Congratulations On Everything

by Nathan Whitlock

“Thank you, at least.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Jeremy asked. “Do you have one?”

  “Well, we’ve still got more chicken, we’ve got all this salad still, and I think there’s a pie warming up. I’m definitely going to have some more of this beer you brought.”

  “You have a meeting, remember.”

  “I mean plans for the money from Estelle.”

  “The money?” Brian seemed surprised that Jeremy had heard about it, despite it being the reason for the cele­bration. “It’s still a little early to be making any decisions, I guess.”

  “Well, I’ve made some decisions,” Marie said, straight­ening in her chair. She wanted to completely renovate the house, she said. They’d been feeling cramped lately, now that there were five of them. She talked about expanding the kids’ playroom, knocking out the wall between the dining room and the living room, and putting an addition on the kitchen so that it would finally be big enough to fit an island in the middle, something she’d always wanted.

  “Your house is going to look like it’s busting out all over. You might as well get a bigger place.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t leave here. I love my little faux farm.”

  She moved over to sit on Brian’s lap and started nuzzling him. Logan moved to the kitchen floor, where there were newspaper-sized sheets of sketch paper on which he drew scenes of tiny armies slaughtering each other on hills and in vast caves loaded with missile launchers. The dishes vanished from the table, and in their place was a bowl of raspberries that looked as though they had been picked in the middle of a light rain less than an hour earlier, from a hidden patch that maybe only Brian and some bears knew about. Jeremy picked one out and brought it to his mouth, where he held it for a moment, as if struck by a sudden thought.

  “All the stuff you have planned makes me even more sure that I need to spruce the Shack up a little. It’s humming along really nicely, but I’ve got a big list of things I want to do to really fire it up.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Brian said, watching his son draw as if the boy were a kitten in the midst of cleaning itself.

  “Exactly. It’s like anything else, though: once you’ve finally got all the day-to-day stuff covered, there’s no time for anything more long-term. Even if you’re firing on all cylinders, you’re still only going to be able to do so much. But I do have some ideas, and ideas are the greatest natural power source that has ever been discovered.”

  “Don’t start quoting that Hendra guy,” Marie said.

  “Wasn’t planning to.”

  “Mom, do I have to go to bed now?” Logan’s eyes were red and half-closed. He looked as though he’d had more to drink than the rest of them.

  “You probably should, buddy.”

  “Good night, Hulk Hogan!”

  “Don’t call him that, Jeremy. He doesn’t know who that is, and I don’t really want him to.”

  “Who’s Hunk Hogan?”

  “He was a boring guy who looked stupid and talked like a big idiot and didn’t do anything important,” Marie said. “That’s all you need to know. Now let’s go, mister.”

  She took the boy upstairs. As soon as they’d left the room, Brian took out his phone and began tapping at it. He had some kind of finger painting program on it, and he wanted to show Jeremy the digital pictures he’d been making with the kids. Each one looked like a puddle of melted ice cream, but Jeremy made the appropriate noises of appreciation. For a while they sat there in silence while Brian grinned at the tiny screen.

  “So, you’re a rich man now, eh? Richer.”

  He expected Brian to laugh, but instead, his brother-in-law put down his drink and gave the darkened kitchen window a thoughtful look. “I’ve never been sure what rich means. I’ve never in my life stopped and said, I’m rich. I don’t really think about it.”

  That’s because you’re rich.

  “And it’s not like Marie and I don’t worry. It’s not like we don’t sit down here and try to figure out how we’re going to cover everything. I still have to work hard to make sure we’re okay.”

  “That’s the way to do it. People who just live off someone else’s money – it does something to their heads. I see people like that sometimes in the bar. You can tell right away. They’re not from the same planet.”

  “If I had the choice between the money and having my mother still alive, I’m not going to pick the money. As it is, I wouldn’t have cared if I’d gotten none of it.”

