Family Love

by Liz Crowe

  “Look who’s here!”

  I grinned and launched myself at my oldest brother Antony, reveling in his low laugh and strong arms. When he put me down, I noticed Rosie Norris standing near him. I gave her a quick hug, hoping my grumpy oldest sibling might actually find a bit of happiness and peace. While I was talking to her, Aiden grabbed me from behind, threw me over his shoulder, ran out, and dumped me in the pool.

  The dinner conference, or whatever the hell it was supposed to be, was a train wreck. In a strange way, it was nice to know nothing had really changed in the years since I’d absented myself from the Love Family Drama.

  The only thing I felt sure of, that my father was utterly miserable about his wife’s medical prognosis, kept me at his side most of the night. My mother and I had yet to even truly greet one another, given all the various revelations and interruptions … up to and including her inviting a total stranger to eat and share in our current trauma.

  Margot Hamilton was a therapist, I thought, whom Mama had befriended and decided in her usual “I’ve got this” fashion would be a positive addition to our family conversation. She was wrong, but I couldn’t help but notice the strange way Antony kept staring at her, and she at him.

  It was the usual mess. And it reminded me why I’d avoided it whenever possible in the past three years. When I realized my niece AliceLynn, now a surly teenager, was to be a part of all this, I latched onto the poor girl when I noticed her extreme misery at my father’s announcement that she would officially be moving home with her father. It was about time. But strange timing.

  She and I sneaked off after the initial family fireworks and sat on the far side of the pole barn, passing a joint between us in silence.

  “You home for a while?” she asked, once we’d induced the necessary buzz to recover from the earlier scene.

  “Hope not,” I said, passing the thing to her. I looked up, pondering the sky I’d memorized from pretty much this same spot years ago.

  “She’s bad off, Angel,” my sweet little niece, now a pot-smoking teenager, said to me. As if I hadn’t figured that out already.

  “I know,” I said, not willing to let on how much I wanted to cry right then. “When’re your daddy and Rosie Norris getting married?

  She snorted and sucked in a huge lungful of smoke. “My daddy doesn’t exactly confide that level of detail, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” I took the roach, depleted it, and extinguished the remaining spark under my shoe. “That therapy lady sure was fucking him with her eyes.”

  “Oh, Lord,” AliceLynn said, smacking my leg. “That’s gross. He is still my daddy, after all.”

  “Nice to see Aiden,” I said, by way of subject change.

  “Yes. He’s comic relief, and he deflects Granddaddy’s attention a little.”

  “I’ll bet he does.” I sighed. “We should go in.”

  “We should,” she agreed, leaning her head on my shoulder.

  By the time we made it to the patio, dinner was obviously over. I started clearing the plates, a bit frightened by the fact that my mother had left the table without doing it. When Margot the therapist re-emerged, claiming car trouble, and my oldest brother took off after her, I got a clear inkling of trouble of a different sort still to come.

  But I had my own little mother-daughter reunion to consummate. Fortified by the pot, I spent a few minutes loading the dishwasher, wiping down all the surfaces as I’d been taught, and giving the kitchen a quick swipe with the broom, before deciding I’d stalled long enough.

  “Oh, hey, honey. I wiped off the patio table.” Rosie Norris handed me a wet rag and tucked a lock of her curly hair behind her ear. “Whew. This is gonna be a tough go for your mama.”

  “Yeah,” I said, rinsing out the cloth and draping it over the dish drainer that I’d emptied in my zeal to avoid actually talking to Lindsay. “I am so happy for you and Antony,” I said, leaning on the kitchen counter.

  My youngest brother Aiden came in then, holding Rosie’s little boy, Jeffrey. Her husband Paul, Antony’s one-time best buddy in the world, had been killed in Iraq before the kid had been born. I caught what I knew damn well was a weird moment between them then … between Rosie and Aiden, not Rosie and the brother Kieran had led me to believe she’d been “with” for the past few years.

  I shook my head, unwilling to even contemplate how badly that might go. “I should go see her,” I mumbled, shouldering past Aiden. As I walked up the four steps to the bedroom hallway, my heart pounded so hard it echoed in my skull. The door at the end of the hall was closed. I knocked.

