The Most Fun We Ever Had

by Claire Lombardo

  “Are you anticipating knife fights? Paternity tests?”

  He watched Violet turn even redder before she said, “Wendy, can you not? Please?”

  “I just think it’s weird that Matt didn’t come with you.”

  “We couldn’t get a sitter, okay? Jesus. Drop it. Can we just go inside?”

  She hadn’t even said hello to him, hadn’t even bothered to ask if he was enjoying himself in the home where she’d basically abandoned him, but then she was ringing the doorbell, and then the door opened, revealing David and Marilyn, holding hands like those fucked-up twins from The Shining, a black dog between them the size of a horse.

  “Why did you ring the bell?” David asked, letting go of Marilyn’s hand to push open the storm door. She reached to take hold of the dog’s collar.

  “I just thought—” Violet faltered. “I just figured because—”

  “It’s the big reveal,” Wendy said. “The grand, dramatic, reality-show premiere.”

  He liked Wendy, for the most part. She was rich and crazy, but she made him laugh, and she let him watch The Daily Show, and she seemed to know the best thing to say, always, like now—even when it deliberately made everyone uncomfortable. They stood frozen for a few seconds, David’s arm propping open the door and Marilyn hanging back.

  “Come in, come in,” Marilyn said finally. “Please. Hi. Come in.”

  Wendy went first, waving him in behind her. They all stopped again in the front hallway, David and Marilyn still by the door and he and Wendy and Violet over by the big wooden bookshelves that framed the entrance of the living room.

  “Mom, Dad,” Violet said, stepping forward. She reached out as if to touch him but instead her hand just hovered a couple inches over his shoulder, like he had lice. “This is Jonah.”

  David came over and extended a hand. He was tall and athletic, grayish black hair, fingers smudged with grease. “Sorry, I was fixing up Marilyn’s bike this afternoon.”

  He took the hand and they shook.

  “I’m David. It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Jonah.”

  “Me too,” he said. “I mean—you too.”

  “And this is Loomis,” David said, taking the dog’s collar.

  He instinctively stiffened, backed up a couple steps, bumping into Wendy.

  “Oh, no, are you afraid of— Sorry. He’s a gentle giant, but we can— Honey, can we—”

  His face burned—such a fucking stupid thing to be afraid of, a big dumb horse-dog. Marilyn was studying him with intensity; he wasn’t sure but it looked like there might be tears in her eyes. Fucking shitshow—crying, mutant dogs, old people holding hands.

  “Right,” David said. “Never mind. I’ll— Let me just go put him in his room.”

  “His room?” Wendy said. “Jesus. The dog has his own room now?”

  “Why don’t you come see it, Wendy?” David said.

  He watched curiously as she shut up and followed her father down the hall, leaving him alone with Violet and his grandmother.

  “Mom,” Violet said again. “This is Jonah. Jonah, this is—my mom. Marilyn.”

  “Hi,” he said, and the next thing he knew he was being hugged, arms pinned to his sides.

  “We’re so happy you’re here,” Marilyn said, finally pulling away. Now he could see that she was crying for real. “Just excuse me for a second,” she said, and with that she was gone, disappeared up the stairs, leaving him alone with Violet.

  “Christ,” Violet whispered, sounding irritated. “Shit. Sorry. Just— She’s happy. They’re both really happy, I swear. Let’s— Why don’t we go in the kitchen. Are you actually afraid of dogs? I should’ve asked. Loomis is harmless though. Coddled and innocuous. Do you want—water? Or—my parents don’t really—”

  “I bought soda,” David said, appearing in the doorway without the dog.

  “You bought soda?” Violet asked. “You’ve never bought soda in my entire—”

  “Special occasion,” David said. “I thought Jonah might like it.”

  “Thanks, sir,” he said, an address that popped into his head from a James Bond movie, and David gave him a puzzled half smile. The next thing he knew, Marilyn was back, ushering them all into the dining room; he could hear her clanging around in the kitchen as the rest of them sat at the table. David rose to go check on her. He watched as Wendy and Violet made elaborate eye contact across the table.

