by Kris Ripper
Instead, Jake was grinning at Miles, tugging on his ear, and the tail end of that smile caught Singer by surprise.
“So, time to hang out with the in-laws, huh? I mean, you’ve been stuck with, like, all of my people. It’s only fair.”
“This isn’t really the same,” Singer muttered, cheated out of his bad mood by Jake’s lack of complicity.
“Okay.” But clearly Jake—whose huge, loving, overinvolved family was nothing like the Thurmans—had no idea what was wrong.
“So you think she’s staying for a few days?”
He looked at Lisa, and at least she understood that now was a time for dire warnings. “I hope that’s all she’s staying.”
She sighed, slipping her phone into her pocket. “All right.”
Jake, still carrying Miles, trailed behind them while the Thurman kids squared their shoulders and prepared to smile at their mother. They knew how to do this. At one time, both of them had even been good at telling Mother exactly what she wanted to hear. Somewhere along the line, Singer thought he’d lost the skill. And he could tell by looking at her that Lisa wasn’t better off.
This was going to be a disaster.
*
Derries to the rescue.
Singer’s shoulders tensed. But the text message—from Carey, of all improbable people—said nothing else. Then the phone rang. The landline, which they only used for telemarketers and charities.
He excused himself from the stilted conversation in the living room. “Hello?”
“Singer, it’s Cathy. Did I hear correctly that your mother is in town?”
In town. What a phrase.
“Hi, Cathy. Yes, she is. She arrived this morning.”
“Joe and I would love to have all of you over for dinner.”
“Oh, that’s—very kind of you, Cathy.” How could he decline? Or accept? Surely he had to decline.
There were voices on the other end, and Cathy saying, “Leave it.”
“Excuse me?” Singer said, to fill space, give himself more time to think.
“Let us take care of entertaining tonight, Singer. Unless you want time with your mother, of course, and your sister—”
“No, no. I mean—” He broke off, grateful the doors were closed so at least he could sag back against the wall in relative peace. “No, Cathy, that’s— I mean, thank you, so much, for the offer.”
“Singer, I—” Cathy paused, and he closed his eyes, waiting for some platitude, getting ready to give some meaningless reply. “It’s been a hell of a week.”
Shocked into a laugh, he said, “I’ve never heard you curse before.”
“Only when it’s appropriate. Please invite your mother and sister over for an impromptu family dinner.” All ambiguity was gone; that was Cathy’s no-nonsense voice. “Carey and Alice will be here. Please let me at least try to help.”
Singer straightened his back. No-nonsense deserved the same. “Thank you very much. I’ll let you know our plans.”
“Excellent. I look forward to meeting your mother. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you kept us apart all these years.”
“No, I—” No-nonsense, dammit. “It should be interesting. Thanks, Cathy.”
“Of course.”
He stood there in silence for a moment after hanging up.
“He’s asleep.” Jake was standing at the hallway door, leaning against the jamb.
“I didn’t know you were there. That was your mom.”
“Yeah, I just got a cryptic message from Carey. What’s up?”
While Singer outlined the conversation, Jake moved closer to him, standing right inside his reach. In other times, he’d close the distance, adjust Jake’s shirt, brush something invisible from his collar. Now Singer felt glued in space, unable to move. Waiting to see what Jake would do.
Jake’s phone buzzed, and he looked at it for a long moment. (This is the opportunity, Singer’s brain informed his limbs: this is when you make contact.) “Okay. We’ll take separate cars. You take your mom in your car and leave first, so Lisa can—I don’t know—spontaneously combust or something.”
Singer was so preoccupied with whether or not to reach out, it took him a full minute to understand. “Oh. Oh. Of course.” He glanced at the door to the living room. “Was this the plan all along? It’s a good one, but Cathy didn’t mention—”
“No, Mom totally wouldn’t.” Jake held out his phone, open to a text message. Tell Singer to say yes. But no pressure. We thought at the very least Lisa could use a break.
“All right. Well, we should— I should tell Mother … something.”
Jake’s hand, in slow motion, descended on his wrist. “Let me. Mom would probably have asked me to do it anyway, except you’re way more reliable.” Then he smiled, an ordinary Jake-smile, one that held no special subtext or meaning.
Right now that smile made Singer want to cry like a little kid, off on his own, wallowing in self-pity and the knowledge that he didn’t deserve Jake’s smile, or Cathy’s help.
“Once more into the breech.” Jake let go. “I think Miles likes Lisa. Because she doesn’t demand his attention, just watches him and lets him be.”
“Really?” It was something he hadn’t even considered, the relationship between their child and his sister. Until the last month, he had mostly written her out of his future entirely. She could still leave, obviously. Just like Miles.
Jake delivered the invitation smoothly, and Mother’s innate politeness forced her to accept (on Lisa’s behalf, as well, though he thought Jake might have winked at her when she opened her mouth to speak).
Lisa would be an aunt. He’d thought of Aunt Alice, joining the ranks of the Derrie aunts and uncles, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Lisa would be as much his child’s aunt as Alice was.
And Mother would be a grandmother. Singer glanced across the room at her perfect makeup and set shoulders and wondered if any of this would ever make sense.
