Mom bursts into tears. “It’s just so—depressing,” she says when she’s calmed down enough to talk. “You do think it’s depressing, don’t you, Emma?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty depressing,” I say.
But when we get home and Mom tries to explain this to Dad, he says, “What’s so depressing about a La-Z-Boy Recliner?”
“Being so poor you can’t just afford to go buy one if you want one,” Mom says. “Not to mention, that woman actually believes a La-Z-Boy Recliner will make her husband happy.”
“Maybe it will make him happy,” Dad says. “Hey, you’re always talking about things being cosmic. This seems like the perfect example. We get fifty million dollars, this guy gets the La-Z-Boy Recliner of his dreams. You want to talk about depressing. Depressing would be if things had been reversed.”
This cracks me up. It’s so—Dad. Even Mom smiles, and then she tells him about giving the money to the punk couple—already embellishing it in a way that makes me know it will become one of those stories we always tell: The Time Mom Gave Away Money in the Mall.
It’s nice the way Dad listens, grinning. The way he puts his arm around her and gives her a squeeze when she’s through, and looks at her with an expression on his face that lets you know what a good person he thinks she is and how much he loves her.
The trouble is, I’m left wondering if she really is okay.
I need to talk to Jules about this, I think. But she steps off the plane on Christmas Eve, bursting with joy, and why would I want to put the damper on that? She’s in love, and his name is Will. She met him in September, before we were rich, the night she worked her very first shift as coat-check girl at the Sherry Netherland Hotel.
“And dog-check girl,” she says, telling us the whole story at dinner. “Right? I’ve been there maybe an hour when this old couple comes in and sets a cage with a cocker spaniel in it on the counter. Sasha, the girl I was working with, tags it and gives the old guy a token, like checking a dog is the most normal thing in the world. Is that nutty, or what? Anyway, I’m still laughing hysterically when I look up and there’s this guy standing there, his jacket over his arm. He—Will—looks at the cage, then he looks at me, smiles—God, he’s got the greatest smile, you won’t believe his smile—and says, ‘Fur coat starter kit?’ And I’m hooked. I’m totally in love.
“I told myself, don’t even go there. He’s probably here to meet his girlfriend. But he wasn’t. He kept coming out to the lobby—supposedly to see how Pookie was doing. And he stayed till closing time, sitting at a corner table all alone. It totally got to me, you know? Him sitting and waiting all that time, half asleep.”
“He could have been a serial killer,” I say.
Jules looks beatific. “I know, I know. I didn’t have the faintest idea who he was. But we went for coffee and it was like we’d known each other forever. We couldn’t stop talking. He’s part owner of this gym and he told me all about that. And I told him, well, everything.
“I can’t wait for you guys to meet him,” she says. “Tomorrow! He’s coming in at noon, I invited him to come up to Michigan.”
Mom sets the water pitcher down with a clunk.
I freeze, a forkful of steak halfway to my mouth.
Dad says, “Michigan?” Like it’s another planet.
“It’s okay, isn’t it?” Jules says. “I’d have called, but we just decided this morning. I mean, I suddenly realized I just couldn’t stand to be away from him for a whole week.”
“Of course, it’s okay,” Mom says. “But you’ve been seeing him since September?”
Jules flutters her hands, blushing. “I couldn’t tell you when I came home because of the money. Duh. And compete with that? Besides, I hadn’t known him that long. I wasn’t sure. Then I was going to tell you at Thanksgiving. But we were all still so—you know, distracted. So I decided to wait till everything settled down and I could have your complete and total attention.” She beams around the table at us. “Like now.”
“Oh, Julie,” Mom says in a small voice.
Even Dad looks a little bit chagrined.
Jules doesn’t seem to notice. “I swear, you’re going to totally adore him,” she babbles on. “He’s worried about that—whether you will. You know, like him. But I told him, if I’m in love with you, my family will like you. Not that you wouldn’t like him anyway. He’s so—”
“We like him,” I say. “Jules, we like him already, okay?”
