On Mondays, for example, the restaurant is closed, so they agree on Sunday morning they’ll all go out to dinner the following evening, as a family. Then they spend all day Sunday and most of Monday morning going back and forth about the place—Renata wants to go to the Chinese place downtown, but Daniel has some long-standing personal beef with the owner there (one which is, in Ben’s opinion, Daniel’s own fault), and couldn’t it be a steakhouse? He gets one night out a year, basically, it couldn’t be a steakhouse? But then Lucia’s offended—one night out a year? How could Daniel say that? Does their monthly bridge night meannothingto him? The salsa lessons they took last winter? And, also, she doesn’t want steakorChinese, she wants a good sandwich, doesn’t anyone make a good sandwich anymore? And Renata says a sandwich isn’t dinner food, and Lucia says she didn’t raise her children to be too good to eat sandwiches for dinner, and then Daniel sayshedidn’t raisehischildren not to offer an opinion, and everyone turns, expectant, to stare at Ben.
But when Ben shrugs uncomfortably and mutters, “I honestly don’t care what we eat? I just don’t want to argue about it,” Daniel huffs out an annoyed breath, and Lucia rolls her eyes, and Renata gives him a look that clearly communicates, “Ooof, a swing and a miss, you hate to see it,” which is…great. It’s juuuuust great. It makes Ben feel totally awesome.
The truth is, in a perfect world, things would have worked out differently in Ben’s family. In a perfect world, after they made their little deal—Lucia would name any daughters, and Daniel any sons—and then, by luck of the draw, had one of each, his parents’ favoritism would have broken out more evenly. Perhaps Lucia would have preferred Renata, having named her, but Daniel would have focused his attentions on Ben, committed to building a strong bond between father and son. Or, equally acceptable, it could have gone the other way, with Lucia preferring Ben, and Daniel preferring Renata, each enjoying the reflection of the other they saw therein. In atrulyperfect world, of course, they would have simply loved both of their children equally. Even in his fantasies, though, Ben can never quite imagine that.
In any case, Ben doesn’t live in a perfect world, and in this one, it broke out thatbothhis parents prefer Renata. Ben doesn’t entirely blame them; between himself and his sister, he, too, prefers Renata. People tend to. Renata is loud and charming and vivacious and funny, like their mother, but also grounded and rational and never misses a trick, like their father. Ben loves her, of course—she’s his sister, and he has to—but he genuinely doeslikeher, enjoys her company and the person she is, especially when it’s only the two of them. It’s only that after a couple of days of watching her communicate with their parents in a language he has never been able to learn, the obviousness of the difference between those relationships and his…rankles.
But Pete helps. He helps so much that Ben is honestly embarrassed about it; he keeps pulling out his phone to look at his messages in quiet moments when no one else is around, looking over both shoulders as though afraid of being caught in a crime. It’s ridiculous—it’s not as though blushing, or smiling soppily down at the screen, is illegal. It’s not as though his father is going to snatch his phone away, start scrolling throughhis texts, get to the dirty ones (this, in fairness, wouldn’t take him long), and then scream, “My eyes! My eyes!” while instantaneously dying of sheer horror. Ben could say, “I have to jump on the phone with this guy I’m talking to, back in a bit,” instead of making up some weird lie about going on a walk for his mental robustness and fortitude on the recommendation of a podcast. If, as he knows they would, his family pushed and pressed him for details, he could say no, and refuse to give them, and weather the evening of sulking awkwardness that would result.
He doesn’t want to, though. It’s sonew,of course, that’s part of it, still undefined even between them because it isn’t a conversation Ben wants to approach over the phone or in text, but it’s not just that. He spends the week puzzling over it, turning it over and over in his mind as he covers several shifts at the restaurant, and cooks two-thirds of Thanksgiving dinner, and peels potatoes with his mother for an hour while she complains about Ben’s father, and watches the parade for an hour with his father while he complains about Ben’s mother.
