Take Me Home

by Lorelie Brown

  I lead the way to the living room, where I know they’ll be from long, long years of experience. At least Mom doesn’t take Trisha to my room and tell us to “play nice” anymore. There were only so many Bratz dolls’ snapped necks I could take.

  Still, I pause in the hallway and chew the inside of my bottom lip. Brooke stops and looks at me with her brows lifted. “What?”

  “You don’t have to be anything.” I want to call it back. To tell Brooke that who she is is fine, but the words get twisted up inside my smoke-filled brain. “If they’re fine, you’re fine.”

  Maybe she understands me? She shrugs. “I’m sure it’ll be cool.”

  But as soon as we walk into the cozy room, I’m not sure of anything.

  Anything except chaos. Daphne is in front of the TV, which is playing looping footage of a crackling yule log. She’s bouncing baby Mason in her arms as he screams his head off. I’d assume Trish would be bothered by this, except she’s at the back of the room with a corkscrew in one hand and a box of wine in the other.

  What does she need the corkscrew for?

  My dad has been pinned by Caleb, who’s talking a mile a minute. Dad waves to me with what looks like a fairly desperate expression. Caleb must be talking about how big government doesn’t support the little guy like him.

  A tiny black puppy streaks out from under the couch, yaps at me once, and then darts away.

  I stare at the pale-gray carpet between my PLV kitten heels. “Was that … a dog?”

  “Maybe,” Brooke answers. She’s staring at the same section of floor. “Might have been a rat. Do rats bark?”

  “Was that a bark?” I know we’re a little high, but one joint split three ways doesn’t seem like it should’ve gotten us too blazed.

  “I think so. I mean, it was a little yippy, but still bark-like.”

  Sierra pushes through us. “You two are ridiculous.”

  “Keighley,” calls Trish. She starts to wave the box of wine at us, looks at her hands, and then puts down the corkscrew. “C’mere, coz.”

  I go, because I can’t not go over. Thanksgiving. The reason for the season and all that. Or something. “Hey, Trish. This is Brooke. My date. Brooke, this is my cousin Trisha, her husband, Caleb. Her mom, Daphne, and my dad, Mark.”

  “Nice to meet y’all.” Brooke waves toward the room in general.

  “How … nice.” Daphne stops bouncing the baby, who manages to scream even more loudly until she starts up again.

  “Trish, need help with that?”

  “Nah, I’ve got it. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been looking forward to today.” She fills a glass from the spigot. “Eating what I want without Caleb saying anything. It’s a holiday!”

  “Why the hell would Caleb get to say anything anyways?”

  Trisha has cleaned up pretty well post-baby. Her middle is pooching out over her skinny jeans by like a fraction of an inch, but c’mon. She carried a demon in there for nine months.

  “He’s my accountability buddy,” she answers—and then takes a great giant gulp of wine.

  I look at Caleb over by the window. He’s talking to Dad with his hands open wide. His polo shirt is emblazoned with the emblem of the youth group he volunteers at every Wednesday night. His face is round, with soft cheeks that I mistook for friendliness the first time I met him. I wonder who his accountability buddy is.

  “I’m on an eighty-twenty plan and we watch my macros,” Trisha adds smugly.

  “What are his macros?” Brooke asks. “Eighty percent carbs?”

  I hide my laughter in my wine.

  “He’s in a gains period right now.” Trisha drinks more wine. It’ll probably be a good thing that she brought the box since she’s sinking it down like water. “He’ll cut soon.” She looks at me. “You should come to our CrossFit box. Coach Kelly will take care of the junk in your trunk.”

  I take back every bit of understanding I had about her baby body. Was hers so much worse previously? I didn’t need Brooke at all. I’m making this holiday a winner all on my own. I drink more wine instead of saying anything out loud. Then I have another swallow as my reward.

  “Babies really pack on the pounds, I hear,” Brooke says. I have no clue how I hold my laughter in, but I do. Her eyes are wide and guileless. “How much did you gain?”

  “Fifty-three pounds,” Trish says slowly. She’s looking for the hook, but can’t resist talking about her pregnancy. “I’ve already lost thirty-two of it.”

