Family and Other Catastrophes

by Alexandra Borowitz

  “For what reason?”

  “Just for...fun!”

  “I thought all the sections were things you win.”

  “Maybe you can give her a deal on a membership,” David said. “I’d sign up too, if I could get a lower membership fee. Is the price negotiable?”

  Where were all the men like David hiding? Places like LifeSpin, she supposed. Suddenly, cost barely mattered anymore. She would be seeing this handsome stranger every day. All of her single friends complained that they had to move to another city to rid themselves of San Francisco’s horrible “man problem.” The stereotype was that men were either good-looking douchebags, engineers who didn’t bathe or stoner losers. Maybe David would turn out to have his own skeletons—Madonna-whore complex, micropenis, balloon fetish—but for now, he was perfect. She had to make sure they both joined LifeSpin.

  “Look,” Zxon said. “I like both of you guys, so I’m going to cut you a special deal. If you both sign up now, it’ll be just a hundred dollars a month each.” David smiled at her.

  “We’ll do it,” he said.

  “We will?”

  “Sure. I’ll be your workout buddy if you want. And besides, it comes with five free bottles of NaturBuzz.” He took one of the sample bottles at the desk and tossed it to her. Thankfully, she caught it. She was so terrible at sports, she was shocked she was even able to catch a bottle from a few feet away.

  “How much do they cost normally?”

  “Nine bucks a bottle,” Zxon said. “But let me tell you, NaturBuzz replaces your coffee, your toxic energy drinks and even your protein shake. So it’s actually ridiculously cheap for what it is.”

  Minutes later they were signing the gym membership agreement on an iPad, and Emily was plugging her phone number onto the screen.

  “You actually need to type your number again,” David said.

  “What, did it not go through?”

  “No, I’d just like it if you typed your number into my phone too. So we can be workout buddies.”

  She laughed. “Smooth.”

  “Wait, I’m not being creepy, am I?” he asked.

  “No, of course not. Well, a little. Appropriately creepy.”

  “That’s what I was going for.”

  * * *

  “I’m just saying, you can’t compare the basketball David and I played to your team in San Mateo, Mark. It’s public versus private, East versus West. Apples and oranges.” Kevin put down his plastic fork, which was coated in General Tso’s sauce. The Glass family had ordered in Chinese food to celebrate the arrival of more wedding party members: Kevin, Mark and Gabrielle. Jennifer was invited too, but had declined because she had just applied self-tanner and it was supposed to rain that night.

  “Sorry, man, I just can’t take Connecticut basketball seriously,” Mark said, shaking his head. “Connecticut doesn’t even have an NBA team. The Bay Area has the Golden State fucking Warriors! You’re telling me there’s a baller in Connecticut who holds a candle to Steph Curry?”

  Emily couldn’t help but notice how attractive all of David’s friends were. Was it just a coincidence? They were all good-looking in different ways, of course. Kevin was blond and boyish, David was dark-haired and chiseled, and Mark was black with a shaved head, a few inches of height on both the other men, and modelesque bone structure accented by a sharp pair of hipster glasses. She wondered if her friends’ appearances were a good way to gauge her own attractiveness. She hoped so, since she thought Jennifer and Gabrielle were quite pretty, but she also felt she had too few friends to have a reliable sample size. The only reason David had just two friends in his groomsmen party was that Emily only had two girlfriends and didn’t want the bridal and groomsmen parties to be embarrassingly uneven, further highlighting her social ineptitude.

  “There are plenty of great tri-state area ballers!” Kevin insisted. “And fuck San Francisco—at least we have seasons.”

  “You guys,” David said. “Jesus.”

  “You have a very oppositional streak, Mark,” Marla said, with a slightly flirtatious smile. “No wonder you’re a lawyer.”

  “He’s a doctor,” Emily said.

  “What do you do, Mrs. Glass?” Mark asked.

  “Dr. Glass, dear. I’m a psychologist.”

  “Oh, right! I think David told me. And you, Mr. Glass?”

  “Also Dr. Glass. I’m a professor.”

  “Oh. What’s your field?”

