Family and Other Catastrophes

by Alexandra Borowitz

  “That’s not true, I ate buffalo chicken salad yesterday. I’m saving the rest for lunch today.”

  “This is so stupid. I don’t have an eating disorder.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to think? You’re part of this LifeSpin thing, with the wheat restriction and the sugar restriction, and now I see you’ve gained all this weight. You’re binging.”

  “Mom, I’m not binging. I didn’t even gain that much. And I don’t know why you think it’s appropriate to bring this up in front of my friends, in public no less.”

  “I don’t mind,” Maddyson said. “I find it interesting. I’m live-tweeting it right now.”

  “Can you stop that?” Emily asked. Maddyson shrugged and put her phone down.

  “I think this binge eating is something you need to work on in therapy,” Marla said. “Don’t you see what happens when I’m not permitted to be in contact with your therapist? It’s ridiculous to expect a person suffering from anxiety to have the self-awareness necessary to raise the important topics.”

  “Oh, so you want to have sex with my current therapist too?”

  “Emily!”

  “Well, you obviously needed to sleep with Dr. Leibowitz to get the important information about me.”

  “Emily, you need to stop this right now. This is extraordinarily embarrassing for Diana.”

  “No, Mom. We’re talking about it. How could you do this to Dad? I don’t care how long ago it was, it’s so fucked up. And you wonder why I have all these so-called trust issues.” Between Jason and her mother, Emily was certain that she could never, for even a moment, relax in her marriage. Monogamy wasn’t really a vow, it was just a suggestion. Her mind went to her wedding vows. Well, at least I can write a compelling paragraph on how I’ll never cheat with our kid’s psychologist. That’ll be touching.

  Gabrielle looked mortified. “Um, do you want us to—”

  Marla wheeled to face her. “No. I don’t care who hears this. Stay where you are.” Gabrielle froze. Marla turned back to Emily. “As a person who has never been married a day in her life, you have no right to judge my actions. Abe is a wonderful, intriguing soul, and for years we were just friends. But then your anxiety began to crop up and he was there to help. You have no idea how hard your anxiety was on me. And when one is under such severe emotional stress, it makes sense that one might attach oneself to the person who is the most supportive. Abe Leibowitz was a saint. He saw you at a discounted rate. He prescribed you all those meds. And when it was time for you to take your SATs, he wrote you the note that got you extra time.”

  “Got it. So you fucked Dr. Leibowitz so I could get extra time on my SATs?”

  “This is ancient history.”

  “How ancient, Mom? When did it start? Wait, is Dad even my real father?”

  “Of course he is. You inherited his inability to read social cues.” She turned back to the bridesmaids. “Well! Shall we try on our dresses?”

  Emily slumped into an ivory armchair and looked at her mother, a slideshow of disgusting images of her and Dr. Leibowitz running through her mind. A drunken kiss or a flirty text was one thing, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around how her mother could have kept an affair going for years without remorse. Or for that matter, how her father could have forgiven her whenever he first discovered it. What did she even see in Abe? Granted, Emily couldn’t figure out what she saw in her father either. Or what either of them saw in her mother.

  Despite all of Marla’s shortcomings, Emily never would have expected this. She knew her parents’ marriage was littered with cutting intellectual putdowns and snide remarks, but an affair almost seemed too trashy, too plebeian for Marla. If Marla couldn’t be trusted to stay faithful in a marriage—even an admittedly dull one—who could? At the very least, Marla’s desire to be right all the time should have prevented her from making such a huge mistake. A whole new wave of terror washed over Emily as it occurred to her that David might be no better. He might frame his affair differently, perhaps he would just “fall in love” with a cute new sales rep at Zoogli and tell Emily he still loved her but wasn’t in love with her. People would do anything to justify their own terrible actions, and the worst part was that anyone was susceptible.

  Jason

  While Gabrielle tried on her dress, Jason took Gabrielle’s empty seat to get closer to Jennifer. She looked like a real ice queen, but Jason chalked that up to the shameless display of dirty laundry she had just witnessed being aired.