  “Man, he must’ve been a big baby.”

  “He was five pounds, eight ounces.”

  “Oh.” Brooke looks as sweet as a schoolgirl, but Trish is twisting with quiet wrath.

  “Mom is trying to get my attention,” she says.

  “Sure, sure,” I agree.

  “You should come hold the baby, Keighley.”

  I think I’m supposed to sense the exclusion of Brooke as an insult. Probably. I’ve been playing Trisha’s games for a long time.

  “In a minute.”

  Brooke and I are left alone, facing the bookcase.

  “That went well,” she says.

  “Perfect.”

  I hold my breath for a beat, then two. I lose it to giggles, and Brooke does too, even though she’s trying to hide it like I am. Our shoulders run into each other. I wish my blouse was sleeveless so I could feel her better.

  “Shh,” I say.

  “You first.”

  “You’re horrible.”

  “You mean wonderful. I said exactly what you wanted to, didn’t I?”

  “God, you did.” The puppy runs over my toes and yaps again. It pauses to nibble at my heels. I scoop it up. “Who are you?”

  “That’s Snow White,” answers Caleb.

  I peer at her face. Her muzzle is pointy, but her black fur and black eyes seem to blend together into a blurry shadow.

  “That’s a terrible name for such a small dog,” Brooke says. She pats the creature’s head.

  “I like Snow White!” Trish protests from the other side of the couch.

  “The cartoon or the dog?” Brooke arches a single eyebrow.

  I’ve always found it hot when a woman can do that.

  “The movie,” Trish says. “I mean, and the dog too.”

  I pull Snow White closer. She tucks her muzzle against my neck and hooks a paw over my shoulder. It’s like she’s hugging me. I have a moment of thawing.

  “She’s adorable,” I say. Even if she does have too much name.

  “She’s clingy,” Trish says with a laugh, but in my humble opinion she sounds three inches away from hysterical.

  I can’t imagine what life would be like with a baby and a puppy and a husband who’s my accountability buddy.

  “Stay in school,” I whisper to Snow White as I nuzzle her soft, round puppy flank. “You’re worth it.”

  The doorbell rings, heralding the next wave of guests.

  “Where’s her kennel?” Brooke asks in the midst of peeling the doggie off my shoulder. The paw that’s around my neck doesn’t want to let go. I want to rub my face in her baby-soft fur for a while longer.

  “We didn’t bring it,” Caleb answers. “Too much crap to haul around.”

  “I guess we’re lucky you didn’t leave her at home for six hours,” Brooke mutters. “Don’t put her down until everyone’s aware of her. We don’t want her tiny back broken.”

  “Aye-aye, cap’,” I tease. “You know dogs?”

  “My mom worked at a hunting dog operation for a few years. They bred Weimaraners.”

  She’s complicated. Surprisingly so. With her tattoos and faintly rocker-punk look, I would’ve assumed the dogs in her background would be pit bulls. Not high-strung, pale-gray dogs that run like ghosts.

  Caleb doesn’t look too happy, but whatever he’s going to say is cut off by the arrival of Granddad Larry and his wife, Connie. I make another round of introductions that goes much more smoothly than the first. A couple more cousins trickle in before I get a
chance to sit down with my wine. Plus Mom has invited stragglers the way that she always does: a couple of junior employees at Dad’s civil engineering firm who don’t have families yet—and also one guy who brought his wife and an eighteen-month-old baby.

  Halfway through arrivals, I turn to Brooke. “Sweet potatoes are worth all of this?”

  Except she looks excited, not frightened. Her eyes are bright. Her cheeks are nearly pink enough to match her hair. She’s holding the dog now, its small black body coordinating with the dark pattern of her dress. “Worth it.”

  “Eh. We’ll see.” I’m trying to play the cynic but probably not doing so well. The chaos is getting to me and the only way to cope is to either laugh at the absurdity or lose my happy to crankiness.

  Mom still firmly believes in the kids’ table, which thankfully saves us from having to interact with Connie’s faint racism, but unfortunately leaves us at a table with Caleb and Trisha. The couple with the baby is at one end of the table, and the tween cousins I don’t see often at the other, but Caleb and Trisha are right across from me. It doesn’t feel as bad with Sierra on one side of me and Brooke on the other.

