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“And how’s the boyfriend?” my mother asks.
I told her about Tate and I getting together without too much of the details. She knows that he used to be the boss at my old company and that we had gotten to know each other there. I never provided specifics on how we got to know each other or how well, exactly. But she’d guessed that he was the “senior executive” I’d been seeing for a while.
“Things are good, we’re happy,” I say and it’s true.
“How long have you been together?” India asks me, for the first time interested in something about me.
“It was a bit on and off but properly together? About two months.”
“We still haven’t met him, though,” my mother says pointedly. “Kind of makes me wonder if you are ashamed of us or ashamed of him?” I think she meant it as a joke, but India reacts immediately, looking at me and my mother.
“I’m obviously ashamed of you!” I say quickly, “I mean, he is perfect so it can’t be him.”
India’s eyes widen in horror and I realize I’m making it worse. She does not know we’re joking.
Later, after we’ve finished eating and cleaning up, India and I are making up beds on the sofa in the living room, settling down for the night. Then India suddenly says, “I grew up in foster care. I never knew my parents.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, not sure how to respond.
“My foster parents were kind people, but much older. I was the only child. It was very quiet in the house.”
Now I know where she’s going with this. “I’m afraid our house is a bit loud,” I say apologetically. “That’s kind of how it is with brothers. They’re always teasing and joking and trying to prank you.”
I tell her how when I was a teenager, Steve had pretended to be a boy from school, sending me messages on my phone, telling me he liked me and would I come meet him at night in the woods. I did, of course, and no one showed. Then Steve came to get me and laugh at me.
“That’s horrible,” India says.
“Yeah,” I say. “But I knew it was him all along, so it wasn’t too bad. And I got my revenge.”
“What did you do?”
“I signed him up for a musical at the school and he got one of the leads. He couldn’t pull out because he liked this one girl and he’d be doing the show with her. But he was furious with me because all his jock buddies made fun of him for the rest of the year. Called him Justin, after Justin Bieber, you know?”
She smiled.
I could see that she was trying to understand how our family worked. It was one of the reasons why I was slow to introduce Tate to my family. I knew they would be in awe of him, once they knew who he was and I feared he wouldn’t handle it too well either, he wasn’t really good in stressful situations with people who were important. It had taken us almost a year to get together, so I knew. I had no intention of introducing my folks to Tate before I was sure that all of us were ready for it.
“You guys look happy, though,” I said. “Andy is more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. But that may just be the beard.”
My eldest brother had always been a bit more straight-laced, certainly more responsible than Steve. He wasn’t one for drinking and going out as much and was closer to my mother. She’d taken it hard when he’d chosen not to make the move to Lake Tahoe with us. Once he finished school and went to college, we saw even less of him, mostly over the holidays.
“The beard was his idea,” India said with a little laugh. “I don’t like it, makes him look old.”
I tell her Steve used to call him “old man”, said he was old before his time. He never liked that much.
India smiled, “He told me that.” She paused. “He said he struggled to find his place in the family, always felt like the odd man out.” She said they had met each other at the gym, after both wanted the same exercise bike. He told her to take it and she insisted that he take it. Afterwards, they had a smoothie in the health bar and that was when everything started. Her voice softened when she talked about Andy and with a pang, I realized that she really loved him. When my mother, after Christmas, asked me what I thought about her, I said I thought India was the best thing that had happened to my brother.
Then Tate took me on a holiday after Christmas.
He’d gone snowboarding with friends and then we flew out to Colorado to a luxury resort where we had our own cabin tucked into the mountains. It was gorgeous, intimate and very romantic. I could ski but had never really tried snowboarding. Tate wanted to show me, insisted that it was the best adrenaline rush and how I would love it once I’d tried it. I wasn’t so sure, but I kept this information to myself.
He insisted on teaching me himself, which I thought was because he just wanted to stand close to me, pretending to help me get the moves right while really trying to grope me. It was fun though, standing on the beginner slopes, surrounded by kids whizzing past me like Olympic athletes while I could barely stand up without falling down.
“It’s hopeless!” I said after falling down one too many times, face down in the snow. I took off my goggles and hat and tried wiping my face. But my gloves were wet, everything was full of snow and I was just making it worse.
“Can we please go back and have some hot chocolate?”
“One more time,” Tate said. “Come on, you’re so close to getting the basic moves.”