Mom puts on the Elvis Christmas album, and we open presents. A gazillion of them. When all the packages under the tree are open, Dad stands up. “Okay, Emma,” he says, and the two of us go to the garage and get the dollhouse he bought for Mom. It’s a Victorian house, lavender-blue with white gingerbread trimming.
“What in the world?” she says, when we set it before her.
Dad says, “You always wanted a dollhouse.”
“Open it,” I say. “See? It opens out from the front, like double doors, and the roof lifts up to show the attic.”
Mom gets down on her knees and opens it. Inside, it’s all white, primed, ready to be decorated. There’s nothing in it but a miniature Christmas tree, decorated with tiny red balls and candy canes and gold garlands. A tiny star at the top. And a doll family: a mom, a dad, and two little girls with blond yarn hair.
“I can’t believe it,” Mom says. “It’s exactly like the dollhouse I wanted when I was a little girl.”
“I know,” Dad says. “I remembered that.”
She jumps up and throws her arms around him. “Mac Hammond, you are the best person in the world! I can’t believe you would even think of giving me a dollhouse!”
“Will took me to see the Rockettes,” Jules says, in this tone of voice that says I know exactly what you mean. “And the skaters at Rockefeller Center. Then we went to see the Christmas decorations at Saks. It was like a fairyland, all green pine boughs and white twinkling lights. Last night he gave me this glass ball with New York City inside it. There’s even a little yellow cab. When you shake it, it snows.”
But Mom’s not listening to her. She’s down on her hands and knees again, opening the little door, peering through the little windows. Jules doesn’t care; she’s in her own world anyway. And if the longing I feel, the fear that nobody will ever fall in love with me are visible on my face, not a single person in my family mentions it. Or maybe they don’t notice.
The next morning, Mom fixes our usual Christmas breakfast of waffles and sausage and fresh-squeezed orange juice, making enough batter for four extra waffles so we can have our traditional waffle toss. For this event, Mom, Jules, and I stand, shivering, on the freezing cold front porch, still in our pajamas and robes. Dad backs his truck out of the garage and parks it in the street, so we can aim the waffles at the bed. Then he joins us on the porch.
“Okay, let’s do it,” he says.
His waffle goes beyond the truck, into the middle of the street; Mom’s flies out of her hand too soon and lands about two feet away from the porch; I throw mine like a Frisbee and it spins sideways and hits the window of the car parked next door. Jules’ sails out in a perfect arc, curving right into the truck bed, which makes her even more insufferably happy than she was last night. In fact, she’s so daffy I insist on driving her to the airport to meet Will. I’m afraid she’ll wreck the car, left to her own devices. And, okay, I’m dying to see him.
I’m expecting the usual: tall, dark, and handsome, nice clothes, expensive haircut. In fact, I have my eye on a guy I think could be Will when this stocky blond guy in jeans and a Hammer Strength sweatshirt comes through the security gate, sees Jules, and breaks into a dazzling smile. He owns a gym; it makes sense he’d be a jock. I don’t know why this surprises me. He puts his arms around her, picks her right up off her feet, and hugs her hard. Then he sets her down and they look at each other for what seems
like forever.
“Hel-lo,” I say finally. “Are you guys auditioning for a part on The Young and the Oblivious?”
Will laughs and says, “You must be Emma.”
I hold out my hand and we shake. Then I herd the two of them through baggage claim, to the parking garage. “Nice Jeep,” Will says, which gets him some points with me. He gets more when he likes our neighborhood, which I drive him through, taking the long way home. It’s called the Village—it actually was a village a hundred years ago, before the city grew up to it and absorbed it. It has a nice feel. Lots of little shops and restaurants—and the old Whitewater Canal runs through it, where Freud, the famous lottery goose, resides. Will looks anxious for the first time when I mention Freud, and it occurs to me that he might feel uncomfortable about meeting the suddenly rich parents of his new girlfriend.
“Okay,” I say, pulling into our driveway. “The parental units await you.”
He gives an endearing little groan.
“No problem,” I say. “They love you. We all do. Jules said we had to and we always do what Jules says.”
