Family and Other Catastrophes

by Alexandra Borowitz

  “You don’t look it. You probably gained muscle and lost fat, that’s why. You used to have such a nice lovely shape, and now you’re looking a bit...hard. It’s all that LifeSpin garbage.”

  “Mom, stop body-shaming,” Lauren called out again, this time in a harsher tone.

  Emily could hear Lauren’s four-year-old son, Ariel, ask “Mommy, what’s ‘body-shaming’?”

  Marla shook her head in a long-suffering way. “I promised myself we wouldn’t fight this week. I must just be overwhelmed with all the planning that I’ve had to do all by myself. Let’s just get you settled in.”

  Emily stepped inside. David followed her but stood frozen, still carrying the two bags, afraid of putting them in the wrong place. The living room hadn’t changed much since Emily was a kid. Her father’s antique Japanese bronze bowl sat in the middle of the low cherrywood coffee table, while a few family photographs hung over the mostly decorative marble fireplace that hadn’t been lit since 1992. Light flooded through the windows. The only light fixture in the room was a dim, Japanese lantern-style floor lamp next to the black leather sofa. The television was the same bulky, old-fashioned one that Emily had watched throughout her childhood because Steven and Marla both believed television made people dumber and saw no need to upgrade. Emily had seen discarded ones in the vacant lot that were more up-to-date.

  “Hi, Lauren,” Emily said. Lauren got up from the sofa. She had gone from slightly soft to legitimately big, a label that Emily knew Lauren wouldn’t mind. Matt, her beanpole-shaped, perpetually silent “partner and parental unit,” stood next to her. He apparently had a strong preference for larger women. Emily knew this because Lauren told her about it every time anything tangentially related to weight came up. But Emily was happy that her sister had found someone she loved. For a woman who raged so much against body expectations, Lauren’s taste in men had always been very conventional: thin, white, young and tall. Matt checked all those boxes, but his neck tattoo and long blond Viking beard were a good disguise for his conventional looks. Thanks to that beard and tattoo, Lauren didn’t look like too much of a sellout.

  The two sisters hugged, Lauren’s black cat-eye glasses jabbing into Emily’s forehead. Emily still couldn’t get used to being taller than her older sister, after so many years of looking up at her. She hugged Matt, his bony sternum pressing against her chin.

  “Don’t listen to Mom,” Lauren said. “She’s been on a warpath all morning. Ariel ate the last of her nectarines and it’s been downhill ever since.”

  “I heard that,” Marla said. Beyond the living room was an open kitchen, where Marla was opening the fridge to get a mixed berry Greek yogurt. For as long as she could remember, Emily had never seen her mom eat a full meal. Marla ate constantly, but all her meals looked like unsatisfying snacks you would grab quickly before running to the airport.

  “I like your hair,” Emily said. Lauren had cut her dyed black hair to her chin with baby-short bangs across her forehead that made her look a bit like a creepy 1920s doll. Emily didn’t really like it, in the sense that she would never have mutilated her own hair like that, but she knew the bizarre impression it gave was exactly what Lauren was going for, so the compliment was still somewhat genuine.

  “Oh, thanks. I took Ariel to the salon with me and let him choose it. It was either this or a purple buzz cut. Then we both got manicures. Ariel, show Aunt Emily your fingernails.”

  “No!” Ariel shouted. His long pale blonde curls whipped from side to side as he shook his head with his arms crossed over his chest. He wore a blue T-shirt with a fire engine on it, along with a fluffy pink tutu and a pair of yellow floral rain boots.

  “Ariel, do you need to pee?” Matt asked him, noticing how he was grabbing his crotch and dancing around.

  “No!” Ariel said. “I’m just touching myself!” Matt shrugged and went to pour himself a glass of water.

  “Ariel, I think that’s for private time,” Emily said.

  “No, it’s not,” Lauren said. She patted Ariel on the head. “There’s so much anti-masturbation stuff in the media nowadays, we may as well let him enjoy his own body while he’s little enough not to understand shame.”

  “Is he wearing a...skirt?”

