Erick appeared, arms folded in front of him, while Raymond served watermelon margaritas on the porch. Adrian and Julia had shared the tampon story with Taina and Ray, but they all agreed it was not a good idea to tell Holly, much less Erick. Erick kept looking over his shoulder. Julia said, “Erick. Go relax. Your kids aren’t drowning on my watch.”
“C’mon, honey,” Holly called from the porch steps. “We can watch them from up here.”
When Erick turned to look at Julia, it was like he was peering into the pit of her soul. “Will you dive in and rescue them if something happens? Will you risk your life if need be?” He demanded.
“Absolutely. In fact, I was a lifeguard in high school. But they’ll be okay; it’s shallow near the dock.”
He lowered his eyes. “You know why I’m like this, right? It’s because of my brother.”
“Holly told me, Erick. I’m so sorry.”
Erick’s eyes softened and he nodded.
“Uh, Erick?” Julia said, grabbing hold of his arm. “Daniel is throwing rocks at a huge swan.”
Erick turned around and sure enough, a swan the size of a small ostrich was circling and fluffing up its feathers, ready to go on the attack, while the three boys whipped coins at it. Erick turned and sprinted toward the water, yelling at the swan first, then at the boys. Holly bolted toward her family, giving Julia a grateful squeeze as she passed.
Later that day, Bobby was crying, and his parents couldn’t console him. Holly and Erick were arguing again. The boy was hot, tired, and grouchy. His brothers were excluding him. Dinner was still an hour away. Julia ran out to the beach and came back with a periwinkle, a tiny mud snail. Julia sat the boy down on her lap and told him that if he said “Rum,” slowly, over and over, that the snail would come out of its shell and crawl around on his hand. They began chanting, “Ruuuuum. Ruuuuum,” singing it lower on the second note. The boy was silent for the first few repetitions, but then he began to sing it with her, feeling the vibration of the “m” in his mouth and throat, elongating it so they harmonized the “mmmmm” until their breath ran out. When they got really good at it, they both laughed and had to concentrate not to crack up and break their perfect harmony. The snail extended one eye stalk, then the other, and slowly came out of its shell and crawled around the boy’s hand. After that, the little boy declined invitations and taunts from his brothers, choosing rather, to gather more snails with Julia. At dinner that night, Bobby declared that Julia was his “favorite aunt”, which didn’t go over well with Taina or Holly. But on her right, David gave Julia a little kick under the table. On her left, Adrian did the same thing.
In the Northeast, in mid- to late August, there comes a day when it’s unexpectedly cool, quite suddenly. This day happened on Friday, the third-to-last day of the reunion. David was upstairs napping, while Julia entertained the others, describing the often sharp transition to autumn: “You think that it’s just a hint, a quick, premature leap toward fall; you expect the heat and mugginess to return, but no, it’s over. A curtain comes down.” She made a dramatic downward cutting motion. Then, “driving through town, you notice a single red leaf high up in a maple tree. You’re on your way to the beach when a neighbor hands you a tiny pumpkin over the fence instead of the usual bagful of tomatoes. And that’s it. What follows is a quick slide into autumn.”
Sure enough, that afternoon, the hooded sweatshirts came out. They all laughed when Holly came down wearing a woolly Armenian sweater she found in an armoire. “It’s sixty-two degrees, Florida girl,” Julia said, shaking her head. “And you claim that you want to live here all year?” She tipped her head back. “Ha!”
The reason Julia mentioned the seasons was because she had begun to worry that the changing landscape might negatively affect David’s state of mind. She looked at Taina and said, “You’re a visual kind of person, so you know that winter landscapes can be so depressing.” Taina agreed and Holly and Erick decided to invite him to Fort Lauderdale in late winter, even though they all knew that David wasn’t a fan of flat, over-developed South Florida. “No hills, no real forests and way too much cement,” he once told Julia. “What’s the point?” But they all believed in the curative powers of rumrunners and sunshine, and Holly was home all day so he wouldn’t be alone. It wouldn’t be easy with David’s medical needs, the longest he could be away was three weeks if everything went well, and you couldn’t count on that. His treatments had side effects and complications that needed almost constant monitoring. Still, they understood the need for a plan to keep his spirits up all year. Suddenly Julia sighed and pointed behind her. “I’m going to go up and see what’s taking David so long to come down. Then I’m going to make sure he takes his afternoon pills and make sure that he brings down his stress ball.” She stood up, then sat back down. “Wait a minute,” she said, as she looked at Adrian, then Taina, then Holly, and finally Raymond. “Guys, it’s time for you to start doing these things automatically,” she snapped her fingers, “and consistently. I can’t be the default all the time.”