  “Come in,” my father said.

  I opened it, slowly, willing myself far away from this mess. “Angel,” he said, folding me into a huge hug. I held on tight, blinking hard, unwilling to cry. “She’s asleep,” he whispered.

  “I declare, Anton Love, if you don’t quit babying me, I’m gonna snatch you baldheaded. I am not sleeping. It’s only eight-thirty at night, for heaven’s sake.” My mother’s distinctive drawl made me smile.

  My father rolled his eyes.

  “Hey, Mama,” I said, from the safe circle of my father’s arm.

  She sniffed, tugged the quilt up under her arms and patted the bed beside her. “Come here and let me see you, Angelique. I didn’t get a minute to even breathe earlier. What do you think of Margot?”

  Daddy gave me push when I didn’t move. I sat, staring at her, marveling at the strength in her voice and the extreme thinness of her hands and face. “I, um …”

  “I think therapy will be just the ticket for Antony and AliceLynn,” she declared. Lindsay making her pronouncements was familiar territory. When she asked for your opinion, it was meant to reinforce her own, not as an actual request for yours.

  “Mama, I …”

  My mother tilted her head, studying me in a way that I vividly recalled. “You’ve been sick,” she said, taking my chin and turning my head left and right. “And you have hickeys, young lady.”

  I slapped my over my neck, cursing her sharp eyes. “I haven’t been sick. Only … busy.”

  “That school called me last month, but I haven’t had a chance to phone them, what with …” She waved up and down her prone form, dismissing the cancer with an “oh, this old thing” sort of gesture. I touched her leg—broomstick-thin under the quilt—pondering the delicious possibility of disappointing her yet again with my own news flash. But when she smiled at me, her eyes shimmered with tears. Startled by this in a way I couldn’t explain, I pulled my hand away.

  “Hmm … well, anyway,” I said, trying to regain control of my voice. “Why don’t you rest?”

  She swiped her eyes, even as they narrowed at me. She usually could slice straight through my bullshit way better than she ever could with her beloved boys. I’d seen a couple of them, Dominic most often, tell her such bald-faced lies I had to leave the room to keep from laughing at her naïveté. My favorite was when he wandered into the kitchen one Saturday morning—him about seventeen, me about eleven years old—with nothing on but his underwear. Our mother had noticed something was off within seconds.

  “I don’t put your drawers away inside out, young man,” she’d said.

  “Huh?” He’d glanced down, then over at me with a frown of “don’t you dare say anything.” Of course, I never did. “We went for a swim in the quarry, Mama. Had to get dressed in the dark.” He’d kissed her on the top of her head, accepted the plate of hot food in one hand, the other over the obvious hickey between his neck and shoulder. “I’ll, um, get my clothes on first,” he’d said, plunking his plate down next to mine.

  She’d harrumphed around, muttering, “I’ll declare. That boy.” And, “Thinking he can sit nekkid at my kitchen table.” I continued eating my scrambled eggs, ignoring her.

  Now she looked ready to say something. I tensed, prepping my own whopper of a lie, since I’d decided laying the I-dropped-out-last-year thing on her now would be a bit on the unfair side. She sighed and stayed
quiet. I got up and kissed her papery cheek, my nose filling with the smells of her … the distinctive lilac-scented lotion she’d worn forever, bleach, starched cotton, and a hint of my father’s malty yeastiness lingering in her hair. “Love you,” I muttered, suddenly at a loss.

  She looked up at me, her eyes sharp again. But instead of making a caustic remark, she patted my cheek. “Go sit with your Daddy, now. He’s been pining for you, I know.”

  Chapter Six

  I woke the next morning to smells of breakfast. Confused for a few seconds, I stared up at the canopy of my teenaged bed, pondering it and all my many memories of mornings spent in this exact position, the exact same odors making my mouth water. I grabbed my phone to check the time, groaning at the big, bright 7:32, and found text messages from a few people in New York, my clingy roommate included. I deleted them. They had no place in this life, in this bed, this room.