  “Ariel dresses himself,” Lauren gloated. “Some people say it’s strange, but fuck them.”

  “Mommy, what’s ‘fuck them’?”

  “Nothing, Ariel. I’m just speaking with Aunt Emily.”

  “You curse in front of him?” Emily asked, lowering her voice a bit.

  “I like him to be present for adult conversations. It is ridiculous how people underestimate their kids and baby talk to them. You know, I take Ariel to work with me once a week. He needs the exposure to the adult world, especially in a female-positive, body-accepting space that recognizes and calls out his inherent privilege.”

  “Don’t you work at a place called Cunt Magazine?”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t matter to Ariel. Children are innocent. He loves his Fridays at Cunt. Don’t you, Ariel?”

  “I love Cunt day!” Ariel flailed his arms around and twirled.

  “He isn’t using it as a gendered slur, so as far as I’m concerned, he’s just taking away the word’s power,” Lauren said. “I don’t want to tell him to stop saying it. It might damage his self-esteem.”

  “Uh-oh, did I walk in on another debate about Photoshopping plus-size models to get rid of cellulite?” Emily’s brother, Jason, stood in the doorway. Emily hadn’t seen him since his divorce, and she was struck by his new single look. It had been a while since Jason qualified as attractive, and now that he was in his midthirties, balding could be added to the list of attributes that made him solidly average looking. However, he had slimmed down a bit, losing some weight in his face, and he had stopped wearing white Reebok sneakers with jeans unironically. Now he wore skinny jeans and an intentionally distressed Urban Outfitters T-shirt, dusty blue and paper-thin, with a faded image of a Fender Telecaster printed on it. He resembled the middle photo between “Before” and “After” on the LifeSpin progression board that was posted between the AeRate™ oxygen bar and the FloTate™ flotation chamber.

  “Hey, Jason,” Emily said. “Nice shirt. You look good!” She hugged him.

  “You too, Em. Christina is coming by to drop Mia off later, by the way. She posted a picture of her on Facebook, and I have to say, she looks pretty cute in her flower girl dress. You’re going to like it.”

  “Aw, I can’t wait to see her.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  “Not Christina. Mia.”

  “Oh. Yeah, me too. Last time I saw her was three weeks ago. I miss my little girl. I had to miss our last weekend together for my friend Mike’s bachelor party, and then Christina was too much of a bitch to give up the weekend after. Says it will ‘ruin the schedule.’”

  Marla strode over to them. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Jason, have you heard from Christina yet?”

  “Please refer to her by her proper name—Satan. And the answer to your question is that I haven’t heard from Satan since last night when she said she’d be dropping Mia off today. Maybe she’s been busy causing plagues in Africa or possessing the bodies of rural teenage girls.”

  “Hmm. Well, would you please ask her to give us an ETA?”

  “Why would I ask her that? ETA for what? She’s just dropping Mia off.”

  Marla turned to Emily. “He doesn’t know. You told me you would tell him.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Well, he obviously doesn’t know.”

  “What don’t I know?” Emily would have taken his concern a lot more seriously if he hadn’t been swiping through Tinder while expressing it.

  “Emily invited Christina to the wedding,” Marla said. “She also invited her to David’s parents’ barbecue. I told her it would cause problems, but she wan
ted her there. So now I’m just trying to avoid your constant drama, like always. Every time with you kids.”

  Jason looked up from his phone to glare at Emily. “Em! Dude! What the hell?”

  “Look,” she said, her heart beginning to race. “I didn’t want her there. I invited her because it seemed really cruel to ask this woman—who I’ve known for years—to drop her kid off at my wedding and then drive away. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.”