Adrian nodded once and stood up. “I’ll go check on him.”
Taina had winced when Julia snapped her fingers, but she got up, reluctantly. She muttered, “You keep them in the fridge, right?”
Ray got up too. “He needs to take them with milk, or it’ll mess up his stomach. I’ll go get it.”
“Thank you,” said Julia. “Ray I know you’re cooking Thai food tonight, so I’ll go start the chopping.”
Holly and Erick stayed put because they were watching over their boys, who were playing nearby in the yard. “Julia, I think you should get a starfish tattoo,” Holly said. She passed her hand gently over the blank surface of Julia’s hand. “You’re the third sister. You know that, right?”
Julia looked at the empty chair where Taina had been sitting, and a cloud passed over Holly’s face. It confirmed what Julia had begun to suspect—that Taina wasn’t feeling so sisterly these days.
David showed up at cocktail hour wearing a white panama hat with a black band around the crown. “I found it in the attic,” he said. It used to belong to Julia’s dad. He flicked a finger at the brim of the hat, raising it a bit over his eyes. At that moment, Adrian plucked Julia’s empty martini glass from her and handed it to Raymond. “Bartending rule number one. Always give them a fresh glass.” Raymond took it from him and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Why is Ray bartending for you?” Erick asked. “That’s just wrong.”
“I can wash my own glass,” Julia called out, giving Erick a look of agreement. She followed Ray into the kitchen. Inside the house, the jazz was so loud that Ray didn’t hear Julia following behind. He stopped at the sink and grabbed a sponge to wash the martini glass, then he held the glass up to the light to see if there was still vodka at the bottom. He swirled it around. He looked at it for a long time, and Julia got the impression that he had found something out of place, like a shard of glass or a dead bug.
Ray brought the glass up to his lips and tipped it back. Julia couldn’t see his face, but she could almost taste it with him, that sting of warmed vodka, the salty taste of olive juice, prickling the front of the mouth. Recognizing the potential gravity of what he had done, Julia instinctively turned and stepped into the butler’s pantry. She waited a few seconds and then went back into the kitchen, pretending that she had not been in there all along. Raymond gave her back her glass, clean and dry, with fresh vodka that had ice crystals on top. She thanked him, avoiding his eyes, and went outside, but she was no longer interested in drinking it. She filled a glass with cranberry juice and seltzer, Ray’s signature drink. David was laughing and joking and she noticed, suddenly, how happy he seemed. Soon, she forgot all about the incident in the kitchen.
Ray’s seafood and noodles had a spicy, lemony, coconut sauce that deserved nothing less than the moans of delight it got. They soothed their burning mouths with ice-cold beer. During the evening toast, David took off his white panama hat, held his drink up, and said,
“There is nowhere I’d rather be than right here with all of you. There are people who live their whole lives without ever experiencing the feeling of being at the right place at the right time, of just standing at the center of your own life. I feel that way right now; and I want to thank you all for showing up here, in this moment.” He said it flawlessly, with no aphasia.
Even the three boys stared at him, blinking and crunching their baby carrots. Julia remembered their talk at the Christmas tree farm back in the spring, how David had defined his idea of holiness as an encounter with a beast in the woods. Only Julia could have predicted that they would find communion in a house filled with family, bickering kids, competition, noise, and chaos. It was as if their affection for each other appeared amid rustling leaves, long enough for everyone to see it, then spooked and disappeared from wherever it came. David took Julia’s hand and thanked the Griswold family, “who are all here with us right now.” His eyes roamed the porch, stopping at intervals, smiling sometimes, as if to make eye contact with invisible people sitting in the gallery of wicker chairs. So convincing was his acknowledgement of the unseen that the boys’ eyes grew huge, and they scooted closer to their parents.
