Four Chambers: Power of the Matchmaker

by Julie Wright

  “I don’t remember sending you an invitation to my tea party,” I said.

  “That’s because you only invited the stuffed shirts.” He pointed to a large stuffed bear occupying the seat in between ours.

  “Isn’t that the point of a tea party? To invite people you don’t really like so you can impress people who don’t really matter?”

  Everett grinned knowingly. “Your childhood really was as lame as mine.”

  I sighed and pretended to pour from the delicate tea pot. “Actually, when I was a very little girl, my mother was a big fan of tea sets. Before I had decided to enter the masculine world of surgery, we got along pretty well. She would sit with me and have tea parties using my tea set with real tea and real sugar and real cream.” I made a soft tsking noise. “I really liked those moments back when we got along. I miss it.”

  “That sounds idyllic,” Everett said and pretended to use the tongs to get us both sugars from the sugar dish. “I wish I had memories like that of my mom. It would make dealing with her a little easier.”

  “I don’t know if it makes it easier or harder. Things like this remind me of all the ways I failed her in not being the shopping debutante daughter she really wanted. I always wonder if I could have been both the doctor and the debutante if she hadn’t been so insistent that I chose only one.” I poured me imaginary cream, but he put his hand out to stop me from pouring any in his cup.

  “I don’t take cream in my tea,” he said quite formally.

  I nodded and set the creamer jar down.

  We picked up our respective saucers in one hand and removed the tiny cups from the saucers with our other. We even had our pinkies extended, as might have been considered proper.

  “Well,” Everett said. “Here’s to your masculine profession.”

  We clinked our tiny cups together just in time for a flashbulb to go off and blind both of us. We blinked and scowled into the now spotty nook.

  “Great picture. Thanks guys,” the photographer said. “You can’t stage them to look that natural.”

  He wandered off to presumably blind some other hapless victim.

  Everett smiled at me. At least, I think he did. It was hard to tell through my spotted vision. “Why is being a doctor considered a masculine profession?” he asked.

  For a moment I thought he was picking up the conversation his mother had tried starting both last night and at the breakfast table, but then he said, “Whenever I think of the word masculine, I always think of hairy chested, body builders. Most doctors—even the male ones, are usually quite thin and non-hairy . . .”

  I laughed and could only drink my pretend tea and agree with him.

  There were interviews by the media, punch and cookies—the real kind like you would give small children since it was a bookstore where actual children were wandering the store and choosing items their parents would hopefully buy for them.

  The parents seemed willing to buy and happy to be there spending not only money, but also time, with their children. Whatever Hazel had done to spark interest in her company, she’d done it right. The whole affair was quite festive, and it made for a nice break in my study-work routine. According to the media, the patrons, and Hazel, the grand opening had been a smashing success and also created a lot of buzz for the online arm of the company, which celebrated its own spike in sales due to the attention.

  The Covington family held a celebratory dinner party at their house on their back patio under a ceiling of twinkle lights with the ocean providing a steady soundtrack.

  It would have been completely amazing if it had only been Everett, Hazel, and me. Sadly, the others had been invited as well. The three make-up free women faced each other around the dinner table as if gearing up for a death match of wits.

  I sort of hoped that my burgundy lip gloss excluded me from the death match.

  Riley seemed generally unhappy that her sister had experienced a great day and drew first blood.

  “All you’re doing with these stores,” she said to Hazel as she plucked a roll from the serving dish, “is contributing to the world-wide landfill.”

  The statement made my jaw go slack, and I wondered if I should have brought an emergency doctor bag so I could tend the wounds they clearly meant to inflict on one another. But no one else seemed to notice the snark in the words, and Hazel didn’t seem to mind at all. “That’s not true. Most of our toys are considered to be of heirloom quality and heirloom desirability, which means they will be well-loved during their time with the original child, and then preserved and passed down to future generations.”

  “Who determines heirloom quality?” Riley asked. “And could someone pass the unsalted butter please?” She waved toward my end of the table where a pat of butter lay on a plate.

  I hesitated a moment, unsure if the butter by me was the unsalted version she requested but when she waved again and rolled her eyes at me, I figured I didn’t care which it was so long as it got her to turn her attention elsewhere.

  Hazel smirked at her sister.“My research and development team make that determination. And since they’re the best in the business, and I pay them a lot of money to stay smart, I’m inclined to trust them. And Dad, the asparagus is perfect, not too limp, not too crisp either. Just perfect.”

  “Thanks, Hazel,” their father said. The normal word count in any sentence uttered by Gordon Covington was two. A long sentence consisted of three words.

  But he smiled at his wife a lot, so I didn’t think he was unhappy. His complacency served as his downfall in many ways. It kept him from being the kind of father who didn’t allow his wife to henpeck her children and who didn’t allow his children to henpeck each other.

  Everett’s parents had a complete reversal of roles in comparison to my parents. My mother was the quiet one smiling at her spouse. My father was the loud and demanding one who asked questions that had answers which could never satisfy him.

  It was fascinating to watch from my point of view.

  Fascinating and irritating.

