by Beth Labonte
It’s true that after the Bermuda cruise, things at the Hartwell household changed for the better. Graham and I began dating, and I moved into my own apartment. Mom and Dad, no longer having my life to obsess over, started to actually go out and enjoy their retirement. They took up ballroom dancing. They started taking weekend trips, just the two of them, up to Maine and New Hampshire. Dad never did get back on a scooter, but he did convince Mom to buy one of those tandem bicycles, which they’ve occasionally ridden around Nantucket. I’ve actually come to view them not as the overbearing, anxiety-ridden stressors of my youth, but in the way that they’ve always appeared to others—as cute.
My parents are cute.
Graham’s parents are cute too, just in a different way.
John Blenderman is a retired high school science teacher who began planning for retirement as soon as he started working at the age of twenty-five. He put in his thirty years of service, became well loved by the student population, and received several consecutive Teacher-of-the-Year awards. Then he promptly retired while he still had his youthful glow. He loves everything about Florida, and his mind is overflowing with ideas and projects that he wants to tackle in his golden years. He is a bit loud and a lot tanned, and when I look at him I see an older version of Graham in possession of a bucket list. He gives me quite a lot of anxiety, if we’re being honest.
Babette, in her younger years, was a very successful real estate agent. Growing up, I was accustomed to seeing her smiling face plastered across For Sale signs all over the city. About ten years ago she moved into the high-end real estate market and made quite a hefty commission on a few waterfront properties. After that, it didn’t take much convincing from her husband to pack it in and move down to Florida. Aside from becoming functioning alcoholics, they seem to have made the right decision.
All cute. All very nice people.
But throwing all of them together...here? I can’t even wrap my head around it. I wonder if it’s too late to find them a hotel? Believe me, I’ve suggested it many times, but Babette and John won’t hear of it. They keep saying that you don’t get the full Havens experience if you stay at a hotel.
Do you know who is staying at a hotel? My brother and his wife. That’s right. In classic Eric style, he’s going to toss Mom, Dad, and The Duffle out of the car and peel off to his relaxing hotel far, far away. I probably won’t even see them again until the day of the wedding.
You know what? Screw the full Havens experience.
I take out my phone and start frantically searching for Holiday Inns, but my fingers are so jittery that I keep making typos and pulling up results for things like Hogwarts and the Holy Grail.
“Aaah!” I groan in frustration.
“What are you doing?” asks Graham, leaning over. “Why are you Googling Howard Stern?”
I turn off my phone.
“I wasn’t. I was trying to find a hotel. Just in case things go horribly—”
“They’re here!” shouts Graham.
Oh, God. He’s right. Eric’s Escalade is coming around the corner. Bass pumping. Spinning rims spinning. When did he get those? He really is a tool.
“Shhh!” I say to Graham.
“What?”
“We don’t need everybody running out all at once, do we? It might be a bit overwhelming.”
John and Babette are watching TV on the back porch, and I had been fantasizing about sneaking my parents in the front door and not bringing them out again until breakfast tomorrow.
“Of course everybody’s going to run out all at once,” he says. “This is a big deal. Mom! Dad! They’re here!”
Graham jumps out of his chair and runs to the curb, flagging down the Escalade like he’s hailing a cab in Times Square. As soon as Eric sees him, he lays on the horn.
BEEEEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEEEEEEEP!
Gray heads begin popping out of doors and windows up and down the street. The next-door neighbor’s garage door goes up. A couple in a golf cart passes by and beeps back three times. Dogs bark.
So much for subtlety.
Eric pulls into the driveway and rolls down the window. Both the air conditioning and the radio are cranking at full blast.
“Hey, man. Good to see you!” he says, reaching out to shake hands with Graham. The silence is deafening when he turns off the engine.
“Hi, Graham! Hi, Summer!” Tanya leans over Eric’s lap and waves to us from the passenger seat. She’s got something of a feral look in her eyes, to be honest. Like somebody who just drove a great distance with her in-laws in the backseat.
