“He did?” I had been standing there the whole time and hadn’t heard a word about a contest. “When?”
“We’ve been e-mailing.”
“Oh. That’s great.”
“I started making the game a long time ago, but then when I found out about the contest, I started working a lot harder on it so I could get it done in time.”
“It’s great news.” Mom’s beaming.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got even bigger news,” Hopkins says, looking up from her phone. “I wanted to tell you guys in person. One of my clients is donating a fortune to the hospital with the condition that they name a conference room after me.”
For a moment, I reel from the blast of familiar emotions: awe mixed with jealousy that Hopkins is so amazing and I’m not. She’ll have a room named after her, and she’s only thirty. By the time she’s forty, she’ll probably have a hospital wing named after her. By fifty, a hospital. I’ll be the sister of the famous Hopkins Sedlak for the rest of my life, and I honestly don’t know whether to be proud of that fact or crushed by it.
But then I glance over at Milton and see how his face has gone closed again—no more smile—and something else cuts in. Something new.
Annoyance.
Why couldn’t Hopkins just have let Milton have his moment? Why did she have to blow his news away with her bigger news? He never gets to have news. She always has news.
But then I realize that while Dad is exclaiming proudly—if quietly—over Hopkins’s announcement, Mom’s response is much more reserved. “That’s great,” she says flatly before turning back to her son. “Milton, I want to hear more about your game. Did you come up with the entire concept?”
“Yeah.”
“Are there animals?” I ask. “Is it cute? Or violent?”
“Sort of both.”
Mom says, “Please tell me it’s not one where people are shooting at each other.”
“Just a little bit,” he says. The smile is back on his face.
Hopkins returns her attention to her BlackBerry, looking vaguely annoyed that her announcement hadn’t caused the stir she was hoping it would.
Milton’s deep into describing his game—a Disneyland-like theme park has been hijacked by extraterrestrial aliens so the people who run the rides have to organize a resistance and fight them—when the doorbell rings.
“That must be Jacob!” Mom says brightly and looks at me. Since moving back home, I’ve been the official door opener because Milton ignores the doorbell and she’s lazy.
I get up and leave the kitchen.
I take a deep breath in the foyer before I pull the door open.
Yeah, it’s Jacob. Just him though. No Cathy.
“Hi,” I say. I step back to let him in, putting space between us, not sure how to greet him anymore, not sure if a hug from me would be welcome.
“Hi.” He enters but lingers by the door uncertainly. “You remind me of someone I once knew. This girl with a crazy name. Keats something-or-other. She probably doesn’t remember me. It was a long time ago.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s been like a month, Jacob.”
“Feels longer.” He holds out his hand. “Good to see you, Keats.”
“Same here.” I shake his hand, and then we both lean forward, and I kiss him lightly on the cheek. I gesture down the hallway. “They’re all in the kitchen. Come on.”
“Hold on.” His gray eyes flicker up to my face, then away again. “While we’re still alone, can I just say really quickly that I’m sorry?”
“What for?”
“You know.” He jams his hands into his pockets. “The last couple of times I saw you…I wasn’t very nice.”
There are a lot of things I could say now, but I choose the fairest one. “You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. I acted badly.”
“You were in a tough spot. I could have had more sympathy for that. I should have had more sympathy for that.”
“Thanks. It helps hearing you say that.”
“Good.” There’s a pause. “That’s all. I wanted to clear the air. So we could be friends again. I want to be friends again, Keats.”
“Me, too. Very much.” We stand there in silence for a moment. Then I say quietly, “I’ve missed you.” I quickly slip away and head toward the kitchen, not meeting his eyes.
* * *
We eat on paper plates in the dining room, now stripped bare of everything but the table and chairs, which my mother’s taking with her to the new apartment.
After we’ve done some damage to the pasta, Jacob says, “I can’t believe how much packing you’ve done since I was last here, Eloise. You look like you’re in good shape for the move.”
“Keats gets most of the credit for that,” Mom says. “She’s been working like a maniac. My job is to keep her in coffee so she has the energy to keep going.”
I hold up my hands. “See? Packer’s calluses.”
“Packing doesn’t give you calluses,” Hopkins says.
Does she think I’m a total moron? “I know. I was just kidding.”
She shrugs and pushes her plate away—as usual, she’s only eaten a few bites—and then sits up with sudden energy. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I haven’t told you this yet, Keats! Your ex called me the other day.”
“Wait—what? You mean Tom?”
She nods and leans back in her chair, everyone’s eyes on her, and it occurs to me that she always makes that happen one way or another, that my sister needs to be the center of attention. I used to think it wasn’t something she asked for, that tribute was just paid naturally to her because of her gifts. But she really can’t let a moment pass without being noticed.
“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you until now! He wanted to ask me if I’d speak to you on his behalf. Isn’t that amazing? He said he knows we haven’t spent a ton of time together, but that you’ve always valued my opinion—thanks, by the way, I’m honored—and that it would really mean something to you if I said you should get back together with him.”
