Tangled Like Us

by Krista Ritchie

  “You think I’m dumb? I know whatta celebrity is.” My mom clutches Jane’s arm. “This is my son’s girlfriend.” My mom smiles up at me, almost teasingly.

  Mustering cheerfulness, Jane manages to say, “My family is well. I’m just sad I have to go so soon.”

  My mom nods. “Come back around. We’ll take you to Sunday mass before the next dinner.” We all go to an LGBT-friendly Catholic church and consider ourselves cafeteria Catholics: practicing, but we dissent from less progressive teachings.

  I cut in, “We’re busy next Sunday, ma, and you haven’t gone to mass since Easter.”

  Everyone laughs.

  My mom makes a face at me, a smile creeping. “Busy with what—?” Her voice is cut off as loud commotion comes from the front door.

  A target.

  I’m about to move toward the noise. But I hear the boastful laugh of Tony Ramella—and there’s no chance in any fucking hell that I’m leaving Jane’s side.

  I can’t be surprised that Tony is here. Three surnames dominate the house: Moretti, Piscitelli—sometimes changed to Fish, depending on whose ancestors had to Americanize their name to get jobs—and lastly, Ramella.

  My grandma reaches out to Jane, clasping her hand. “Youse already met my cumare?”

  Jane wracks her brain for cumare. I can’t remember if I mentioned that Italian word. It means a friend who’s a girl.

  I’m about to help Jane, but realization strikes her fast. “Michelina? Yes, we’ve met; she’s quite wonderful.” Jane goes on, talking more, and my grandma is beaming the whole time. She smiles from me to Jane, back to me.

  We need to leave. I can’t stand here and do this much longer. Not in front of these women, and Jane is having a harder time too.

  I’m about to excuse us, but then Michelina shuffles into the dining room with Tony. Goddammit.

  My aunts, cousins, and moms stand up to hug and kiss them.

  Jane rises to her feet too, and I wrap a protective arm around her hips. I watch Tony snatch a bottle of whiskey off the table. Everyone had been drinking whiskey with black coffee.

  He spreads his arms out to me. “Aren’t you going to give your uncle a hug?”

  I want to give him a right hook to the jaw. My glare intensifies. We’re both twenty-eight, and un-fucking- fortunately, he is actually my uncle.

  On paper. Not by blood.

  His older sister is Nicola Ramella, my stepmom who has a heart of gold. Tony and Nicola have a large age gap for siblings.

  I already told Jane my relation to him, and how my mom and Nicola were in the same grade at Saint Joseph’s. They used to date before my mom got with my dad. And they reconnected at a high school reunion, fell back in love, and married.

  Tony drops his arms. “No?” This fucking tool winks at Jane. “What about you, sweetheart?”

  I step out in front of Jane, my eyes lethal, and all the women yell at the men to come separate us.

  “Antonio!” Uncle Joe calls to Tony. “Get your ass in here.”

  I’m being told to go talk to my grandma before I leave. I check back on Jane before I do. “You good?”

  “Yes. You?”

  I nod. “Has Farrow texted you?”

  She softens her voice. “He has. He’s with Moffy. They’ll be here in five minutes.”

  I kiss her temple before I draw away, our hands stay clasped until the very last second that our fingers have to pull apart.

  I approach my grandma at the table. Short gray hair, petite, wrinkles and age spots blemishing her frail skin—her eyes already fill with tears seeing that I’m about to go.

  I take a knee in front of her chair and kiss her cheek. Whispering, “I wish we could stay longer with you.”

  My grandma places a loving hand against my jaw, cradling my face. “You put too much on yourself, you hear? There’s only one thing you need to remember. Just one.” She brings my face closer to hers. “Be happy.”

  43

  JANE COBALT

  My dad is practically a lie detector.

  It has made every Wednesday night family dinner tense. For me. The one who is holstering a giant secret. There are only so many times a girl can pretend she isn’t sleeping with her bodyguard before all the beans are spilled. And there will be no spilling of any beans.

  Which is why I’ve come prepared tonight.

