by Box Set
“Ah. Todd,” I say. It’s hard to keep the acid out of my voice. Jeffrey worshipped his father and begged Santa—me, in disguise—to bring his dad home for Christmas last year. Despite every call, text, and email outreach possible by Carol, no dice. The guy didn’t even bother to send a Christmas card to his own kids.
Loser.
“Carol was always my wild child,” Marie says with a loving sigh. “She’s had a hard life.”
Who hasn’t?
“What is this?” I ask, changing the subject, touching the odd pebbles that appear to be meticulously glued together to make the maps.
“Coffee.”
“Coffee?”
“Coffee beans,” Marie elaborates. “Carol buys green coffee beans in bulk. Roasts them different colors. Then she makes her art.”
Terry would have a field day with this. He’s the creative one in the family and while Dad hates it, he’s—
“I’m sorry about your ass,” Marie blurts out.
Here we go.
“My ass is fine. It’s my pride that’s hurt. More than that, though, it’s Shannon. That was one hell of an invasion, Marie, and I can’t have you doing that anymore.”
Marie hangs her head in the closest thing to shame she’s capable of feeling. Her hair doesn’t move with her at all. The woman must use the equivalent of a can of SuperGlue to keep it in place.
“I know. We just have a pretty free kind of family—”
“You have no boundaries. Shannon does.”
Marie’s face flashes with anger as she looks at me. “I’ve apologized for barging in on you having sex while a camera crew filmed me. I’ve tried to make amends. You’re a hard man, Declan.”
I smile without showing teeth. “I take that as a compliment.”
She shakes her head slowly. Sadly. “You need to learn how to forgive and move on.”
It dawns on me that her sadness isn’t about her rudeness in barging in on us, but is directed toward me. As if I’m the sad one. Being the object of her pity isn’t high on my list of goals.
“I don’t need to do anything, Marie. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
She pales. “You don’t...I don’t...” Her frown deepens and oh, no—are those tears?
I see where Shannon gets it.
“Declan,” she says with a tiny sob in her voice. “Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone.”
My perfectly reasonable, one hundred percent unassailable, totally understandable and perfectly justified righteous indignation is being threatened by the salt water in her eyes.
This is unfair.
“And in our family, when someone makes a mistake, they go to the person they hurt and they apologize. Sincerely and truly. And then, because we love each other, the person accepts. They forgive. They move on.”
Now there’s a fairy tale, right? Because who does that in real life?
She’s watching me carefully, without guile.
Oh, shit.
She’s serious. She really believes that this is how people work. Maybe in schlocky sitcoms. But I’ve been alive long enough to know that forgiveness is just a catch phrase that people with character disorders use against the weak.
At least, that’s what Dad always says.
“You want me to forgive you,” I say, clarifying.
“I won’t demand it, but it would be nice. You have a way of behaving that feels like the knife is being twisted a bit,” she answers.
“Maybe I’m not ready to forgive.” The words are out before I realize they’re all wrong. I’m conceding, aren’t I? Just mentioning the idea that I would forgive if I were ready shows a willingness to negotiate, and everyone knows the first rule of negotiations is never, ever to speak first.
(The second rule is not to do it naked after your mother-in-law’s barged in on you having sex).
She beams a smile of happiness that makes me feel like Tony Robbins is going to chew me out the next time I see him at a conference.
Marie just won.
Flinging her arms around me in an embrace I don’t reciprocate, she squeezes me twice, gives me a kiss on the cheek, and flees out the front door with a purse slung over her shoulder.
What the hell just happened?
How did I go from being the aggrieved party to the one who was chided for not forgiving?
The look on my face must betray what’s going on inside, because Jason comes over to me and slings an arm around my shoulder.
“You’ve just been Marie’d.”
“What?”
“Marie’d. She got you. Welcome to the family.”
As that sinks in, I realize I haven’t even proposed yet and I’m being manipulated by people I’m not legally obligated to interact with.
The kids run into the kitchen past me and Jason.
“You want a cheese stick,” Tyler declares, opening the refrigerator door.
