Within Arm's Reach

by Ann Napolitano

  LILA

  Gram, Gracie, Uncle Ryan, and I have been alone in the kitchen for nearly twenty minutes. Mom and Dad have disappeared somewhere. They’re probably fighting. The only one who has spoken—apart from “Will you hand me the sugar?” or “Is the oven at the right temperature?”—is Ryan, and he is not someone you can hold a conversation with. We have been rolling out cookie dough, cutting it into the shapes of eggs and rabbits, and placing it in the oven. I have the most muscle, so I roll the dough. Gram and Ryan sit at the kitchen table wielding cookie cutters. Gracie mans the oven, sliding in and pulling out trays. The room smells of sweetness and holidays and warmth.

  Only our silence cuts through that aroma, running from each of us in pointed directions. Gracie hasn’t had much to say to me since I told her I was moving out at the end of the week. Gracie also seems to be avoiding Gram, not looking directly at her, not speaking to her. And Gram is keeping to herself, bent over the trays of dough. It is hard to tell if her silence is deliberate or if she’s just not in the mood to talk. And, as for me, what’s the point of opening my mouth?

  I figure it’s to my credit that I’m at least aware that I am in a bad mood, and that it’s probably best that I keep quiet. I’m exhausted because I was on call last night and got only two hours of sleep. Things are getting worse at the hospital. I can’t seem to say the right thing to the patients, no matter how hard I try. And Belinda has been testing what little patience I have left.

  Also, I am in no mood for the boredom and the stress of one of these gatherings. The fact that it’s taking place here means Gracie and I had to spend long hours cleaning and that I can’t even leave early. Besides, it’s best to come to these family events feeling focused and sure of yourself because together the McLaughlins tend to shake one another up. You have to be ready, and today I am not. I wish I was already in my new apartment, where I could close and triple-lock the door and enjoy some peace and quiet.

  Mom stops just inside the kitchen and raises her hands dramatically in the air. We look over obediently. “Well,” she says, “here you are doing all this work and I found your father napping in front of the TV.”

  “I was watching the news,” Dad says. He rubs the back of his neck with his hand. “What can I do to help?”

  “Television is evil,” Ryan says.

  My father seems to notice Ryan for the first time. His face brightens, and he says, “I just bought your building.”

  “What do you mean?” Mom says. “The building Ryan lives in? When?”

  Dad is smiling to himself, his arms folded over his chest. His posture is now straight, a change from a few seconds earlier. “I got the place for a song. The structure of the building is decent, but it needs a lot of work. The previous owner hasn’t put a dime into it over the last twenty years.”

  “Vince is right,” my mother says, “you are buying up all of Ramsey. Why wouldn’t you tell me that you bought my own brother’s building?”

  “That’s Dad’s business, Mom,” I say. “It’s not personal.”

  “He’s doing really well,” Gracie says. “You should be happy for him.”

  “Girls,” Gram says.

  “Girls,” my father says, shaking his head.

  Mom looks appropriately squelched. Her skinny shoulders drop and I feel guilty. But the temptation to knock her down comes on so strong, it is almost impossible to resist. I can see from the way Gracie is playing with her hair, twisting and pulling it, that she feels badly, too.

  There is a sudden noise in the corner of the room, a tapping sound. Ryan is patting the arms of his wheelchair. As soon as the sound begins, Gram is on her feet and moving around the table toward him. Ryan’s lips have gone white from biting them.

  “My building,” he says.

  Gram leans over him. She says, “You can stay in your apartment, Ryan, I promise. Can’t he, Louis? Nothing will change. This is good news, actually. Your building will be owned by family. Louis didn’t mean to surprise you like that. Everything is fine.”

  We all watch, frozen, as Gram soothes her son.

  “Yes,” Dad says, “of course you’ll stay in your apartment. Sorry if there was any misunderstanding, Ryan. I’m just going to fix it up, that’s all. No need for you to worry. Just a little fix-up.”

  “A fix-up,” Ryan repeats. “I won’t have to move?”

  “No,” Dad says.

  “I promise,” Gram says.

  The tension in the room diminishes, just in time for the party to start.