  To conceal my facial expressions, I wear a silver Venetian mask, cheap and plastic. I even haphazardly hot-glued feathers to the edge. Costumes are typical, so it won’t draw suspicion.

  Dinner will formally begin when my parents arrive. Two velveteen chairs wait for them.

  All six of my siblings are already seated at the elegant, ornately-carved dining table, the surface stuffed for a feast. Roasted goose emits a familiar and savory aroma, surrounded by platters of cranberries, green beans, and potatoes. A vegan roast made from seitan sits at Ben’s end.

  The menu never changes. When I was little, I’d grow sick of the meal. But now, I crave it.

  “Jane, wearing a mask to dinner,” Eliot says, a wry smile playing at his lips. He’s dressed in an English vintage suit: black-fitted tailcoat and white chin-high dress shirt with a blood-red cravat tied at the neck. As fashionably theatric as he is.

  I notice how all my brothers and sister fixate on my mask now.

  My back is painfully straight. And I wait for Eliot to say something else.

  But he’s stopped speaking and lights his pipe. We all have the pleasure of watching him blow smoke rings in the air.

  I take an encouraging breath. I’m not a toothless lion, even when it comes to my younger brothers who love to tease me mercilessly.

  “Is that all?” I ask Eliot. “You’re just making a stray observation? Did you notice how Charlie is shirtless then?”

  Charlie tilts his head at me, a cigarette burning between two fingers. He wears nothing more than thousand-dollar suit pants and a chic black-diamond-encrusted harness hooked around his shoulders.

  He always comes to dinner as he pleases. A grin lifts his lip. “I am who I am, and that is not you.”

  Pithy and pointed.

  My cheeks pull in a smile. “I wouldn’t want you to be me, nor I you.”

  Charlie raises his goblet in cheers, but he seems to stare through my mask. My lips slowly fall. He acts like he can see far into me and my deceits and intentions.

  I sweat beneath my armpits. It’s just a trick of the mind, Jane. A chess move. Charlie can’t know anything at all.

  “Well, I think Jane’s mask is positively lovely,” Audrey says beside me, her voice extra whimsical on Wednesday night. We all somehow become our most dramatic selves during this dinner.

  “Thank you, Audrey.” I clink my goblet to hers. Just water in mine. I’m too nervous to drink. I must stay sharp.

  Tom grins, more devilish with half his face painted like a skeleton. He wraps an arm around Eliot’s chair. “I think it’s hands-down the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  We all laugh.

  Eliot passes Tom the pipe, and Ben refills his glass with water, wearing a blue-gray shirt with simple font that says because there is no planet B.

  He’s only sixteen, and it’s strange to think how Ben and Audrey have had more empty dinners than the rest of us. I can’t remember the last time we were all under one roof on a Wednesday night.

  Now that some of us are older and moved out, it’s more difficult to get together. Even when we all can’t make it, those two are here, still at home. The youngest of the brood.

  But we do make it a point to try our hardest to be back these nights. No one wishes to miss a Wednesday dinner.

  Beckett has graced this table the least. Usually, he has rehearsals or a show. Right now, he reaches for a goblet of wine, his honest eyes pinned to me. “Will you try to narrate another audiobook, sis?”

  “No.” I fold my hands on my lap. “After my failure, I believe it’s not where I should be.”

  “Fate decrees it so,” Audrey say
s, fixing a bonnet atop her carrot-orange hair. Fresh flowers tucked to the hat with blush ribbon.

  “Precisely. Fate says I should find work elsewhere.” I ramble on. “And with my life so upside down and sideways with the fake dating ruse, I’ve given myself a new deadline. I will find a suitable career after the holidays.”

  Eliot is about to respond, but the familiar sound of heels clicking on floor breaks our attention.

  Our heads swerve nearly in unison at the doorway.

  Poised and unflappable, our mom and dad push inside with purpose and determination. Each in their finest formal outfits. Black dress and tailored suit, respectively.

  Our dad takes one head of the table.

  “I apologize, my beautiful gremlins,” my mom says, reaching the head nearest me. “For being five minutes late you all may—” She stops short, finally noticing the table. Her eyes go wide and her red lips part in shock.