11
Viv
107 days until starting over
Viv was tired. She had imagined a quiet dinner at home with her children, but she could hardly turn down an invitation from Jake’s parents. They lived in an upscale neighborhood she mentally dated back to the same era of her own house, though in a slightly less desirable area of town. She and Drew had seen a few houses nearby, if she remembered correctly. It was such a long time ago, of course; they’d been younger than Lisa and Singer were now.
Cathy and Joe Derrie matched their house: nondescript, ordinary. She smiled, shook hands, and thanked them for having her over on short notice. She also met the brother, Carey, and his partner, Alice. Carey shook her hand and mentioned that he’d been in Lisa’s class in high school. He clearly hadn’t been a friend, or even an acquaintance, but Viv nodded and smiled, as if this bit of personal trivia was as significant as he expected it to be.
Alice—and Viv wasn’t sure what to make of the word “partner” in the context of a woman—had a pretty face, a loud voice, and a weight problem. Still, Singer seemed to feel comfortable around all of them, which was slightly disorienting.
She looked forward to asking Lisa about Singer’s apparent newfound fascination with … chaos. Strange, considering he had always seemed so in control. Surely Lisa must be equally mystified.
Viv felt a sudden pang of regret. Had it been this way the entire time since Lisa returned home? Unexpected dinner parties she didn’t feel she could turn down and overfamiliar strangers? Whatever had happened, Viv could start putting it to rights now that she was here. She turned to the expansive front windows in time to see Jake pull his car to the curb in front of the house. She hadn’t really gotten a straight answer from Singer about why they’d needed to take separate cars in the first place, but at least now she could see Lisa for herself, even if the conditions were less than ideal.
<
br /> Except Lisa wasn’t there. It was just Jake, extracting the little boy from his car seat, fumbling with the diaper bag.
She fought a sudden irrational fear that something had happened to Lisa. Of course it hadn’t. That was absurd. Which didn’t explain where on earth she was.
“Where is your sister?” Her tone was light, but Singer immediately looked away.
“She’s at home.”
At home? But Lisa had been invited. They’d all been invited into this cluttered house, with its overstuffed chairs, its cupcakes—cupcakes—set out on the kitchen counter, a children’s birthday treat presented like hors d’oeuvres.
Jake walked through the door and nearly tripped, losing his grip on the diaper bag, scattering its contents everywhere.
Singer dropped Viv’s arm and went to help gather the bits and pieces, while Jake awkwardly attempted to get to his knees.
“At least you saved the kid.” Alice reached for the baby. “Right, Miles?”
“It was a close thing.” Jake shook his head, murmuring something to Singer, who didn’t quite look up.
Who are these people? Singer’s last boyfriend, or at least the last one she’d met, had been a quiet boy. Reserved. He’d suited Singer, she thought at the time. She wondered whatever happened to him.
The parents hustled and bustled around each other, trading smiles and stories, folding Singer and the little boy into their bewildering volume. The child assumed the glazed expression of a person overstimulated beyond reason, but Singer’s behavior was far more confounding. He might be pretending out of politeness, which would at least explain matters, though if Viv were being honest, that wasn’t what it looked like. He seemed genuinely … at home in the relative mayhem.
Viv found a safe corner and a glass of wine, making small talk with Joe Derrie while watching his son from across the room and trying to understand Singer’s attraction.
Yes, she agreed Miles looked perfectly healthy. Of course she remembered the local athletic club, and no, she didn’t realize it had finally gone out of business. It turned out they’d been house hunting right around the same time and had probably looked at a few of the same houses. And yes, that was quite the coincidence.
Dinner was served around a table that was nearly large enough to accommodate them all. Jake ate one-handed while the child drank a bottle on his lap. Cathy offered to fit the high chair in at the table, but Jake declined, choosing to defend his dinner from tiny fists while Singer attempted to keep the tablecloth and Jake’s clothing free of food-covered handprints.
They laughed. They laughed at the baby’s antics, at his expression when he managed to grab a handful of mashed potatoes. Cathy patted Singer’s shoulder as she passed him and said, “Don’t worry too much. There’s nothing here that can’t be cleaned, Singer.”
Viv bristled at her presumption. Having been placed in a situation that almost guaranteed a mess, was it any wonder that Singer was trying to prevent it? But Singer only smiled apologetically and stood to follow Cathy into the kitchen. He helped with the dishes while she made coffee, both of them speaking in low voices.
Food soured in Viv’s stomach, sitting at a table with people she did not know, unable to even hear her son’s voice over the general babble of the room. It should have been easy enough to navigate a dinner party—even one as disorderly as this—but she felt an unaccustomed hollowness in her chest whenever she looked at Singer. How could her own son feel so foreign, so alien? She’d fed him and clothed him and raised him, and yet he was, if anything, more bewildering than the spectacle of Jake’s family.
The disorientation was slightly dizzying.
But she smiled, and nodded, and agreed. Yes, it is good to see the boys. Yes, Lisa looks very well. Such small, meaningless words; she barely noticed herself speaking. When they were finally alone in the silence of the car, she waited for Singer to explain something, anything, about this night. Why Lisa was at home. Why he’d expected Viv to accompany him to this dinner party. He said nothing.
