Family and Other Catastrophes

by Alexandra Borowitz

  “Well, I won’t even eat anything, so I don’t think anyone would even notice me. What day is it again?”

  “Next Saturday.”

  “Oh,” Stephanie looked down at her hands, as if discovering them for the first time. She shrugged. “Saturday is actually no good for me. I’m going to a reconstructed Druid bonfire that day. Poop! This totally sucks! There’s no way we can do another day?”

  “What, like, reschedule my wedding?”

  “Oh, of course not! What was I thinking? You probably already paid all the fancy caterers and whatnot. Can we hang out a different day?”

  “Let’s totally do that next time I’m in town,” she said with no intention of returning to New York for at least a year. Next holiday season, she would definitely try to go on vacation with David alone, to somewhere warm and peaceful where she could wear a bikini and a breezy cotton kimono. Slighting both sets of parents for the holidays seemed easier than slighting only one—at least they couldn’t be accused of favoritism. The previous year, they had visited his parents, because they had seen her parents the year before that. With her parents in Westchester and his in Fairfield, Connecticut, they could easily visit both in one trip, but whichever family paid for the ticket seemed to feel horribly insulted if they spent even a few minutes seeing the other family. Emily learned that the hard way when she visited her own family for the holidays and made the mistake of seeing David’s parents for lunch one day. For the rest of the week, her mother lamented that they were “stealing” her and deliberately trying to destroy what little Emily’s parents had left of a family. This somehow devolved into the accusation that David’s Catholic father was trying to steal her away and convert her to Catholicism because “for them it’s not enough for Jews to be only two percent of the population, they want us at zero percent.” The holidays had gone from something Emily enjoyed celebrating as a child—in a secular, Claymation-movie-based sort of way—to something she dreaded each year.

  “What about Friday?” Stephanie asked. “Are you free to chill at my place?”

  “Your place in Brooklyn?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be low-key. We can just chill for an hour or so.”

  “I mean, I’m staying with my parents in Westchester. Also, that’s the day of the rehearsal, the rehearsal dinner, you know...it’s kind of a busy day.”

  “I’m sure you have an hour free. Come see me! I never see you anymore!” She jutted out her lower lip like a kid begging for a rainbow slushy.

  “Well, actually it would be like, three or four hours if you include the commute.”

  “Figure it out! Don’t be a party pooper! We can smoke a little weed, drink the home brew that my neighbor made and watch Nosferatu. It’ll be rad.”

  “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” She squeezed David’s hand, as if to send a distress signal, but he already knew she was distressed and seemed to have no intention of intervening.

  “Sweet, let’s totally do that!” She tried to high-five Emily. “Shit, my Uber is here. I have to go.”

  “No worries, I’ll see you later.”

  Emily waited until she was gone and turned to David.

  “Why does she even like me? What about me is even likable to a person like that?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but her interest in you is just as confusing to me as it is to you.”

  “We’re talking about someone who uses her emergency allowance money to go to Burning Man. What does she want with me? My organs?”

  “Possibly,” David said with a grin. “Since you went grain-free, your digestive system is probably top-notch.”

  * * *

  Emily got chills when she saw her father, Steven, behind the wheel of his gray Volvo waiting to pick them up at the airport. This sight brought her back to the terrifying days when Steven attempted to teach her how to drive, shouting “Ah!” and “Ooh!” every time the car went above two miles per hour. Now, at twenty-eight, she was still afraid of actually taking her road test. Fortunately, in San Francisco everyone just took Uber.

  Steven looked older to her, even though he and Emily’s mother, Marla, had visited her in San Francisco the year before. He had gained some weight that had settled in his lower face. He had slightly less hair and a slightly longer beard with more gray in both. He was only sixty-three, which she knew wasn’t really that old, but she often felt ripped off when she considered that her older siblings would wind up with more years of living parents than she would. Then again, he was only thirty-five when he had her. Having a child at thirty-five was no longer old by current standards. If anything it seemed recklessly young compared to what people attempted in San Francisco. Emily always dreamed of having her first child at thirty, but now that she was in her late twenties, such an act seemed outrageously premature. People who had children before thirty were part of the multitudes who occupied the land mass between New York and California, watching game shows, trampling each other in Walmart on Black Friday and remaining shockingly unaware of gluten. She knew it was classist to think that way, but she couldn’t help it. She blamed Linda.

  Emily’s boss was an overachieving blonde Amazon who firmly believed that a person was incapable of committing to another person properly until they were both forty and had a net worth of over a million dollars (each). Linda proudly regaled her with stories about how she had the foresight to freeze her eggs at the age of thirty-seven, only to fertilize them at the age of forty-eight when she met her sixty-year-old husband. “In this technologically advanced day and age,” Linda said, in her usual chipper but abrasive tone, “women no longer need to get married. My little Harper won’t get married until I’m dead. That’s the rule.” Then she laughed and added, “Not literally, of course. But she better not be under forty, or I’m not paying for that wedding! Unless she’s already at C-level. She’s gifted, so it’s not a totally crazy idea!”

