At first she looks confused, but then she laughs, a laugh that is sad, but also not sad. So they dance, on the marble of the bathroom floor, their image reflected in the mirrors over the double sink and the clean black porcelain of the Jacuzzi and the shower.
And he thinks that maybe Jack is right, maybe things are in flux, changing direction on a whim. Isn’t it true that everything in his life is the way it is because of a series of glitches, because his mom got pregnant when she thought she couldn’t? Because his parents died? Had his father lived five, maybe ten more years, Connor might have gotten to know him like Jack did, may have gone to law school, too. Had his mother not kicked the bucket when he was fifteen, would he have known Jack at all, or would his brother have remained a holiday cameo in Connor’s life? Had Laine not gotten knocked up in grad school, would Jorie have been born at all? And Keelie? Or would he and Laine simply have parted ways after a few months of hot sex in public places? So maybe he’ll find his way back to Laine, even though she’s married to Steve Humboldt, such an aww-shucks good guy for a banker. Perhaps Connor and Laine have forty more years in them, or maybe he’s sick and that glitch will stitch up the gap between his girls.
There’s no way to know. So they dance in the bathroom until they think the song ends, but the music is so soft it’s hard to say exactly when that is.
Her aunt and uncle are fucking in Keelie’s bedroom.
Jorie watches from the floor of the Jack-and-Jill bathroom separating her bedroom from Keelie’s. She’s on her hands and knees by the toilet, contemplating puking, and can see everything through the gap in the door. Mona is bent over at the waist, her hands on the lacy white bedspread while Jack presses himself into her from behind. He moans, his face like Brandon’s when he hovered over Jorie on Wednesday.
She knows she should leave, that it’s not right to stare, but she wants to see, so she crawls across the tile for a better look.
“Jack,” her aunt moans, reaches behind her for his hips and ass, squeezes them.
“Oh God.” Her uncle’s words are choked and broken. “I love you, Mona.”
Her aunt quivers and falls forward onto the bed, her uncle after. He kisses her neck, covers her in his weight, his body draped across hers. Then Jorie can’t watch anymore, feels everything in her digestive system definitively working in reverse. She makes her way back to the toilet and stares into the bowel, listening to the sounds of her aunt and uncle zipping, giggling, and buttoning in the next room.
Before she can actually vomit, the door is thrown all the way open.
“Jorie?” her uncle asks, and she catches a glimpse of his square-toed shoes and the cuffs of his trousers, then whips her head around to puke up vodka and more vodka and chewed crudités.
When she finishes, she sits on the floor, looks up at him.
“Do you want me to get your sister?” her uncle asks.
“No.” Jorie shakes her head, feels heat on her cheeks.
He squats next to her, elbows on his knees, hands hanging between his legs. It makes her think of his penis, then of Brandon’s penis swollen and purple.
“Can I get you a soda or crackers?”
“Mmmmnnnn.” Jorie shakes her head again. “I’m okay.”
“You just had a little too much to drink?” he asks gently. When Jorie hesitates, he adds, “I won’t tell your parents.”
She nods and mumbles a thank-you.
“Yeah, it’ll be our secret. And between you and me, your father has had plenty of secrets.” Her uncle’s eyes are her father’s eyes, his hands her father’s hands, and she realizes this might be the only conversation she’s ever had with him.
“Uncle Jack?” she says.
“Yeah?” he looks at her and nods. Even in her alcohol haze, the moment seems an important opportunity to ask about her father or her childhood or something.
“I slept with Brandon,” she says.
It takes Jack a minute to realize that Brandon must be the pretty boy who had been loitering around the bar. It takes significantly longer to figure out what he wants to say to his niece. Almost a quarter century has passed since he screwed up this conversation with his brother, and if genetics do the job, he’ll probably be dead before his own son exchanges his games for girls. This might be his only shot to pass on any wisdom.
“Didn’t you used to be a blonde?” he says, and she looks at the floor. He tries again. “Did you enjoy it? The sex, I mean.”
She shrugs.
“Do you love him?”
“He loves me.” Jorie shrugs again. “Or he thinks he does.”
“Well, there’s your problem.” Jack relaxes back on his heels. “It’ll be better when you love the person, I promise.”
Eyes wide and wet, she looks at him, and he feels as though he’s said something of value. Then Jorie’s body shudders and she lunges toward the toilet again.
The door to the hall swings open, and Connor is there looking from Jack to Jorie and then back. Palms on his thighs, Jack pushes himself to his feet.
“I think the shrimp salad was bad, your kid and I aren’t feeling so great,” he says.
“Thanks,” Connor says. “I think I can handle it from here.”
As he’s walking out of the bathroom, Jack notices that his brother looks dimmed, and he starts to wonder if there are things Connor isn’t telling him.