  “Hey, Jason,” she said. She was texting, her eyes glued to her phone. The one thing Jason liked about women over twenty-five was that they were less likely to be obsessed with their phones. He already had to compete with an iPad when it came to getting Mia’s attention, now he had to try to conquer technology with twenty-nine-year-old women too? He glanced over at her phone to see she was texting Kevin, that pretty boy.

  “Texting Kevin, huh?” Jason asked. “He’s a little young for you, don’t you think?”

  Jennifer’s lips thinned. “Only one year.”

  “How many kids do you have?”

  “Uh, I’m single. I don’t have any kids.” She turned away slightly.

  “Sorry about that. You just have that mom look.”

  “What the fuck? That’s incredibly mean.”

  “I’m just playing. How else would I get the attention of a woman who looks like you? Come on, give me credit for trying.”

  Jennifer flipped her hair over her shoulder. “You’re my friend’s brother, and we’re at a bridal boutique. Also, I’m pretty sure you have a front row seat to your parents’ marriage falling apart. Is this really the time?”

  “When would be the time? The wedding? Come on, give me a chance! Give me just five minutes of conversation and I promise I’ll be way more interesting than that penisless Ken doll you’re texting.” He wondered if this was getting dangerously close to begging, which would be the exact opposite of demonstrating high sexual-market value. Oh well, the words had already come out of his mouth.

  She put down her phone. “Okay. Go. What’s your story?”

  “I’m an amazing dad, I lift weights three times a week and I’m an extremely generous lover.” He had to be careful not to make himself seem too generous. There was a difference between men who loved giving oral sex because they loved controlling a woman’s pleasure, and men who did it to make up for a tiny dick or otherwise lackluster ability in bed. It was a bit too early in the conversation to discuss dick size, but hopefully she’d figure it out eventually.

  “What do you do for a living?”

  His favorite question, other than “My place or yours?” What a lucky moment! “I’m the CEO of a technology start-up. I know, I know. I’d be better suited for San Francisco than New York. But look, once we get married I can move out there!” He grinned.

  She smiled back. “So you’re wooing me with marriage talk?”

  “You’re nearing thirty and single. It usually works on chicks like you. Let me guess—you were fat as a kid.”

  Her brow flattened. “How did you know?”

  “You take way too good care of yourself not to be compensating for something. I feel you. I’m divorced, and that’s what fuels my desire to lift at the gym—stronger and harder each time.” Luckily Lauren was trying on her dress and not close enough to start scolding him for being “creepy.”

  “I got off a relationship fairly recently too.” Her voice finally softened. She might as well have taken her dress off, he was so in. He was practically balls-deep in her brain.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, we had been together for a while. I was at the point of wanting marriage, or even just a guarantee that it was going in that direction. He told me that he wouldn’t be making enough money to afford the kind of ring he knew I wanted. He did pro bono work as a pediatrician for a free clinic—it sounds great, but I
had to pay for everything. And I don’t mind paying for some things, but sometimes I want to be taken care of, you know? And I just knew, right then and there, he wouldn’t be able to support my lifestyle the way I wanted. I’m not a gold digger or anything, it’s just...if I am going to have a date night with my boyfriend, I don’t want it to be at Chipotle.”

  “You have expensive taste. I get that. Luckily, you’re hot enough to be that much of a bitch and get away with it.” He winked.

  She gave him a half smile. “Heh. I guess!”

  “Jennifer,” Diana called over from the fitting area. “You’re up.”

  Jason watched as Jennifer went behind the curtains and began changing. With Diana and Marla deep in conversation, and Emily, Gabrielle and Maddyson stuck on their phones and looking bored, Jason knew he could pull his greatest move yet without immediate detection. He crept behind the dressing area and whipped open the curtains from the other side, so none of his family members would see him coming in. “Hey there,” he said. “So are we doing some oral, or what?”

