Reunion: A Novel Read online

  Whitney came along four years after Mom died. She was a botanist and worked at the Atlanta zoo. Our best guess is that Stan thought he was marrying our cure—a woman who could beat our blues: take them outside, chop them up, and be done with them for good. We also guess that his motivation was as simple as finding and marrying what essentially became a live-in babysitter. These are the excuses we’ve come up with, and as far as Whitney goes, excuses are necessary. She was the kind of stepmother people write bad screenplays about. She’s the one who locked me out of the house overnight when my father was gone on business and I had to call the Rutherglens from a pay phone to come pick me up and let me stay over. She’s the one who read our journals and wouldn’t let us use the phone to call our friends. She lasted only three years—just long enough to have one successful pregnancy, which resulted in the birth of the twins, Stan Jr. and Lily. If my math’s right, they’re somewhere close to twenty-five or twenty-six years old now.

  So Whitney took the twins and some alimony and moved out when Elliot and Nell were teenagers; I was twelve. Stan waited till Elliot and Nell were in college before marrying again. Next came Joyce. She was old. Not just older than Stan, but actually old. Dough-skin old, hate-your-neck old, plastic-surgery old. Stan sold the high-rise condo we’d been living in, and he and I moved in with her for a few years. They stayed married for seven total, but only actually lived together for four. When I went to college, Stan moved out. I’ll never know what Joyce’s appeal was; maybe it was just that she was rich. What I remember is that the house smelled like mothballs and liquor, and Nell and Elliot never came to visit unless they had to. By the time their divorce was finalized, Stan was already living with Louise, who was already three months pregnant. We call Louise the baby factory. She produced Lauren, Libby, and Lucy, who are probably somewhere between ten and sixteen years old now. By the time they were born, I was long gone from the state of Georgia and the only times I went back were when Nell and Elliot were going back, too. At first it was once every two years. Then it was once every three years. Then we all just stopped going south. Ever.

  Sasha came on the scene six years ago. Stan was sixty-two when they met. She was a big-boned tennis pro at the local country club. Somehow he wooed her. It hadn’t even occurred to me—to any of us—that he had another baby in him. Sasha was twenty-seven when they married. She was pregnant within weeks. We didn’t go to the wedding. We didn’t visit when Mindy was born. By then it just seemed like a bad joke. I remember one conversation with Elliot after we found out about Mindy. Pigpie had just been born and we were marveling at the fact that his youngest daughter would have an aunt who was roughly the same age.

  “I used to think we were from a good family,” Elliot said. In Atlanta, good family was a term you heard often, and somehow, you just knew what it meant. It meant money, yes. But it meant taste, too. Or if not taste, then discrimination. “But now,” he said, “I don’t know.”

  “Elliot,” I said. “We’re from a lousy family. We didn’t even have a mother.”

  “We had a mother,” he said.

  “She had cancer,” I said. “You can’t have a cancer mom and be from a good family. Not in that town.”

  “It’s not our fault she got sick.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But our father’s been married five times. He has more children than we can count. We stopped being from a good family decades ago.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “I wonder what our friends’ parents thought of us.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “We were the black sheep of Atlanta.”

  “I’m so glad we got out.”

  “You and me both, mister.”

  BUT NOW WE’RE HERE, back in Atlanta, stretching and flexing, huffing and puffing, and gearing up to mourn this man, this relative stranger, this hoarder and baby maker and consummate ass, and I’m the only one who sees how shallow it all is. I’m the only one who objects to the performance. Where is Matt Damon when I need him? Where is my star when I’m seeing black and all the world is shouting, “WHITE!”?

  22

  Billy calls

  I’m in the living room, helping Elliot set the table for dinner. I still haven’t figured out how Sasha affords this place. Nell’s said that she comes from money, but the three of us arguably come from money, and look at me. There’s no way I could afford a condo on my own, much less a whole house. In Druid Hills. On a quiet, quirky street. With enormous sidewalks. And poplars keeping watch over every home. And, more, it’s like she’s lived here for years. She and her antique dining room table and her legitimate Oriental rugs. They’ve all been here for years is what it feels like. Except just six months ago she was living in an attached condo off Pharr Road with my father, the ancient sperm donor. Which begs the question: Why? If this house is possible now, why wasn’t it possible then? Who is this woman, and what was she doing with our father?

