Family Affair

by Caprice Crane

  “That damn sock drawer,” Jared says morosely, as he takes a swig of his beer.

  “That’s a great band name,” I say. We come up with band names constantly—never mind that none of us is in a band.

  “Or at least an album title,” Doug adds.

  “You ever think about the fact that your wife is the last woman you are ever going to be with?” I ask in Doug’s direction. We had a running joke that he’d never get married—that every IT guy’s true love is Diet Coke, since that’s the only thing most take to bed—but he managed to find the right girl regardless.

  Jared feels the need to interject. “No, because I don’t have a wife. I could have had a fiancée, but that damn—”

  “Sock drawer,” Doug and I say in unison.

  “I was talking mostly to Doug, bro,” I add.

  “Yeah, man. Layla’s the last person you are ever going to be with. But you got married like twenty years ago.”

  “Six,” I correct.

  “This is the kind of stuff you should have thought about, oh, I don’t know, before you got married.”

  “Yeah, man,” Jared adds. “And Layla’s awesome. What more could you want?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing. You’re right. Layla’s the best,” I say.

  “Trust me,” Jared replies. “There’s nothing more.”

  “Then that’s pretty fuckin’ sad.”

  “Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning?” Doug mutters. “All this ’cause you got some wood over a chick?”

  “First of all, I didn’t get wood,” I correct. “And second of all, nothing. It’s cool. I’m just contemplative tonight. Is that all right? Can we be grown-ups for one night? Is that allowed?”

  “We’ve been grown-ups, dude,” Jared says. “Sounds like you’re just getting the memo and may not like the responsibility that comes with it.”

  “Fuck you, dude,” I say, only I realize he might be right, and that fuckin’ stings.

  Luckily, I need to head back to school to do some prep work before our game against NWMSU. Otherwise, I’d have to hear more of this garbage. So I leave the guys to finish their happy hour, which will probably extend until the game, when they always show up to support the team by being slobs and yelling shit.

  It’s not that I don’t love my wife. I do. I love the hell out of her. But there’s a fundamental difference between loving your wife and loving being married. One has nothing to do with the other, I’m beginning to realize. Especially when it doesn’t feel like we’re connecting the way we used to. She did leave the game last week.

  Am I going to find a note in the sock drawer one of these days?

  layla

  Ginny shows up at our office—which is more pet playground than workplace, especially now that Lou, Trish’s dog, is back from the groomer—but that’s never seemed to matter. Ginny gets us. She always has.

  “We don’t photograph people,” Trish teases. “Sorry.” She pretends to shut the door in her mother’s face.

  “Don’t think we’ve met,” Ginny says, holding her own. “I’m here to see my daughter: Layla.”

  “Ouch,” Trish says, and she takes a few steps back, pretending she’s been stabbed. “Careful there, Mom. Any more of this emotional abuse and I could turn into a lesbian.”

  I push Trish out of the way and embrace Ginny. “Can you believe it? You were my first call!”

  “Of course I can,” Ginny says. “I’m so proud of my girls.” She pulls Trish into a three-way hug. She’s so amazing. We’re lucky to have her.

  “So, did you just come to celebrate in person?” I ask. “No, honey, we had dinner plans, you and I. Remember? Now we have a great reason to celebrate.”

  Crap. I’m surprised I’ve forgotten. “Shoot. Did we? I thought we said tomorrow, but my days all blend lately and here you are, so … great!” I smile as I rack my brain to remember if we’d actually said today. I’m still foggy with thoughts of PETCO and the loans we’ll have to apply for. “Trish? You in?”

  “A celebration dinner?” Trish raises her eyebrows. “Mom paying? Hells yeah!” At this point Trish’s dog gets jealous and starts scratching his tiny little dachshund paws against her leg, so she picks him up and pulls him into the group.

  “Did you call Brett?” Trish asks me. And there must be something in their psychic sibling connection, because as soon as the words leave her lips my cell phone rings, which snaps me out of the contemplative trance I’d slipped into as I watched Trish’s dachshund try unsuccessfully to scale her leg. They’re funny little beings, dachshunds. They seem to go from being puppies to tripping over their ears and dragging their chests on the ground. I like to assume they’re happy, but a lifetime of scraping your boobs across the pavement just doesn’t seem ideal. Then again, snails don’t mind.

