“Hey, Molly, can you feed us two, and one more?” Bri asks as a hint of a grin curls her plump lips.
“There is always a place for one more at our table, Bubble, you know that. But if you be calling me Molly again, you’ll bedoing the dishes and cleaning the fucking toilets for a week. Toilets used byallthe boys, you hear me. I didn’t birth six fucking kids to not earn me the title of Mom.”
Twenty-six people are jammed arounda table, most of whom talk over each other and get progressively louder to get their point across. Um, well, yeah, this wasn’t on my calendar this year, either. And it’s nota tableper se; it’s two scratched, old doors bolted together, balancing on what I believe must be the actual dining table. It’s safe to say that family Broe is synonymous with spontaneity, not spite. Unlike the clusterfuck earlier in the day, this house is filled with happiness, memories and… love. They’re all loud as fuck, talking a million miles an hour in thick accents I don't always catch. Butthey’re real. Even the repurposed wooden doors make do for a situation where turning people away, or segregating some families from others, was never an option.
These people don’t discriminate; they champion. Children presenting for food are met with warm smiles and a tousling of hair. Others are dragged onto vacant laps, the beginning of juvenile conversation, something beautiful to watch. The kids are not shunned or discouraged. No, here they are revered and embraced. Something I don’t experience as a fully grown adult, much less a toddler.
My cell buzzes in my pocket. Before I can fish it out, Bri snatches it from my grasp and banishes it to her lap under the table.
“What the?” the room collectively gasps.
“Molly doesn’t allow phones at the table. She’s big on face to face, present conversations. She’s also not a woman you want to see angry,” comes a voice from my right.
Bri tilts the screen to an angle where she can read the message. Trystan’s message.
Trystan
I’m here. Is this address correct? I’m going to get jumped, I just know it.
Bri offloads another younger baby into my arms, cargo I was unprepared for. While she now has two hands free to text Trystan back, telling him to come to the door and she’ll be right there, I’m looking down at an actual sleeping baby. Sleeping, yes, but silent, no. This warm, wriggly mass is emitting the kind of noises I was not prepared for.
“He just ate,” says a kind-faced woman on the other side of Bri, who I think may be the mother. Does she want to reclaim her spawn? I don’tdobabies, lady. I don’t do children either, really. I lived, from a respectable distance, what Nic and Fraze had to go through with Ava and Ramsey, and wondered where they found the well of strength to draw on in those uncertain times. Not just days or weeks either; these were months of agony and uncertainty. Plastering my best helpless, please take this squirmy individual back, face on, Bri ignores me completely. She extricates herself from the table, not before placing a soft kiss on the baby’s downy head and moves toward the entry door. She has saddled me with a tiny human and abandoned ship in less than a minute. Nice!
The woman on the other side of Bri, whose name I didn’t catch, doesn’t swoop in either. She stabs at her carrots with a fork, scooping the discs in turn before downing them all with a hefty sip of white wine. Someone must want this kid. Someone, anyone? The guy to my right is inhaling slices of roast meat as if he’s coming off a fast. I doubt he’ll put down his utensils to cradle a newborn. He’s barely slowing to masticate. Trystan emerges from the narrow hallway with Bri on his heels, right asthe baby jolts. His eyes, like saucers, grow impossibly wider when the infant lurches, jolts, and then throws up geyser-style what must have been four gallons of partially digested, sour-smelling milk.All over me. Fuck!
Trystan removes his Burbury scarf and coat, watching with keen interest as they hang on a wall-mounted coat rack next to the Broe boulevard of family photographs that is the hallway. I hang them next to the Walmart jackets and assorted hand-me-down items, some offering warmth and comfort, others telling a story about the current owner and who wore it over decades past. I try to shove the mountain of a man beyond the pictures of me in goalie gear, or with braces, until a throaty honk and an entire room exclamation has our feet moving double time. We enter the cramped dining room in time to see my second cousin, Eamon, throw up his last feed all over Mason Mercer, CE fucking O. I’ve never wanted the ground to open up and consume me more than now. More than the bullying, or the wet bathing suit clinging to extra pounds on the pool deck as a teen. Now is the single worst moment of my life because the man has vomit on his Versace.
I scramble around the chairs full of family to scoop up a still gurgling Eamon and fling him toward Deidra who still has a burp cloth over her shoulder. When Mason stands, the extent of the expulsion, exorcist-style, is worse than I first imagined. In all the years I remain on this earth, I will never forget the face of a man whose impeccable designer clothes are now ruined as rivulets of baby vomit cascade down his chest and pool in the creases of his pants.
“Mason, I’m so sorry.” The words are far from adequate. As he stands there like some slime-drenched scarecrow, I nudge my brothers into action. “Kynan, go get him some clothes to wear. Liam, get some cloths. And I don’t know what the fuck the rest of you are all staring at. Show’s over.”
Liam and Geoffrey both jump into action with napkins and tea towels, while Dad just chuckles into his glass. Typical. Useless as fucking tits on a fish, Mom says. I steer a bewildered Mason past Trystan, who backs away, palms up in surrender. Kynan returns seconds later with an armful of clothes that I accept before locking both Mason and I into the bathroom.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, trying to remove his sweater and not allow any of the remaining liquid to slosh into his hair. Wearing borrowed clothes is bad enough. If the man requires a shower in our tiny brown cubicle with a geometric shower curtain and body wash from Costco, there’s no coming back from this. The boys use a four in one shampoo, for fuck’s sake.
“It's not your fault. Not the baby’s either. I understand that is kind of spontaneous, right?”
“Yeah, it can be. For such tiny humans, they sure have disproportionate stomachs, hey. Who would think so much milk fits in there?”
“Bri, I think the math is wrong. If it could fit, it wouldn’t have been projected like a water cannon. Does it normally stink like this?” he adds, pulling a face.
I don’t know! He moves to undo his button and zipper, only to realize they are still coated in vomit. “Here, let me.”
“I love it when you undress me, Bri. Or should it be Bubble?”
The button pops free, and the zipper follows with little biohazard transfer. He steps out of his pants, standing in my childhood bathroom in just his socks and boxer shorts. If only teenage me could manifest this man while I’d been deepconditioning my hair the mustard-brown bathroom wouldn’t have been so… mustard-brown? I hated this room, and now I never want to leave. I wet a washcloth under warm water and wipe down his chest and thighs before repeating the process. I want to repeat the process with my tongue. Reacquaint myself with every ridge, dip, and plain.
“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to want to take the last of these clothes off, not put more on.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing, Mr. Mercer.”
“It’s a way better idea than being covered in baby barf.”
I fight to hide my smile, separating the sweatpants and shirt so he can, in fact, put clothes on. Even with the thermostat hovering around seventy-nine, this bathroom can be an old, draughty bitch. I’m gathering up the ruined clothing when I catch sight of him in the faded Megadeath concert T-shirt. This isn’t Kynan’s, he’s way too young. It must be a relic of Connor’s time here, or God forbid, Dad’s.
“This day keeps surprising me,” he says in a curt tone. His eyes, his beautiful eyes bound by the most adorable fine lines, tell a different story. He’s enjoying himself here.
To their absolute credit, no one says a word about the respectable business executive sitting in a death metal concert shirt with a tiny hole above the left nipple. Not one word. It could well be an everyday occurrence, like pass the salt, please, or would you care for some more bread? Even Trystan has pursed lips, tamping down any remark that might dance on the tip of his tongue. I bet he’s dying to take a stealthy picture but doesn't want to run the gamut of Molly Eileen.
