by Anthology
Which was why she refused to leave Renee alone even in the bathtub.
Harlan gestured toward the front door. “I will be happy to change your mind. Have I told you how lovely you look tonight?”
“Your compliments do nothing to sway me, mister. You can keep them to yourself.”
She didn’t get a chance to reprimand him further. Her arm wrapped around Renee and the baby balanced on her hip, she plastered a smile on her face when the door opened.
“You’re late.” A dark-haired woman Olympia could only assume was Harlan’s mother stood with her hands on either side of the door frame, one eyebrow raised, and more attitude in human form than physically possible. A loose braid hung down past her chest, standing out against her golden complexion.
Instead of looking chastised, Harlan stepped forward to loop his arms over her shoulders. “Didn’t you know?” he said as he lifted her off her feet. “Whenever I arrive is the right time. That’s the way it’s always been.”
She slapped at his back to be put down, her gaze falling on Olympia. “You brought a girlfriend?”
“Client,” Olympia and Harlan said at the same time. The scrutinizing glance his mother shot her sent a flash of color rising to her cheeks. She refused to give in to any kind of awkwardness or embarrassment. She could handle Carl on his worst days. Which meant she was primed for this kind of outing. Despite noticing the sweat on her palms.
“Olympia Trumbald,” she said by way of introduction, “and this is Renee.”
“Evelyn.” The squat beauty holding the spoon, Olympia now saw, took them both in with a quick and calculating head to toe sweep before stepping aside. “Well, come on in. This one might not think he’s late, but the meatloaf is done and everyone is starving waiting for him. You know how your father gets when his dinner is late. He is mad at you.”
Harlan gestured for Olympia to follow him, not in the least bothered by his mother’s smack talk. “He’ll be fine. It will give him a little break from filling up so quickly and making himself sick.”
The second they stepped through the door into the interior of the home, they were met with a blast of sound. It was similar to a crowded restaurant, she thought. A very crowded restaurant, one where everyone was yelling over each other to be heard.
Evelyn shot her a curious look when she tried to slip into the dining room unannounced, as though hoping no one would notice her presence.
Not quite.
The conversation didn’t exactly halt when the group saw a new face. More like the volume went down a few notches. The scrutiny she’d seen on Evelyn’s face was a shared trait, apparently.
“Hello.” Olympia went for polite if reserved, wondering again why she’d agreed to come.
There were too many names to remember. Too many faces to try to keep straight and too many relationships and backstories and hugs. So. Many. Hugs.
She lost sight of Renee almost instantly, the child swept away into the eager and caring arms of Harlan’s sisters, Beatrix and Diane. They looked similar enough that she wondered if she’d have a hard time keeping them straight. Both were dressed in black blouses with cutouts on the sleeves and little silver embellishments near the shoulders, their sandy-colored hair pulled behind their ears in matching loose buns.
Unconsciously, her attention pulled in a thousand directions at once, Olympia reached out to take Harlan’s hand, her life preserver in an unfamiliar sea. He laced his fingers through hers and continued through the introductions. There were siblings and cousins, his father—a thin and slightly balding man with a small beer belly and a permanent impish smile—and even a few neighbors thrown in for good measure. Maybe she should have brought Mama Nunez over after all. What was one more person in an already packed house?
Olympia tried to count heads and found she came up with a different number each time.
It was party madness. It was more people packed into one room than sardines in a can.
She took a seat at the head of the table and was instantly presented with a glass of wine and a plate heaped with more food than she’d eaten in the last three weeks combined. Glancing over at Harlan for confirmation, he shrugged and mouthed for her to just go with it. None of the others were intimidated by the portions or the people. For them, this was normal. For her, it was a different game entirely. She was used to being alone or at most a small family gathering where there were two to four people around a table.
“Mr. Anderson,” Olympia said during a lull. Which, she’d come to find out, was a rarity in this family. “How long have you been interested in collecting decoys?” She gestured with her fork to the impressive display of brightly painted wooden mallards in the nearby cupboard.