  Brett’s call is still ringing on my phone. I press send. “Hello, husband.”

  “Hello, wife. Are you coming to the game?”

  Crap again. I hear the excitement in his voice, but I’m pretty sure he’ll let me off the hook this time. I really was planning to go with him, but now with Ginny here, and Trish and I celebrating the likely PETCO deal …

  “I’m sorry, babe. Something came up. Maybe I can come late. I told your mom I’d go to dinner with her, and she’s here, and Trish and I—”

  “Huh,” he interrupts. Apparently, he’s angrier than I’d anticipated. He didn’t give me a chance to explain my wonderful news, and he retreats into monosyllabic answers when he’s pissed off but doesn’t want to get into it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I totally forgot. You see, Trish and I—”

  “No big deal. It’ll make it that much more special if you ever do show up and stay for a whole game again.”

  “I have great news—” I try one last time. “Great,” he snaps. “Tell me when I get home.” He hangs up. “He hung up,” I say to Trish and Ginny.

  “Oh, sweetheart, we can do a rain check,” says Ginny. “Why don’t you go to the game?”

  “No,” I say, slamming the phone closed as though there was someone on the other end to hear it. “We’re celebrating.”

  He’s not even curious? How many times do I say I have great news? Probably never. And did he really just hang up on me?

  The second we get to the restaurant I start feeling terrible. I fumed for the whole car ride, but as soon as I get outside my own head I feel like the worst wife ever. It’s true, last week I left early and I’ve missed a few other games this year, but how many seasons of how many teams have I been there for? Considering that, I’ve been pretty dutiful. Still, this is Brett’s job, and I’m being totally unsupportive. I make a vow to myself to dig up my beak hat and get my ass into those bleachers for the next game no matter what, and quickly dial his cell-phone number to apologize.

  “This is Brett. Leave a message.”

  He’s screening me? So much for my rescue mission.

  When I hang up the phone, Trish is giving me the look. “What?” I say defensively.

  “You know what,” she says. “We’re celebrating. Stop obsessing. His team will win or lose and he’ll come home and you’ll be in bed, eating cereal, wearing his boxers and his I Fucked Paris Hilton T-shirt.”

  “No, he doesn’t have a shirt that says that,” Ginny says. Trish and I both look at her, two looks that both say: Have you met your son?

  “Brett’s been acting really weird lately,” I say. At which point the look is now directed at me: Have you met your husband? So I add, “I mean, more than usual. He’s all sensitive and edgy. Honestly, since when does he care if I go to his games? I mean, I understand that I should be there, but it’s unlike him to get all upset about it.”

  “He’s Brett,” Trish offers.

  “Yeah, but he’s also doing that sleep thing.”

  Ginny puts her fork down and does a trademark Ginny reveal: the leg cross-uncross, which tells you she’s just become uncomfortable times two. “He’s sleep-coaching?”

  “Yeah,�
�� I say.

  Brett coaches an imaginary team in his sleep when he’s worried about something or about to make a change. It’s sleepwalking but with an extra movement or two, so it’s harmless if a little weird—though he’s woken me up once or twice with shouts for tighter pass coverage. He does this especially toward the end of football season, when the important games come around. He crouched by make-believe sidelines for weeks before we bought our house, and from what I understand he nearly wore a path in the carpet at his parents’ place, flailing his arms and celebrating fantasy touchdowns, before he proposed to me. But what’s he nervous about now? What momentous occasion could be on the horizon?

  “Do you think … No, I shouldn’t say,” Ginny says.

  “Spill it,” I growl.

  “I know what she’s thinking,” Trish says. “And you know, she could be right….”

  “Can we cut the cryptic crap and let Layla in on the lightbulb?” I say to the pair, who seem to have discovered a new continent they don’t want anyone to know about.

  “She’s talking in third person,” Trish says to Ginny. “Nice alliteration, though. Tell her, Mom.”