  “Asian history and religion. By the way, when you mentioned the Golden State Warriors, that reminded me of the Golden Warrior of Almaty in Kazakhstan. Are you familiar with it?”

  “No, not really.”

  “It’s a statue of a Scythian warrior that was recovered from a kurgan, or burial mound. It’s sometimes known by its Russian name, Zolotoi Chelovek. I wrote one of my more famous articles about it. If you’d like to know more, I should have a copy of it around here somewhere—”

  “Dad,” Emily interrupted. “Why don’t you tell Mark and Kevin about how you used to play basketball in high school? They’d love to hear about that.”

  “Oh, it was nothing,” Steven said, taking a bite of chicken, oblivious to the sauce dripping down his chin. “I was on the team, but I never got to play. I’m five foot nine—there wasn’t much demand for me.”

  “How tall are you, man?” Mark asked Kevin.

  “Six-two, you?”

  “Six-three. How about we find a court around here and play sometime this weekend? East versus West, the ultimate showdown.”

  “Sweetheart,” Gabrielle said, putting her hand on Mark’s. “Not now. I don’t want a repeat of the ‘Pluto isn’t a planet’ disaster.”

  “Pluto isn’t a planet,” Steven said.

  “Oh yes, we know,” Gabrielle said. “My mother, unfortunately, didn’t believe us, and the first time Mark met her, he debated her about it until she stormed out of the room.”

  “Oh, come on, babe, she didn’t storm out. And that’s not at all the same thing as a friendly competitive game of basketball.”

  “For you, ‘friendly’ and ‘competitive’ are often mutually exclusive. You get way too worked up and you need to win everything.”

  “Emily used to have a thing about planets,” Marla said, a smile creeping across her face. “Has she ever told you guys? When she was sixteen she saw some alien movie and she was convinced that they were planning an invasion. She said, ‘Just because there’s no proof of aliens doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’ I mean, I always knew she struggled with her fair share of irrational fears, but I was afraid she was going full-on tin-foil hat!”

  “Yes,” Steven said. “That’s crazy but all the people in the world who think a giant bearded man controls their lives are totally normal.”

  Gabrielle giggled. “Emily, is that true? Did you really believe in aliens?”

  Emily tried to hide her annoyance. “Mom, I think I heard Ariel calling for you upstairs.”

  “I thought he was asleep.”

  “He was, but on the baby monitor I kept hearing, ‘I want Grandma!’”

  “Really? He has severe stranger anxiety and has resisted spending time alone with me. How long ago was this?”

  “Just now.”

  “Mom,” Lauren said. “He actually has very normal levels of caution around strangers. Although I’ve noticed he can sometimes be uncomfortable around new white people. I try my best to expose him to as many people of color as possible, and he’s growing up with a very healthy fear of whiteness.”

  “Sounds healthy,” Jason said.

  Marla rushed upstairs. Steven put his plastic fork down. “American Chinese food isn’t really Chinese in any sense. It’s all sugary American versions of things most people in China never even eat.”

  No one responded. Emily tried a new subject. “So, Kevin, Jennifer texted me and
said she ran into you at the airport.”

  “Yeah. We wound up sharing a car. She’s gorgeous, by the way.”

  Bringing up Jennifer was a mistake. She wanted the conversation to end before people started raving about Jennifer’s looks. It was tiring to hear the inevitable cascade of compliments about Jennifer’s beauty every time she came up in conversation.

  “Ooh, a bridesmaid,” Jason said, digging into the greasy beef lo mein and plopping it on his plate. “She’s the hot one, right?”

  “No offense taken,” Gabrielle said, rolling her eyes in unison with Lauren.

  “You’re married and pregnant,” Jason said. “You weren’t even included in the ranking.”

  “Wow, there was a ranking!” Gabrielle laughed. “The more you know.”

  Lauren cleared her throat. “I want to push back against women of color such as Gabrielle being excluded from this so-called ranking.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” Jason said. “Besides, I’m pretty sure Jennifer is Indian.”

  “She’s not Indian,” Emily said, not sure why that was what she chose to take issue with.

  “What is she then?”