  THE FIRST hour or two of these family gatherings are always torturous. We see one another once, maybe twice a year. We are family, but we have very little in common except that we are all terrible at small talk. We search one another’s eyes, trying to communicate something of who we really are while we have strained discussions about the weather, politics, our jobs, or absent family members. But today the entire McLaughlin clan is here, so we’ve lost one topic of conversation.

  This is the first time we’ve had full attendance in ten years, since Papa died. While he was alive, there was no thought of missing a family gathering. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone, not even Uncle Pat. His presence removed all choice. But now, with Papa gone, family is an option, and somehow that changes the way we regard one another. At these gatherings we size one another up and glance for the nearest exit and wonder, Why are you here? Why am I here?

  We have appetizers outside on the back porch. It’s a nice day, but not warm enough for people to take off their coats. We find seats (the catering company left lots of folding chairs) and eat buffalo wings and Cheddar with crackers and raw vegetables with dip.

  I sit with Gracie on one side of me and Angel on the other. Angel is a sad-looking woman in her early forties. As far as I know, she is sad for two reasons: one, because she is married to my uncle Johnny, who is very depressed and hardly ever speaks, and two, because she has been unable to conceive a child despite years of fertility treatments. I usually try to avoid Angel, as I find her sadness contagious. She sighs a lot.

  I have barely taken a bite of a cracker before Angel leans in. What I’ve been dreading the most is about to begin. Ever since the moment I declared premed as my major in college, my aunts and uncles have considered me a medical expert. No matter what I say, my family refuses to give up their grossly mistaken belief that wanting to be a doctor is the exact same thing as being one.

  “Lila,” Angel says, her voice so soft it is almost a whisper, “I’ve been having these pains in my lower back. What do you think it could be?”

  Theresa, seated on the other side of Angel, joins in. Her black Farrah Fawcett waves bounce in my direction as she says, “My Mary’s been suffering from terrible menstrual cramps. Is that normal for someone her age?”

  My whole body hurts. My aunts sound like patients, like the men and women whining at me from their hospital beds. I can’t help any of them. There is nothing I can do.

  “Mom.” Mary is suddenly nearby, gripping one of the three crosses around her neck. “Don’t talk about that, please. You’re embarrassing me.”

  I clear my throat and give them my usual spiel. “I’m not a doctor yet. You should really ask your physician for advice.” But they keep looking at me as if I have a direct line to God. I hear myself give one of Angel’s sighs. “I assume you’ve both tried Advil?”

  “Yes,” Angel says.

  “Morning and night,” Theresa says, her hand on Mary’s knee.

  Meggy passes by on her way to the food. “What’s the point of having a doctor in the family if you can’t get free advice?”

  “I’m not a doctor,” I say. “I’m still a fucking student. Will you all please hear that for once?”

  “Lila,” my mother says, from the other side of the porch. “Your language!”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, but my aunts look unfazed. I expect Travis to add insult to injury and ask me about his bum knee, but he is busy talking to my cousin John.

  Aunt Meggy starts to
complain to the group at large about the traffic she hit driving up here. She says three times that she will have to head out early in order to be in her bed before midnight. Aunt Theresa reaches out and smoothes Mary’s hair away from her face until Mary stands up and crosses to the opposite side of the porch. Angel, keeping an eye on Uncle Johnny, praises the food while taking small nibbles from a buffalo wing. Mom makes her usual joke about how she has spent hours slaving over a hot stove to make this meal. Dad doesn’t say much; he hardly ever speaks at these family gatherings. He keeps his eyes on Mom to make sure she is okay, but that is his only involvement.

  I notice that the porch is already a mess, particularly around Aunt Meggy and Uncle Travis. Travis has somehow managed to drop three entire rolls off his plate, and not bothered to pick any of them up. He has also lost a handful of green beans to the wooden porch floor. He is obviously more concerned with taking care of his beer can than with holding his plate steady. And Aunt Meggy keeps picking food off Aunt Theresa’s plate because she is too lazy to get up and refill her own. While transferring crackers and forkfuls of cheese spread, she has also managed to drop a fair amount of food.

  “Can you believe that we have to clean up after these people?” I whisper to Gracie. “I don’t have time to spend a day scrubbing the damn floors. I have work to do.”