  Right now she’s in the kitchen with Nell and Mindy. Paul Simon is blasting from the stereo; he’s been working on a rewrite. Elliot keeps handing me pieces of silverware, which I keep dropping. I’m moderately to substantially drunk. My sobriety seems to change depending on what I’m leaning against—the table (not so drunk), a chair (slightly drunker), a napkin (drunk). I’m about to throw in the towel on this entire day—just sit down right here, put my arms on the table and my head in my arms and pass out—when my phone starts buzzing in my back pocket.

  Elliot looks around.

  “It’s mine,” I say.

  He nods.

  “I’ll take it upstairs,” I say, trying not to sound overly enthusiastic.

  He nods again, but I can see he couldn’t care less. He’s so ensconced in his own personal meltdown that he can’t see I’m in the middle of my own. Fine by me, man. Fine by me.

  I take the stairs as calmly as possible, my heart getting noisier with each step. This is it, I think. This is Peter. He’s ready to talk. To talk to me. His wife. He’s ready to map out a course for our relationship, to find a way for us to get back on track. He’ll make demands. I’ll give in to all of them—not immediately, not so quickly he thinks I’m not even listening. No, I’ll show him I care. I’ll show him every word he says is getting through. I’m not just hearing. I’m listening, too. Sure, just yesterday, almost twenty-four hours ago now, I told him to have a nice life, but I didn’t mean it. He knows I didn’t mean it. My constant text messages have shown him I didn’t mean it. This is it, I think. This is it.

  I close Mindy’s bedroom door behind me, pull out my phone without even looking at the caller ID, and answer.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” says a voice that is definitely not Peter’s.

  Momentarily, I’m flummoxed.

  Just for a second, I truly have no idea who’s on the other end of the line. It could be a member of the Republican National Committee for all I know—that’s how confused I am by the voice not being Peter’s. I was sure, I was so sure this was it.

  “Kate,” says the voice. “Kate?” And that’s when it hits me. That’s when I recognize the timbre, the pitch, the clipped midwestern accent.

  “Oh God,” I say.

  “I just want to talk,” he says.

  “Billy,” I say. “I told you never. Never. Never call me.”

  I hiccup into the phone. I think I might barf.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “I’m in Atlanta,” I say. “My father is dead.”

  “What?”

  My father is dead. What a pitiful sentence to mutter into a phone.

  “He shot himself,” I say. “In the head.” I hiccup again.

  “When are you coming back?” he says.

  “Did you hear me?” I say. “Did you hear what I said?” If ever there were a Get Out of Jail Free card, if ever there were an excuse to get away with anything I ever wanted, this is it. But Billy’s not playing along.

  “When are you coming back?”

  “Never,” I say, and hang up the phone. Then, l
ike a kid, I stash it under the pillow on the top bunk. As if changing the past and all the things I’ve done is as simple as that. Wish you hadn’t cheated? Regret that vasectomy? Marriage falling apart? Have no idea how you’ll pay the bills if your husband actually divorces you? No problem! Just put your mistakes under a pillow and they’ll all go away.

  If only.

  At the foot of the stairs, Elliot calls dinnertime. I go to leave the bedroom and the pillow starts vibrating. I take one last look, to make sure I’ve fully suffocated the thing, then shut the door and head downstairs. Maybe I can’t make my mistakes disappear, but I can certainly ignore them a little while longer.

  Okay, so listen, dinner smells and looks amazing. And it’s not just that I’m drunk—or who knows? Maybe at this point I’m actually a little bit hungover. People think of hangovers as being a morning thing. But that’s a myth. Take it from me. Total propaganda.

  Anyway, it’s not just that I’m drunk or hungover or whatever, it’s that Nell and Mindy and Sasha actually whipped together something that looks undeniably delicious. I take a seat between Elliot and Nell.