  Ginny inches her chair toward mine, and I start to get nervous. She takes my hand in hers and smiles at me, which only magnifies the tension. “Honey?” she says.

  “Yeah?” I reply, eyebrows raised. And then she inches closer and hugs me.

  “Oh my God, Mom, can you be more annoying?” Trish spouts. Then she turns to me and suggests, “Brett wants to have a baby.” He does?

  “He does? Did he tell you that?” I ask, as I try to process what they’re saying—and yes, it does kind of make sense. Before he proposed to me he was extra-sensitive and almost snappy, though not in a mean way, just tense. The fact that he’s become an almost unbearable ass now could simply be a reprise of that otherwise joyous time. After all, a baby’s a new beginning.

  “I think so, sweetheart,” Ginny says. “He’s probably thinking about starting a family of your own, and he’s gathering the courage to bring it up.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “I’m gonna be an aunt!” Trish cheers.

  “Easy there, Tee,” I say. “Let’s not put the crib before the epidural.”

  “No wallpaper borders,” Trish remarks darkly. “We can stencil, maybe.”

  “Oh!” Ginny squeals, eyes watery. “You and Brett will have the most beautiful children.”

  “Children,” she said. Plural. Little baby Fosters. Little Bretts and Laylas. The more I think about it, the more I like it. It’s weird, I never was one of those girls who thought about her biological clock; in fact, maybe mine’s broken since I am… nearing thirty, but my alarm hasn’t rung. Yet now that they bring it up, it feels right. Coming from such a small family—if I can even call our party of two that—I always knew I’d want to marry into a big family and probably have kids, but I never knew it would happen. I just got lucky with the Fosters. And making a baby with Brett would be the first real blood tie I had to my last name.

  As if on cue, the moment I really start to settle into the glorious thought of Brett and me and baby makes three, an infant at the next table starts wailing.

  brett

  Two things I hate: people who don’t just come out and say what they mean, and strawberry anything. And also when something that’s supposed to be simple and a break from the grind becomes a clusterfuck. So that’s three.

  Each year brings the Foster Family Autumn Barbecue—some say Famous, but I’ve taken to saying Notorious—and Layla’s famous (I say notorious) strawberry-rhubarb pie, made with strawberries and rhubarb that she grows in a scrubby patch of dirt in our backyard. It was charming for a while, her playing Young MacDonald in the back forty square feet, but like all things charming, it eventually started to irritate the shit out of me. I don’t want to sound like an asshole; it’s not the idea of growing things in the backyard that gets me. It’s the sanctimony, the “look at me.” And then she puts strawberries in everything. Strawberry shortcake, strawberry cheesecake, strawberries and cream. I swear, one cold night we had strawberry stew. I know everybody else in my family loves the stuff and eats it up, but what about me? I’ve given up saying anything, because it does no good. I just live with it.

  The family barbecue is something of a legend around town. Mostly because there are only nine Fosters—my mom and dad, Scott, Trish, and me; Layla (Foster in name only); and then my dad’s brother, Nate, his wife, Allison, and their daughter, Lucy—yet our little event has over the years morphed into a block party for practically all of Los Angeles.

  Nate and Allison are crunchy granola folks. Allison refused to go to a hospital when Lucy was being born and gave birth underwater with a midwife and a lot of bad music playing. They believe in holistic medicine only, which essentially means no medicine. Lucy wasn’t even vaccinated, and she’s never had a shot in her life. I guess if she’s healthy, that’s all that matters, and she is. I call it dumb luck. Just not to their faces.

  Now, I’m not one to judge—or, rather, I try to keep my observations mostly to myself—but they don’t feed the girl breakfast. They give her chicken noodle soup or purees of vegetables and brown rice in the morning. That’s not breakfast. I mean, that’s just un-American. As a favorite uncle, I find it my duty to corrupt her whenever possible. Therefore, the barbecue is one of her favorite days of the year.