  Until Trish volunteers Caleb to say grace.

  “Aw, no, shucks, honey. Someone else should.”

  I stare at the shell of a human being who would actually say the word shucks.

  “I’m sure no one else wants to,” replies Trish, taking the next step in their prescribed mating ritual.

  “I don’t mind,” pipes Brooke.

  “If you’re sure,” Caleb says to his wife as he stands, but then he freezes and looks at Brooke, obviously stuck in his assumption that events would unfold as he expected. “What?”

  “It would be my pleasure.” Brooke’s got the smile of a cheerleader who can do no wrong. Except I think this cheerleader might be the kind who wraps boys around her finger and turns tricks in the locker room.

  “Oh. Sure.” Caleb sits with a thump that makes his folding chair clatter.

  “Take your neighbors’ hand,” Brooke says.

  I try to catch her eyes, to guess if this is a game to tease Caleb and Trish, or if it’s legit. She smiles at me with a quiet calm that I want to crawl inside of and wrap all around myself. I settle for putting my hand in hers. Her fingers are soft and warm. I trace my thumb over the back of her knuckles, trying to feel some difference between her and the ink. There is none. She and her tattoo are one.

  I jump when I realize what I’m doing, petting her like we’re actually a couple. She’s giving me an indulgent smile. The back of my neck and my cheeks turn hot. I clear my throat and turn to Sierra, sticking my hand out toward her.

  “Finally,” she mutters in full teenage-snot tone.

  I hope I’m the only one who hears her. I don’t know what she’s talking about anyway. It’s not like I don’t date or like she’s never seen me around girlfriends. I date lots, actually.

  Brooke waits until we’re all hand in hand. Caleb seems more hopeful than I would’ve guessed, with a small smile. Trish mostly looks confused. It’s a natural state for her.

  “Love, good fortune, and happy circumstance bring us together today,” Brooke says. I get goose bumps. “May we all love as we are loved, with open hearts and innocent souls. May we spread our good fortune to the interconnecting web that meets our universe, that we might enrich the lives of all those with open hearts and innocent souls. And last, may we appreciate the bend of circumstances that aligned to bring us to this rich meal and abundance of friends, so we might ourselves grow to have open hearts and innocent souls. Go in peace.”

  “Peace be with you,” echoes one of Dad’s guests, and a couple more amens bounce around the table. I watch Brooke for a glimpse of irony, a hint that she’s having us all on, but there’s nothing. She smiles as she reaches for the bread basket.

  “That was beautiful,” I breathe. I’ve never considered myself a particularly religious girl. I tried church youth groups on for size when I was in high school. I liked the part that was hanging out with thirty friends every Thursday, but then there would be my whole gay thing. A crush on my youth pastor seemed even more hopeless than a crush on the home-ec-teacher-against-her-will, Miss Moira. So I quit the church group. It took me four more months to quit writing ridiculous alt fan fic where Miss Moira and I were trapped on a deserted planet together, the only survivors of our star school.

  I have a thing for the unattainable. It makes life exciting.

  “I go to a UU church in Laguna Beach.” Brooke takes a yeast roll then passes them to my cousin Stacy on her right. “They have beachside services sometimes. It’s nice.”

  “Oh. Unitarian Universalist,” sniffs Trish. “That explains it.”

  Brooke’s eyes narrow.

  I grab the mashed potatoes and drop a wallop of glee on my plate. “How could you possibly find fault in that grace, Trish?”

  “I don’t know, the fact that there was no God in it?”

  Peter, the guy with the toddler, leans forward over the sherry mushrooms. “I found it lovely. Exactly right for welcoming a big group.”

  “I didn’t find it welcoming,” Trish says as she spoons cranberry sauce on her plate.

  I wish Mom had gotten the canned kind of cranberry, the one that wiggles like Jell-O and is best sliced.

  To his credit, Caleb looks faintly embarrassed by his wife’s bitterness. The tips of his ears are flaming red and he keeps squirming as if he’s sitting on a pea beneath six mattresses. “Babe, watch out for that mac and cheese. If Cindy made it with Velveeta, it’s poison.”

