by Liz Kay
When Bear comes back, I let him inside. I start my coffee and cut an apple into very thin slices to have for breakfast. I hear the boys upstairs talking, making their morning noises, and I think, We’ll be okay. We’ve made it this far.
APRIL
MICHAEL’S MOM WANTS US to come for her Easter luncheon, which is a nightmare. I’ve never liked the woman, but since Michael died, she’s been this weepy, pathetic mess. She makes the boys uncomfortable. It’s really important to us to spend time with our grandchildren, especially now that we’ve lost our boy. She actually breaks down on the phone. I’d like to say, For Christ’s sake, I am not your family. Jenny, of course, says that I have to go.
I take a big pasta primavera salad for me and a bottle of cheap white wine for her. She’s not a very classy lady. I’m trying to play to her tastes.
I make the boys wear nice collared shirts and slacks, and when Carol opens the door, she doesn’t let us in so much as she pushes her way out and throws her arms around them. “You look exactly like your dad when he was little,” she says, and Ben stiffens.
“Can we go in?” I say. “My hands are pretty full.”
She moves out of the way and holds the door open. I walk in and head for the kitchen. The whole place smells like ham.
“I made your favorite—twice-baked potatoes,” she says, rubbing Ben on the head.
“That’s not my favorite,” he says, and I give him a look. I may not like her, but he doesn’t have permission to be an asshole.
“You liked them last year,” she says.
“Is Lisa coming?” I like Michael’s sister, but of course Carol says, “No.”
“But Josh is,” she says, opening the oven and letting out this tremendous wave of sugar and pig.
Great. Josh is an asshole. Josh I hate. When Michael and I were still dating, Josh got drunk at a family Christmas and put both hands on my ass as I was coming back from the bathroom. He’d cornered me in the back hallway. “I will tell your brother,” I said, and he backed away. So, yeah, I’m thrilled about seeing him.
“You look so handsome, you two,” Carol says to the boys, and she sniffles again. “Are you just coming from Mass?” They look at each other. They look at me.
“We don’t go to Mass, Carol.”
“What?” She’s holding this giant meat fork, and she turns and sticks it in the ham.
“Boys, go say hi to your grandfather,” I say, and they trudge off toward the living room, where they’re bound to find him in front of the TV.
“I’m not Catholic,” I say, and she says, “Well, Michael was.”
She stands back up, closes the oven. She’s holding the fork in her hand, staring at me. I can see little droplets of fat on its prongs—juice, she would probably call it.
“Don’t you think it’s disrespectful not to raise the boys the way he would have wanted?”
“He wouldn’t have expected me to take the boys to church.”
“Well, I bet he would have liked it,” she says, her lips pressed together in a thin mean line. She slams the oven open and pulls out the potatoes. They’re loaded with bacon. She just loves me. She always has.
• • •
The only dish on the table that doesn’t have meat is my pasta salad. She doesn’t even have the decency to put out some plain rolls. I know she does this on purpose, but as she brings out the last two trays she says, “Oh gosh, Stacey, I guess you can’t have this either. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I do, but I just smile. “It’s okay, Carol, I’ve always hated your cooking,” and then I make a face like, I’m just kidding.
“We brought a Jell-O salad?” Josh’s wife, Lee, says.
“Mmm, gelatin. No thanks. That’s made from animals.”
“It is?” she says.
Josh says, “It’s like hooves and bones or something, right?”
“Not exactly,” I say, but close enough.
“Are the kids eating in the kitchen? I’ll just make them some plates.” I give them mostly pasta salad, small pieces of ham, some of those bacon-covered potatoes, a little Jell-O. I hope they haven’t heard the bit about hooves. Once they’re settled, I spoon some of the pasta onto my plate and sit in my usual spot. That’s the thing about Carol’s, we all know our place.
“So Mom tells me you’ve got some movie deal going?” Josh says.
“I do, yeah. One of my books.” I spear a noodle and a strip of carrot with my fork.