He casts me a grateful glance, then smiles—and Jules is right: it is a smile to die for. “All right, then. I’m ready,” he says. “No way you’d ever want to mess with Julie.”
The way he says it—kidding, but in this sort of besotted tone of voice, like maybe he half-believes it—makes me think, yeah, this is going to be okay.
We head up the front walk, Jules insisting she’s without a doubt the most reasonable, easy-to-get-along-with person in America, and Will and I laughing, one-upping each other to remind her how perfect she’s not.
“You should see the bathroom,” Will says. “Desert Storm.”
“Yeah, well, has she dragged you to see that Joseph and His—” I wave my hands around. “Coat,” I say. “Whatever. I never can remember the whole name of that stupid musical, but I’ll tell you what. I’d rather be stabbed in the eyeball than ever go see it again.”
Jules grins wickedly and breaks into that hideous “Go, Go, Go Joseph” song from it, which she knows I particularly hate because of the way you absolutely cannot get it out of your mind.
“See?” I say to Will. “I’m warning you now. That’s the kind of thing she’ll do to you.”
Just then, Mom appears in the doorway and smiles at the sight of all three of us laughing. I watch her taking Will in, deciding, by whatever it is she sees in him—the way he looks at Jules, maybe, and catches her hand, as if just touching her will bring him courage—that she’s going to like him.
“Will,” she says, and opens the door wider.
Eleven
We caravan to Michigan later that afternoon—Mom and Dad together, Jules and Will in my Jeep. I ride in the Winnebago, with Gramps. I’ve forgiven him for the mortifying Bloomington visit, and, now that I’m not paralyzed with anxiety about what he’s going to say next, I get a kick out of how he acts like a kid with a new toy. I let him crank up my Lenny Kravitz CD to prove how great the stereo is; then, at his insistence, view The Great Escape on his mobile theater unit while he drives.
It starts snowing when we cross the state line into Michigan—big fat flakes that swirl onto the windshield and make it seem as if we’re looking at the highway through a white kaleidoscope. Up north, it’s cold and crisp. We turn onto the narrow road lined with pine trees that leads into the ski area, and when we turn again and drive down the hill toward our house, there are six deer in the meadow. The sky is black, punctured with stars.
We’re up early, on the slopes. When we get back, around two, Dad and Gramps brush the snow off the picnic table in the yard and spread tools and engine parts all over it. They’re never without some kind of project, and this Christmas vacation it’s restoring an old beat-up snowmobile Gramps bought at an auction in the fall. If you go out on the deck, you can hear them bickering.
“Goddamn it, Dutch,” Dad says. “Will you quit beating on it? You’re not going to fix it by beating on it.” Then there’s a crash—Gramps dropping something—and Dad starts laughing. “Jesus Christ,” he says. And Gramps goes at the engine again with the wrong side of a wrench, the sound of metal on metal ringing in the cold, dry air. Before too long, Will’s out there with them, all three of them drinking beer, swearing, and goofing around.
Mom looks up from sketching and rolls her eyes. “It’s a guy thing,” she says.
Jules watches through the kitchen window with a moony expression. An expression that’s been fixed on her face since Christmas Eve. Will, Will, Will. He’s all she can talk about. Doesn’t Will ski amazingly well for a person who’s only been skiing three times in his whole life before? Doesn’t he look fabulous in that orange parka? Isn’t he the most truly funny person in America?
Well, yeah, I think. So far, I like Will just fine. He gets our jokes; he likes our goofy ski house with its strange books and posters and flea market treasures. He doesn’t mind when I beat him, racing. But it’s always been just us in Michigan, and it seems strange with Will here. Not that Jules is ignoring me or anything. In fact, since Will arrived she’s been paying more attention to me than she has in a long, long time.
Over the next few days, Jules goes out of her way to make sure the two of us have the chance to get to know each other. Every night after dinner, the three of us head over to the bar at the lodge. Between band sets, Jules and I entertain him with family stories.
“Tell Will about when Mom got pregnant and they went to the doctor,” Jules says one night. “You tell it funnier than I do.”