I put my head in my hands. “God,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t feel bad, Keats. I had the best time. We had a great talk. I told him that if he wanted me to sell you on him, he’d have to sell himself to me first, and he gave it an incredibly valiant effort. There was a lot of really sweet stuff about how much he loves you, how no other guy could ever love you as much as he does—oh, and he promised not to molest any more little girls in the future if you take him back—”
I raise my head. “That’s not funny.”
“Just kidding about that. Obviously. But the rest is true, I swear. He also said—”
“I don’t want to hear it. Seriously, Hopkins. It’s all kind of painful for me. I don’t want to make fun of him.”
“But I wasn’t mean at all! I was incredibly nice. I let him talk for like twenty minutes. I even took notes.” She starts punching at her phone.
“Please—can we just talk about something else?”
“No, no, wait—hold on—” She’s frowning down at the screen. “I promise you this is totally worth it. I want to make sure I get the phrasing right. I think at one point he rhymed statutory and masturbatory—”
“Shut up, Hopkins.”
Someone else said that, not me. I turn, surprised. People don’t talk to Hopkins that way.
But Jacob just did.
Hopkins looks up from her phone. “Oh, come on,” she says. “That was another joke. Obviously. Seriously, Keats, let me read you some of the actual stuff he said—”
“She asked you to stop. So stop,” Jacob says.
“He was Keats’s boyfriend for like three billion years, right? I don’t know why she’s suddenly lost interest in him.”
“This isn’t funny,” I say. “I feel bad for him. I’m sorry he bothered you, but please let’s not make fun of him now.”
She opens her eyes wide—between those big eyes and her angular face and the way her hair is pulled so harshly back fro
m her brow and temples today, she looks a little like a salamander at the moment. “He called me. If I’m going to be forced to endure the teary lamentations of your idiot ex, I should at least be allowed to get some amusement out of it.”
I’m a little stunned. This is my big sister. The one who’s loomed so large at every stage in my life and whose praise and attention I’ve always craved. And she’s acting like an asshole. “Fine,” I say. “If you’re not going to stop, I’m leaving.” I stand up.
My father says to my mother, “It’s nice of the girls to squabble like teenagers. Makes me feel young again.”
“A thoughtful gesture,” she agrees absently, her eyes on me. “Keats, sit down.”
“If she’s going to keep going on like this—”
“She’s not.” She turns to Hopkins. “That’s enough. No one is enjoying this.”
“I am. Anyway, you should be grateful to me, Mom—you were always complaining about how you had to put up with his boring moronic stories at every family dinner for the last decade.”
My mother evades my eyes. At least she has the grace to flush.
“He owes you some entertainment. Listen, just listen to this.” Hopkins studies the BlackBerry. “I swear these are all direct quotes. ‘Keats was my universe.…She made life worth living.’” She looks up. “I know, I know, it’s clichéd, but let’s not judge him too harshly. It obviously came from the heart. Oh, and then he says—”
Two chairs scrape back in unison. One of them belongs to me. The other is Jacob’s. “Hold on, Keats, I’m going with you,” he says as I head out of the room.
“What is everyone’s problem?” Hopkins asks with an aggrieved tone to her voice. “Okay, fine. I’ll stop.”
But I keep going because it feels good to walk away from her. Oddly powerful.
And also…Jacob’s following me.
So I keep going, all the way to the stairs and up those, and then down the dimly lit hallway—good thing Milton left his door open and the lights on because it would be even darker there without that—and up the second set of stairs to the pitch-black attic. I grope blindly along the wall at the top of the stairs, trying to feel the light switch.
It’s so dark that Jacob actually bumps into me. “Sorry,” he says and quickly drops down a step. “Didn’t realize you stopped.”
“I’m trying to turn on the light.” My hand finally lands on the switch, and I flick on the overhead light. I step up into the room, and Jacob follows me.
“Wow,” he says, gazing around. “You really cleaned this out.” Where there once were stacks of books and journals and old mugs filled with broken pens and partially used pads of paper, there’s now just the daybed and the desk and the empty bookshelves. It took me three days to clean it out.
“I’m glad we’re almost done packing up. I am so sick of sorting through decades of junk.” I cross the room and sit down on the daybed.
“Story of your life?” he suggests. “Cleaning up your family’s messes?”
“I make plenty of my own. As you probably know better than anyone.”
He shakes his head, comes over to the sofa, and sits carefully at the other end, leaving plenty of space between us. He starts to say something, stops, then just says, “Sorry about Hopkins and all that.”
“She was trying to be funny, I guess. But it just seems so sad to me.”
“That’s the problem with having a heart,” he says. “Stuff like that gets to you. Clearly not a problem for Hopkins.”
“Maybe she got an extra brain in her chest instead of a heart?” I suggest. “That would explain the supernormal intelligence.”
He waves his hand dismissively. “Eh, she’s only smart in some ways.”
“Yeah, just in the ways that matter.”
He shakes his head. “You’re the one who’s smart in the ways that matter. Nice in the ways that matter, too.”
I feel myself blushing. It’s a weird compliment—but it feels good right now, right when I need it, right when Jacob is the one delivering it. He’s calling me nice. I didn’t think that would ever happen again.