“Making a lot of money off that?”
It’s not any of their business, really. “Is it polite to talk about money at the dinner table?”
“Come on, we’re family,” he says.
I give him a look that very clearly says, No, we’re not, but then I say, “I’m making enough.”
“Enough that you don’t have to work?” he says, holding this slab of ham up to his face.
“Michael left Stacey enough that she doesn’t have to work,” Carol says.
Which is true, but I say, “This is work, Josh. That’s why they’re paying me.” I turn to Carol. “Did you open that wine?”
“Not yet. I have an open box of blush in the fridge. You want a glass?”
Of course, boxed rosé. That sounds delicious, but I say, “Thanks, Carol, that would be great.”
“Anyone else?” she says.
“I’ll take a glass,” Lee says. “Let me help you.”
“No, no. You just relax,” Carol says, waving her off. She’s always loved Lee. Lee is totally her favorite.
“I’ll have another beer,” says Stan, Michael’s dad. These are the first words I’ve heard from him all day. There’s a good chance they’ll also be the last.
“Me too,” Josh calls after her.
“So tell us about this whole movie thing,” Lee says. “It sounds exciting. Have you met any famous people?”
“I have,” I say. “The director is pretty famous, and the actor producing it too.”
“Who is it?” she says, her eyes big.
There is really no way to prepare them for the name-dropping that’s coming. Normally, I feel uncomfortable about it, but I hate these people. Well, I don’t really hate Lee, but she’s married to Josh, so I probably should. “Jason Collier. Tommy DeMarco.”
“Holy shit,” Josh says. “No wonder you don’t have to work.”
“Josh,” Carol says sharply, coming back in the room with two beers and a glass of wine for Lee. “I don’t like that language in my house.”
“Sorry, Mom. Thanks,” he says, grabbing the beer and taking a swig.
“What’s he like?” Lee says.
I know who she’s asking about, but I say, “Jason? Sweet. He’s lovely. I like him a lot.” I take another bite of my pasta, wonder how long I’m going to have to wait for my wine.
“No, Tommy DeMarco.” She says his name in the tone that all women seem to use when they talk about him. “I mean, you’ve met him met him?”
I think, Yeah, I’ve definitely met him, but I say, “Sure, I just talked to him yesterday.”
“He calls you?”
“Sometimes.” I nod. “Yesterday, I called him.” I had a good reason, a legitimate question, but then we just stayed on the phone for a long time. I smile. “You want to call him? I’m sure he’s around.” I wouldn’t do this if I thought she’d take me up on it. She just giggles.
Carol finally brings my glass of shitty wine, but she doesn’t hand it to me. “You know,” she says, and I can tell she’s about to pull some crying shit. “When my son died, I did not expect to see you, sitting at my table barely a year later, giggling about some other man.”
Clearly, I am not the one giggling, not that that matters to her. When Michael died, I thought I could be done with these people, but here I am. Right now, I’m so pissed at Michael. When he was alive, he handled Carol for me.
“Carol, these are people I work with. I was talking to Tommy about a book panel we have to do at the end of the month. But, you know, the fact is
, he’s famous, and I’m sure that’s all a little exciting when you first hear about it. For me, this is just a job.”
“You’re going out of town?” Finally she hands me my wine.
“Yeah, just overnight hopefully. Why?”
Carol looks at Stan and then back to me. “Well, we could keep the boys while you’re gone.”
I nearly choke on my wine. “That’s nice of you, Carol, but they can stay with my sister.”
“You never let the boys stay here,” she says. “Don’t you trust us?”
No. Fuck no. Michael didn’t either. She wants me to respect his wishes? Well, on this, I am. “Of course I trust you. You’re their grandmother. But it’ll be a school day, and Jenny’s kids go to the same school. It just makes things easy. You know?” I smile really sweetly.
“What about some other time? What if we took them for a weekend?”
I look at Stan. He doesn’t say anything. You can barely tell he’s listening.