  “Was that Peter?” says Elliot.

  “He says hi,” I say.

  Nell gives me this look like she knows I’m lying. And, yeah, maybe she suspects it, but there’s no way she could know it for sure. Not unless she was a fly on the wall upstairs in that bedroom when I was talking to Billy. She might even have her suspicions that someone like Billy exists, but like I said, there’s no way she could know for sure.

  Mindy says, “Who’s Peter?”

  I say, “My husband.”

  Mindy says, “Gross.”

  I say, “Well, yeah, sometimes.”

  Mindy giggles and suddenly I realize I’d like nothing more than to win over this little gray gargoyle. It’s a sickness, this need to compete with the people around me, even if they’re people I love, but I can’t help it. Suddenly, it’s like—I don’t know—I want to win.

  Mindy says, “What is God?”

  There is silence. I look at Elliot, but he’s staring at his pasta like it’s a foreign substance. He’s a zombie over there. Totally worthless. I open my mouth to speak, but Mindy beats me with an answer to her own question.

  “God is all around us,” she says. She spreads her arms in front of her slowly and solemnly.

  “Like fairies?” I say.

  She shoots me a look. “Not like fairies,” she says, and folds her hands in front of her all dainty-like. “Like angels.”

  I shoot her back a look that says, essentially, I’m onto you, bucko. And, honestly, I think I am. This little kid is sharper than she looks. She doesn’t buy this God crap for a minute, but she likes that her mother thinks she does. This kid is all manipulation. A total con artist if I’ve ever seen one, and trust me, I have.

  “Speaking of angels,” says Sasha slowly and stretches out her hand to rest on her daughter’s knee. “We need to talk to you about your father.”

  Mindy looks up, suddenly and woefully doe-eyed. “Daddy?” she says.

  “Daddy,” says Sasha.

  “Is he with angels?” says Mindy, and I swear to God, this is the doe that knows the car is coming, doesn’t care, and can’t wait until the driver swerves and does a face-plant into the nearest tree.

  Sasha swallows and her eyes make this pinched-with-pain expression. “Yes, baby,” she says. “He is.” Then, after a pause, she says, “How did you know that?”

  Now the little kid is misty-eyed, glassy-eyed, and it’s wrong of me, but I’m actually impressed with her abilities. I’m actually moved by her chameleon ways. She gives a little sniff from her colorless prepubescent nose and says, “Kate said so.”

  This gets even Elliot’s attention. Nell has put down her napkin, like an angry parent.

  Sasha looks genuinely hurt. “Kate,” she says, “I thought we talked about this.”

  I’m shaking my head. At first I don’t understand how Mindy knows to pick on me. But then I get it. She was upstairs, outside the bedroom, listening while I was talking to Billy. I’m trying to figure out the quickest, easiest lie, but nothing comes to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was careless. Really, I’m sorry.” I say this last bit directly to Mindy, who winces. Game on, Kiddo Jr. Game on.

  Mindy’s clearly reading my mind, because she looks up at her mother, all tender, all heartache, and says, “Mommy, what does ‘shot himself in the head’ mean?”

  Sasha drops her fork and looks right at me.

  “Seriously?” she says, which is funny, because that’s exactly what I’m thinking.

  23

  showering after dinner

  After dinner, I go upstairs to shower in the guest bathroom and give the real grown-ups a chance to talk about me behind my back. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that I’ve got some issues that need sorting out.

  I check my phone. Two more calls from Billy, no messages, nothing from Peter. Against my better judgment, perhaps against any judgment at all, I send a new text to Peter. I’ll do anything. Which is funny, because right after I send it, my very first thought is Well, actually, no I won’t. Then, a minute later—as if to test a theory—I write, Please take me back. PLEASE. And it’s like the theory might be valid, because my first thought after this text is But I’ll be okay if you don’t. I’m tempted to try one more, to nip this entire thing in the bud once and for all. But something stops me. It’s as though I don’t want to see what’s right in front of me. Not yet.