“We’re going out for ice cream, honey,” Shannon explains. “You want some?”
“Tyler wants ice cream!” Tyler says. Tyler’s like the Bob Dole of little kids, always talking about himself in the third person. It’s amusing. Very gradually, he’s replacing his name with ‘I’, and as he begins to talk normally Carol’s thrilled. I think it’s pretty cool that he has a mind that works differently. Those are the people you really want to hang out with.
Tyler will develop something big some day, the future equivalent of the Internet, or the cell phone, or he’ll head Anonymous. I want to stay on Tyler’s good side.
“Say, ‘I want some ice cream, please,’” Carol says in a patient tone.
“I want some ice cream, please,” Tyler repeats perfectly. He’s nearly seven now, and while he’s still way behind kids his age, he’s really come a long way. Marie, Jason and Carol have acted as a unit, receiving training and support from speech therapists and teachers at Tyler’s school, and it shows. I admire that. The big, happy family really kicks in with the Jacobys when one of them needs help.
Maybe there’s something to this forgiveness bullshit.
Shannon offers a palm to Tyler. “High five!”
Tyler turns to me, ignoring her, and gives me a closed fist. “High zero!” he declares.
We fist bump.
That’s the closest he comes to saying When are you going to be my uncle?
Soon, kid. Soon.
I hope.
“Ice cream, huh?” I murmur in Shannon’s ear, giving her a kiss on the earlobe. “You’re my favorite flavor.”
She smiles and blushes, entwining her fingers in mine as we hold hands and herd the two excited boys outside for the walk down the street to their favorite ice cream stand. Carol’s already pulling out of the driveway with Marie. I can see Jason climbing in his car and he waves, a friendly smile plastered across his face.
We walk on the sidewalk, a couple with a stroller walking past us, going in the opposite direction. Shannon peeks in the stroller’s top and makes a sound of gushy surprise, a little “Oh!” that indicates her ovaries are ready to hijack my sperm and put them in a half nelson, pinning them to her uterine wall.
First things first. I still need to propose. But watching Jeffrey and Tyler make their ambling way down the road, the four city blocks like their own personal obstacle course, makes me think about kids. We want them. Shannon’s made it clear that she needs to have her career in order before she’ll consider having any, but I think she’s already softening.
Having kids will slow us down. First, I want to spend a few years taking her all over the world to cross items off my bucket list. We’ve never been to Paris, and Shannon has talked about wanting to see Machu Picchu. Can’t do that easily with a baby strapped to your front in one of those contraptions.
I could give a laundry list of all the various experiences we both want before we have kids, but instead I’ll just focus on the fact that Shannon is suddenly holding a screaming Tyler, whose nose has turned into Mt. Vesuvius, complete with red blood spurting all over Shannon’s shoulder and chest.
“What happened?” I bend down to check it out.
“Tyler tripped,” Jeffrey explains. Simple enough.
Shannon’s rocking him back and forth while he screams, “Wipe it off! Wipe it off!” as he smashes his palm into his bleeding nose. Every two seconds he does the same loop: wipe, look at it, scream “Wipe it off,” and then repeat.
“Hey, buddy. Hang on. Are you hurt?” I ask.
“NOT! NOT HURT!” Tyler likes to deny anything negative. Spill his juice? No, he didn’t. Get his feelings hurt? No, he didn’t. Bloody his nose? No, he didn’t. He’s great at denying reality like that. He could be the Fox News correspondent on climate change.
Shannon hands me her purse. “Can you find tissues in there?” Her purse is a bottomless pit of practical items you might need once in your life, seven tampons, two EpiPens, a few lipsticks, countless receipts, and one lottery ticket.
Finally, I find tissues and hand them off. “Lottery ticket?” I ask, incredulous.
She begins to gently wipe Tyler’s nose. “It can’t hurt to try,” she says in a sing-songy voice.
“I’m a billionaire,” I say slowly.