“So,” I say after a moment of silence. “How’s life?”
“Pretty good. I’ve been working hard. I want to actually finish my dissertation this fall. I’m tired of being a professional student.”
“And then you’ll look for a new job?”
“I’ll look, but it’s rough out there right now. I think I can get some kind of instructor position here to tide me over for a while if nothing else comes through. With your dad’s help.”
“At least you’d stay in the area that way.”
He nods. “I don’t want to leave Boston, but I’ll have to go where the jobs are.”
“Anything else going on in your life?” I’m fishing, wanting to ask about Cathy, curious why she’s not here when I know Mom invited her—but I’m scared to ask outright, because the last time I did, he said he’d never talk to me about his romantic life again.
“Not much. Classes are over for the year. I spend my time doing research for your father, research for myself, writing, eating the occasional cheap meal…”
He’s still not answering the question I haven’t asked. I say cautiously, “Any chance we’re friends again enough for me to ask what’s going on with Cathy?”
“Yeah, we’re friends enough,” he says evenly. “But Cathy and I stopped seeing each other a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh.” It takes an effort to sound sympathetic, not eager. “What happened?”
“I think we just reached a point where it was time for things to either move to the next stage or end. And ending seemed more right. For me, anyway. She claimed she felt the same way.” A pause. “It’s possible she was just trying to make me feel better.”
“She would do that.”
“She would.”
I hear someone calling my name, and then there’s a clattering on the stairs and Hopkins appears. Today she’s wearing an oversized Oxford shirt—maybe from the men’s department?—which might have looked chic over leggings, but she’s got on baggy jeans, and the whole outfit just looks too big, like she pulled her clothes out of someone else’s closet that morning. “There you are,” she says. “What are you guys doing up here?”
“Talking,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows. “What a nice secluded spot to have a conversation in. Anyway, Mom told me I had to apologize to you. Apparently I was rude. Jacob, could you help me with something?”
“Hold on,” I say. “Was that your apology?”
“Clearly.”
“I just wanted to make sure. It didn’t really sound like one.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Jacob, there are a couple of boxes for me downstairs.”
“Yeah, I packed those,” I say.
She ignores me. “I need to mail them to my apartment, but I have an early flight tomorrow so I can’t do it. Would you mind?”
“What time’s your flight?” I ask before Jacob can respond.
“Eleven.”
“The post office opens at seven thirty. You have plenty of time to do it yourself.”
“I can’t risk missing my flight—I have patients who need me. Anyway, it’s none of your business. I’m asking Jacob.” She turns back to him. “You don’t mind, do you?”
I wait for his resigned acceptance of the task. He always does everything we Sedlaks ask him to do.
But then he surprises me. “I agree with Keats. Just get to the post office early enough, and you’ll be fine.”
She scowls. “It’s going to make my morning really rushed.”
“Some mornings are like that,” I say.
“I’m supposed to do an interview with a reporter from the Globe. I said maybe we could talk tomorrow morning. But if I have to go to the post office—”
“You’ll figure it out,” I say calmly. “You’re a supergenius.”
“Well, at least help me load the boxes into the car.” It’s not clear which of
us she’s talking to. Whoever will actually do it, I guess.
“In a minute,” Jacob says without moving.
She folds her arms across her chest. “Dad and I need to get going pretty soon.”
“They’re not that heavy,” I say. “I know because I packed them and carried them downstairs in the first place. If you can’t wait for us, feel free to load them yourself.”
She throws her hands in the air, annoyed, but with no good argument left to make. “I don’t even know why you guys are all the way up here,” she snaps irritably. “You planning to make out or something?”
What is she—thirty going on fourteen? “Maybe,” I say.
“Thanks a lot.” She flings herself angrily down the stairs, done with us since we refused to wait on her.
We’re silent for a moment, then Jacob says, “I know she does really good work in the world, but I’m beginning to think she may be just a tiny bit spoiled.”
“I’m proud of us for holding our ground.”
“Yeah, we were magnificent.” Another pause. He shoots me a sideways look. “So about that making-out idea…”
I grin. “What about it?”
He returns the grin. “Nothing. Just thought it was an interesting subject to explore.”
“I’ll bet you did.” I shift toward him. “Did you know that Mom keeps making me go out with all these random guys? She says I have to make up for all the years of dating I missed.”
“How’s that working out?”
“Honestly? It’s made me miss hanging out with you.”
“Yeah?” Now it’s his turn to move a little closer. “That’s nice to hear. So why haven’t you called me or anything?”
“Well, one, you basically threw me out last time I tried to talk to you—”
“I’m sorry. I was mad. But I got over it.”
“But mostly I thought I should leave you alone because of Cathy.”
“That’s just—” He stops. “Actually, that was kind of decent of you.”
“I know, right? You don’t need to sound so surprised.”
He laughs. “Well, Cathy’s out of the picture now, and I’m not angry anymore. So do you think you’d be willing to have dinner with me sometime? Or is your schedule too full with the random guys your mother keeps fixing you up with?”
Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts Page 26