  “It’s totally fine,” Wendy said. “She’s fucking insane, but she’s totally benign.”

  “Wendy,” Violet said.

  “Sorry, do you—what, you disagree with that?”

  “Knock it off,” Violet said.

  “This is like the most interesting thing that’s happened to her since Grace was born,” Wendy narrated to him. “She’s a mostly well-intentioned basket case.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant by knock it off,” Violet said. She turned to him. “This is just difficult for her. Not because of you. It’s because of me. She’s fine. Ask them anything you’d like, okay? They’re so excited to get to know you.”

  “Jesus, tone it down,” Wendy said. “It’s not like they’re—”

  “The chicken is just a tiny bit overcooked, I think,” Marilyn said, appearing in the doorway with a platter. He could hardly keep his eyes on her, she was moving so fast, setting the plate on the table on top of a pot holder, messing with one of the tall blue candles, stopping to pick an invisible piece of lint from David’s shirt. “Violet, sweetheart, am I correct in my assessment that Matt and the boys won’t be joining us?”

  “The sitter canceled,” Violet said.

  Wendy snorted, but Marilyn got to work again, sweeping around the table, lifting three extra place settings. There was a momentary silence and then Marilyn was doing something with her hands; in his peripheral vision, he caught Wendy rolling her eyes.

  “In the name of the Father,” Marilyn said, “and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

  “Amen,” Violet said, and he thought he heard Wendy laugh.

  “Liza has a faculty meeting,” Marilyn said. “She’ll be over for dessert.”

  “Dessert?” Wendy said.

  “Dad baked a pie,” Marilyn said, and this time Wendy definitely laughed.

  “Apple,” David said. “With salted caramel.”

  “Excuse me, Gordon Ramsay,” Wendy said. “Are you serious?”

  “Your father’s an excellent cook. All it took was getting him out of medicine; who knew? Violet, honey, can you start the brussels sprouts?”

  “Who’s Gordon Ramsay?” David asked, and Jonah, before he realized he was speaking, said, “He’s a chef who has this show where there’s these people trying to be the best cook and they’re all mean to each other and, like, sabotage their opponents.” Lathrop House had gotten cable specifically so this one fucked-up kid with Asperger’s could watch it.

  Everyone was looking at him.

  “Ah,” David said. “Maybe we’ll have to start watching that, sweetheart, huh?” He accepted the bowl of brussels sprouts from Marilyn. “Are you interested in cooking, Jonah?”

  “Oh,” he said. “No. I mean—not really, no.”

  “He’s a ceramicist,” Violet said, sounding like Hanna. “Aren’t you, Jonah?”

  “Um, sort of,” he said. “I— Do you mind if I go to the bathroom?” He just needed a break from them. Just a minute where he didn’t have to be listening to a million people at once. The Sorensons seemed to produce a different kind of chaos from the kind he was used to; a product of having money, no doubt, but there was also an electricity running among the people at the table, facial expressions that meant one thing to a specific person and nothing at all to everyone else, things that made Wendy crack up that didn’t seem necessarily funny, the way David and Marilyn always seemed to be touching each other in s
ome way, her hand over his or his arm over the back of her chair. He was used to being the quietest one at the table—the staff at Lathrop House often cited his tranquillity—but he wasn’t used to feeling so observed; he was the occasion for this dinner; he wasn’t sure he’d ever been the occasion for anything.

  He was on his way down the hall when he happened to look out one of the front windows where the sun was just starting to set, a radioactive orange. There was a green Subaru station wagon parked at the curb, windows rolled down, and the man and woman in the front seat were kissing. He paused to watch, intrigued. The woman had an orange scarf wrapped around her neck like a flag. Some gross neighbors, he assumed. He proceeded to the bathroom.

  When he returned, he barely had time to sit down before another guest showed up.