  Gracie just shakes her head. She seems intent on being quiet to the point of invisibility. She might as well have not shown up. She and I are usually allies at these events. We rarely leave each other’s side. We roll our eyes at each other, and whisper jokes about Uncle Travis and our cousin John. We rescue each other from boring conversations, and from the moments that sometimes arise when one of our aunts or uncles asks a question that is far too personal. But today Gracie has made it clear that she will not engage. I’ve never maneuvered my way through one of these family events without my sister, and I can’t believe she is going to make me start now without so much as an apology.

  I turn my back to her and try to pay attention to the stilted group conversation. Uncle Ryan, still patting the arms of his wheelchair, tells us that Dad bought his building, but that it’s all right because he will not have to move out. Uncle Johnny, during the half hour when we are going around the porch giving a sentence or two about how our job/school is going, tells us in excruciating detail about a new super-powered, mega-memoried computer he just bought.

  “Mega-memory,” Dina, Meggy’s daughter, says, “just like Lila. A smart computer and a smarty-pants.”

  I smile at Dina. This is the other side of our family gathering’s polite conversation—small jabs and burns. Dina is at her third high school in as many years due to disciplinary problems. She is a mean kid, but, by the unspoken rules of the family, she is allowed to cut at me and I’m not allowed to respond. The reason is that I have been more fortunate then she has by drawing Mom as a parent instead of Aunt Meggy. I was raised with money and privileges and Dina was not. So, no matter what Dina says to me, I’m supposed to take it.

  To distract myself, I think about the review for my oncology rotation. I give myself thirty seconds to come up with as many different kinds of cancer as possible. Uterine, throat, colon, ovarian, esophageal, cervical, prostate, skin, pancreatic, liver, lung, breast, brain.

  The rest of the family gives a forced smile to Dina’s comment, and then the subject is swiftly changed. As in all awkward moments, Mom turns to Uncle Pat, who sits, tall and thin, in the corner of the porch next to Gram, and offers him more food. She doesn’t seem to notice that his plate is still full from the first serving she gave him. Uncle Pat is in his third marriage, to a woman named Louise, but he showed up today alone without an explanation. Gram keeps touching his arm, and Uncle Johnny gives him a wave from the other end of the porch whenever they make eye contact. I think Uncle Pat reminds everyone of Papa, which is ironic since Papa hated Pat. But in a family of nervous, awkward, quiet people, Pat holds his quiet with a kind of peace. I don’t look down on my mom for her idol worship of him. It seems understandable. When I was younger I used to fight my cousins for a seat on Uncle Pat’s lap. I once gave my cousin John three silver dollars out of the silver-dollar collection in my mother’s underwear drawer just so I could sit in the front seat of Uncle Pat’s car when we went for ice cream.

  It is Uncle Pat who initiates the next phase in the gathering, which is when the kids separate from the adults. This is a crucial phase because it is when the drinkers start to drink and the mood of the event changes, but I hate this phase. I grew up with my cousins, but we are so different now and unfamiliar with one another.

  Pat says, “I thought I saw some cookies in the kitchen that still need to be decorated.”

  “Oh yes.” Mom claps her hands. “Why doesn’t everyone under thirty go into the kitchen and take care of that very important job?”

  The family smirks at Gracie as she stands up, twenty-nine years old and the one who each year raises the bar for us all. It is a running joke that is not that funny. Last year it was “Why doesn’t everyone under twenty-nine go and do so and so . . .” There is the sense that if only Gracie didn’t keep getting older, then maybe the cousins would all still be little kids, laughing and talking and loving one another before we absorbed the rules of the McLaughlin family and shut up and grew up. During our childhood the family gatherings were very different. Papa was still alive, of course. Gram was young and energetic. Possibility was in the air for all of us. Everyone misses those lost times, in a way. And with that lame joke, each year that loss is pinned on my sister.

  “So, we’re being ordered around in our own house?” I say, in a half-joking tone. I don’t really see the point in fighting. This is the way these evenings unfold. I can’t see any other way.

  “You’re moving out,” Gracie says. “It’s not your house.”

  “You heard Uncle Pat,” my mother says. “Off you go.”