  “What the fuck?” Jennifer looked like she had just opened a Tupperware full of mold.

  “What’s going on in there?” Marla asked.

  “Jason just asked me for a blow job,” Jennifer said, opening the curtain. Everyone looked aghast.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Jason said, stepping backward. “I wasn’t asking for head. I was going to eat her pussy out.”

  “Ugh,” Jennifer groaned in conjunction with the other women. “Could you have phrased it in a more disgusting way? Besides, I don’t let guys do that.”

  “Jennifer,” Lauren said, “while I agree Jason is being a complete piece of assgarbage, you need to examine your internalized misogyny. What’s so bad about receiving oral sex?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Marla said, putting her hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. “I actually hated cunnilingus until I was well into my thirties.”

  “Ugh, Mom,” Emily said. “You’re clearly talking about Dr. Leibowitz.”

  “Well, this entire dress fitting has become somewhat of an airclear, so I’ll just say it: your father could label every city on a map of China, blindfolded, but couldn’t be bothered to locate my clitoris.”

  “Mom, that’s so disgusting,” Jason said.

  “You’re such a fucking dickpipe, you know that?” Lauren said, stepping closer to Jason. “You think words like clitoris are so gross, but you completely fail to see how gross your own behavior is, literally every second of the day. No wonder Christina left you.”

  “Oh yeah, Lauren? Well, at least I’m not a wannabe activist who conveniently hides all the things that make me just as privileged as the people I claim to hate. Question, do Mom and Dad mail you your rent checks, or do you have some sort of direct deposit thing going on?”

  In a move that seemed almost instinctual and out of her control, Lauren charged at Jason and pushed him over. He fell on his ass, knocking a bunch of safety pins off a wooden stool.

  Marla gasped. “Jason!”

  “I...I...think I broke my coccyx.”

  * * *

  “How is your posterior, brother?” Nathan asked.

  “The Vicodin David slipped me is helping. It really is the wonder drug.”

  Nathan’s bedroom had the unmistakable smell of Cheetos. A large bookcase stood against one wall, cluttered with thick paperback fantasy books and action figures still in their boxes. His bed was unmade, with an empty bottle of Mountain Dew peeking out coyly from the sheets.

  “You seem glum, milad,” Nathan said.

  “You don’t even want to know. I just had one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.”

  “It couldn’t be more humiliating than getting banned from a LARPing convention—only because you were being historically accurate!”

  “I don’t even want to know what that means. Okay, let’s get started. Before we figure out what you’ll wear to the bachelor party, I feel the need to address...this whole thing.” Jason gestured in Nathan’s general direction. “You need to fix it.”

  “What’s to fix?” Nathan sat at his computer chair, arms folded in his lap. He was wearing a ponytail again, which masked his greasy scalp slightly, but made his face look wider and exposed the acne by his sideburns. He wore a gray T-shirt that read Religion: the Opiate of the Masses.

  “Your whole thing. This whole look, this whole strategy, whatever you want to call it. Girls don’t like this. They like Ryan Gosling, not Comic Book Guy. Do you shower?”

  “I do shower, verily.”

  “More than a few times a week. Every day. You need to actually wash your hair too. It’s not like you have a regular job that takes up all your time, so this should be pretty easy.”

  Nathan scowled, but nodded.

  “You also need to get into shape. Obviously you can’t lose weight before the wedding, but if you want to attract the ladies, at least get to an average BMI. You don’t need to be a bodybuilder or male model, and frankly I don’t even think that’s possible, but if you get all this—” he indicated Nathan’s body, making a giant blob shape “—under control, then you might have a fighting chance with the girls.”

  “My good sir, we only have a few hours before the bachelor party. I cannot alter so much about myself. I only summoned you here to help me decide which cape I should wear.”

  “No capes. And another thing—this weird medieval dialect just freaks women out. Stop it.”

  “With all due respect, good sir, I only wish to attract the type of lady who enjoys such courteous talk.”

  “What is your type?” Jason sat on Nathan’s bed. “Paint me a picture.”