But it’s not until Thursday night that Ben figures it out. It’s after everyone’s partaken of The Thanksgiving Meal, and moaned, and claimed they couldn’t eat another bite, and made room for dessert, and groaned, and said they couldn’t possibly bear to eat a single thing more, and made room for one more dessert, and collapsed in a heap on whatever piece of furniture was nearest. This is all normal enough for Thanksgiving, but Ben finds within him a very nontraditional burst of energy after about an hour in the heap stage, when he receives a text from Pete that says,free from dinner. u around?And then, a second later, another text, that’s just a phone emoji.
“I’m going out for, uh, air,” Ben says, standing up. Normally, someone would offer him a “What, so the air in here isn’t good enough for you?” It’s a sign of how stuffed everyone is that all hereceives in response to this is a series of semi-agreeable groans, and a wave—more of a hand-flop—from Renata.
But Pete is bright and cheerful when Ben gets outside and calls him, bubbling over with energy; it was a good Thanksgiving at his father’s restaurant, better than he expected, and he’s so pleased to have the nice memory, and for nothing to have gone horribly wrong. He laughingly relates several humorous anecdotes about his nieces and nephews, tells a story that leaves Ben in stitches about his sister Michelle, a cabbie, and her neighbor’s illegal pet lemur, and in return Ben tells him the story of the Thanksgiving of his fourteenth year, when his cousin Billy, all of five years old, had screamed out, “I’M A MAGIC MAN,” and attempted to pull the tablecloth out from under the spread. He had not achieved this—he had dumped the entire Thanksgiving feast to the floor—and the collective meltdown which had followed ultimately resulted in each branch of the Blumenthals having their own separate Thanksgiving celebration, which was safer for everyone.
Pete clearly enjoys this story, but then he says, voice going wry with a different brand of amusement, “Speaking of annoying little cousins with a reputation for ruining family parties: Chris says hi.”
Ben groans, sure he’s blushing so deeply that it would be visible to random passersby; he’s glad it’s Thanksgiving night, and basically everyone in town is either passed out or might as well be. “I was really hoping he was kidding when he said he was going to tell your entire family that story. But he wasn’t, was he?”
“He was not,” Pete confirms; Ben thinks he must be grinning. “But if it’s any comfort, I think it made my family like you? They all agreed that your heart was in the right place, and I didn’t exactly mention to them what we’d been getting up to right beforehand, for reasons I hope are obvious, so you’re in the clearthere. My dad says he wants to meet you; he says you should come by the restaurant sometime.”
“Really?” Ben asks, embarrassed that it comes out slightly squeaking. “That wouldn’t be weird for you?”
“Nah,” Pete says, his tone easy, open, unafraid. “You’re welcome anytime.”
It’s cold on the street, under the forever-glowing red neon Trattoria Luciana sign; it’s always cold here this time of year, the wind biting under the tightest-pulled scarf. But when Ben shivers, it’s from warmth: not just in Pete’s voice, not just in the nature of the invitation, but at the slow, sinking-in-all-over realization of how easy it is to talk to Pete. How easy it is to justbewith him. How it’s never a long, intricate argument; how Pete never makes him feel disappointing, or like he’s singing a slightly different song than everyone else, and in the wrong key, to boot. How Pete, outside of the miasma of his own traumas and anxieties, looks for the good things, and not the bad ones, even though those traumas and anxietiesshouldhave made him as misanthropic as Ben is.
I want to go home, Ben thinks, on the street where he grew up, close enough to his parents’ restaurant to be within the sphere of the neon sign’s light. For all these years he’s lived in New York, he’s thought of coming backhere—at Thanksgiving and sometimes Passover, and for an always-grueling week over the summer—as coming home, but something has shifted within him since his last visit.
When he was in his early twenties, Ben ended up dropping by his old elementary school, visiting a friend who had gone into teaching. He’d been amazed by the way the reality didn’t match up against his memory, doors he remembered as toweringly tall turning out to be simply regular-sized, rooms he recalled as enormous being small-to-average at best. It had taken him several disorienting moments to work it out:He’dbeen smaller,when he formed those memories. The building had stayed the same—it was Ben who had changed.