  Whenever Emily thought about how difficult her own mother was, she contemplated little three-year-old Harper, only allowed to watch PBS and forbidden from playing with dolls or anything that would discourage her from a career in science or engineering, the only acceptable fields for a woman in Linda’s world, despite the fact that Linda worked in PR. Linda didn’t want Harper wearing makeup or pink frilly dresses, but Linda got her roots touched up every few weeks, wore fitted, surprisingly sexy sheath dresses to work and never left the house without her fuchsia lipstick and heavy mascara. Eventually, Harper would start asking questions, especially if she was really so gifted, and the result wouldn’t be pretty. Emily still recalled Linda’s chilly, thin-lipped response when she had told her about the possibility of an American Girl Place opening up in Union Square and how much fun Harper would have there. Poor Harper was a science experiment from day one, as if Linda were playing The Sims and wanted to build the perfect Sim from the beginning—complete with the right genetics, the right skills, the right interests. But wait! Screw Harper! Harper only saw her mother for two hours a day, but Emily had to work with her and suffer her unsolicited pseudo-maternal advice for nine hours a day. Every time Linda opened her mouth to dispense some pointless aphorism, usually along the lines of “dump your fiancé and focus more on your career, but of course you can have it all, just not in your twenties,” Emily cringed as she realized she was literally growing older with every second that she spent with her. Emily deserved far more sympathy than stupid Harper. Harper was naturally blonde anyway—life would come easily for her.

  “Emily!” her dad called out. She ran toward the car. The sweatpants were too hot now that she was being hit with the humid air of New York in June, not to mention that her legs were double-insulated with both sweatpants and blood-clot-preventing socks. Sometimes she felt she should be compensated just for living with anxiety and all the inconveniences that came with being a hypochondriac. Could she possibly enroll herself in some kind of medical study? It would certainly beat scheduling Linda’s meet
ings all day.

  “Good to see you, Professor Glass,” David said, climbing into the back.

  “Haha, ‘Steven,’ please. So how’s work? Is there going to be an IPO?”

  “We’re out for a second round of funding. Once that closes, we’ll start the countdown to an IPO. So fingers crossed and say a prayer.”

  “I’m an atheist, so I don’t pray,” Steven said, peeling out and cutting off a taxi, then nervously slamming on the brakes so that the taxi almost rear-ended him. “But it is fascinating how, historically, people have resorted to prayer as a way to feel in control of a completely chaotic universe.”

  “Oh...well, I just meant—”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bore. I recently wrote a book on early Jainism but you probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. So who’s your funding coming from? Google? It seems like they’re buying up everything.”

  “No, actually—”

  “Apple?”

  “No, um...it’s a VC firm called BluCapital.”

  “Like Blu-ray? I’ve heard of Blu-ray.”

  “No, it’s...it’s something else. I don’t want to jinx it anyway.” Emily could tell David wanted the topic to end. Whenever they traveled back East, people Steven’s age were always ravenously interested in his work for a start-up. Half of David’s stepmother’s friends thought he worked for Amazon, and the only reason he didn’t correct them was that he didn’t feel like explaining what he actually did.

  “So what happens when you do the IPO?”

  David fiddled with the zipper on his backpack. “We’ll hopefully make some money.”

  “I’m sorry, but what is your company called again?”

  “Zoogli.”

  “Right, right. And what does Zoolie do again?”

  “Zoogli, and we—well, we are the liaison between mobile tracking SDKs and the mobile app developers. We help to aggregate spend in a way that is more accessible for the developer. Our slogan is, So easy, even a marketer can get it.”

  “Oh, so you make apps? I have this flashlight app on my phone, it’s outstanding.”

  “Oh, no, we don’t make apps.”

  “So you...how would you say it...promote the apps?”

  “No, not exactly.” David cleared his throat. “We are the liaison between the people who make the apps, and the people who track how many installs the apps get when the apps are being promoted.”

  “But you don’t promote the apps?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Oh, so you’re the guys who...track the installs the app gets when the app is being promoted?”

  “No, we’re the liaison between them and the app developers.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, hopefully, the IPO will happen soon.” He looked back at Emily in the rearview mirror. “Em, what are you wearing?”

  “Oh, they’re just compression socks because of the flight. I don’t want to get blood clots.” She took off her sweatpants and compression hose. She had unflattering red marks around her knees. “Are Lauren and Jason at the house?”

  “Yes. You know, sweetie, it would really be nice if your boss were a little more understanding about the time you need to plan a wedding out here. Your mother had to do most of it herself and she’s driving herself crazy with it. How is it that Lauren and Jason had no trouble getting a week off for your wedding, and you practically had to beg for it?”

  Emily took several deep breaths, as one therapist suggested she do when she felt filled with rage. “Well, Dad, Jason is the pretend CEO of a company that doesn’t exist and Lauren is a writer for a magazine that barely exists. You’d be surprised at how lenient bosses are with vacation days when your job isn’t real.”

  “Jason and Lauren are taking risks. You aren’t happy where you are—why not do something of your own? Your mother keeps saying you’re wasting your creativity over at TearDrop.”