They were nearly back to the house when she couldn’t contain her perplexity any longer.
“What happened to the young man you introduced us to a few years ago? I don’t remember you telling us…”—anything—“… whatever happened with him.”
Singer looked over. It was possibly the first time he’d looked directly at her all night. “The young man I introduced you to a few years ago.” His voice was perfectly flat.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked. “I was wondering, but of course you don’t have to tell me.” Aware it was weak, she added somewhat defensively, “I was only making conversation.”
“Mother, I’ve only introduced you to one—man. Person. Boyfriend. Ever.”
“Yes, I remember.” Reserved, polite, a nice young man.
“I don’t think you do remember, actually.” Singer sighed. “That was Jake. Jake is the only person I’ve ever introduced you to, Mother. You just spent the entire evening with him.”
“That’s absurd. They’re nothing remotely alike. The one you brought to dinner was … He barely said a word the entire time he was with us.” This had to be a joke. She opened her mouth to say something, but then she caught his expression.
Singer’s lips pressed grimly together, and for a moment Viv lost sight of her son in the man sitting next to her. She sought familiar details—the small scar on his neck from where he’d picked at his chicken pox, the cowlick on the top of his head that could never fully be controlled—and to her relief he came back into focus. Her son, of course. An adult man who was still her son.
It had been such a long, long day. She sat back in the passenger seat of the car and wondered if she wasn’t experiencing one of those troubling mental stumbles that heralded eventual dementia. That made more sense than crediting Singer’s story as truth.
She tried to picture the young man from—what had it been? Five years ago? She couldn’t remember anything about the boyfriend but an indistinct blur, who’d sat at her dining room table and said “please” and “thank you” in the correct places. She had still hoped, halfheartedly, that Singer would eventually bring home a girl. A wife.
Clearly that hope had died, but Viv wasn’t archaic in her views. She didn’t mind that Singer liked men. If he had to like men, though, why did he have to like this particular man, with this loud, exhausting family?
“Are you certain that you introduced us to Jake before?” It was a last effort to reconcile the jumble of the day.
Singer pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine, but made no move to get out of the car. “Mother, I’ve been with Jake for nearly seven years. He’s the only serious boyfriend I’ve ever had. The night he met you, he wore a brown plaid shirt he thought was too preppy, and you treated him like you’d treat a plumber, or a car mechanic, with cold detachment.”
She stiffened, stung by the censure in his tone. “I was perfectly polite. And I wouldn’t invite a plumber to dinner, for goodness’ sake.”
“You didn’t invite him, Mother. I did. The one time, in my entire life, I cared enough about someone to introduce him to you and Dad. And you didn’t even recognize him when you saw him again.” Singer shook his head and unbuckled the seatbelt. “Lisa is at home. The entire night was just an excuse to get all of us out of the house so Lisa could have a few hours of peace. That’s how the Derries work: they heard she needed something, so they did it. They’ve never even met her, and yet they know her better than you do, Mother.”
He left the car, snapping the door shut behind him.
That’s not fair. How can you say that? You are so much like your father. But, also like Drew, Singer wasn’t there to fight with. It was so easy for them to walk away, leaving her with all of her arguments loud in her head, unspoken.
The tightness in Viv’s body was unfamiliar and unpleasant. None of this made sense. Everything she’d expected when
she called for a car this morning to take her to the airport had fallen apart. She’d imagined arriving home, assessing Lisa and finding a new specialist, to say nothing of making a hair appointment for both of them, just like she used to do. At first, for a split second, Viv had felt hope. Lisa had smiled as she used to smile, like nothing could touch her, like she could have whatever she wanted. Viv had always thought a little bit of that triumph was hers, raising a daughter to face the world like she’d already conquered it.
But then she’d noticed the bags under Lisa’s eyes, the way she couldn’t quite hold her smile in place. She hadn’t sat down, not even just to chat. She’d edged out of the room and down the hall. And Singer had pointedly offered the guesthouse. In her own home.
Or rather, her own backyard.
Jake’s car pulled alongside, parking in the driveway. She should have looked away, but instead she searched his features to confirm what Singer had said. All she managed to accomplish was startling him when he spotted her still sitting in the passenger seat.
For a prolonged moment they stared at each other.
Who are you? Why are you in my house? Whose child is that? Viv looked away first, resentfully loosening her belt and going inside without a backward glance.
No sign of Lisa, and the light in her room was off. Viv had come all this way and had hardly seen her daughter at all.
She retired to the guesthouse, feeling almost unbearably exhausted. Surely that was part of the issue. It had been a long day, and while it hadn’t gone as smoothly as it should have, all was certainly not lost. It would no doubt be easier to begin straightening things out after a full night of sleep. It always was.
12
Lisa
41 days since leaving Grace
Four days into Invasion Viv, the majority of Lisa’s contact with the outside world came from random text messages, mostly from Jake (with a scattered helping of Singer, and Jake’s cousin Frankie, who, last Lisa had heard, hated her guts). The most recent Jake text read: V’s getting her hair done. QUICK, EAT SOMETHING.