  Back when Jason and Christina were married, Christina had been the feminine, graceful older sister that Emily never had. She had given her fashion tips, and they had even gotten makeovers together at Macy’s one Christmas. But with every loving, sisterly embrace came unsolicited advice, needless pep talks and confessions of problems that were actually brags, such as the fact that her butt was too round and made her look slutty if she wore white pants. Even so, as much as Emily was sometimes tempted to write Christina off as a delusional, self-important jerk, she couldn’t. Christina had been the only person in her family to take her college social dramas seriously, or any of her mini crises, for that matter. When she was the only girl in her hall not to be accepted by a single sorority, Christina stayed on the phone with her for over an hour listening to her vent. Meanwhile, her father had only emailed her: Sororities are a waste of time and money anyway. Study. Love, Dad. Every time she worried about getting herpes from a toilet seat, Christina was armed and ready with her own handful of stories about herpes-afflicted friends and how none of them got it from a toilet seat. That made Emily feel better, and afterward she only Googled herpes for an hour.

  “I can’t believe you,” Jason said. “Inviting my ex-wife when you know she’s the worst person on Earth.”

  “You won’t even have to see her. And this is my wedding anyway.”

  “Yeah, well, unfortunately she was at my wedding too. I’d like to go to a family wedding where this woman doesn’t ruin it. Lauren, when are you getting married?”

  “When same-sex marriage is legal in every country.”

  “Okay, so after Saudi Arabia is wiped off the face of the Earth by an alien invasion.”

  “That whole part of the world will be wiped off the face of the Earth anyway. Thanks to our corrupt government’s white American imperial colonization.”

  “You are going to get married, though, right? If you honestly wait for gay marriage to be legal everywhere, it’ll just never happen.”

  “So be it. I won’t use any privilege that is only afforded to me because of my whiteness or straight-passing.” Lauren picked up Ariel, as if to use him as a conversational shield.

  “You’re not straight?” Jason said. “You only ever date men.”

  “I’m pansexual and heteroromantic.”

  He blinked and turned back to Emily. “Did you seriously need to invite Christina to this stuff?”

  “Jason, just relax about Christina,” Marla said. “Don’t let her rent space in your head for free. She never deserved you.”

  “She never deserved him?” Lauren said. “He cheated on her and emotionally abused her for years. You’re blaming the wrong person, Mom.”

  “Abuse her!” Ariel said.

  “Men can’t help it,” Jason said, quieter this time, as if to prevent Ariel from hearing him. “We’re just not monogamous. We’re always looking for the youngest, hottest thing around. Don’t kill the messenger—it’s just biology.”

  “Jason, that’s ridiculous,” Emily said. “Christina is beautiful.”

  “You’re missing the point. Sure, she’s hot, but she’s only one woman. Would you tell a gay guy to stop being gay? I’m only attracted to hot, young women, and I can’t be with one woman at a time. At least I admit it. You guys should be proud of my self-awareness.” He smiled to himself, eagerly anticipating an argument. This was something he had been doing since he was a kid. In 1997 he told Marla he was a Republican just to get a rise out of her, and she cried for days after declaring she had failed as a mother.

  Emily had heard enough. “You’re not young or hot, Jason!”

  “Women don’t care about looks. They care about personality.”

  “Okay, well, you also have a shitty personality.” It wasn’t often that Emily sensed approval from her sister, but she knew Lauren agreed with that comment.

  “Look, I know both of you are self-conscious about your looks or age or whatever,” he said. “You shouldn’t be. I’m not saying all men are like me. Obviously you’re both with guys who are fine committing to a woman. I’m just of a different caliper.”

  “It’s caliber, actually,” Lauren said.

  “Uh, where should I put these?”

  Emily turned and saw David, still holding the two bags, his back against the wall. He looked like someone who had just seen a digitally remastered version of The Exorcist in the front row of a 3-D Imax theater. He always asked her why she tried to limit the time he spent with her family. Now he knew.

  * * *

  “The four horsemen of the apocalypse are here,” Jason said, looking out the living room window as Christina’s Audi pulled in to the driveway.

  “Not your best,” Emily said. “There aren’t even four people, just two, and one of them is your three-year-old daughter.”

  Emily went outside to greet Christina. She saw Mia for the first time in a long time as Christina lifted her from her car seat. Mia had Jason’s brown hair, cut into a clean little bob, and Christina’s upturned nose as well as her sparkling gray-blue eyes. At times, Emily felt jealous of Mia, knowing that when she was old and unattractive, Mia would be young and pretty—prettier than she ever was. But she stopped herself. Her vanity had to have a limit, and being jealous of the future version of a three-year-old had to be that limit.