Chapter 33
David
As I toast my siblings, I see the uncles across the lawn. They tip the brims of their ubiquitous panama hats, but I also spot safari hats, felt bowlers, fishing hats, fedoras, and a few hunting boonies. The Griswold personalities are coming through more clearly every day. Today, I notice that the adventurer who invented the water unicycle is wearing a leather race cap with goggles fastened to the top of his visor. Julia’s third cousin, a hulking teenager, is wearing wrestling headgear. The Vietnam-era “conscientious objector” in the family is wearing John Lennon glasses and has a bandana tied around his head. The old guys look happy as usual, and they join in on the toast by raising their odd-sized bottles of beer, brands that no longer exist. The more contemporary men raise gleaming cans of Coors in the sunshine, and I can tell, by the way they hold them—uncomfortably, with two fingers—that the cans have been sitting in ice too long and are half-frozen. The aunts are scattered across the lawn, their faces concealed behind colorful straw hats. All around me, the trees serve as a sundial; I notice that the shadows falling across the lawn have lengthened by at least three inches since we got here. I’m in “the hilltop hour” as Helen Keller called these moments of pure happiness. It’s that perfect moment, as my grandmother used to say, “before everything goes to hell.”
Chapter 34
Julia lowered a handful of dirty dinner dishes into the sink. When she turned, there was Adrian, holding a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. “Try this,” he said, advancing with a spoonful of sticky coconut-rice pudding, topped with a thin slice of ripe mango. Adrian’s lips were red and swollen from the spicy heat of the last course. Julia opened her mouth and he slid the spoon inside and deposited a mouthful of contrasts: warm, sticky rice and cool, slippery mango. As it melted in her mouth, she closed her eyes and moaned. She felt him step closer, and closer still, so that one of his arms was touching hers.
Holly walked in with an armful of dishes. Julia opened her eyes just in time to see Holly’s expression change. Holly blinked quickly, locked eyes with Adrian, then swung her gaze over to Julia. “Wow, you’re flushed,” she said. Julia pivoted around and hastened to wipe scraps of food off plates with a wad of soiled napkins.
Holly grabbed Adrian’s arm. “Would you mind playing some music? It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just so we’re together, having fun.”
Adrian smiled and put a finger under Holly’s chin and kissed her on one cheek. “You’re a good egg, you know that?”
Holly shook her head. “I didn’t have to cancel eleven gigs to be here. You did, sweetie.” After David’s cocktail hour toast, everyone was affable like that, calling each other pet names, hugging and backslapping, thanking each other for every little thing.
Adrian put a hand on Julia’s shoulder. “If you accompany me with the piano, I can play guitar.”
“Okay, but I suck,” Julia said. “Just so we’re clear on that.”
Holly waved a dishrag at them and pushed them both out the door. “Taina and Erick will do the dishes while I put the boys to bed. Be ready in an hour or you’ll find us all passed out.”
Adrian and Julia found five songs that they both knew well, among them “Piano Man” and “Tiny Dancer.” The last one they would sing was “This Guy’s in Love with You,” as Adrian had promised to do back in the spring. When he put the sheet music of that song in front of her, Julia remembered the strong attraction she had felt that day that they had come to the house alone, and how confusing that feeling had been. How shockingly natural it felt to be around him now. She felt like she’d known him for years. Adrian kept his eyes on his fingers, plucking the strings of his guitar:
I’ve heard some talk
They say you think I’m fine
Yes, Julia thought as she pressed down on the keys of the piano, you absolutely are. They played under the veiled gaze of a bridal grandmother and her groom. Julia played well that night, beyond her normal range, due in part to the euphoria that kept her from feeling self-conscious. But she also felt connected to Adrian’s talent, and therefore for a brief moment, it felt like her own. She was inside his magic, not just standing outside, admiring it like everyone else. She was exhilarated by this heightened state of awareness, this glow-in-the-dark, heart-on-fire undercurrent. Perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising that David’s illness was bringing them closer together, uniting them all in a grander way. Sadness, lust, melancholy, and happiness all mixed together into an unlikely cocktail that had Julia utterly intoxicated.