“Kid,” Jack starts. Now, more than ever, he wants to say what he’s been trying to say all night, before he wanders out of this bathroom and into the party, before he takes a plane a thousand miles back to his complicated life by the lake. But he can’t get it out. So Jack claps his brother’s shoulder, nods, opens his mouth but then closes it.
“Fluid?” Connor asks.
Jack squeezes his brother’s arm tighter, feels the muscle and bone under his shirt. “Something like that,” he says.
Using the edge of the bathtub, Jorie props herself into a sitting position. Her father runs a washcloth under the chrome faucet and hands it to her.
“Shrimp salad?” he rubs her back. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, and he tells her it’s okay, sits on the floor next to her.
Even before Keelie appears in the doorway, Jorie is aware of her pink smell, feels stuff spin-cycle in her guts again.
“Ohmygod.” Keelie says. “Daddy, she’s totally trashed. At your birthday party.”
“Shut up!” Jorie hisses, twisting around, clawing at Keelie’s shapely calves.
“Totally trashed,” Keelie says.
“I’m aware of that,” her father says to no one in particular.
“She gets drunk a lot, Daddy,” Keelie says. “You should probably know that. And she was voted Girl You Most Want to Fuck.”
“You’re fat,” Jorie says. “Tomorrow I’ll be sober.”
Lower lip trembling, Keelie runs out.
“Ke, wait—” Connor calls after her, but she’s already out of the room; then to Jorie, “That was a really mean thing to say. Why do you do that?”
“It was funny though, wasn’t it? It’s kind of like Churchill—”
Her father sits back on the edge of the tub. His head is down and his jaw shifts, just like Keelie’s does when she might cry.
“Daddy?”
Her father says nothing, stares aggressively at the hardwood floor. Instantly she’s sober.
“What is it?” she asks.
“My brother was always there for me. It would just be really nice if the two of you got along.”
“Daddy.”
“Maybe helped each other out every once in a while, especially now.”
The toilet bowl becomes a crystal ball and she can see all of her father’s people clearly. Her redheaded aunt and her father’s brother, back at the party, naughty smiles on their faces. Jack squeezing Mona’s hand as they dote over their spoiled son stabbing tuna rolls with chopsticks. She can see Keelie staring at the full-length mirror in her bedroom, pinching flesh from the swells of her hips, suc
king in her breath until her ribs poke through, too worried she’s not thin enough to notice her bedsheets have been rumpled. Jorie sees her mother curled into a ball on her bed, probably crying because Jorie forced her to remember what she loves. Her father is giving her these people, they are her legacy, but she has to ask anyway.
“Why does it matter more now, Daddy?”
His hands resting on his knees ball into fists. “You know.”
Two words, and she ages three decades.
This is her entrance into adulthood—not sex with Brandon, not the driver’s license she’ll get on her second try, not the acceptance letter from Harvard next year, nor the birth of her son in a decade and half. Her father is leaving her his people, bequeathing them to her when he goes, be it in thirty years, five months, or next week.
And because she knows that the minute she walks out of the bathroom door nothing in her life will be the same, she does the thing she did as a child, she reaches for her father’s index finger and wraps her hand around it.
acknowledgments
I tell my students that everything we are is somehow a product of family, and I lucked out in that department. Thank you to my parents, Nancy and Michael Goldhagen; my sister, Jackie; and my grandparents, Fran and Irv Victor and Marcia Chesley.
I also tell my students they should check the acknowledgments page to see if a writer is satisfied with her agent. I dig mine. Alex Glass—you’re my own little Jerry Maguire without Scientology. Likewise, I have nothing but good things to say about my editor, Kendra Harpster, and all the nice people at Doubleday.
Thank you also to Michelle Herman, my thesis director at OSU, whose support is always above and beyond. Some other fabulous folks I met at Ohio State: Lee K. Abbott, Erin McGraw, Stephanie Grant, and Bill Roorbach.
To all the scattered people in my life, who make me proud of my life: Lauren Asquith, Sheri Barrette, Andrea “AC” Baron, Mandy Beisel, Erin Brereton, Jim Bush, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Kae Denino, Matt Krass, Chris Coake, Terri Goveia, Alex Marcus, Andrea Mason, Julie O’Connell, Brian Romick, Jeremy Staadeker, Brett Stern, Jennifer Stevens, Ben Timberlake, Ryan Tracy, and David Victor.
Lastly, to Will Leitch, for making me want to be a better writer and a better person, and for helping me realize that the better person thing is of far greater importance.
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Random House, Inc.
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.
Copyright © 2006 by Shari Goldhagen
All Rights Reserved
”Stealing Condoms from Joe Jr.’s Room” originally appeared in the Indiana Review
”By Being Young, By Being Nice” originally appeared in the Wascana Review under the title ”Things She Wants.”
”The Next Generation of Dead Kennedys” originally appeared in Confrontation.
eISBN: 978-0-385-51768-3
v3.0
Family and Other Accidents Page 26