  “Hey, sweetie.” Emily hugged Mia.

  “Mommy, is that a man or a lady?” Mia asked, her plump finger to her lips.

  “I’m so sorry about her,” Christina said, balancing Mia on her hip. “She’s starting to figure out the difference between boys and girls and she’s having a little trouble with it.”

  “No, I’m not,” Mia protested.

  “It’s okay,” Emily said. “She’s hasn’t actually seen me in person since she was tiny... I’ve been a pretty bad aunt.”

  “Nonsense. You do you.” She leaned in to kiss Emily’s cheek. Christina had changed her hair since she last saw her. It was blonder, straight and parted down the middle, stopping right above her shoulders. Christina had delicate, girlish features that always looked feminine and youthful even though her skin was freckled and lightly lined from years of tanning to a deep brown during her teenage summers in East Hampton. She seemed like the type of woman who would go for Botox, but her insistence on self-love and acceptance probably prevented her.

  “I love your dress,” Christina said. Emily knew she didn’t really mean it. If she saw it in a store, she’d say it was cheap.

  “Oh, thanks. It’s probably all sweaty now. I should change.”

  “It is what it is. Never doubt yourself. You are a goddess. Just like me, and just like Mia. Every woman is a goddess. Aren’t you a goddess, Mia?”

  “No, I’m a princess. I’m Elsa.”

  “Are you coming to the barbecue at David’s house?” Emily asked.

  “Of course. I’m sure Jason will be a p-r-i-c-k about it, but then again, when is he not?”

  “Yeah.” Emily laughed a little. “I love your nail polish, by the way.”

  “Oh, thanks. It’s one of those shellac manicures.” It was clear and neutral, matching her flowing ivory silk top and gray skinny jeans. Such a simple manicure easily could have been done at home, but Christina usually chose the priciest option for anything. Even her toilet paper was organic. Everything about Christina was refined and subtle, expensive and tasteful. She came from Greenwich old money, and, as a result, had grace that Emily would never hav
e, even if she became insanely rich overnight. On top of her family money, Christina worked at a New York ad agency and presumably was paid well there. Emily sometimes wondered if Jason had to pay alimony, or if Christina did, but she was afraid to ask. They both acted as though the divorce settlement was horribly unfair. No matter which one of them she spoke to, the story was one of gross injustice.

  “So are you...dating?” Emily tried to get a feel for whether or not that question would offend Christina. But she didn’t know what else to ask.

  “Not in front of Mia,” she whispered. “But...yes. I’m surprised at how well it’s going. I am prouder and prouder of my decision every day.” She pressed Mia’s head to her chest and put another hand over her ear. “Between you and me, the only reason I’m fine with him having partial custody is that at least I have the occasional weekend to get a pedicure and go on a date. I honestly think he’s a horrible father.”

  Emily wasn’t sure what to say. “Anyway, we’re going to the barbecue in a few hours. Come inside and we’ll get you some coffee. Ariel is there in case Mia wants someone to play with.”

  Christina turned to Mia. “Mia, are you excited to see your cousin? Gosh, it’s been too long! I don’t think she remembers meeting him.”

  “Just a warning,” Emily said. “If she’s having trouble telling boys from girls, she’s going to have a lot of trouble with him.”

  * * *

  David’s childhood home looked like a modern, more expensive version of a log cabin. In front there was a wraparound wooden deck, an expanse of freshly cut grass and a tire swing hanging from an old maple tree. A well-worn wooden playhouse, painted red like a miniature barn, still stood out on the lawn. David’s father had built it when he and his brother were little and later converted it into a shed for his tools. Nick was the type of manly-man father that Emily only saw on television. He had worked for years in risk arbitrage and was now retired. He was in his late fifties, and despite being able to afford to hire people to fix things around his home, he took pleasure in home improvement: building decks, fixing pipes, woodworking.