“Thank you for noticing! All my life.” Reginald—AKA Reggie, AKA Pop—let his fist fall to the table with an excited bang, his woolly-worm eyebrows waggling in excitement. “It was my father who got me into the mallards. We used to go duck hunting together. Real family bonding.”
“No one wants to hear about your ducks.” Evelyn brought a steaming heap of corn from the kitchen and set it down in the middle of the table, jerking her hands out of the way moments before the horde lunged for a share. “They’re the bane of my existence.”
“Well, she did ask,” he replied grandly.
“Daddy is a bit of a hoarder, you could say,” Beatrix offered, looking pleased with herself. A miniature version of Evelyn without the spoon. “You think the mallards are bad? You should see the garage. It’s the one little area Mom lets him hoard to his heart’s content. There aren’t any available spaces anymore. There are stacks of old newspapers, glass bottles…”
Evelyn sent her oldest daughter a stern look before taking a seat at the opposite end of the table. “You don’t need to air our dirty laundry right away, Bea. Let her get comfortable first before you bombard her with information. Now.” She laced her hands in front of her and trained that stern look on Olympia. “We’ve been expecting you for a few weeks, Oly. It’s taken you a long time to show.”
“It’s Olympia,” she corrected, squirming under the attention.
“Harlan has been telling us all about his new client and how she’s been putting him through the wringer.” She leaned closer. “Have you been hard on my boy?”
Olympia swallowed the bite of meatloaf, hoping to goodness she wouldn’t choke on it, as she considered her answer. “No harder than he deserves, ma’am.”
Harlan stared at her, his face frozen in disbelief. Then his lips twitched and before she knew what was happening, his head was tipped back and he was howling with laughter. The rest of the room took it as their cue and joined in, snorting and giggling. At her. Even Evelyn was laughing, wiping her eyes.
“You are a bad man,” Olympia grumbled to cover up her awkwardness, pulling her napkin off her lap to wipe her mouth.
He grinned. “It’s why you like me so much.”
A lesser person might have seen it as an insult when everyone in the room was having a laugh at her expense. Luckily, Olympia considered herself made of stronger stuff.
“Harlan tells me you work for an art gallery.” One of the aunts, whose name might be Hildie or Tildie, she couldn’t remember which, fixed her with a look. “What exactly do you do there?”
“I’m the coordinator. One step below owner and one step above glorified go-fer.”
“How do you manage it all?”
She saw Hildie—or maybe it was Millie?—point her crooked nose toward Renee. “What? Juggling a toddler and a job?” Olympia asked.
“You know what you need to do? You need to cut down on your working hours. Take a more direct approach to child rearing. Children benefit from having a strong maternal figure.”
“Yes, I’m sure they do, and I am doing my best.”
How had it turned into a conversation where she felt the need to defend herself?
“Don’t pay any attention,” Harlan interrupted, shooting a smile in her direction. “Aunt Philly has a definite opinion on how thi
ngs should be done. And she will tell you whether you want to hear it or not.”
Philly held her hands up on either side of her head like flapping wrinkled ears. “I’m just trying to help,” she said in defense.
Uncomfortable, Olympia turned her attention back to Bea and Diane, who were making nearly identical funny faces at Renee. Conversation flowed around her, be it a good-natured squabble or a humorous retelling of a familiar anecdote. All foreign to her.
She twiddled her fingers on her lap and wished for her cell phone. Something to do with her hands to hide from the attention and regain some equilibrium. This was a far cry from the solitude of the last few years. She missed it!
“These mashed potatoes are delicious. So creamy.” Reggie raised a fork to his mouth, eyes closed, savoring the flavor.
“How is it, working with my brother?” Diane asked Olympia. She leaned closer. “Has he tried to put any moves on you yet?”
“Did you use half-and-half in the potatoes, dear?”
“You’re exactly his type, you know,” Beatrix added.