“Hi, guys,” I say, slowly approaching the vehicle. The windows are tinted, so I haven’t been able to see Mom and Dad yet. They haven’t made a peep. It’s quite possible that Eric left them behind at the last rest area.
“Oy, Richard! I’m having a nervous breakdown!”
Nope. There they are.
I wrench open the back door and Dad almost falls out.
“Richard! Wake up! We’re here!” Mom whacks him on the arm and he sits bolt upright.
My eyes widen at the sight of the backseat. Tissue boxes, napkins, umbrellas, tourist pamphlets, extra pairs of old-people sneakers, packets of emergency rain ponchos, and several thousand crumpled up fast food wrappers litter the floor. Defying all laws of physics, a lidless, nearly full cup of McDonald’s coffee sits on the floor between Dad’s feet. An Everest-sized pile of hats, jackets, and sweaters sits between them on the backseat, almost completely blocking Mom from view.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” I say. “How was the drive?”
“Great!” says Dad, moving his foot and kicking over the cup of coffee. “Eric took us to see the world’s third largest ball of twine!”
“Oy, please,” says Mom, waving her hand.
“What do you have against twine?” I ask, helping Dad down out of the car. I don’t mention the coffee.
“Who needs that much twine?” asks Mom.
“Nobody was actually using the twine,” snaps Eric. “It was just a—”
“Mom! Dad! They’re here!” interrupts Graham, yelling in a voice loud enough to wake all the residents of Sunset Havens who have died over the past fifty years. Now John and Babette are running down the driveway, and everybody is hugging and shaking hands, and The Duffle is being unloaded from the trunk like a coffin from a hearse, and it’s all really happening now.
I take a deep breath and watch everybody file into the house from the safety of the driveway. The front door shuts with a satisfying thud. I stand there alone for a good minute and a half, relishing the fact that they are all in there and I am alone out here. I glance longingly up the street. Maybe I should make a run for it. I could steal a golf cart and be at the airport in, like, three days.
The front door quietly re-opens. Graham pokes his head out.
“What are you doing out there, Sum? The party’s in here!” He beckons to me with one of his irresistible Graham smiles. “Join us.”
I melt a bit. Only Graham could consider this nightmare a party. He really is amazing. What am I worried about? With Graham by my side, I can do this. Of course I can do this. Graham was able to make a cruise with my parents enjoyable, why should this be any different? There’s even a light at the end of the tunnel. In one short week, Graham and I will be husband and wife, and all of this will be behind us.
I smile back and follow him inside.
5
Okay, where the fuck is Graham?
We were inside the house for a whopping five minutes before Eric suggested that he and Graham go out on a beer run, and they’ve been gone forever. What do they need beer for, anyway? Babette’s got enough booze in here to keep us all drunk for a very long time. Eric just couldn’t take another second in close proximity with Mom and Dad, that’s what happened. I saw the way he snapped at Mom about the twine. Not that I can blame him. If it’d been me who’d just driven them a thousand miles, I’d be out on a beer run too. I’d be out on a permanent beer run. But why did he have to
go and take Graham with him?
Speaking of booze, while Graham and I were waiting outside, Babette was in here whipping up a batch of something she calls a Rusty Twizzler. Since moving to Sunset Havens, she fancies herself an amateur bartender. I don’t know what exactly is in a Rusty Twizzler, but I can tell you three things: One, it tastes like a Twizzler, two, it’s the color of a rusted out ’57 Chevy, and three, one of them can knock me straight to the floor. On our first night here, Babette invited Francine and Janice over for drinks. The two of them had about six each and there I was, one Rusty Twizzler down, and Graham had to literally carry me off to bed. And they laughed at me. Two old ladies laughed at me because I couldn’t hold my liquor. How will my parents—the people who think that having a second glass of Arbor Mist qualifies you as an alcoholic—be able to survive a week down here?