  Hazel had experienced a wonderful day. Why would her parents allow Riley to scorn the whole affair as if Hazel had done something socially criminal instead of socially good? Why would Grace continually make quips regarding Everett not being quite good enough?

  A rush of relief flooded me when Riley excused herself from the table to use answer a phone call from a “very crucial client” and swept away with the grace of the dancer her mother likely scolded her to never become.

  If heels were on the Covington documented banned list, surely ballet slippers would have been as well. I wondered what Grace would do if I showed up at breakfast in the morning with a tiara. I actually felt a bit of disappointed that I hadn’t packed one. Oh well. Maybe next time.

  At least "next time" if they ever invited me back and if I ever decided I wanted to partake in this live horror movie again.

  As I sat, musing these thoughts and bouncing my one red-heeled foot, Grace settled her gaze on me. My bouncing foot halted and slowly lowered back down as I waited to see what she meant by scrutinizing me with such intensity.

  “What kind of doctor are you studying to be?” she asked after a moment.

  “A pediatric heart surgeon,” I replied. “Like my father and my grandfather. It feels sort of like a family tradition, so it’s a good thing I really enjoy internal medicine and children, both.” I tried at a smile. So far, the conversation had gone well. Nothing dramatic or unfriendly.

  “And your mother? Is she in the medical field as well?”

  “No.” I didn’t elaborate since the chances of Grace approving of my mom’s socialite behavior remained as thin as Grace’s naked lips when she pressed them together at the onset of any displeasure. It wasn’t that I cared if Grace approved, but more that I cared if the table of people continued biting at each other. People who invited contention to a conversation were people not worth knowing.

  “Where do you hope to do your residency?” she asked.

&n
bsp; “I’d like to stay in Massachusetts. I’ve grown used to it, I guess.”

  She fingered the napkin she’d placed next to her plate. “How are your grades?”

  Hazel cut in and said, “If they aren’t perfect, don’t answer that. Nothing bugs Grace more than a woman who doesn’t take her studies seriously. She grounded me once for a whole month over a C.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” I told Hazel. “They’re not perfect, but I’m near the top of my class. So there’s nothing to feel ashamed of.”

  “You hear that, Everett? The woman is the top of her class. It’s not enough to bring a smart woman home, you should try to emulate her example.”

  Everett actually smirked at her comment. Smirked! As if his mother hadn’t basically called him stupid in front of the woman he’d brought home to meet the family.

  “Actually,” I cut in before Grace could lecture her son any further. “Actually, I’m only near the top of my class because Everett is the top of the class, and his grades and work ethic are insurmountable.”

  Everett stopped grinding pepper over his salad long enough to look startled at my comment. “That’s not entirely true. My grades might be better, but Andra’s work ethic is a thing of art.” He winked and put the pepper grinder down.

  How could he wink when the entire conversation made me feel so angry for him?

  “Either way,” Grace waved her hand through the air as if dismissing an unruly servant. “I’m glad you know what you’re doing and where you want to be going, Andra. None of Everett’s wild switching of schools in the middle and all that. He’ll be lucky to get a residency at all with that kind of track record.”

  I tensed all my muscles to restrain myself from leaping up and screaming at the whole lot of them. “He’s far more likely to get whatever residency he puts in for,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm—even to me. “Everett is a commodity in the medical community.” I’d intended on saying more, but Riley returned, and I fell silent instead. Everett wasn’t bothered with their behavior. Why was I?

  Riley continued her crusade to find fault with everything about the day and Hazel’s success. Hazel laughed at half the things her sister said. Everett continued to smirk.

  I kept quiet, letting them have their quarrels even while not understanding how the sibling group hadn’t banded together the way Nathan and I had as children.

  At least I kept quiet until Riley decided she’d had enough of picking on Hazel and turned her attentions to Everett.

  “Done with nursing school yet?” she asked him.

  I bristled at the comment—not because there was anything wrong with nurses or the nursing program, but because she meant the words to bite. My dad often suggested I study to be a nurse instead of a doctor since the lines between them blurred so much anyway, anymore.

  “Almost,” was the only reply Everett bothered to offer. I couldn’t help the instinctive need to defend my position and to defend Everett’s honor. But Everett must not have felt such a need. He didn’t suck in a great breath of air like I had so that he could argue louder and longer than his sister. He didn’t straighten as though someone had knifed him in the back.

  He said one word.

  Almost.

  Why did it grate on me?

  I should have stayed quiet. And I might have if Riley hadn’t already worn me down by clipping snippets of Hazel’s great day away and if Grace hadn’t belittled her son just moments before and if the two of them hadn’t messed with my heels this morning. But I had straightened and had sucked in the air, and there was nothing to be done for it except let it all out. “Why would you say that?” I asked.

  The business of people eating meals at the table stopped and all eyes went to me.

  “Say what?” Riley asked.

  “Calling his education nursing school when you have to know he’s in medical school to be a surgeon.”

  “Well, it’s not like that’s a bad thing, is it? Is there something wrong with being a nurse?” Riley petitioned the table.

  Her mother shook her head, wide-eyed as if baffled by my impertinence.

