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“What she said,” Meghan added.
“Boys,” Carl said, “help yourself to the whiskey if you want. I think it’s that point in the evening.”
Rob moved to clear his dessert plate but my mother swatted him away. “Nope, not having it. Go enjoy yourself by shooting the enemy or ravaging a city, whatever nonsense those ruffians have started in the other room.”
I stood up in Rob’s place and started to clear the table. My legs were growing restless, and I wanted something to do to fill up the space in the room that would soon be dominated by more wedding talk, despite my pleas for my mother to cool it. Meghan looked so tired, with deep circles under her eyes, but deeper down, she looked more happy and more serene than I had ever seen her before. Still, she stood up to help me.
“I am still in shock about this whole baby thing. We don’t have babies, Meg.” I was piling plates into the dishwasher.
“No, Kelly,” my sister said. “Youdon’t have babies. I have always wanted to have a baby, and we’re both really stoked. Don’t make your story my story.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” After filling the sink with water, I asked, “Lunch next week when I’m off? Maybe the day after my dinner thing.”
“Absolutely. I’ll ping you tomorrow when we’re back home from Jason’s folks’ place. My mother-in-law is more excited about this kid than our mother. Mom has an online book club with Jason’s mother, they’re chatting all the bloody time. Mom keeps talking to me about Yahoo groups and the failings of the Bildungsroman. She says that stuff just to make me crazy.”
I looked at my sister, face to face, and held her shoulders tightly. “You’ll be a great mother.”
“I know what not to do, right?” She laughed.
“I heard that!” my mother said. “I did well by you girls.”
“Not saying you didn’t, Mother,” Meghan said. “I would never suggest that you were anything but who you were at any point in our entire lives. That’s one thing we could always count on—you being one hundred percent you.”
Thankfully, my mother didn’t take offense to Meghan’s teasing. She and Annie were talking about what it was like to raise to small children so close in age, and Carl was sitting back with a silly, contented grin on his face. Often, my mother’s mood carried generosity and good spirits forward, but other times, if she disagreed with you, or worse, if you had refused her advice about something that she turned out to be right about, she’d shut down with an effective, emotionless cold front that refused to lift until you apologized within an inch of your life.
By the time Meghan and I joined everyone in the family room, my mother had forced the video games to be turned off and was asking if we wouldn’t rather play a family board game instead. No one was up for it, so instead she agreed that we could turn the TV back on as long as it was a holiday movie.Christmas Vacationwas playing on a loop on one of the American channels, and we all settled in to watch.
The entire room seemed washed in white—the furniture, the tree, and all the trimmings sparkled and shone with a strong sense that, as my mother felt, this year was special. Maybe she felt happy and settled with Carl in a way that neither Meghan nor I really understood. Maybe she felt like she’d made up for all the shitty holidays past. But as I sat there, holding Rob’s one hand, his other arm casually draped around me, I could see the potential of a shared life.
That feeling that you get when you’re in the airport limo driving back into the city and you see the skyline—the CN Tower, the condos that litter the Lake Shore, the familiar bumps of the Gardiner Expressway—and then, no matter how much fun you had while you were away combing through the bent and broken avenues of Havana, staring at theMona Lisaamid a hundred camera-laden tourists, or bunking down in a crowded Irish pub after hours, that warmth spreads through you in the back of the car—that was what I imagined being married, living with someone for eternity, felt like.
But I had never felt that way, maybe because we had been shuttled around so much growing up or because home had been fraught with complexities ever since I was young. I didn’t know how to settle down and enjoy the idea of having landed somewhere with someone. Rob had had that backbone his entire life, and knew what to expect. But I felt there was a difference between wanting what was expected and then doing what was expected. I felt too far in the latter category. The idea that maybe I was a little too much like Annie, that thought kept roiling around my after-dinner, relaxed mind. What Rob and I had was great for right now. And maybe that’s all it was ever meant to be. How would I know? How could I know?
Annie rounded up the boys at around ten and took them home for the night. She said she needed them around her for one last sleep before her vacation. They grumbled but gathered up some overnight stuff and headed out. She whispered to me that I could come and see her any time I needed to talk about my future, and that I should give myself the proper time to consider Rob’s proposal. “A night away would do you wonders,” she suggested. “You could come home right now with me and the boys.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine. Plus, I love my bed. I hate spending even a night away from it.”
“Remember, I’ve got that apartment in the basement. It’s semi–brand new and still vacant.”
“Thanks, Annie. I do adore you.”
“You, my girl, are mine, and you’d better never forget it.”
I squeezed her so hard that it hurt us both a little, and then they were gone.
* * *
It had been a long day—for everyone. There was little more to be done. Conversation stood still, and there was a holiday pause—that moment of not-quite boredom when all the necessary events had been accomplished, the meal eaten, the leftovers put away, the presents opened and gushed over, and everyone seemed to be sitting still, in a reverie of their own making. “Do you think we’ve stayed long enough?” Rob whispered.
I looked over at my mother, curled up on the couch beside Carl, looking small and delicate, and I felt ashamed for having always assumed the caricature she presented to the world was anything other than a coping mechanism, a cover-up. “Mom?”
“Hmm,” she answered, a happy cross between sleepy and a little drunk.
“Rob and I are going to head out—it’s getting late.”
“Okay, lovey,” she said. “Carl can help you pack up the car.”
Gently lifting himself up from the couch, my stepfather stretched a little and yawned. From under his festive sweater, his pale belly showed, blanched and unkempt. “Where are the keys?”