“Only on paper. I know how that goes. Steve was a ‘millionaire’.” She actually uses finger quotes. True, her ex-boyfriend, Steve, was a pompous windbag with the financial management skills of one of the real housewives of Beverly Hills. That prejudice does not apply to me.
“I am a real millionaire,” I remind her. “And damn close to being a billionaire. You need a lottery ticket like Taylor Swift needs Spotify. ”
Jeffrey overhears this. “You are? I’m gonna have a rich uncle? That ith tho cool! Do you have a helicopter?”
“Yes.”
“And a grey tie?”
Huh?
“Because Mom is always reading this book at home about a billionaire who wearth a grey tie. It’s on the cover of the book and everything.”
Oh, God.
“He has fifty tieth! Fifty! Why would a man need so many tieth?” Jeffrey’s lisp becomes more pronounced as he gets excited.
“Um...”
“Fifty! Fifty!” Tyler repeats, laughing. He has so much blood on his face he looks like he’s an extra in the movie Saw 27.
“Is there another tissue in my purse?” Shannon asks. I look. Nope.
She frowns, and I see the problem. As we both ignore Jeffrey’s innocent questions about Carol’s mommy porn, I realize Tyler looks like we just smashed his face against a cement wall. He can’t go out in public like this.
“You have a key to Carol’s apartment?” I ask, certain of the answer. Of course she does. Her family has no boundaries. They probably all share toothbrushes in a pinch.
She shakes her head sadly. “No.”
“No?”
“Mom does but I don’t.”
“Shit.”
“Shit,” repeats Tyler, perfectly. He, unlike his older brother, does not have a lisp.
It’s a warm August day, and I’m dressed for the canceled yoga class. Black polyester shirt, black shorts. Grabbing the hem of my shirt, I whip it over my head.
“While I love the view, what in God’s name are you doing?” Shannon whispers.
“Shirtless men aren’t exactly a rarity in August in Massachusetts,” I whisper back.
As if I’m approaching a spooked cat (because I pretty much am), I crouch down and lean on one knee. Tyler’s face is buried in Shannon’s chest. Her pale pink t-shirt now looks like a bad tie-dye job.
“Tyler? It’s okay. I just need to wipe the blood off your face.”
“You will NOT!” His eyes are wide and panicked, and I realize my error immediately. I might not know much about kids in general, but after a year and a half of spending holidays and occasional babysitting nights with Tyler and Jeffrey, I have a good sense of what to do.
Plus, I was a six-year-old boy once. There’s really only one way to proceed.
“Did I say blood?” I ask in an exaggerated way, like an actor on a kid’s television show. “You don’t have blood on your face, do you?”
“No blood,” Tyler says with suspicion. At least he’s stopped screaming.
“Of course you don’t have blood on your face,” I say, holding my bunched-up black shirt near his face. “But,” I whisper, pulling him in like I have a secret to share, “you do have poop on your face.”
“Poopy?” Tyler asks. Shannon gives me a Really? look with an eye roll that must hurt.
Jeffrey starts giggling and comes closer to where the poop talk is. If you ever run out of topics to talk about with boys under the age of, oh, thirty-five, just talk about poop. It’s the universal language of immature males.
Fine. All males.
“Do you want poop on your face?” I ask Tyler.
“I don’t see poop,” Jeffrey says, frowning. “All I see is blood.”
Panic returns to Tyler’s eyes.
“It’s not blood,” Shannon says to Jeffrey, pulling him to her and whispering furiously in his ear. His face changes to an I get it now look.
“Tyler,” Jeffrey says excitedly, “you are covered in poop! It’s like you, like you...” He’s frowning, trying to come up with something wild and crazy.
He succeeds.
“It’s like you were eating poop!” Tyler and Jeffrey descend into giggles as Tyler says “We don’t eat poop!” eleven thousand times in a row.
Shannon gives me a disgusted look. I shrug. The kid’s not screaming anymore, is he? In fact, he’s howling with laughter. Still covered in blood, which makes him look like a mini Dexter, but—
I got this.
I totally got this whole Dad thing down.
You just talk about poop.