  Poison? Did he just call my mom’s baked mac and cheese poison? I glare at him as I pass the turkey to Sierra. Brooke takes three heaping spoons of the gooey macaroni and cheese, smiling the whole time.

  This isn’t going how I pictured it—I seem to be more antagonistic than Brooke is—but I’m stoked all the same. Trish is shoveling food into her mouth with the sullenness of a toddler eating squash. So much for enjoying her cheat day.

  Conversations twist outward, stretching to encompass everyone. I enjoy my food, but I enjoy talking to Sierra and Brooke even more. It turns out that Brooke and I have a lot of musical choices in common. We were even at the same concert four months ago.

  “Oh my God, when Dan Smith climbed the scaffolding and crawled into the balcony? I almost got run over. Had to step on some bitch’s foot.”

  “I was in the balcony,” Brooke says smugly.

  I bump my shoulder into hers. Is it bad manners to flirt with your fake date? I don’t care. “You tease!”

  “That doesn’t make me a tease. The show’s already passed.”

  “Show-off?”

  “That’s better.”

  “Show-offs are better than teases?”

  She pushes her dinner plate away. “More accurate?”

  “That’s better,” I say, echoing her purposefully. It gets the laugh I want.

  “You should’ve seen this chick next to me, though.” Brooke rests an elbow on the table and her chin on her fist, looking at me. “She tried to touch his hair.”

  “Even though he was wearing that hoodie?”

  She nods. “Saying, ‘Dan, I love you,’ the whole time, over and over again. I don’t get it at all.”

  “Why people throw themselves at stars?” I eat my last bite of green bean casserole. The onions will be soggy and it won’t be any good tomorrow. So okay, I make some room for one more forkful.

  “Love at all.” She shakes her head. “How people think they love strangers. They’re insane.”

  “You’ve never fallen in love with someone because of what they can do? Their art, their skills? Their competency?”

  “That’s not them. That’s not who they are.”

  She has lovely skin. I want to nuzzle my cheek against hers. I settle for touching the back of her knuckles where spider lines of ink decorate her.

  “I’ve never been in love anyway.”

  My attention is yanked back up to her gaze. �
��What?”

  She shrugs. “Not really.”

  “There’s no in between to it. Either you have been in love or you haven’t.”

  “Then I haven’t.”

  I don’t even have words for what she’s missing out on. “I love being in love.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  She glances around the table. Most of us have split into smaller groups and are focused on conversations of two or four, but we’re not alone by a long shot. I realize that Trish and Caleb have left the table. Probably to take care of the baby.

  “You seem like the type,” Brooke eventually says.

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  “You should. I mean, it is. You’re … You’re so normal.”

  I laugh because she’s joking. Isn’t she? “Who’s normal lately? Aren’t we all a little strange?”

  “We do live in California, after all,” adds Sierra. “It’s like ground zero for weird.”

  “‘We’re all mad here,’” Brooke quotes, but I don’t think she’s agreeing.

  I don’t get a chance to ask her, though, because shouting starts in the living room. Mom and Dad push up from the table immediately, but most of the guests only make surprised faces at each other.

  I get up because I’m nosy. Sierra follows me because she always does. I think Brooke comes for the amusement factor, and Daphne comes because it’s her daughter we can hear shouting.

  “Why is it such a big deal if I look at your phone, huh?” Trisha is standing at the side of the couch, kind of balancing Mason in place on the cushion with her knee. Mason’s butt is bare, and he’s kicking his toes in the air, occasionally grabbing for them. He usually misses.

  “It’s your goddamn dog that peed on it.” Caleb is cradling the silver phone in a cloth diaper, wiping it off.

  “Which is why I was trying to help.” Her fists go to her hips. Daphne pushes her aside and starts finishing the interrupted diaper changing. “But you freaked.”

  “I freaked because she pissed on a $600 phone, Trisha,” he says, his voice dripping scorn.

  Which makes me wonder where little Snow White is. I spot her in the corner next to the fireplace. She’s flat on the ground, wriggling like a fuzzy black slug and whimpering. When I scoop her up she yelps and holds her front paw away from my shoulder.