  I narrowed my eyes at her and set my utensils down. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with being a nurse if that’s what he was actually working toward. Just like there’s nothing wrong with being a paralegal, but I'm willing to bet you’d get miffed if someone called you a paralegal because it downgrades the higher achievement, the longer stretch, as you well know, or you wouldn’t have said it.”

  Hazel busted up laughing. “Go Everett! You’ve snagged yourself a girl who can hold her own at our family dinner table!”

  I flushed deep and hot and remembered myself. I wasn’t at my house with my parents on one side of the dinner table and Nathan and me on the other side. This was Everett’s family and I was a guest. “I’m sorry. This is your celebration dinner, and I’m probably out of line. I’m sorry,” I said again. I wanted to get up and go to my room, but knew that would make me look like a coward to people who clearly despised weakness. And in reality, I wasn’t sorry at all.

  I stayed, and actually felt relief when Riley declared that she would never have a reason to support her sister’s store because she never intended on having any children. It was hard not to feel relief. Maybe there was something to Grace’s first declaration that some women weren’t meant to be pigeonholed into the role of motherhood. Grace made a joke about kids not being so bad and actually urged Riley to reconsider as long as she only had one or two.

  “Of course,” Grace said with a laugh, “I’d only wanted two children, but a little too much wine and a little too few birth control pills contributed to me having to raise a boy, of all things.” She stopped then and for the first time since meeting her, the woman actually managed to look a little embarrassed by what she’d said. Her mortification with herself made her a much more careful, somber human and dinner conversation turned into something almost friendly after that.

  Everett took me on our short walk down the pier after dinner was put away and cleaned up. “Makes your family look normal, doesn’t it?” he said as his feet slowly thumped against the planks.

  “Is it always like that?”

  “Naw.” He laughed. “Sometimes it’s worse.” He took my hand when he realized I’d stopped to gape at him. “I’m just kidding. Sort of.”

  “How do you handle that?” I asked, still baffled. His family really did make mine look like a lakeside picnic. Whatever they were, I didn’t mind that he had my hand in his, that he didn’t let go.

  “My mom had to get married—shotgun wedding situation. She resented a lot of things but most of all, she resented not becoming whoever it was that she wanted to be. Not that she couldn’t have done whatever she wanted in life—even with children. But that she's afraid . . . really afraid, and she hides behind us and all the energy it took to raise us. We’re kind of her convenient excuse to never try hard things. She took it out worst of all with Riley. She pushed Riley hard.” We made it to the end of the pier and sat down; his hand dropped mine in the process of sitting, and he didn’t take it again.

  His mother would have scoffed my lack of feminism for not having the courage to take that initiative of hand-holding on my own, but knowing about her fears and insecurities made mine easier to feel okay with.

  Everett continued, “I remember lots of nights lying in my bed, listening to Riley cry because she was so tired while my mom drilled her to help her get ready for a debate in school or when she made her give a talk over and over again to help prep her for the speech she needed to have memorized when she was running for student council. Things like that. I go easy on them because neither of them have been easy on themselves or on each other. It’s all good.”

  I stared at him, the pale moonlight reflected in his face. “No. You’re all good. The rest of us are kind of crap. I’m sorry I got involved. It wasn’t my place.”

  Everett laughed. “Andrea without an E . . . that was the best dinner I’ve had with my family. It’s n
ice to know you can hold your own with them. Like Hazel said, not many people can. You were brilliant.”

  “Does it bother you when they bite at you like that?”

  He shrugged. “Probably. It’s the way the family communicates and it's been going on for so long, I don’t know anything else. My mom sometimes used to say that we may not like what she was telling us, but we always knew she was telling us the truth. She called them kind truths, which she insists are better than the apathetic lie.”

  I lay flat on my back on the pier and stared at the stars, which were few under the light from the full moon. “I’ve heard you say that before, but still don’t get it.”

  He lay down next to me. “It means she loves us enough to be kind and tell us the truth. If she was apathetic toward us, she would have told us a lie.”

  I turned to face him, propping my head up on my arm. “Sorry, I’m not buying it. Most of the things she says about you are absolutely not true, so it feels more like the apathetic lie.”

  He turned to me, mimicking my elbow prop. “Truth is perspective.”

  “Philosophy from a student of science. The scandal.”

  “The two are a genuine complement to each other. Yin and yang and all that.”

  I shook my head and laughed. “You are too good. Kind of disgustingly perfect. Have you ever done anything you shouldn’t have?”

  His face went from amused to intensely serious. “I invited you here this weekend.”

  I did not see that answer coming. “And that’s bad because . . .”

  “Because I sort of told a lie.”

  I wanted to make a joke, to tease him about telling a lie, to maybe ask him if it was an apathetic one or not, but the way the air emulsified with my every breath made such brevity impossible.

  His confession came out in a tsunami of words. “I never invited Liz to come with me this weekend. She knew my sister had a store launch coming at some point and would have come if I had given her a specific time and date, but I didn’t invite her because they would have eaten her alive.” He jerked his head toward the lights flooding over the stone patio from the back windows of his childhood home.