Being here, now, Pete’s easy, familiar voice pouring into his ear like honey, is like that. It’s the same street, the same collection of brick buildings, the same neon sign it always was; it’s Ben who has changed. He feels, all at once, like laughing out loud at all these years he’s spent living a small, quiet life, braced for the worst. He wonders why he never considered before the glaringly obvious answer: that home isn’t a place, or a building, or a sign. Home is being with people who make you feel like yourself.
“I’ll be back in town Saturday night,” Ben says, allowing himself the risk of wild abandon, of imagining a future where a home with Pete isn’t metaphorical. “You guys do Sunday brunch? I love a good brunch, unless that’s creepy and too soon, in which case I hate brunch and all who are associated with it; down with brunch.”
“We should let brunch live to fight another day,” Pete says, laughing, and Ben settles back against the brick wall of the restaurant, against the sound of Pete’s voice. Soon enough, he’ll be back where he belongs.
THIRTEEN
The rest of Ben’s time in Michigan passes quickly, probably because it isn’t very long. He has to weather all day Friday helping his parents prep for the weekend—they’d kindly given the staff both Thursday and Friday off for the holiday, though no such allowances were extended to Ben—but texting with Pete makes the time move faster. Rick has asked Pete out for a Saturday evening drink, and so they spend a lot of the day speculating about what he could want, the concepts getting increasingly more absurd. By the time Ben goes to bed Friday night, Pete has fully steeled himself to be sworn into the Fish Crusades, though he’s planning to turncoat Rick and fight on the side of the sea if it really comes down to it. The whole thing is insane, but Ben falls asleep laughing anyway.
On Saturday, Ben’s flying out in the early evening, so he’s able to bail out of family bonding time after lunch. Everyone seems a bit relieved to see him go; it doesn’t bother Ben as much as it once did. After all, he’s a little relieved to see the last ofthemfor a few months, although he’ll also, in a strange way, miss them. He’s often wondered if that’s the universal nature of family: being with them feeling both good and bad at once, like scratching a mosquito bite, or poking a bruise. Maybe it’s justthe nature ofhisfamily; he supposes it wouldn’t matter either way.
Regardless, he and Pete text back and forth all day, right up until the point Ben’s boarding the airplane. His flight, landing at around nine thirty, will run right over Rick’s proposed time for drinks with Pete, and Ben spends it looking forward to turning his phone back on, and finding out what exactly it was Rick wanted. Pete’s actual best guess was that this was some kind of bonding ritual, and holiday related—apparently it wouldn’t be the first time.
But Ben’s not so sure: He’s been watching the numbers climb on the first of their Christmas videos, the ones with the sponsored content worked in, which had posted the day before Thanksgiving. The numbers arehigh—not only for sponsored content, but fortheircontent. It’s probably the seasonal draw, and while Ben, if he’s honest, hates to give Christmas credit for anything, he has to admit it’s worked nicely for them here.Hethinks, though he’s kept this thought to himself, that Rick probably has some news about the future of the show, or what Formica’s planning to do with them next.
All in all, by the time his plane lands at JFK and the captain releases him from cell-signal jail, Ben’s a little excited, and a little nervous, and jiggling slightly with both anticipation and how much coffee he consumed during his long airport wait.
But when he turns his phone on, there are no messages from Pete. Not one.
A tiny sinkhole, barely bigger than a pea, opens in the pit of Ben’s stomach.
Still, he tells himself it’s fine. Of course it’s fine—Pete’s probably still out at drinks with Rick, that’s all. Ben has no right to be worried about the frequency of Pete’s texts anyway; they’ve hooked up once, they haven’t even technically had the dating conversation, and if anything, up until now they’ve beenmessagingtoomuch. This is fine. Normal. Nothing to get worked up about.
The last text Pete did send him, before Ben turned on Airplane Mode, had said Ben should let Pete know when he lands. So he does, typing and deleting several drafts before eventually going with,Made it back to NYC, still in one piece! Hope you can say the same. Just send a hook emoji if you need extraction from the Fish Wars.