“I’ll let it go this time,” Shannon says as she snags my shirt from my hand and Tyler lets her wipe away the “poop” from his face, “but I don’t want to hear you talk about poop again.”
“But—”
“Poop comes from butts,” Jeffrey says, like it’s the best joke ever.
Jeffrey, Tyler, and I fall apart laughing, but Tyler lets her clean his face. Shannon has to lick my shirt here and there and wipe hard, but by the time she’s done he looks mostly okay, if a little pink.
She hands me my shirt. I unball it and put it on.
“You’re going to wear that?” Her nose crinkles in disgust.
“What? It’s got warrior paint on it.”
“It hath poop on it!” Jeffrey declares as we get closer to the ice cream stand. No line today, which is a surprise for an August day.
“Poop shirt!” Tyler screams. Shannon walks ahead of us and puts in our standard order.
“Okay, guys, let’s stop with the poop talk. Auntie Shannon doesn’t like it,” I say as I pull them into a huddle. Tyler doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying, and Jeffrey certainly does, his face crestfallen.
I take them over to the jungle gym and they play for a few minutes, Tyler begging for a push on the swing, Jeffrey climbing up a rope and ramp. Shannon appears with a tray of ice cream cups and we sit at a picnic table.
It’s like we’re normal. Like we’re a family. I can imagine having two boys like Jeffrey and Tyler and taking them out for a fun afternoon like this (minus the nosebleed).
Shannon distributes the ice cream and we dig in, muted by sweet cream and sprinkles on top.
Jeffrey starts giggling uncontrollably. Shannon and I look at him, perplexed. He points to Tyler.
Tyler’s chocolate ice cream is all over his face. The kid managed to get it in his hair and along the ridge of one ear.
Jeffrey is squealing with painful howls of laughter, and can manage only one, single word:
“Poop.”
I grind my jaw trying not to laugh, and Tyler repeats everything Jeffrey says.
“Poopy faith,” Jeffrey sputters. Tyler repeats him twelve thousand times.
“This is all your fault,” Shannon hisses at me. “I do not ever want to hear you make poop the topic of conversation a
gain.”
“What? It’s not my fault!” I put my hands up defensively. “It got Tyler to calm down.”
“It’s disgusting and you know better than to get two little boys started on poop jokes.”
“Poop is hilarious.”
“Poop is not a conversation topic!”
“I beg to differ.”
“No more poop talk. I am done with poop talk. I never, ever want to hear about poop again, as long as I live. I don’t talk about poop, and you don’t need to, either. Are we understood?”
She’ll regret those words.
Chapter 7
Three days before the proposal...
“That,” Dad says as he hands the ring back to me and picks up his half-empty highball glass, “is a gorgeous ring. Still is after all these years. Your mother wore it well. Cost me a small fortune back then.” His pipe burns, half-abandoned, in a small ashtray. Smoking’s not allowed in Boston, but James McCormick insists the rules don’t apply to him when he’s the owner of the building.
His hand is steady as he lifts the glass to his mouth but he drinks it all in one long gulp.
And signals to the bartender for another.
We’re in the lounge at The Fort. Dad likes to pop in on his favorite property from time to time. There’s a soft spot in my heart for this place, too. After all, you don’t watch your future wife drop-kick a vibrator down fourteen floors into Boston traffic every day now, do you?
Ah, memories.
“I always thought Terry would be the first to marry,” he adds, looking mournfully at his empty glass. “He’s the oldest.”
“Terry is about as likely to marry as you are to date a fifty year old, Dad.” Terry’s a musician who travels all over the world and is just starting to dip his toe into investing in really fringe web concepts for music. Not only does Terry lack a permanent address or a permanent woman, he doesn’t even own a car. The guy is minimalism personified.
His biggest commitment is his international cell phone plan.
Dad laughs, the sound dismissive. “What you’re telling me is don’t hold my breath on a wedding for Terry.”
I give him a tight smile. Dad shakes his head slowly, eyes on the ring I’m still holding in my palm. It feels hot, as if the metal were pulsating from within.