  I take my phone with me to the bathroom—the game is afoot with Mindy and I know for a fact that my belongings (and more so, my privacy) are no longer safe—and I take, like, an hour-long shower. I turn on only the hot water, step under, and stand there. My skin gets pink and blotchy. I start itching. I don’t even care. At some point, I get tired of standing and I let myself sink to the floor of the tub. Bad things live in bathtubs. Take a look sometime. Take a look at the little crevices between the tiles, the ones that once upon a time used to be white. There are entire families of germs living in those crevices, whole planets, entire solar systems. I don’t doubt it for a second.

  Here is what I’m thinking: I’m thinking that at some point soon I’m going to have to stop moping about and walking around feeling sorry for myself and make a decision about what to do next. At some point, much sooner perhaps than I’d like, I’m going to have to shake this wallowing off. There’s a very good chance that my marriage is over for good; there’s even a chance I’m happier about that than I’m letting on. What’s certain is that it’s beyond my control, which is probably what’s making me try so hard. I don’t want Peter to get the deciding vote. That just seems wrong. What’s also certain is that my debt isn’t going away, but my paychecks are, at least for the summer. A natural extension of that fact, then, is that I need money. Now. Eighteen thousand dollars. Marcy has made me an offer—an unbelievable offer—but it’s one I can’t consider.

  What all this amounts to is going back to Chicago when the funeral nonsense is over, packing my things, renting a place, finding a summer job, and moving out. I’ll sign whatever Peter puts in front of me. It’ll be that simple and that messy. If Billy keeps calling, I’ll change my number. Classes will start and I’ll teach them. Days will begin and I’ll wake up and live them. Nights will fall and I’ll put my pajamas on. Life will continue, and at some point, enough time will have passed that it won’t matter as much. I’ll read more. Give up cable. To hell with Internet. Heat? Only when the pipes might freeze. A/C? That’s why God made ceiling fans and coffee shops. When I finally meet someone new, I’ll be a completely different person. I’ll be better. I’ll be a real grown-up. And perhaps I’ll even be out of debt. This is the plan. That simple, that messy.

  I reach up and turn the water off and then just sit there and watch while my skin evens out and the blotches disappear. There’s nothing like a bathtub to remind me of how oversized my body is. I’m two inches too long in every direction. But as w
ith my marriage, there’s nothing I can do about that.

  I check my phone. There’s still no word from Peter, which I’m increasingly okay with. I should come clean to Nell and Elliot tonight. I should tell them the marriage is over. If they want reasons—well, if they want reasons I can always just come out and say it. It’s not like I cheated on them.

  I can hear Sasha murmuring in the bedroom down the hall. She’s murmuring to Mindy, no doubt, telling her to forget about the big bad woman in the bathroom, to forget about the terrible things she heard me say. Nell and Elliot are downstairs on the back porch. If I wanted—if I were feeling desperately paranoid—I could open the bathroom window ever so slightly and hear what they’re saying. I could prepare myself for whatever bombs will be dropped on me when I finally go down. But the whole point of this shower was to give them an opportunity to get on the same page, to give them an opportunity to bitch and kvetch and kind of start to feel guilty about how much they’ve bitched and kvetched so that by the time I go down, there’s even the chance that no bombs will be dropped at all. All things are possible through prayer, right?

  I do a cursory search in the drawers and behind the medicine cabinet for the bottle of whatever pills Sasha’s been crunching but find nothing. It’s the guest bathroom, after all, so I’m not surprised. I power off my phone for the night, slip past the master bedroom with the door cracked open and the murmuring voices, and go downstairs to my brother and sister. In cases like this, it is best to expect the worst. It is best to expect disappointment and anger and all that good stuff. That way you’re prepared for anything. That way, if it’s bad, you’ve known it would be bad and you’re ready for it. If it’s not bad, if it’s better than you thought, you feel suddenly light. You feel like a burden’s been lifted. You feel like a goddamned cloud.

  So I walk onto the back porch with my hair in a towel, fully expecting to be excoriated for ten or fifteen minutes. What I don’t expect is to find Elliot with his head in his hands, sobbing, and Nell with her arm around him, telling him it’s going to be okay.