  I sat up, mystified by my own clear-headedness, until realizing it must be the first time I’d woken up without a hangover in months.

  The muted voices from the kitchen sent a shaft of dread through me, but in a purely reflexive way. No one knew about my newly non-scholarly life in the big city. And no one would, ever. While part of me wished I could confide in my brothers, they had their own shit to manage, if last night’s careful observation of all the overt and just-under-the-surface drama was any indication. Starting with That Look I’d unwillingly intercepted between Rosalee Norris—Antony’s intended, according to everyone—and my youngest brother Aiden. All the while Antony made eyes at that new lady, Margot, the therapist.

  Dominic, for a change, seemed free of the usual BS that typically surrounded him. Perhaps it wasn’t his turn, I suppose. When I got in last night after spending a few quality hours with a distraught AliceLynn, he’d told me Aiden had hooked up with his old high school girlfriend Renee Reese last night—loudly, and in the pool, which was just outside the kitchen window.

  Renee’s history with the Love family was convoluted in the extreme. After Dom dumped her —they were the same age—she’d latched on to Aiden in a way that’d amused my father and two oldest brothers and made my mother spitting mad. Dom hadn’t been too thrilled about it either, and he’d only gone after Aiden once it became clear Renee and the youngest Love brother had become a couple despite their age difference. That had been a scary fight and something our father had a hard time getting under control.

  Poor Kieran was mired in a strange relationship with the most horrible bitch-on-wheels woman I had ever encountered. The thought of my sweetest, most even-tempered brother letting that hopped-up, snooty cow order him around the rest of his married life made my gut churn.

  But it was, as they say, none of my damn business. I’d made sure of that by avoiding everyone and everything here, not too different from the way Aiden had, with his multiple college degrees, and now a fancy writing school in Idaho, or Montana, or elsewhere in the boondocks. Of course, he had eased right back into his beloved baby brother role, the bizarre moment I’d witnessed between him and Rosalee not withstanding.

  I got up, brushed my teeth, and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. It had to be hot out, but my mother always kept it a hair above frigid in the house.

  When I saw my own face in the mirror, it looked haunted. I frowned at my reflection, reminding myself to get a grip. This was life. People died. I was here to provide support and whatever comfort I could to the men of the house.

  I squared my shoulders and headed for the steps. But my foot paused in midair, suspended, before touching the first one, and I hurried back up and made up my bed. I had not made my bed since leaving here, I mused, while fluffing the pillows and making sure nothing was dangling from beneath the heavy comforter. I heard more familiar voices joining the two in the kitchen and smiled to myself.

  My brother Dom’s distinctive, low, almost gravelly laughter was punctuated by my mother’s raised voice and my father’s chuckle. He’d probably let loose with a bit of semi-lewd commentary about a date, or something one of the brewery staff had been caught doing in the cooler. He loved to pretend to shock my mother, even though we all knew she was rarely, if ever, shocked.

  I took a breath, and went down the steps. Dom was leaning against the counter, coffee mug in hand. For a moment he seemed bigger to me, and I shook my head. But he was merely Dominic—the scary one to all my young friends, and the hottest one to my teenaged pals, even with his inherent drama-trauma.

  As the only blond brother, he still possessed the Love family square jaw and chin dimple, combined with the Halloran angular, high cheekbones and our father’s dark chocolate eyes. He was pretty good-looking. Even I’d admit that.

  His little “up yours” to trigger our parents’ disapproval monitor was the ink that ran up his arms and across his torso and shoulders. He was also fond of piercings, and not just the ones in and around his ears. The others were hidden, thank God. But I knew about them.

  Ironically, since he clashed harder with our father than any of the other boys, he’d been the only one out of them with a serious interest in the family business. With Dominic in charge these last few years, the brewery had almost quadrupled its capacity and ran three shifts to keep up with the distribution demands. When I first saw a Love Brewing Broken-Hearted IPA on the shelves of my little grocery in Greenwich Village, I’d almost burst with pride.