  Jeremy knew that wasn’t true: the inheritance was originally supposed to have been shared out equally between all three brothers, but the youngest was living in a kind of commune in Northern Quebec and had renounced all connections to his family years ago. He sent a letter refusing the money. They talked about putting it all in a trust in case he changed his mind, but Brian’s lawyer told him the letter could be considered formal enough for legal purposes, and that he and the other brother might as well split up the youngest brother’s share. So they did, though not without a few weeks’ worth of legal wrangling and lawyers’ letters. The other brother wasn’t onside at first with the idea – he wanted their younger brother’s share to be given to charity, maybe something to do with heart disease, which was what had killed their father. Marie had given Jeremy frequent updates as to the progress of the battle. She talked about the money as if it were a child they were adopting from some third world country, a fragile thing that did not deserve to be put at the mercy of lawyers and paperwork and courts.

  “I know so many people who would get money like this and blow it all in about six months,” Jeremy said.

  “I’d have Estelle’s ghost after me if I lost it like that.”

  “Exactly – she knew what she was doing. She was no dummy.”

  “She was a tough woman,” Brian said.

  “She was tough, and she knew money was useless unless you were doing something useful with it.”

  Brian raised his glass for a toast: “To the root of all evil.”

  “And to seeing the war, while everyone else sees the battle,” Jeremy said, raising his own glass.

  Brian paused with his glass at his mouth. “That’s a weird one,” he said.

  He began to stroke his phone again, checking texts and emails. Jeremy slipped his own phone out of his pocket and took a peek. The Shack had called twice, but there was no voice mail message, which meant that whatever perceived emergency had been avoided or cleaned up.

  “How’s that beer, Brian – not bad, eh?”

  “Have to say it: this is good stuff.”

  “Have another one.” Jeremy stretched himself as casually as he could. “You know, one thing you could do is take a closer look at the bar.”

  “Which bar? Yours? Why? What’s going on there?”

  “No, I mean as an investment.”

  Brian laughed. “Sure. I should buy a bar. Marie would love that.”

  “I don’t mean buy it, but maybe stash some money there, away from the tax vultures. It wouldn’t even be that much.”

  “Ah. I’m pretty sure Marie has plans for the money. I know she wants to put a lot of it away for the kids.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m suggesting this. The Shack is as solid as a bank, with a better return. When they’re ready to start heading off to college –”

  “University.”

  “Right, exactly. And when they’re ready to go, here comes Uncle Jeremy with a bag of cash in each hand.”

  Brian laughed again and said that he liked that idea, at least, but honestly doubted they’d be able to make the rest of it happen.

  “I know about as much about running a bar as I do about the dark side of the moon. Probably less, actually. That’s your world, and I envy you for it.”

  “You envy me?”

  “I never had one of those jobs,” Brian said. “A service job. I ne
ver waited tables or tended bar or any of that. It always looked like a blast. I think it would’ve been fun to do for a summer or two.”

  “Try doing it the rest of the year. For 30-plus years. It’s been a total blast.”

  “Yeah well, I don’t know that I’d be totally happy doing that. But you’d probably be bored stiff doing what I do, too – sitting and staring at computer screens, trying to make the colours look exactly right. Adjusting type sizes and leading.”

  “I have no idea what leading is.”

  “Exactly.”

  Jeremy smiled, happy to let Brian sprinkle his superiority around with practiced casualness. His brother-in-law had been born rich, and would die rich, no matter what he did. Money went where it knew it would not be alone, not where it was needed, because it didn’t want to be needed. It wanted a life of comfort, and could sniff out the people who could give it that. It would rub up against their legs and purr. It had sniffed out Marie and Brian, and had settled in. It settled into the very skin of their children, giving them the warm, dumb glow of people who already knew, instinctively, that they didn’t have to worry about much, who already knew there were no cars or trucks bearing down on them, who knew they would be warned about every hole in the road ahead – warned, and then lifted gently over. If he went upstairs and fell asleep in one of their little beds, he wondered, would the money settle on him, too? No, money could smell desperation. You couldn’t just ask for it, you couldn’t grab at it.