  “I like petite women: delicate, slender and feminine. Preferably eighteen to twenty. Once they get older than twenty-one, they become entitled and hardened, demanding a man be employed, live on his own, have his own car. Their looks decline and their standards rise to the point that no normal man could fulfill them! It’s laughable.”

  “You’re really making me not want to help you,” Jason said.

  “Oh? And why did you agree to help me in the first place, if you could not handle the truth about decaying Western society?”

  “Because you—well, first of all, you asked for my help, and second of all, I just...” He paused. Why was he helping Nathan? He doubted there was any chance for him, and yet, despite all the things that made Nathan unappealing, Jason had a small glimmer of hope that perhaps Nathan would find his own girl, a nerdy redhead who wore retro clothing and studied fictional languages. Maybe Jason was an asshole, but at least he would have done one good thing. “Fine, Nathan. I don’t want to see you wind up like me. Although actually, given your current trajectory, winding up like me would be a gift from God.”

  “Ah, you’re a fundamentalist,” Nathan said. “No wonder you have such inane ideas about relationships. I suggest you read this atheist blog I found called The True Enlightenment.”

  “Isn’t that your blog?”

  “Yes, but I found it.”

  Jason pursed his lips together in frustration. “Look, what I meant to say was...you only get one life. And I fucked mine up. I married the wrong person, I treated her like shit, my daughter probably wishes I was a giant blow-up doll of Olaf from Frozen. And if you keep going the way you’re going, you’ll be a hell of a lot worse off than me. Because it’s not just about your weight or your hygiene. At the end of the day, you’re afraid of women. That’s even more of a death sentence than being an asshole like me. You could be the most attractive guy in the world, but with your attitude, you won’t get anywhere.”

  “I don’t have time for this feminist nonsense,” Nathan said. “Next thing you know, you’ll call me a ‘misogynist’ just because I think women hit their peak at eighteen, which for the record is reproductive age and perfectly legal.”

  Jason put his hand on Nathan�
��s sweaty, T-shirt covered shoulder. “Look, I’m the furthest thing from a feminist. I have a Reddit username called FuckBitchesChuckBitches. But the point is, you need to change. You can’t stay fourteen forever.”

  Nathan looked down at the floor in between his feet. “You say this like I can be turned around. Like I’m the girl in the romantic comedy who’s only ugly because she’s wearing glasses.”

  “No, I think you’re pretty ugly all around. I’m just saying some minor improvements could take you from being a two to a four. And—voilà—if you finally have the confidence to speak to women and treat them like humans, maybe you’ll bag yourself an average-looking girlfriend.”

  “I shall consider it. Now enough with this emotional dribble.”

  “It’s drivel.”

  “I’m speaking in Middle English. Anyway, let’s focus on the basics. Is this ensemble acceptable for tonight?” He motioned to his T-shirt.

  Jason grimaced. “Of course not. It’s so far from acceptable, it’s an abomination. Do you have a decent blazer?”

  “I wore one for my college graduation. It’s in my closet somewhere.”

  “Cool. Wear that. Wash it first, if you have time, because I imagine it doesn’t smell great. Just a feeling I’m getting. Maybe pair it with a collared shirt, no tie—or a T-shirt. But not these argumentative, weird T-shirts with quotes on them. Just a normal T-shirt. And no stains or holes. Actually, just go with the collared shirt. I’m afraid of what might happen with a T-shirt.”

  “I suppose I could do that.”

  “As for pants, no cargo shorts. This is not a Blink-182 concert. And please, no dirty white sneakers. Do you have a good pair of dark-wash jeans and some dress shoes?” He was trying to imagine a well-groomed Nathan, but was having quite a bit of trouble. He hoped this advice would help him, as opposed to somehow making him look worse the way makeovers tended to make women look more masculine if they went too heavy on the eye makeup and contouring.

  “My stepmom got me jeans for Christmas. And I have a pair of shoes from my dad’s wedding.”