“Sure,” I say. “We could do that.” I hope she can’t tell I’m lying. “I’m sure the boys would think that was fun.” Actually, I don’t even know what they’d do here. They don’t even keep any toys in the house. What kind of grandparents don’t have toys?
• • •
On the way home, Stevie says, “I don’t like ham. It’s too wet.”
I wonder if Carol even cooked it all the way. Leave it to Carol to poison my kids with parasitic meat. And she wants them for the weekend.
“Don’t be rude,” Ben says.
“I’m not rude. You’re rude. You’re the rude, stupid one.”
My head hurts. Maybe it’s the wine. I only drank a glass of it, but it tasted stale. Or maybe it just tasted like wine from a box. Either way, it was crap.
“Gramma Carol says she’s going to take us to the zoo,” Stevie says.
“Really?” I say. I don’t bother saying that she’s not, that I won’t allow it, that I wouldn’t let her take them in a car for anything.
“We’ll take you down and leave you with the alligators,” Ben says, and Stevie starts to cry. The alligator exhibit is really scary. Even I won’t go in it.
“Ben,” I say, “don’t start with him. Can’t you two be nice?”
Usually they are. Usually they’re the sweetest boys, but lately Ben’s been agitated and Stevie’s an easy target. Ben can’t seem to help himself.
• • •
I get into LAX about ten a.m. and go straight to the festival. We don’t have to actually do the panel until mid-afternoon, but I have nowhere else to be, and I know if I wander the book fair I’ll see people I know. I’ve been to this thing before, and as busy as it is, the poetry world is pretty small. An hour into the thing I realize that, as usual, I didn’t wear the right shoes. I always think I’ll feel more steady if I look a certain way, like people will think I know what I’m saying if I wear black jeans and a tailored jacket. Of course it’s too hot, and I have to take the jacket off and stash it in my bag, so now I’m just wearing this sleeveless violet shell, which I’m hoping is dark enough to hide whatever anxiety sweat I’ll be dealing with all day. But the shoes are a problem. I mean, they didn’t seem too high at home, but Michael would have talked me out of them for sure. You’ll call me crying about your feet by noon, he would have said, and he would have been right. The balls of my feet feel bruised.
When I reach the room for the panel, there’s no way I can get in. I get there fifteen minutes early and already the place is packed. I say, “I’m supposed to be on this. Do you think I can get through?” to the people jammed in the doorway, but there’s nowhere for them to move. I feel a little panicked. I step back into the hallway, moving away from the crowd, looking for someone official-looking, someone to help me.
“There you are,” a man says behind me.
I can’t remember his name, but we’ve met. By met I mean he came by my publisher’s table this morning and stayed for a long time, and at one point, he made a comment about my shoes. “That’s some sexy footwear,” he’d said, which was creepy both for the word footwear and for the fact that he is super unattractive. But he is on the festival board, so I smile like I really need him, and I say, “I can’t get in.”
“Let me take you through the service hall,” he says, and he takes me through a door marked STAFF ONLY and down a hallway with none of the polish of the rest of the place. He’s trying to talk to me the whole way, and I laugh politely a couple of times, but I’m not really listening now. I’m just responding to his tone of voice.
I don’t know the moderator. She’s a short, heavy, gray-haired woman in this awful beige dress. “I’m Sandra,” she says, shaking my hand. Her palm feels doughy, maybe a little wet. “So we’ll go ahead and get you settled.”
They’ve brought in a portable stage and skirted it in maroon fabric. She points me to the rickety stairs in the back. The table is long and similarly skirted to hide its folding metal legs, a white cloth stretched across the top. I try to keep my focus here, on the stage. Beyond it are too many people, too many bodies pressed into the chairs and standing along the walls, but the ceiling is high, and when I look straight out, keeping my eyes over their heads, I can tell myself the room is filled with air.
“So you’ll sit here,” Sandra says, pointing me to a black folding chair at one end of the table.