  “Ah, my prodigal baby sister,” he said, spotting me lurking in the doorway. “C’mere and give me a proper hug. It was too crowded for it yesterday.” I ducked under his outstretched arm and held onto his waist, the comfort only a big brother can provide making my rapid heart rate ratchet down a notch or two. He handed me his mug and I sipped my mother’s special—she claimed secret—blend of coffee I had never been able to recreate, no matter how hard I tried.

  My father sat, staring down into his mug, looking miserable, while Mama flitted here and there, scrambling eggs, checking the biscuits, slapping Dom’s fingers away from the bacon and country ham already prepared and waiting. She ignored me until it came time to put the platters on the table. I took them and poured orange juice right about the time Antony and Aiden arrived. Mama smiled, accepted their kisses, and leveled her gaze at me for the first time that morning. “Glad to have my whole family here for a change.”

  I smiled weakly. Antony seemed grumpier than usual when he flopped into a seat at the dining room table. Dominic brought the coffee carafe and clouted Aiden on the back of head with his other hand. Kieran showed up right when we were about to sit. I smiled at the familiar scene, all the way down to my middle brother’s tardiness. We held hands and bowed our heads before anyone reached for anything.

  “Dear Lord,” my father began, “we thank you for the bounty of the table. Use this food for the nourishment of our bodies. Thank you for the safe arrival of both Aiden and Angelique, and the relative success of the family dinner last evening. We ask that you hold us all close as we approach Lindsay’s surgery. Give us all her level of inner strength and guide the hands of the doctors. May they see their way clear to find the evil cancer and carve it out of her so she can recover and continue to hold her important place at this table. I …”

  His voice broke. I squeezed his hand hard and peeked at him. He swallowed, took a deep breath and continued. I didn’t really hear the rest for the roaring in my ears. On my other side, Aiden had a death grip on my fingers. I glanced down at my mother’s serene face, my chest tight and tears burning.

  “Angel,” my father whispered. I turned to him, startled out of my reverie. “We’re ready to eat now.” He smiled, his forehead crinkling up and the lines at the sides of his mouth deepening. I let go, mortified that I’d been caught staring at my mother and hadn’t even realized he’d said “amen.”

  My mother picked up the huge platter of eggs and handed them to her right, the signal for us to begin serving ourselves, which we did in silence, my brothers’ faces each reflecting his own version of tension.

  The food t
asted glorious. I hadn’t had a decent meal for months, and last night’s didn’t count, what with all the declarations about Mama’s illness, the strange Margot intervention, and Antony’s reaction to the announcement of AliceLynn’s return to his house.

  “So, Antony,” Mama said, interrupting the eating sounds.

  “Ma’am?” He’d finished eating and was holding his coffee mug in two hands.

  “When can we expect to set the wedding date?”

  “Um …” He seemed startled.

  “I’m right proud to hear that you and Rosie came to your senses, and are going stop this silly dating thing and finally tie the knot. Paul’s Mama thinks so, too.” She named Paul Norris’s mother, the dead man who’d been Rosie’s high school sweetheart and husband, and Antony’s lifelong best friend.

  “Glad to hear y’all have it sorted out for us.” He didn’t look at her.

  “Don’t sass,” our father intoned from his end of the table.

  “Sorry,” Antony muttered under his breath.

  “That wild boy of hers needs a Daddy with a firm hand.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The answer is I don’t know … yet. Rosie and I … we have to figure out … some … details.”

  Aiden fidgeted in his chair next to me. Antony shot him a dark look. I met Kieran’s across the table with a raised eyebrow. He shrugged, lost in his own world, probably. Dreaming of life with that dreadful woman I’d met the night before.

  “Kieran,” Mama said, making him flinch and drop his fork. It clanged off the edge of the plate and hit the floor. He stared up at her like a deer in the headlights.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Be sure to coordinate yours and that Melinda’s wedding date with your brother’s. She strikes me as the type of gal who wouldn’t pay attention to that detail.”

  He nodded. Mama raised her eyebrow at him, then patted her lips with her napkin. “Yes ma’am,” he said reaching down to fetch his fork and take it to the kitchen.