When the song was over, David stood and called for an encore, but a few notes into it, David asked Julia to dance. She stepped away from the piano and Adrian sang and played guitar unaccompanied. This time it was David’s voice that rose over Adrian’s, “Say you’re in love, in love, with this guy.”
Julia held David closer, as if to protect him from . . . what? Herself? She felt a knot form in her throat, at the familiar warmth of his body, and she kept her focus on the steps of the dance to keep from thinking too much. Suddenly, he pushed her away, but gently. He put a hand up, signaling Adrian to stop. The room grew quiet.
David got down on one knee, still holding on to her hand. The soft light in the room made his gray eyes shift to a sparkling, mineral blue. He pulled out a ring from the front pocket of his camp shirt and took his hat off to reveal his bald head and six-inch brain-surgery scar. “Julia Griswold,” he said. “I love you and want to spend every day of my life with you. Will you marry me?”
Chapter 35
David
Even as I’m dropping down on one knee, I know this proposal is doomed. I know that I’m being fueled by a spirit called gin and by a demon called jealousy. I may have brain damage, but I’m not stupid. I can see that Julia’s all goo-goo eyed over Adrian’s singing, and I’m utterly terrified by the prospect that the feeling might be mutual. I don’t know what I thought her answer would be, but I was confident that she’d at least consider it. But cool as can be, she cups my head with her hands and says, “Oh hon, you’re just beer-goggling.” She wrinkles up that cute little freckled nose and says, “You won’t like me this much when the Beefeater wears off.”
“I’m not beer-goggling! I love you!” I bark, looking over my shoulder at Adrian, just to make sure he’s listening.
“Say yes!” Taina calls out in a low, smoky voice. Ray jabs her with an elbow and mumbles, “Shh. Friends don’t let friends drink and propose.”
Holly is just staring at the floor in horror, and so is Erick.
Julia butts her forehead softy against mine and looks into my eyes. “You know perfectly well that the answer is a big, fat, hairy ‘no.’ ”
“So did you,” I point out. “On that morning at Long Wharf. But you asked me anyway.”
She smiles, flicks her head a
little to the side, points to me, and says, “Touché.”
I shake my head, this is going down the wrong track. “This isn’t a fencing match, Julia, I’m beg—” A grandfather clock gongs somewhere downstairs; a warning from the masculine spirits of the house. So I stop, before I totally humiliate myself. I gather up my pride. I’ll never resort to begging anyone to marry me. Not even Julia.
She looks relieved. She gives me her hand, and pulls me up. With her arms and with the swaying of her hips she induces me to dance with her again, as Adrian plays “Just the Way You Are.”
“I took the good times,” she sings along, still looking straight at me. “I’ll take the bad times.”
I don’t know how she does it, but she calms that tempest inside me and I just sort of melt. I just hold her and we sing along, while Ray and Taina and Holly and Erick dance beside us. Adrian has shifted over to the piano, he keeps his head down, concentrating on the keys, and I can pretend that the whole thing never happened, especially since I’m drunk. When the show is over, we all go back for one last cocktail. I pour myself another gin martini, but I’m starting to feel pretty sorry for myself.
Chapter 36
David’s limbs seemed to drift onto Julia’s body; his arms draped themselves around her shoulders, his fingers brushed her thighs. Now and then Adrian shot Julia an apologetic look, the way guys do when they have a drunk and unruly friend.
Ray brought out the karaoke machine, and David put his hat back on and they had great fun singing until David couldn’t remember the lyrics to “Just a Gigolo,” and since he couldn’t read, his mood spiraled down fast. At one point, he whipped the stress ball at Adrian, but his aim was so bad that it got stuck on top of one of the kitchen cabinets and everyone laughed. That did it. He sat down at the kitchen table, held his chin up with his hand, and said, to no one in particular, “I’m sick of being a dying man. How can it be my time? It’s so stupid. And pointless. Why did I go to college? Why did I get a job? Save money? Why did I exercise . . . for what? The future was a lie!” He pounded a fist on the table. “I was wasting my time!”
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