  But we’re not why it’s legendary. Rather, it’s because the entire neighborhood and several crashers from adjacent neighborhoods come every year, resulting in the transformation of Riverside Park into the Foster “Extended Family” Zoo. It’s become not just a family tradition but a local convention, so busy that food trucks and vendors show up like clockwork and generally make a killing.

  Layla and I roll up to Riverside Park at eleven-thirty a.m., and it’s already packed. She’s telling me again about this great deal for her and my sister, something about PETCO maybe franchising her photo-booth rights, but it doesn’t sound like it’s set in stone yet. I nod, thinking I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m still thinking about my team’s last game and how they’re not doing as well this year as last.

  I bust out my mitt and head over to the baseball diamond as Layla heads toward my dad’s annual poker game. Layla’s been a part of that game since we were juniors in high school, and she and my dad’s friends take their card playing very seriously. As seriously as anyone can take a poker game where there’re potato-salad droppings on the table.

  Layla says that they all have certain tells and she knows when someone’s bluffing nine times out of ten. She says my dad purses his lips and flares his nostrils and tries to look worried when he has a good hand. When he has a bad hand he massages his earlobe and smiles. Get it? He does the opposite. She says that Crazy John DeMarco will hum Sinatra when he has shit for a hand to bluff happiness, and if he’s quiet he may actually have something. Elvis Presley songs can go either way. Rick Bennett keeps looking at his cards if they’re bad, and looks around the table if they’re good. And so on. I think she’s full of crap—but then again, there’s a reason I’m not part of the game, which involves a serious losing streak that began as soon as I started playing and ended when I retired. I prefer my sports to require the movement of all four limbs, anyway. I don’t even consider poker a sport, honestly, though the poker activists insist that it is. And with all the money it’s generating these days—as was the case with the British Empire, the sun never sets on Texas Hold ’Em—I guess they can call it whatever the hell they want.

  “Your wife is taking Dad downtown,” Scott says when I return from the baseball game, with a head nod to signal that he’s impressed. As if that would be a shock. As I said, Layla is Scotty’s dream girl. Unfortunately, she’s also his sister-in-law, so that ain’t gonna happen. It’s sweet, though. Sometimes when I see the way he looks at her, it reminds me of what I have. He’s measured every girl he’s ever dated against the Layla stick, and sadly, few measure up for more than a couple months.r />
  “I know, little bro. She’s the wind beneath your wings.”

  Scott takes my cue and starts to sing the tired Bette Midler classic. “‘Did you ever know that you’re my’—hey! How awesome would that be for a gyro commercial?” he asks, all excited.

  “Like the Greek sandwich?” I question. “Did you ever know that you’re my gyro?” “It’s genius.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Except not.” “Put down the Hateorade, dude. That is gold!”

  “They don’t make commercials for gyros.”

  “Because they don’t know me,” Scott says. “Maybe that’s my new career.”

  “Writing commercials for products that don’t advertise?”

  “Milk advertises!” he says. “It’s not a brand of milk. Just milk. And cheese does. In fact, so does soup. ‘Soup is good food’?”

  “That’s Campbell’s,” I correct.

  “Milk still does,” Scott points out, with a little less oomph than before. Then he mutters, “And so does cheese.”

  I’m already over the picnic. I’m ready to go home and have a nice quiet day with my wife. Maybe we can get over the tension that’s been dogging us lately with some time on the couch. And on the kitchen table. And on the rug. It’s hard not to get bored having sex with the same person year after year, but I will say this: Layla rocks the bedroom when she wants to. She and I always had sparks. Which is probably why I get so frustrated with the way things are now. Because they were so mind-blowing once upon a time and they’ve really faded.

  But when I glance over at Layla and catch her laughing—no doubt at one of my dad’s stupid jokes (the newest one’s about a beer, a mop, and a skeleton who can’t hold his liquor)—I know I’ll be stuck here all day. She’s got Lucy on her lap, and she’s throwing a disgusting mud-and-saliva soaked tennis ball for Sammy Davis Junior, my parents’ black Lab-terrier mix. She looks over to Scott and me and smiles.

  Great. I guess we’re skipping the table and the rug tonight. What a surprise. She’s going to want to stick around for the long haul.