like they want to dance. I shake my head, neither affirmative nor negative.

Gram says, “I want that drifting to stop. If I have to continue to force you all to come together like I did this time, I will. But there will come a time when I won’t be here, and you’ll have to gather, or disband, on your own.”

“I
knew
Mom was sick,” Theresa says in a shrill voice.

“You don’t need to talk like this, Mother,” Mom says, but whereas Theresa sounded scared, Mom sounds annoyed.

I stare at my knees. I watch them shake, and wonder what I should do to make them stop.

“I am not sick,” Gram says. “But I
am
an old woman. I have been fortunate to live for as long as I have. I’m not trying to upset you children. I just need to tell you what it is that I want.”

“What do you want, Mother?” Ryan looks prepared to get up out of his wheelchair and give it to her.

“I want this family to come back together. I want us to know each other, and to help each other. I think it is very important, especially now that we have a new baby on the way.”

This stops my knees from dancing. I look up. I feel the ripple of wonder and curiosity pass around the room, from folding chair to folding chair. Gracie’s fingernails bite into my arm.