“She’s not my type,” Harlan argued, unsuccessfully.
“He always goes for short brunettes with dark eyes,” Diane continued.
Reggie still had his eyes closed, his fork now empty for wagging in the air. “Very creamy indeed.”
There were too many conversations going on at once. Her attention divided in a thousand directions, Olympia glanced between Diane, Beatrix, Reggie, and Harlan, trying to find a direction.
Diane took a dainty sip of her wine. “If he hasn’t put the moves on you yet, I’m sure he will.”
“He loves brunettes,” Bea asserted with a gleaming grin.
“I don’t really feel comfortable talking about this—” Olympia tried to interject.
Harlan’s older brother Gil clapped a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “He’s a good catch. He’s tall.”
“You know who else was tall…” Aunt Philly began. “My Herbert. And John Wayne. He was very tall. I met him once, you know.”
Olympia needed an escape. Quick. The hem of her shirt was starting to fray from tugging on it and she was pretty sure she’d broken into a sweat. Glancing over, she saw the baby in an old-fashioned wooden high chair, elbow deep in corn and mashed potatoes.
“I’m going to go take Renee to wash her hands,” she stated suddenly, pushing out of her chair. “When I come back I expect the smiles to be wiped off your faces.”
The demand, as expected, had everyone bursting into another round of uproarious laughter. She and the little girl found the powder room quickly and Olympia helped Renee up to the sink for the soap. Her reflection in the oval mirror caught her eye and for a moment she stopped. Captured by what she saw there.
The woman staring back at her had hair tousled around her face in carefree waves. Her eyes were a warm chestnut-brown, a little tired, but exuberant and cheerful. Her mouth was curved in a natural smile she hadn’t seen there in a long time.
Renee announced the completion of her chore by splashing water into her face. Instead of scolding, the immediate reaction she wanted to reach for, Olympia chuckled.
When they returned from the powder room, Reggie was in the middle of a story, his hands flapping around his head and his words flying out faster than his lips could form them. “She was gonna leave me at Coney Island! Tried to get rid of me, sending me off on some kind of wild goose chase for a certain flavor of sno-cone she said she had to have. But I was no fool. I knew the real reason she wanted me gone was so she could flirt with the funnel cake vendor near the Ferris wheel, by God. Now don’t deny it,” he insisted when Evelyn waved away his assumption. “I knew you were sweet on Biff. Anyway, much to her surprise, I found the damn near impossible to find sno-cone flavor and got back before she had a chance to leave with her shyster.”
Evelyn tsked. “He wasn’t a shyster, dear, he was an old friend from school.”
“He was a shyster, and a damn good one too. Used to buy oil second-hand from the french fries kiosk just to save money on his funnel cakes. And he kept separate shakers of powdered sugar, one for the public that had plain flour mixed with the sugar, and another one without the flour mixed in and that’s the one he used to dust Evie’s funnel cake. He sold fake sugar to the public while he was trying to take my Evie away from me by courting her with extra powdered sugar!” Reggie got to his feet in an emphatic finish to his words.
“Reggie, enough!” Evelyn didn’t need to raise her voice. She slapped him across the wrist with the same spoon she’d used to serve the gravy. “Sit back down and finish your dinner. No one wants to hear those old stories again, especially when you can’t remember what actually happened. I never asked you for a sno-cone, but you insisted I had to try this new flavor you’d discovered, and off you went.”
“Oh now Evie, wait just a minute, that’s not—”
Bea bent low toward Olympia so she wouldn’t be overheard. “You know what else Dad collects?” Her smile was wide and a little crazy around the edges. “Hats. All kinds of hats in styles you’ve never even heard of. He goes to thrift stores and buys every one he can find. He must have hundreds. It’s ridiculous.”
The two adults continued to bicker good-naturedly. Olympia turned frantic eyes to Harlan, expecting him to save her from the rapidly rising voices in the room.
His eyes, however, were focused on a figure walking in the door. “Aunt Karen, there you are.”