  No one told her that Beckett would be here tonight. And I know she’s mentally counting each chair. How they’re all filled with each of her children.

  She fights tears, eyes reddened, and her hands brace the top of the chair, still standing. “What are you doing here?” she asks Beckett. “I thought you had a performance.”

  “Power outage at the theatre,” Beckett says. “Tonight’s was cancelled.” Wearing a simple leather jacket and white T-shirt, he pushes back his chair and stands to hug her.

  She’s notorious for iron-stiff, but loving, hugs. When they break apart, she touches a tear in the crease of her eye.

  Beckett gives our dad a hug before returning to his seat.

  My mom shoots my dad a deadly look. “Did you know, Richard?” She often uses his first name in battle: Richard Connor Cobalt.

  His grin burgeons. All-knowing. And his blue eyes flit to me, just briefly.

  Enough to toss my stomach.

  My dad cocks his head to my mom. “The power outage was in the news, darling.”

  She rolls her eyes, trying not to smile at him, and then she looks to all of us. “What a wonderful surprise, and I will excuse all of your chicanery this once.” To our dad, she says, “Yours, never. You trick me, Richard, and I will roast your heart on an open fire.”

  His grin only grows. “My heart is yours to do with as you please.”

  “Stab it.” She picks up a steak knife. “Roast it. Eat it.”

  My siblings explode in applause, drumming their feet to the floor. Palms to the table, the room beginning to rumble.

  I pat my thighs, a peculiar feeling sinking inside me as I watch and look around at my dramatic family.

  My smile flickers in and out.

  And I wonder…

  What would it feel like for Thatcher to be at the table next to me? There’s never been harm in just imagining, but the more I do, the more my stomach descends and my head droops.

  He’s my bodyguard.

  That’s all he’ll be soon—no fake boyfriend, no late-night sex—and I have no need for security when I’m at my childhood home in a gated neighborhood.

  No need for him.

  It hurts to think.

  So I won’t think it. I won’t feel it.

  “To eat my heart,” my dad says smoothly, “is to have me with you always.”

  Thunderous noise escalates.

  “Incorrect.” She zeroes in on him. “It is cannibalism. It is murder.”

  “You love me,” he declares, his eyes fixed to hers in victory and affection.

  Usually, she’ll deny. Tonight, my mom lifts her chin and restrains a smile.

  She turns to the rest of us and taps her goblet with the knife. “As with every Wednesday, it is what you make it.”

  “And someone will win,” my dad adds.

  Someone will win. Most faces teem with some sort of excitement. I hope mine appears the same, but if not, the mask should do.

  Every Wednesday night…it’s not just a dinner. The second half is a trivia game. Sometimes, depending on the night, we’ll even have different rules. Once only French was allowed at the dinner table, no one speaking a single word of English. Another Wednesday night, all cursing was banned and if someone slipped, they had to put money in a goblet—which would later be delivered to Uncle Ryke.

  Tonight, as far as I know, is more of a traditional Wednesday night dinner. No new rules.

  “Opening remarks have commenced,” my mom announces, lowering in unison with my dad onto the velveteen chairs.

  This time is occupied for us to share our lives. Or not. It’s up to each person.

  I intake a breath. Ignoring the sinking pit.

  Eliot grabs the moment first. He almost always does. Rising to his feet, climbing onto his chair—and like an orchestrated play, we all reach for our goblets. Eliot pounds his boot to the lip of the table.

  Rattling the dishes.

  He bows forward, elbow to his knee. “I’d like to talk of deception.”

  I frown behind my mask. My heart quickening. Eliot will most often quote a play and use up his time with someone else’s words.

  His intense gaze sweeps the table. “To be able to deceive…” He looks directly at me for an extended beat. Emotion bleeding through his eyes. “You need to know where the lie is at all times. So as not to deceive yourself.”

  I sip my water, hand frozen on my goblet.

  “Was that Macbeth ?” Ben asks.

  “No,” everyone says.

  Eliot stands up further onto the table, the surface quaking. “It was an Eliot Alice Cobalt original. This is Macbeth.” He takes a puff from the pipe. “‘Away!’” His blue eyes pulse with raw feeling. “‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know.’”