There is a second chair beside it and a tabletop lectern at the opposite end of the table—mic’ed, of course—and there’s another mic between the chairs, its cord running dangerously close to the pitcher of water they’ve set out. I pour myself a glass, take a sip.
“So I’ll introduce you and then I thought you could read a bit from the book, maybe ten minutes?”
“Sure,” I say. I can read. I can read all day. It’s the answering I’m not looking forward to. I’m better with a script.
“And Mr. DeMarco is still …” She must be getting nervous. We’ve only got a few minutes left, and people bailing on panels and readings is pretty common. Sometimes it’s last-minute travel problems, but often they’re just assholes. Writers don’t get invited to much, so when they do, they tend to overschedule.
“I’m sure he’ll be here,” I say. I slip my phone out of my pocket, slide it to unlock to see if I have any messages.
Sandra says, “Oh,” next to me in this sort of surprised tone, and I look up and there’s Tommy. He’s in the doorway, shaking a woman’s hand, talking, nodding. He leans in close like he’s trying to hear her. She can’t seem to stop talking. And then he nods toward the stage, stepping backwards, holding her hand a moment longer, letting it go. He turns toward me, and when he sees me he smiles. There are four steps. He takes them two at a time, and as he rises onto the stage, there’s a hum of voices across the room. I feel conspicuously frozen, but Tommy moves as naturally as ever, catches me in a hug, kisses my cheek. He leans back, still holding me by the waist.
“Good to see you.” He presses his thumbs against my stomach and lets his eyes roll over me. “You look great.”
“This is Sandra,” I say, turning toward her and away from his hands. “She’s the moderator.”
“Oh, yes, so. Wow. It’s so nice to meet you.” Poor flustered Sandra.
Tommy must feel sorry for her too because he takes her hand in both of his. “Walk me through the plan,” he says because he seems to understand that she needs some direction, someone in charge of telling her what to do.
“Yes,” she says. “So, you’ll sit here, and I’ll introduce both of you, not that you really need an introduction.” She laughs a little stupidly. “And then Stacey will read for a few minutes, and then I have a few prepared questions, and then we’ll open it up to the audience.” She rounds her eyes like she’s asking a question. “Sound good?”
“Sounds great.” Tommy smiles again and lets go of her hand and turns back to me. “I’ve never heard you read,” he says as we sit down.
“Mmm,” I say. “I’m pretty amazing.” I’m just excited to be sitting, a
nd for the fact that I can kick my shoes off under the table without anyone seeing.
Now that everyone is looking at Tommy, I feel like I can look out into the audience. Whatever the fire code is, we’ve broken it by a lot. Some of the girls are grinning, giggling, holding their hands over their mouths, bouncing in their seats, and Tommy doesn’t look away. He waves to them like to someone he recognizes, mouths, Hi, Hey, over and over, the occasional Thank you. He holds his hand over his heart. It’s ridiculous actually, but even I would probably fall for it. He is really, really good.
• • •
The girl at the microphone is adorable and very young. She’s got one of the festival bags slung over her shoulder, and I can see from here that it’s heavy. She must have picked up a ton of books.
“Hi,” she says. “I just want to say how much I loved your book. I read it in my first grad seminar, and it just totally changed my life as a writer.”
“Gosh, that’s … Wow, thank you.” I hate this. I feel awkward. I know most of the people in this room are here because of Tommy, but it is a book festival after all, so most of the questions have been for me. I spread my fingers across the white tablecloth and touch the edge of the water ring seeping out around my glass.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing how this works as a film,” the girl says.
“Me too,” I say, and everyone sort of chuckles politely.
“So what I’m wondering is how you handle the vulnerability that comes with allowing all these other people, these other influences, into your work?”
Tommy’s been sitting back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, relaxed, just listening. Now he leans forward, up to the table mic positioned between us, and he says, “Well, she didn’t fucking handle it well.” Everyone laughs.