“Mom, Dad,” I say, stepping in front of Babette as she comes out of the kitchen carrying a tray of the stuff. “Why don’t I get you guys some lemonade?”
I turn around and sweep Babette back into the kitchen.
“You can’t serve those things to my parents,” I whisper. “Are you crazy?”
“Why not?” asks Babette. “They’re delish! And we’re having a celebration!” She does a little conga move and bumps me with her hip.
Why must all Blendermans think this is some sort of party? The real party will be at the end of the week—coincidentally, the same time that everybody is due to go home.
“They are delish,” I say. “I’ll give you that. But they’re also potentially lethal. You need to ease people into them. Especially people like my parents. Trust me.”
Babette makes a disappointed, pouty face.
“Okay, fine,” she says. “We’ll save them for after dinner.” She returns the pitcher to the refrigerator, satisfied that an extra two hours should be sufficient to increase my parents’ alcohol tolerance.
“So, tell us about your drive down,” says Babette, after we’ve returned to the living room and served everyone their lemonade. “That must have been a fun experience for you two.”
We all turn to Mom as she takes a sip of lemonade.
And three...two...one.
“Fun?” she says. “Oy, please. Let me tell you about the drive down...”
**Twenty Minutes Later**
“...stepped right in a pile of...told Eric to just go around New Jersey on the way back...thank God we had an extra pair of...hardly a single McDonald’s in all of South Carolina...had to eat at something called a Sonic...totally undercooked...specifically asked for no mayonnaise...diarrhea all night...”
I take a deep breath and turn to Tanya.
“I am so sorry,” I mumble.
She chokes back a laugh.
“Eric was losing it the whole way here,” she whispers.
I take a sip of lemonade and smile at my sister-in-law. Tanya and I have become fairly close over the past two years, and she knows all about the resentment I harbored toward Eric when I was still living in my parents’ basement. I say harbored since I like to think that I’ve developed a much healthier relationship with my brother after moving out on my own. For the most part. There are still times—like when Mom and Dad found a mysterious white powder between the pages of their Boston Globe, jumped to the conclusion that they had contracted Anthrax, and guilt-tripped me into spending an entire day with them at the emergency room—that the old bitterness rises back up like a phoenix from the ashes. (The powder, in case you were wondering, was tested and identified as C12H22O11, a/k/a Hostess powdered donut. I will never get those twelve hours of my life back.)
“Why don’t we show you to your room?” asks Babette, jumping up and glancing at her watch. “And then we can all freshen up for dinner!”
I know exactly what she’s thinking. It’s already three o’clock, and to get a good table at Rosa Lee’s, we’ll need to get there by four-thirty. We’re in a retirement community after all. Mom and Dad look nothing like people who are ready for a night on the town. Mom’s wearing this disheveled zippered thing, and her hair has a major cowlick in the back. Dad looks like he hasn’t washed his hair in a week, and has this large, sort of Dorito-colored stain on his pants.
Babette leads the way down the small hallway to the guest bedroom, happily back in her element of showing people around their new homes. She flings open the door to reveal a queen-sized bed with a bright yellow comforter, tropically themed pillows, and an assortment of white wicker furniture. A vase of fresh flowers sits on the bureau. The room looks great—you would never know that Graham has been sleeping in here for the past few weeks.
John and Babette even went out and purchased window air conditioning units for the guest bedrooms, to make sure that everybody’s comfortable. The rest of the house doesn’t have central air, as John believes that you don’t get the full Havens experience if you’re not sweating your ass off on a daily basis.
“Oy,” says Mom. She marches over to the air conditioner and yanks the plug out of the wall. “That’s better.”
“What’d you do that for?” I ask, glancing at John and Babette.
“It’s right next to the bed,” says Mom. “We’ll get a chill.”
Right. Florida plus summertime equals chill.
“But that’s why you have a comforter,” I point out. “So you don’t get cold.” Honestly, do I really need to explain to them how beds work?