  Breath traps in my lungs as those words pool into me.

  Tom snaps his fingers.

  Possibly, his speech was all coincidence and I’m suffering from severe paranoia.

  Eliot takes a single step backward, not even looking. His boot lands on the cushion of his seat and he sits down on the top frame.

  All the while, Tom grips the chair so it won’t tip over.

  Eliot has broken many chairs throughout our childhood. He’s a six-four strong-built nineteen-year-old. And right now, he roots his gaze on me.

  I don’t turn away. “Do you wish to ask me something?”

  “No, dear sister.” He looks to Tom. “Dear brother.”

  “Dear brother.” Tom quickly rises and stands triumphantly on a chair. He often talks of music and issues in his band. I’m waiting for him to mention a recent dilemma. How his drummer has quit, right before The Carraways were recording an EP.

  Tom hoists his goblet of liquor. “Fear.”

  I breathe harder. They can’t be speaking to me.

  He scans the table like Eliot had done. “The feeling that lets you know you’re alive.” He puts the goblet to his lips just as Eliot slings open a Zippo lighter. Flame in his hand.

  Tom blows liquor at the fire, and I feel the heat of the amassed blaze, sputtering out as quickly as it came.

  One dinner in the past, Eliot lit the entire tablecloth on fire, purposefully. Their show tonight is entirely normal.

  Except for the fact that Tom pins his eyes to mine.

  My lips part, confusion and some other sentiment ascending. I try to understand.

  Part of me is afraid to.

  Tom remains standing on his chair, and I wait for slingshot banter. For another person to comment on fear or their theatrics, but there is silence. And movement down the table.

  Beckett shifts his plate, lining the silverware. He often spends his opening remarks catching us up on his life. Moments we may’ve missed. He stays seated nearly every time.

  Powerfully, Beckett rises. Graceful like water, he puts a foot on the cushion to stand, and that’s when I’m certain—this is for me.

  He turns. Eyes on mine. “Sacrifice.”

  It crashes against my body, and I stare at him, my brother who understands that word most deeply.

  “The act
of surrendering something to gain something else. Your greatest desire isn’t without sacrifice.”

  I swallow hard. I picture Thatcher. But his career is not mine to sacrifice. I will never; I could never.

  He’s needed as my bodyguard.

  Yes. That’s what we agreed on.

  Beckett stays standing on his chair too, and then Charlie snuffs his cigarette on a dish. His opening remark almost never changes.

  He will say, I invoke the right to pass.

  Careened back on his chair, he kicks his feet up on his plate. Clattering silverware and cranberries. And loudly, he says, “Love.”

  I freeze, eyes burning.

  I can’t.

  Charlie tilts his head to me. “To love is to reach true fulfillment.”

  I can’t.

  There is no scenario, no possibility, where Thatcher and I can be together beyond the ruse. I can’t love him.

  I can be fulfilled without him.

  I have to be.

  Dropping his feet off the table, Charlie stands on his chair. Staring strikingly down at me.

  “Courage,” Ben says as he steps onto his cushion. Towering over everyone as the tallest here. Warmth in his gaze. “Meaningful change takes great acts of courage. Confront what scares you the most.”

  Tears prick me, and my sister rises elegantly. “Heartache. What comes with love.” She stares earnestly onto me. “What can be necessary.”

  This is a riddle I’ve just solved. My family loves riddles, I love riddles, and this one was meant to rip down my defenses. To be open to love, even if it hurts.

  I pull off my mask, and I brush my fingers under my watery eyes.

  My parents rise together, not to join my siblings. They value the bond between me and my brothers and sister, and they want us to work together.

  Always.

  They begin to walk out, my mom staring fiercely at me. Her hand glides across my shoulders in comfort before she leaves.

  My dad passes my chair. He pauses, his calming hand on my arm. “Ne fais pas mes erreurs, mon coeur,” he whispers. Don’t make my mistakes, my heart.

  He wouldn’t accept how much he loved my mom.

  I breathe in.