  “Hello?” someone called. “Hey, hi, sorry, I—” The woman from the car—untying the silky orange scarf—appeared in the doorway. Liza, apparently—she was pretty, with bright green eyes and a shiny goldish ponytail; he thought Wendy’s assessment of her Band-Aid hair was ungenerous. “Ooh, sorry. Hey, everyone. My meeting ended early and I figured I’d try to make it in time for dinner. Ryan’s—busy tonight.”

  “Jonah, this is my sister Liza,” Violet said.

  He rose uncertainly, and after he did it he noticed that everyone else was still seated but by then it was too late.

  “Great to meet you.” Liza leaned in to hug him, which seemed both weird and generous, her way of making him feel less awkward for standing up. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “That’s okay.” He wondered why the guy from the car—Ryan?—hadn’t joined her.

  “Can I get you a drink, sweetie?” Marilyn asked.

  “Water’s great; thanks,” Liza said.

  “Liza’s pregnant,” Violet explained, as though someone needed an excuse for drinking water.

  “Jesus, Viol, he’s not retarded,” Wendy said.

  “Wendy,” said Violet.

  “It’s not like it’s a secret,” Wendy said.

  “Yes, that’s the part of the sentence I was objecting to,” Violet snapped.

  They were all giving him a headache. He felt like he was watching a dodgeball game.

  “I feel like I’ve killed the mood,” Liza said, sitting down, frowning. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I hoped you guys might still be getting ready for dinner.”

  “We’re on a weirdly speedy schedule tonight,” Wendy said. “Mom’s in schizoid mode.”

  “Wendy.” This time it was David who spoke up.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Wendy said, waving a hand. Marilyn returned, and when she’d sat down again, Liza raised her water glass.

  “To Jonah. Welcome to the family.” Liza seemed kind of insane too—was anyone in this family not insane?—but she was friendly.

  “Cheers,” David said.

  He lifted his Coke uncertainly, and a chorus of clinking followed.

  Dinner consisted of a series of interrupted conversations. They asked him questions and he tried to sound more interesting than he actually was. Wendy talked about her core barre class and Liza talked about her students and Marilyn never stopped moving, refilling wineglasses and stopping trails of wax from dripping onto the tablecloth. Afterward David rose to clear the plates. When Jonah tried to help, as Hanna had always insisted, Wendy touched his hand.

  “No, stay,” she said. “Dad’s got it.” So he was left with the women, Violet and Liza and Wendy and Marilyn all staring at him like a horror-movie coven of unassuming kindergarten teachers who were about to disembowel him.

  “I’m sure this is a strange thing to say,” Marilyn said, sounding almost kind of dreamy, “but you have my father’s nose, Jonah.”

  He squirmed in his chair. “Is that—sorry, is that a—good thing or a bad thing?”

  He heard his grandmother laugh for the first time and he decided, sitting in the dining room of their big weird house, that he liked her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “If it isn’t our lawyer-to-be,” was how her dad answered the phone when Grace called home on a Thursday morning in June. Of course she should’ve nipped things in the bud after she’d lied to Liza. Made up something plausibly stupid, I was high when I told you that; sorry or They sent me an acceptance by mistake. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it, and so when her parents called her the day after Liza had, she’d lied feebly, shyly, as though being humble, while still not quite fully lying: Yeah, so, she’d said. Looks like I’ll be staying out here. But since then she’d realized how fucking stupid she was to think she could maintain a fiction of this immensity. She lived in a linoleum box. She made $380 per week before taxes. She had, at present, no viable prospects for future endeavors beyond hermitage and transiency. She had somehow botched her life to an almost laughable degree, and then accidentally lied about it, and this phone call was her chance to set the record straight. Her parents loved her unconditionally, and Liza was pregnant now, so they were likely to be distracted, and so less likely to be too angry when Grace revealed that she’d massaged the truth a bit at the outset. There was a crack above the door to her bedroom that was starting to look moldy, black specks in the bend where the wall met the ceiling. What did asbestos look like? Could you see asbestos?

  “How’s tricks, Goose?” her dad asked.

  Tricks are not going particularly well at the moment, actually. She swallowed. “Okay. How are you?”