  “You’re fetishizing, Jason,” Lauren groaned, serving herself some tofu. “She’s a human being, not a commodity.” Emily nodded, although she was less concerned with Jason objectifying Jennifer than about having to field further questions about her hotness.

  “Seriously, though,” Jason said to Emily. “What is she?”

  “She’s half Greek and half Japanese.”

  “Hot. Is she single?”

  “Yes, but you’re not her type. She’s really picky. She likes super tall, rich guys her own age. Being a bald, divorced guy with a kid doesn’t strengthen your case.”

  “Tons of women don’t think I’m their type, but I turn it around.”

  “You turn what around?” Marla was back downstairs. “Ariel was not happy to see me, Emily. He started shouting uncontrollably as if he were having a night terror. Are you sure he actually called for me?”

  “Maybe I’m hearing things.”

  “No, you aren’t. You’re neurotic, not psychotic. You diagnose yourself with enough diseases you don’t have, please don’t add auditory hallucinations to the list.”

  “Your mom is hilarious!” Kevin said to Emily.

  “Yeah, she’s really subtle with it. So many people can’t tell she’s joking.”

  “I want to hear more about this Jason-Kevin-Jennifer love triangle,” Mark said.

  “It’s not a love triangle,” Jason said. “Kevin shared a cab with her but I’ve been watching her social media posts for months. Good luck catching up, kid.” He winked at Kevin.

  “Ooh, it’s heating up!” Mark rubbed his hands.

  “Stop trying to make everything a competition,” Gabrielle said snippily. She then softened her face and smiled at Kevin. “Frankly, Kevin, I think you’d be a great match for Jennifer.”

  “And not me?” Jason asked, in a tone that fell somewhere between “genuinely offended” and “only joking.”

  “Well, um... I...”

  “I don’t think you guys realize how malleable a woman’s attraction is,” Jason said. “How does Hugh Hefner get all these babes?” He reached out his hands to gesture “all these babes” but he inadvertently looked like he was referencing Lauren and Marla.

  “Money,” Emily said. “They’re basically sleeping with him for money.”

  “Wrong. Game. He’s alpha as shit. And that’s my strategy too—sure, I’m not the best-looking guy ever but I game women.” His pointer finger collided with the surface of the table for emphasis.

  “You mean manipulate women?” Lauren said, her mouth full of rice. “Or are you just drugging them?”

  “You’ll never catch me drugging anyone. I just game women better than they expect to be gamed.” He crossed his arms and sat back.

  “Sure, we’ll never catch you.” Lauren motioned to Emily as if asking for backup.

  “What about Sandy last night?” Emily said, temporarily much more annoyed with Jason than with Lauren, a feeling she knew would change within the hour. “You got her so drunk, she would have slept with anyone. That’s not game. If you had game, these women would be sober when they had sex with you.” She turned to Kevin. “We always joke around like this, don’t let it freak you out.”

  Kevin smiled. “My parents live in a Bermuda co-op for over-sixty swingers. I don’t think your family is going to freak me out.”

  “Whoa, is that a real thing?” Mark asked.

  “It is,” David said. “They have a branch in San Francisco with great Yelp reviews.”

  “Sandy and I didn’t have sex anyway,” Jason said to Emily quietly. “I went down on her and she fell asleep halfway through.” He gave her an irrationally self-satisfied smile.

  “Who’s Sandy?” Marla said. “Who’s going down on whom?” Emily recognized the pesky tone in Marla’s voice from when she was younger and Marla would go through Emily’s AIM buddy list asking her to identify screen names: Who is 2sexxy4maishirt? Who is yankeesrock33? Who is hottiebabe87? Who is blow_jay88? Who is gwenstefanifan8_08? Who is ieatpoop?

  “Jason brought some girl home last night,” said Lauren. “Some drunk girl from the bar.”

  “Jason, this is my home,” Marla said. “You do not bring street women into my home.”

  “To be fair, Mom,” Emily said, “she was just a normal drunk woman, not a prostitute. He didn’t bring a ‘street woman’ home.”

  “Still, I have some accent pieces from Chico’s and Peruvian Connection and I don’t want them to get stolen.”