“Okay,” I say, and tell the story.
Mom and Dad are pretty sure Mom’s pregnant—and mind you, they’re not married—and they decide she needs to go to the doctor, but Mom’s too embarrassed to come right out and make an appointment for that. So she makes it for a check-up instead, figuring she’ll come clean when she gets there. Meanwhile, she gets this terrible cold. So they sit in the waiting room for almost two hours on the day of the appointment, Mom hacking and wheezing like a TB victim until her name’s finally called. Dad’s a wreck, waiting for her to come out. Then, when she does, she walks right past him and keeps going.
“So he goes after her,” I say. “But when he catches up to her on the street and asks her what the doctor said, she waves a prescription slip right in his face and says, ‘I’ve got strep throat. It’s no wonder I feel so terrible. I’ve got to get this penicillin and start taking it right away or else I’m going to be even sicker than I already am.’”
“She didn’t even ask the doctor about—you know?” Will asks.
“Nope. And when Dad asked why, she had this total breakdown, right there on the street. She goes, ‘You don’t even care how sick I am! My God, I’m really, really, really sick and all you can think about is whether or not I’m pregnant.’” I’m on a roll now, wailing like Mom does when she tells the story.
Jules cracks up. “Mom is pathetic when she’s sick.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And this was the crème de la crème of pathetic, according to Dad.”
I’m about to go on to the rest of it: Grandma Hammond freaking out, wanting to send Mom to an unwed mothers’ home; their disastrous wedding night, when the pipes burst in the dinky little trailer they’d rented and they were ankle deep in water. But I realize Will’s not laughing.
“Your dad told you that story?” he asks.
“Yeah. Well, actually both Mom and Dad tell it all the time. They think it’s hilarious.”
“My parents would never tell me a story as personal as that,” he says. “But then, we don’t talk much about anything.”
I say, “You don’t get along?”
He shrugs. “Oh, we get along okay. They just don’t have a clue why I’d want to hang out in a gym when I could go to med school, which is what I originally thought I wanted to do. What they still want me
to do. You know, get a real life. What can I say? They’re nice people, just—boring. The idea of them ever being young, being in love like your parents were—well, I can’t even imagine it.”
“Are,” I say. “Like my mom and dad are.”
Will looks at Jules and smiles. Jules smiles back. Like we are, they’re thinking. God, this is like a cheesy movie. They might as well be surrounded by a thousand points of light.
I fake a yawn. “You guys want to go back pretty soon?”
“I’m fried.” Jules reaches for her jacket.
“Me too,” Will says. “Boy, being outside in the cold all day really takes it out of you.”
Right. Like they’re going to go back and sleep. Later, I can hear them in the next room. They’re trying to be quiet, but there are the inevitable thumps, the muffled laughter. A society of two, just like Mom and Dad have always been.
Sometimes it made Jules and me mad when we were kids, the way their time alone was so important to them. They left us with babysitters, took vacations without us. They refused to devote themselves endlessly to teams and lessons. But as we got older, and a lot of our friends’ families fell apart, we saw their closeness differently. We realized it was no small thing that the way they were together let us keep on believing in love.
I still believe in it. I just can’t imagine it will ever happen to me. Lying alone in the room Jules and I used to share, I think about Gabe Parker for maybe the millionth time since we met and the hopeless idea that maybe … Stop right there, I tell myself. I make my mind tumble backwards to those early Michigan times when Jules and I were always together.
Saturday mornings, early, Dad would blast us out of bed with the Rolling Stones—“Start Me Up”—so we could be at the ski area the second the lifts started running. We’d be freezing as the old chair lift creaked us up to the top; we’d be clapping our mittened hands together to warm them; laughing, making our breath puff out, white as snow. On top, it seemed like you could see forever: blue-green pine forests, frozen lakes, roads flung across the hills like narrow gray ribbon. Our own brown and yellow ski house, like a doll’s house, below. We’d look a long time, then we’d zoom down, our faces burning with the cold wind our speed made.
Everything You Want Page 8