Another addition to the chaos. Olympia turned around in her seat to see a hobbled old woman limping into the room with a bandage over her left eye.
Olympia was about to open her mouth when she felt his hand clasp hers. “Don’t get her started,” Harlan warned in a stage whisper. “She’s a dear but a bit of a hypochondriac. She’ll talk to you non-stop about gout, goiters, and all kinds of things you want to know nothing about, trust me.”
Karen made her way to an empty seat near the opposite end of the table, greeted with a fresh plate of food. At the same time, Gil and Brett, the middle brother, got into a mock scrape over the last bit of corn, each jostling the other for control of the bowl until Evelyn asserted her authority and took it away from both of them.
“This is not the type of environment I want Renee around,” Olympia confessed to Harlan. When she glanced over to the little girl, seated between Beatrix and Diane, her mouth was round with laughter even as she stuffed it with meatloaf.
“It won’t hurt her. It’s socialization,” Harlan responded, his gaze locked on hers. “Look at me. This is a normal dinner for me and I turned out well enough.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“I’ve had enough of you complaining about this so-called fake sugar,” Evelyn was saying. “You accused him of that without any proof. Biff Batson was a good man and a good friend to me. There was nothing more between us, how many times do I have to say it! He wasn’t trying to do anything but escort me to my car when I thought you had left me there. Reggie, it was all your own fault—”
“Oh, so it was my fault, was it? You were sweet on each other, Evie. I know what I’m talking about. You probably wish you’d married good ol’ Biff instead of me. And you two!” He suddenly grabbed Gil’s wrist. “I have had it up to here with your arguing. If you can’t control yourselves for dinner, and especially in front of our guest, then you both need to cool down,” Reggie bellowed. He pushed to his feet again and threw himself in front of his two adult sons, taking them by the tips of their ears when they would not quit their scuffling.
Harlan smiled wickedly. “You’re going to want to see this.”
“What am I going to want to see?” Olympia asked, confused.
And there was his hand on hers, pulling her outside. She spared a moment to grab Renee from her seat again, like a round of musical highchairs. It seemed like the dining room emptied in a matter of seconds, everyone following Reggie and his boys down a short hallway, into an empty den, and out the sliding glass doors toward the patio. And the pool.
He promptly threw them both in the water. More like they anticipated the throw and helped themselves, the younger one twisting so that he did a cannonball into the water instead.
Harlan whooped at the action, standing next to Olympia with eyes glued to the water.
Laughter flowed around them again and it was hard not to feel herself being sucked in by the sheer joy of the occasion.
“Now behave, the both of you, or I’ll castrate you with one of my collectible spoons,” Reggie warned. Everyone knew the threat was empty.
Evelyn came up behind him, her hands on his shoulders. “Oh, go on, dear. You know you want to. We were almost done with dinner anyway.”
The elder Anderson took that as his cue and catapulted himself into the water without any further hesitation. Fully clothed and all.
“Aren’t you supposed to wait thirty minutes after eating before you get in the water?” Olympia clutched Renee tighter against her when the waves in the pool took on new heights.
“Not in this family, we don’t.”
With the exception of Aunt Karen, whom a glance behind them showed standing in the den clutching her eye patch and moaning, the rest of the party got in the pool one by one. No one bothered with towels. Or bathing suits. Diane didn’t even take off her sandals, flipping ass over head into the deep end.
Satisfied, Evelyn watched the frivolity from a poolside lounge chair and crossed her outstretched legs at the ankles. A picture of relaxation.
“I hope you don’t mind and don’t think me rude, but I’m going to get in on this action,” Harlan leaned in close to tell her. He placed a tiny kiss on Renee’s head before pausing to kick off his shoes. His eyes rose to meet Olympia’s. “If you change your mind…”
“I probably won’t, thank you.”
But she watched him. And her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth when he ripped his t-shirt over his head, pausing for a moment to laugh at something his brother said. Olympia couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Those muscles…
