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“Why are you depressed?” my dad asked.
I looked at Judith. She looked at me. I looked at my dad. He looked back at me; nothing on his face showed that he understood why his question had been ridiculous. I sort of hated that Judith got it and my dad didn’t, but that wasn’t her fault, that was his.
Nicky took one hand off the steering wheel and laid it on my thigh and the silky thigh-highs I was wearing. I put my hand over his, and just that much touch helped me let out a deep breath and come back to my center, to me. I wasn’t the little girl who needed my dad’s protection and didn’t get it anymore. I was all grown up, with all the benefits that came with it. I turned around in the seat so I could just hold his hand and feel the warmth of his hand through my hose. If we had been alone his hand could have reached far enough to find out I was wearing silk panties. Date night would have been so much more fun than dealing with my family.
I hadn’t expected to be ambushed with my grandmother, but I’d been talking for weeks in therapy about protecting my boundaries. Learning that protecting myself physically and emotionally was not being disrespectful or mean; it didn’t make me a bad daughter, but was simply self-care and demanding to be treated like the grown-up I had become, not the child they remembered. My grandmother being here didn’t change any of that; in fact, it made it easier, because my dad had played dirty first. I’d told him over a month ago on the phone that she could not come on this visit. It wasn’t that he hadn’t asked me first, he’d done it after telling me he wouldn’t. I could not let that stand or he and she would bully me the entire visit. I said the next part without turning around, because seeing his face would have made it harder. I stared at the dashboard of the SUV like I was trying to memorize it, and said, “When we come to pick you up fordinner, if Grandma Blake is dressed up and coming we won’t be going to dinner tonight.”
“I can’t leave her alone at the hotel tonight, Anita,” he said.
“Then Josh and Andria can arm-wrestle over who gets to stay with Grandma, but if she’s at dinner you know that there will be no way for you to meet Jean-Claude without her making it all about her and her prejudices.”
“Fredrick, Anita has a point.”
“She came all this way, Judith. She got on a plane; you know she’s afraid to fly.”
I hadn’t thought about the fact that my grandmother and I shared that phobia. She’d just always been afraid of anything she considered too high-tech, like planes. Mine had been a near accident that scared the pilot and flight crew, but it was still a shared phobia. I hated that we shared anything and thought again about that spark of magic at the airport.
I let go of Nicky’s hand and turned so I could see them. “Dad, I’m not saying Grandma won’t get to meet Jean-Claude this trip, I’m just saying not tonight.”
“She’ll never agree to it.”
“I don’t need her agreement. I’ve said she can’t come tonight, and I mean it, Dad. I don’t want to overwhelm Jean-Claude with too many people who think he’s the spawn of Satan. One will be plenty.”
“I have never called him that.” He sounded indignant.
“You said you agree with the Church’s view that marrying him imperils my immortal soul.”
“It does.”
“If you believe that, then which Church-sanctioned theory do you support: that he’s a corpse that’s demonically possessed, or a suicide that’s damned to hell once he stops being the walking dead?”
“I…” My dad opened and closed his mouth, then didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Thanks for making my point, Dad. Your hatred for the undeadwill be enough at dinner; I won’t subject my future husband to you and Grandma doubling up on him tonight. I won’t do it, so you have to man up and tell her she has to stay at the hotel tonight, or you can all get a good night’s sleep, and we’ll try again tomorrow night, but that means that the lunch I had planned so you could meet Micah and Nathaniel gets postponed.”
“I don’t see why we can’t meet them as planned tomorrow,” my dad said.
“Because if you meet Jean-Claude and can’t get past the fact that he’s a vampire, then why should I introduce you to anyone else in my life? I mean, would you come to visit me in St. Louis after the wedding and just never meet my husband?”
“No, of course not, I realize that I need to meet Jean-Claude first, but I do want to meet more of your poly…group.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yes, if this is truly your preference, then I want to try and understand it. I can’t promise that I won’t at some point throw my hands up and say I can’t deal with more, but I will try, Anita.”
I didn’t know whether to cry or not trust it. It sounded too good to be true after the rest of the conversation. “That’s great, Dad, it gives me hope that this visit won’t…suck.”
“Anita, please, ladies do not say ‘suck.’ ”
I sighed and turned around so I wouldn’t have to look at him anymore. Nicky offered his hand again and I clung to it like a lifeline.
5
I’d have riddenthe rest of the way to the hotel in silence, maybe Dad would have, too, but Judith couldn’t stand it. She started talking about her real estate business and how Josh was doing in college. I did learn that he was double majoring in business and biology, which sounded like Judith and Dad’s influence. I wondered if that was really what Josh wanted to major in; I’d find out before they flew back home if I could. When I’d left the parts of my family that hurt me, I’d abandoned Josh, too, so maybe he didn’t owe me insight that would put him at odds with our dad and his mom? Josh and I had done FaceTime calls for a while, but Dad and Grandma couldn’t leave it alone; they’d kept interrupting the calls. Josh was too much the peacemaker to defend our privacy, and I couldn’t do it without his help.
Judith’s progressively more forced conversation finally ended as Nicky pulled in behind the first of our SUVs; the second one pulled in behind us. Dad reached for his door handle. “Don’t open the door, Mr. Blake,” Nicky said.
Dad started to click the handle anyway, but Nicky hit the child locks so he couldn’t. “Why are you trapping us in here?”