  Her dad paused. “Honestly, sweet?” he said. It startled her. She wasn’t aware of her father ever being dishonest, but the prospect made her uncomfortable. “There’s kind of a lot going on around here.” He sounded tired and old. “With your sisters. Plus all these little things around the house. We’re having a hell of a time with one of the ginkgo trees in the backyard. A busy time, oddly.”

  “Oh.” Her how are yous were rarely met, by her father, with anything but oh fine, tell me about yourselfs. He didn’t usually talk about himself. It occurred to her that it must be hard to be the only man in a family of women. Hard to get a word in edgewise. Hard to prioritize your own emotions over those of everyone else. Hard, perhaps, to acknowledge those emotions instead of putting them perpetually on the back burner. She was moved to prod him along: “Is everything…okay? With Liza? And—Violet’s—”

  “Jonah,” he said. “Yes. Relatively, I guess. Lize is—healthy. A little—worn out. You heard about her promot—”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And Jonah—he’s a nice kid. Funny. Sharp. You’re really going to like him, Goose.”

  She felt strangely hurt by this assessment, by her father referring to someone else—someone younger than she was—as sharp and funny.

  “We all had dinner last week,” he said, not realizing he was rubbing salt in the wound. “Minus you, of course.”

  She was still—alongside her envy—concerned about the note in her father’s voice. She recalled a specific moment in her childhood, riding in the car on the expressway with her dad, her sudden awareness that he was a person, too, capable of doubt and weakness. “And are—you okay, Dad?”

  But then there it was, the response she’d been expecting earlier: her father laughed. “Oh, sure, Goose. I’m just fine. Enough about me. What’s new in your world? Gearing up for school? Mom’d like a coffee mug from the bookstore, whenever you have a spare minute. She recently learned that your mascot is a duck; is that true?”

  They’d googled her fake school. They actually believed that she was someone who was capable of normal, upward-moving behavior. Picturing her mom doing image searches on their ancient desktop PC for the beanie-clad and uncreatively named Oregon Duck just about did her in, and she sank Indian-style onto the kitchen floor.

  She’d been crying a lot lately. It typically happened at convenient times, when she was away from the concerned eyes of others, but now she felt the telltale throbb
ing in her throat. Recently she’d felt more achingly alone than she thought was humanly possible, walking the streets alone, waking up alone, making solo trips to the weird off-brand grocery store, where she bought wine and honey and alfalfa sprouts like a biblical widow.

  “Grace?” he said, concerned. “Gracie, are you okay? What is it?”

  She decided, then, that she couldn’t do it, that she couldn’t bear to worry her father more, her father, who was always on top of things but who now, for the first time, sounded truly overwhelmed. How could she justify, upon reflection, adding even more stress to his life? He’d just retired and was supposed to be doing retired-person things; her dad who was older than everyone else’s dad, golfing or day-trading or solving crossword puzzles. Yet he was still clearly devoting all of his energy to her sisters, and would dredge up more energy to devote to her, if she asked, and it didn’t seem fair to put him in that position.

  How in the hell had she gotten so far off-course? Other people her age were in graduate school. Other people her age were getting engaged, were convincingly sporting business-casual outfits, were romping around exotic lands with boyfriends who were rugged enough to wear the straps of their backpacks clipped across their chests without inciting mockery. Other people her age had careers; other people her age had domestic partners with whom they shared pets. And then there was Grace, who had an apartment that looked like the room where Nosferatu kept his victims. Grace, who’d eaten leftover brown rice with her hands for dinner last night because she owned only a single fork and was too depressed to wash it. Grace, whose only romantic prospects existed in the form of accidentally answered sales calls and pleasantries about the weather with the hot, red-bandanna-wearing bike messenger who sometimes delivered packages to her boss. Grace, who’d half-assed her law school applications and then—surprise, surprise—been rejected from every single program.

  Then again: she wasn’t as bad off as Wendy. And she wasn’t doing anything as serious as Liza was doing, so the stakes were lower. And this certainly didn’t match the high-level duplicity of Violet’s early twenties.