  “ClearDrop. And I’m not meant to create my own company. Why does everyone in the world think they’re equipped to start a company? I like my job security. The work’s boring, but I get to do my own fun stuff on weekends. David and I just want to make enough money to live comfortably, and enjoy our life together.” She looked at David, who nodded in solidarity. Every time she mentioned her future with David, she felt the urge to make sure he was on the same page. Even though they were getting married in a week, she still worried about the age-old problem of “What are we?” Sometimes she worried that if she referred to him as her fiancé, he would say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I didn’t realize we were doing labels.” There was no legitimate reason to worry about this, but there was no legitimate reason to worry about any of the things she worried about.

  “Obviously, I’m thrilled that you have established such a stable life for yourself,” Steven said, almost sideswiping a bread truck. “But what about your creativity? What if your crafting was your job, and you got to come home whenever you wanted? Whatever happened to that cute little craft blog you were making?”

  “A bunch of teenagers started commenting on it and said I looked like a naked mole rat in my profile picture. So I had a mini nervous breakdown and deactivated it. And besides, it never got enough traffic to make me any money.”

  “Well, after David’s company goes public—”

  “It’s actually not my company,” David said. “It’s my boss Robert’s company.”

  “My mistake. But as I was saying, once Zookie goes public—wait, David, did I get the name right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then you can focus on something that actually utilizes the stronger areas of your mind. Then you can both come home more often, see your niece and nephew...”

  “Did Mom ask you to say this?”

  “I do not recall,” Steven said, as if giving a deposition.

  “Well, off the record, if Mom brings up the fact that I haven’t visited home in a while, and how she’s had to do everything for the wedding, let her know that’s a byproduct of me having a real job. If she wants to pick on anyone for not coming home enough, tell her to yell at Lauren and Jason. They both live in the city. They don’t even need to take a plane.”

  Steven nodded. The car’s front tires squeaked as he absentmindedly drove into the curb.

  * * *

  Emily looked out the window at the house where she grew up. It was a pale blue colonial on a winding road lined with oak trees. The street would have been picturesque if people from other neighborhoods didn’t use the vacant wooded lot on the corner to dump their old TVs and mattresses. When she was eleven, she had sworn she saw two deer humping on one of the discarded mattresses, but her mother had dismissed the story as a ploy for attention, and briefly diagnosed her as histrionic.

  “Ah, your mother is home,” Steven said, pulling into the driveway. In the carport she saw her mother’s Subaru Impreza, maroon like her trademark shade of lipstick. Her brother Jason’s used red Corvette—his first postdivorce purchase—was parked nearby as was a white Nissan Altima, which she assumed her sister, Lauren, had rented. It had to be a rental, since Lauren had sold her car to reduce her carbon footprint, and if she ever wound up buying another car, it was unlikely that it would be free of pro-choice or anti-meat bumper stickers. The last bumper sticker Emily recalled her sister having was a black one with white lettering, reading Got Privilege?

  David and Steven lugged the bags inside, declining Emily’s mostly empty offer to help. She carried her wedding dress, still in the white garment bag. In the car, she had checked it every few minutes to make sure it hadn’t ripped, but every time she checked it, she worried that the zipper had ripped the lace, so she eventually stopped checking.

  “Here comes the bride!” Her mother was at the front door. She was wearing her usual summer outfit, which Emily was convinced was the warm-weather uniform mandated to all sixty-year-old female Jewish psychologists: blue cotton shell top with a l
ong beige linen kimono, matching palazzo pants, flat, thick-soled sandals with nondescript “ethnic” beading on them and a chunky amber necklace.

  “Hi, Dr. Glass,” David said.

  “Oh, come on, it’s ‘Marla’ now. We’re all family!” She hugged Emily, keeping her hands on her daughter’s shoulders after the hug ended. She looked her over.

  “You look skinny. Are you eating enough? I hope this isn’t wedding nerves.” She rubbed the sides of Emily’s arms, as if trying to warm her up.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “I’m a little worried that your wedding dress isn’t going to fit you now.”

  “I went in for a fitting last week. It’s fine.”

  “Why do you do this to yourself?” She threw her hands up in exasperation. This was a new record for her—normally she waited until Emily was actually inside the house to start criticizing. Emily supposed there was a first time for everything. “You had such a wonderful figure, and now you’re some kind of heroin-chic toothpick runway model. I know weddings are stressful, but you need to remember to eat.”

  “I did eat. Actually, I think I gained weight.”

  Marla crossed her arms. “Well, I haven’t seen you in a very long time. Maybe I just can’t remember what you look like.”

  Emily refused to take the bait, even though that comment was difficult to ignore. She gave her a fake smile. “I didn’t lose any weight, Mom.”

  “I’m not paying for any extra alterations that were caused by your unhealthy body image,” Marla said. “I’ll only pay for alterations done before you dropped below 130 pounds, because while I love you to death, sweetheart, I can’t be an enabler for your anxiety.”

  “Mom, you’re not helping,” came a shout from inside the house. “Don’t blame women for their own oppression.” Lauren was home.

  Marla stayed focused on Emily. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s not argue now.”

  “I actually didn’t go under 130. I’m 132. I’ll weigh myself in your bathroom if you want.”