  Jeremy heard the floor upstairs creak: Marie was moving around, checking on kids. He’d hoped she might fall asleep in Logan’s bed. She sometimes did that when they had company over and she drank too much wine.

  “The thing is, the Shack is humming along pretty nicely right now,” Jeremy said. “It just needs an extra shot in the arm, a bit of turbo fuel to really get to the next level. You know what it feels like when you have so many ideas you want to make happen.”

  “When I have too many ideas about how to do something, that’s usually a sign I need to go for a walk or a drive. Or take the kids swimming.”

  “Oh, absolutely. Totally, totally. But listen: the fact that you’ve got three kids means you can’t just sit around and hope for the best. You have to find somewhere to put it that will pay off for you.”

  Marie came back in the room, moving more slowly than before. “Are we still talking about money?” she asked. “I don’t want to talk about money. The kids are asleep, so I want to talk about grown-up things, I want to talk about sex – I get about an hour a day when I can pretend I’m an actual adult. Who are you fucking this week, big brother?”

  “Whoa,” Brian said, laughing.

  “Oh, I never kiss and tell.”

  “Such a liar. Every time I see you, you’ve got some new thing going on, some new waitress or somebody. Who is it now?”

  “Swear to God, I’m on my own right now. Too much on my plate.”

  “Yeah right. I know what you’ve been putting on your plate.”

  “Okay now,” Brian said.

  “Who’s that one I met when I was in there for lunch that time with my friend Mel? She’s got big eyes, a little chunky. Not the old one, not Patty.”

  “Oh, I remember Patty,” Brian said. He and his wife shared a private joke.

  Jeremy pretended to think. “That was probably Charlene.”

  “Really nice cleavage. Even Mel was jealous, and her tits are huge.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m not saying it’s bad! It’s just a fact!”

  “Charlene’s great, but not really my type. For one thing, she’s really young.”

  “Does that ever stop you?”

  “The other thing is she’s been married since forever. Her husband is a real piece of work, actually.”

  Marie sucked at her teeth. “Oh, don’t tell me he’s a bully. I friggin hate that. I hate guys like that. He doesn’t hit her, does he?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. At least I hope not. No, I really doubt it. His problem is more that he’s got his asshole sewn shut.”

  “Okay, I hate that, too.” She recovered the half-full glass of wine she’d left on the table. “So boring. You’d almost rather be with someone who gives you a smack every now and then. At least you get to have crazy make-up sex. And they feel so guilty they go down on you for like an hour.”

  “Jesus, Marie.”

  “I’m joking! I love boring guys!” She poked her finger playfully into the centre of her husband’s chest. “If you tried to hit me, I’d run you over with the car. I really would. Twice. I’d back over your corpse and be out of here so fast . . .”

  Brian looked offended. “I have been in one fight my entire life, when I was 11. I tried to hit a guy because he was picking on my little brother. I got a single punch in, and he demolished me. One punch, my entire life.”

  “That’s why you go for their balls,” she said, kicking her leg out and nearly sending an empty chair clattering across the room. “You kick them where the sun don’t shine so they don’t get up again. That’s what I always did.”

  “When were you in a fight?”

  Marie straightened up in her chair and flexed her thin, yoga-hardened muscles at him. “I’ve had a few unfriendly encounters. I can take care of myself. You remember Cory,” she said in Jeremy’s direction. “That guy I dated in high school? You met him at Christmas once.”

  “Vaguely.” The name sounded familiar, but all Jeremy could conjure up was a neon green ski jacket with half a dozen crumpled lift passes attached to the zipper. “Did he ski?”

  “That’s him! That’s the little gaylord!”

  Brian made a noise of exasperation. “Marie, come on. Seriously?”