  Obediently, we kids file into the kitchen, having outgrown our use to our parents. Gracie and I lead the group. Then there is Dina, wearing a too-short skirt that Gram has already commented on, along with Theresa’s daughter, Mary, and her son, John.

  Gracie gets the tubes of colored frosting out of the refrigerator, and I get the sprinkles and the Red Hots and the pastel Easter mini-M&M’s out of the pantry. The cookies, stacked on cooling racks, are already on the table. We sit down to work.

  John can’t take the quiet for long. He picks up the biggest and best-looking rabbit cookie and bites its head off. “Mmmm,” he says loudly. “This is some good shit, these cookies.” Then he laughs with his mouth open so we can all see the chewed remains of the rabbit’s head.

  This is the way John has talked ever since he was twelve years old. He is nineteen now and still everything is “good shit” or “bad shit”; every sentence is prefaced by an “Oh man.” Gracie and I have a running bet on whether John is stoned all the time or just stupid. I actually think he’s both, but Gracie thinks he’s just stupid. I once heard Gram say to herself when she thought no one was listening, that she was glad Papa had died before it was clear what kind of man his only grandson would be.

  Gracie and I exchange a look now—stupid or stoned?—our first real communication of the day, as Dina says, “John, you are so repulsive!”

  Mary looks at the ceiling, which is, to her, heavenward. She is fourteen and claims she wants to become a nun. I suspect it is because you can move into a nunnery when you’re sixteen, and Mary just wants to get away from her family as quickly as possible.

  Gracie, who seems more relaxed away from the adults, tries to make polite conversation. She says, “Uncle Ryan seems to be getting worse, don’t you think?”

  “Oh man, he gives me the creeps big time,” John says.

  “I don’t know why they don’t lock him up,” Dina says.

  “Because he’s not a danger to himself or anyone else,” I say.

  “I wonder who pays his bills,” Mary says. “I don’t think Gram can afford it.”

  Th
is is a question we’ve asked, in our cousin mini-gatherings, for years. “I bet they all chip in,” Gracie says. “And his church probably helps, too.”

  “The shoreless lake,” Dina says, squirting red frosting eyebrows onto a rabbit cookie.

  “The what?”

  “That’s the name of his cult church, the Shoreless Lake. It’s such a weird name, I could hardly forget it.”

  We are quiet over our cookies. I picture a shoreless lake, calm water stretching on and on, the land always receding in the distance, forever unreachable. I speed up my decorating, to try to block out the image.

  “That church gives me the creeps, too, big time,” John says, and then eats the cookie he just finished decorating.

  We nod in agreement, and Mary’s crosses jingle around her neck.

  Just then there is a burst of laughter from the porch. It is intense and a little hysterical. We all recognize the sound. It means that the McLaughlins are now drunk enough, loose enough, to start telling stories from their childhood. Their stories are about outwitting baby-sitters and being rescued from the top branch of a tree by the fire department, and breaking bones falling off roofs and bloodletting battles between siblings over stolen wedding dresses and prom dates. There is nearly always some violence and the stakes are always high. My mother, Uncle Pat, Aunt Meggy, Aunt Theresa, Uncle Johnny, and even Uncle Ryan tell of a vibrant childhood and adolescence when life was lived right down to the bone.

  My cousins and I used to love to hear those stories. When Gracie, John, Dina, Mary, and I were little, we would run to the room where our parents were when we heard that particular shout of laughter. We would crouch at the door, or behind a table, and listen as the stories were told, happy to picture our parents living such large lives. But at some point, as we got a little older, we began to hear the stories from a different angle, and with less pleasure. We realized that our parents and their brothers and sisters had lived those stories when they were our age, and that we had nothing to compare in our own lives. Our problems were normal and boring; we couldn’t come up with one exciting, knee-slapping story among us. We had fewer brothers and sisters, fewer brawls, fewer secrets. Our lives were not shaped by unbreakable Catholic rules and inescapable Irish history. We began to feel small, and although we never voiced the decision, at some point we simply stopped running toward the sound of the McLaughlins’ laughter. We stayed where we were, just out of earshot, and kept on doing whatever it was we had been told to do.