  “This food is amazing,” Kevin said, attempting to ease the tension. “Thanks so much for having us.” Emily recognized something in Kevin that she’d seen in David the first day he arrived in Westchester—the eagerness, the willingness to please, the excessive politeness. It would all dissipate in time once the novelty of Marla’s free food and hospitality faded and her criticisms and dramatic declarations became more abundant. Emily gave Kevin two days with constant exposure to Marla before he stopped being so polite, or four days with occasional exposure.

  “So, Jason, what do you do?” Kevin asked. Emily wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed in anticipation of Jason’s inevitable WalkShare pitch, or to be relieved that Kevin had asked Jason about his career, and not Lauren. A Cunt Magazine pitch might be even worse.

  “Thanks for asking,” Jason said, swallowing a chunk of beef. “I run a social networking start-up called WalkShare. It’s sort of like Meetup on-the-go.”

  “That’s cool,” Kevin said. “What stage are you at?”

  “Right now we only have a small amount of angel funding, but I know you rub elbows with some of the fat cats in DC, and—”

  “Jason, the government doesn’t fund dating start-ups,” Emily said.

  “I know that. But Kevin is a well-connected dude regardless. I’ve seen his LinkedIn. Kevin, I don’t know what your situation is, but a small investment of just three thousand dollars could turn into a return of three hundred million dollars.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Kevin said as if he were talking to a college-aged Greenpeace canvasser.

  “My buddy Evan already got in on it.”

  “Nice, getting your first investor must be tough.”

  “Well, he hasn’t invested any quote-unquote ‘money’ yet. He promised he would invest twenty thousand in WalkShare if I invested a mere five thousand in his company. So once he has the money, I’m getting my money back and then some.”

  Kevin’s eyebrows rose. “What’s Evan’s company?”

  “Beardster.”

  “Beardster?”

  “It’s like Pinterest but for beards. It’s all photos, all beards, all the time. Over forty-seven downloads so far.”

  “Nice. Good luc
k to him. And to you too.”

  “We’re actually thinking of merging Beardster and WalkShare to create the next Grindr—a location-based dating app for gay bearded men. We might call it BearShare. The gays are an untapped market for this industry because there’s no restriction on sex. And you know why? No women. Women hold the key to sex and if you’re hetero, men have to climb Mount Everest to get to the pussy.”

  “Jason!” Marla said.

  “I’ve just got so many ideas, man,” he said. “They’re all just...flowing. All the time. I’m like a windmill, and the wind is all my ideas.”

  The phone in the kitchen rang. Marla got up, shaking her head. “So rude to call after eight, honestly. I have grandchildren sleeping upstairs! It’s probably the fucking Jehovah’s Witnesses. They have a points system, you know, and converting a Jew is the highest achievement for them.”

  “Do Jehovah’s Witnesses actually call you?” Mark asked. “I thought they just knocked on the door.”

  Marla waved her hand around. “They haven’t called yet, but clearly they’re getting more tech-savvy every day because that’s definitely them. Two of those maniacs were at our door just last month—this is their sick follow-up.” She walked into the kitchen and answered the phone.

  “Oh, Lisa. Hi! Well, yes, we’re all quite busy with Emily’s wedding... Oh, no offense taken, I’m aware you would be too busy to attend, that’s why I didn’t invite you. I didn’t want to make you feel obligated when I knew you had so much going on with those adorable antiques shows, and really, we had to keep it intimate, close family and friends only. I’m sure you understand. How has that—oh? Okay...really! And you call me about this at night? I have grandchildren upstairs, who, might I add, you’ve never met. Oh, okay. Right. Well, Lisa, this was terrible timing on your part. You really couldn’t wait until the wedding was over? Oh, well, of course, it’s what Mom would have wanted. Easy for you to say that when Mom is in an urn, how convenient for you. You know what, Lisa? I have to go. I’m with my family. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Marla walked back into the dining room. Her expression instantly changed from annoyance to deep devastation. “Pardon me, all,” she said, in an unnecessarily formal tone. “My beloved aunt Ellen, who was more of a mother to me than my own mother, who I’ll admit was a narcissist but that’s beside the point...she has...sadly...passed on.” She hung her head.