  “Oh, he was. He came out of the closet in university. I looked him up on Facebook – he looks like a male stripper now. He’d do well, actually – he was hung like a butcher.”

  “Fuck’s sake.” Brian got up to put away some of the food and picked up Logan’s paper and pencil crayons from the floor.

  “So you kicked him in the balls for liking guys?” Jeremy asked.

  Marie screwed up her face. “Come on, give me some credit. I had all kinds of gay friends in school. People you didn’t even know were gay, I bet.”

  “Good for you.”

  “It was good for me. Very good for me. I learned a few things about –” She jammed an invisible cock in her mouth and made her cheek bulge out with her tongue.

  Her husband crossed his arms with righteous anger. “My lawyer is gay. He’s one of the sharpest guys I know.” Jeremy and Marie ignored him.

  “So why’d you kick him?”

  “Because we were sitting in his dad’s car fighting about something, and he just reaches over – ” Marie, laughing so hard that tears appeared in her eyes, slammed her hand down on the table like she was winning an arm-wrestling match. “Smacks my head right on the dashboard! Seriously! I got out of the car and he tried to follow me to apologize. I turned around and got my knee right in there, right in his crotch, as hard as I could. I thought for a second I’d busted them. I wish I had. He threw up.”

  Jeremy and Brian stared silently at Marie while she struggled to stop laughing.

  “Good for you,” Jeremy said, quietly and sincerely.

  Marie dabbed at her eyes with a paper towel, then blew her nose. “Well, it was fun sometimes, probably because he wasn’t always trying to get into my pants. And, you know . . .” She spread her hands apart. “I think he just lost his mind for a second.”

  “I think the whole idea is messed up beyond belief,” Brian said. “The idea of hitting your wife or girlfriend. I have trouble sometimes even thinking about it. That time you told me about, when your father threatened your mother in the car – I still think about that sometimes. It’s hard to believe.”

  Marie bristled slightly and took a lon
g drink of wine. “He never would’ve done anything.”

  Jeremy had no idea what Brian was talking about. “What is this? Gord threatened Anne?”

  Brian turned to his wife, who suddenly looked guilty. “We were coming home from some backyard party,” she said to Jeremy, in a slow, even voice, as if giving evidence. “They were both a little drunk, so I was driving – I had just got my licence. Gord was pissed off about something. You know him: he’s talking shit. He wouldn’t have done anything.”

  “I don’t know – people can surprise you,” Brian said. “Even Gordon.”

  “What did he say? I’ve literally never heard this.”

  Marie sat up in her chair. “People are surprising,” she said to Brian. “Remember when we were visiting your mom the time Logan threw up in the car, and you took him to the hotel to put him in the shower? I was sitting there waiting for you to get back, and your mother starts saying all this shit about how fathers were different when she was a kid, and how her dad used to beat the crap out of her brothers, all your uncles. He used to slap them on the ears and hold them against the wall.”

  “I’d heard that,” Brian said quietly. “My Uncle Roger used to joke about it. It wasn’t as bad as that. Everybody hit their kids back then.”

  “Oh, Uncle Roger. Uncle Roger was a peach. He was the one who used to throw you and your brothers into the middle of the lake and drive off with the boat, wasn’t he?”

  “He thought it was funny. There were always people around watching us. Roger would’ve come back if we were in any real trouble. We were good swimmers.”

  “Lucky for him.”

  “It was just a bad joke.”

  “Sometimes good jokes go bad,” Jeremy said.

  “That’s what smacking kids around does,” Marie said. “It turns them into cruel assholes who almost drown kids as a joke.”

  “Uncle Roger wasn’t a cruel asshole. My dad definitely wasn’t. He didn’t hit people. He never even threatened anyone, as far as I know.”

  “Oh, really?” A look of evil triumph appeared in Marie’s eyes. She cocked her head at him and opened her eyes wide, waiting.