“It’s not the temperature,” says Mom. “It’s the blowing.” She makes blowing motions with her hands.
I roll my eyes. “Put it on low then. You know, John and Babette bought that special for you guys.”
“No, no, no!” says Babette. “It’s fine. We just want them to be comfortable. John and I don’t use an air conditioner, either. We sleep in the buff! I highly recommend it!”
Oh.
My.
God.
Have Graham’s parents been sleeping naked in the next room the entire time that we’ve been here? And now they’re encouraging my parents to do the same? No. There’s no way I can fall asleep knowing that I’m surrounded by nude parents. Just, no.
I walk over to the bed, and like a magician removing a tablecloth, yank the entire comforter out from under the pillows in one quick motion. I fold it up and put it in the closet.
“There,” I say. “Now you just have a sheet. You’ll be as cool as two pajama-wearing cucumbers.”
“Nudity is nothing to be ashamed of, Summer,” says Babette. “You and Graham should try it. After you’re married, of course.” She gives me a wink.
If I could be granted one wish right now, it would be for immediate death. Painless, if possible, but beggars can’t be choosers. I wait a moment, giving the angel of death one last chance to make an entrance, and then, accepting the fact that it is not yet my time to leave this Earth, turn and silently exit the room. I head straight to the refrigerator and pour myself a nice, tall glass of Rusty Twizzler.
I let out a loud belch as I walk back into the guest bedroom.
“So, did you bring your clubs?” asks John, clapping Dad hard on the shoulder.
“My...my clubs?”
“Golf clubs! You won’t get the full Havens experience without putting in some time on the links!”
Here we go. Poor Dad. I’d almost rather go back to the nudity discussion. I hiccup.
“Oh,” says Dad. “I, um, I never really got into the game. Unless you count the miniature kind, of course. I’m a whiz at the windmill.” Dad mimes a golf swing and knocks a stack of bridal magazines off the nightstand.
“Oy, Richard!” says Mom. She bends down to pick up the magazines, pauses, and then dumps them into the trash.
“What’d you do that for?” I ask.
“They stink!” says Mom.
“It’s just the perfume samples,” I say. “They smell nice!”
“Who can sleep with that smell in the room?”
“You didn’t have to throw them out!” I say, pulling them out of the trash. I have to
steady myself against the wall because, well, Rusty Twizzler. “I’ll put them in the living room.”
As I head out of the room I notice that John’s face has turned solemn. He must still be thinking about Dad’s lackadaisical attitude towards golf. Golf is serious business down here. Twelve championship courses, thirty-two executive courses, and as a resident you receive–
“ – free lifetime membership in all of the country clubs,” says John.
“Oh, my,” says Dad. “That’s really something.”
“It is something,” says John, nodding gravely. I can’t tell if he’s mad, or if he’s just depressed to learn that there are still people in the world whose lives don’t revolve around golf. John’s not usually an angry kind of guy, so I’m guessing it’s the latter. This place really does cut you off from reality.
“Well,” says Dad, “not much to be done about it now. Like I said, I don’t have any clubs.”
“Don’t you worry about clubs,” says John. “You’ll borrow my old set. We’re teeing off tomorrow morning. Nine a.m.”
“But I –”
“No buts.”
“But –”
John claps Dad hard on the shoulder again. “No buts. You’ll be one of us in no time. Now tell me, Richard, what’s your favorite vodka?”
“Rich is more of a whiskey guy, isn’t that right?” asks Graham, suddenly appearing in the room and clapping Dad on the other shoulder. He must have walked right past me and I didn’t even notice. Like I said before...Rusty Twizzler.
“That’s right,” says Dad, jumping again, but quickly regaining his composure. “I do enjoy a nice Manhattan.”
“Just like J.P. Morgan,” says Graham. “Did you know that he drank a Manhattan at the close of every trading day? No? I suppose that’s not common knowledge. Oh, hey, Dad, did Rich happen to tell you about the time he crashed his motorcycle?”