Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts

by Claire Lazebnik

  It’s amazing that someone I rarely see, and never really had all that much contact with, looms so large over my entire life. How do you describe the sister whose very existence makes you feel like the world’s biggest loser? And proud, at the same time, because you’re related to her?

  Like I said, Hopkins and I didn’t interact all that much, even when we lived together. I was five years younger and eons less intellectually sophisticated. Still am. We passed each other in the hallway, and Mom talked about her all the time, but meals were scattered in our house, people eating by themselves at different times, solitary figures usually hunched over a book—and without that basic contact, our relationship was limited mostly to her knocking on the bathroom door and telling me to hurry up or asking me to turn my music down because she needed to concentrate.

  I can remember watching her at the kitchen table working on some project or another, her long hair falling around her face as she frowned down at the book she was reading or the paper she was writing. She barely noticed me. She barely noticed anyone. She needed my mother to drive her places and to provide a little sustenance now and then, but otherwise Hopkins was too busy thinking her own thoughts and pursuing her own interests to sit around chatting with her family. I admired her, revered her, listened to my mother talk about her achievements ad nauseam, and got used to teachers telling me they had never had a student like her before or since. But I didn’t know her.

  At eight, Hopkins skipped a grade. She skipped another one when she was twelve. She still got straight A’s effortlessly and probably could have skipped more, but she was already so much younger and smaller than the other kids in her class that the administration felt she might suffer socially if she did. My parents argued that she wasn’t being challenged enough. The school compromised by letting her take classes above her grade level for the first couple of years of high school and then at Boston College for the last two.

  She was barely sixteen when she went off to college. Harvard, of course. Dad might not have been an involved parent, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t an influential one.

  Since she already had a year’s worth of college credits under her belt and was taking five courses a semester, she finished in three years, making her a college grad at nineteen. She didn’t exactly take a break then, either: four years later, at the age of twenty-three, she had two degrees under her belt, a combined PhD and MD in neurology.

  Note: none of this is normal. People don’t do this. Only my sister.

  She stayed on in Boston for a few more years, her hospital and university connections providing her with plenty of job opportunities, which she was still working her way through when she was offered her current job running a brain injury clinic in New York, where they not only see patients but also do apparently groundbreaking research. She gets asked to speak at conferences all over the world and is always being flown in to various exotic locales to consult on cases that local doctors twice her age can’t handle. She doesn’t have a landline in her apartment, just a cell phone number, because she’s as likely to be in Stockholm or Tokyo as New York on any given day.

  Not that I ever call her: we communicate by e-mail when we communicate at all, which isn’t very often.

  About a year ago, I went to see her give a lecture on neural plasticity and recovery after injury—of which I understood maybe forty percent—and afterward she introduced me to a woman waiting to talk to her who gripped my arm as she said, “Thank God for your sister. They said my father would probably be a vegetable, but she didn’t give up on him. The work she does is nothing short of miraculous. Do you know how wonderful she is?”

  Hopkins and I were supposed to go out for a late dinner after the talk, but there was a guy there from a big lab who was desperate to consult her about something, so she had to cancel our dinner. It was her only night in Boston.

  Tom was glad: I got home in time to go to a movie with him that night.

  * * *

  I am, to put it succinctly, no Hopkins.

  I went to school in the usual way, one grade following the other in exactly the order you’d expect: got pats on my head from my teachers for my steady, decent work, graduated at eighteen like all my friends, and went on to Smith College, where I majored in English literature and wrote papers about Jane Austen for four years.

  I spent every weekend riding the bus back and forth to Boston so I could be with Tom. I lived with him during the summers, too, working as an assistant at his father’s company.

  I had no desire to go to graduate school, but my English degree wasn’t exactly a fast track to a specific career, so after I graduated, I decided to just look for a halfway decent job not too far from where Tom and I were already living together. He offered to find me something permanent at his dad’s company, but even though I was willing to settle, I wasn’t willing to settle that hard, at least not yet.

  Instead, I found a comfortable home in the English department of Waltham Community College, where I make sure there’s always fresh coffee and snacks for everyone and keep things running smoothly.

  I have been told the coffee I make is extraordinarily good, and when I digitalized all of our files, my boss told me I had saved her life. But she was being metaphorical, and the people who say that about Hopkins are speaking literally, so it’s not exactly the same thing, is it?

  * * *

  By the time I make it back up to my father’s office, no one’s left up there except Tom, who’s stolidly packing books into old printer paper boxes. He looks up when I emerge from the stairway and says, “There you are! I thought you’d abandoned me like everyone else did.”

  I cross the room toward him and fluff his hair a little. It’s so thick I can make it stand straight up.

  He leans his head against my hip and says, “It’s funny being up here. I was so scared of your father I think I only came up here once in all these years. He wanted me to help him put in the Wi-Fi, remember? I was terrified.”

  “And now?”

  “Just as terrified,” he admits with a grin.

  “Poor baby,” I say and bend down to kiss him lightly on the lips.

  He turns the kiss into a real one. I pull back because of where we are, and he rubs his face against my stomach. “Mmm,” he says. He burrows his nose in deeper. I slide my fingers down to the back of his neck and then fold completely over him, torn: do I want to keep going or not? His arms slip around my waist. “We could do it,” he whispers. “Right here in your father’s office. That would be a first.”

  “There isn’t a real door. Someone could walk in.”

  “All the more exciting.”

  “I never knew you were an exhibitionist.”

  “Me neither.” His fingers slide under the waist of my jeans. It’s been a while since he’s been like this, all eager and coaxing, and I’m more aroused than I’ve felt in ages.

  Ten years is a long time to be together, and sex is more comfortable than exciting these days. Same old bed, same old bodies, same time of day. That kind of thing. More and more, I find myself fantasizing during sex: a stranger has grabbed me from behind, someone who’s broken into the apartment, I can’t see him, I don’t know who he is, but he’s wild with lust, and that’s turning me on even though I’m terrified.

  That kind of thing.

  I’d worry about it, except I read in a magazine that it’s totally normal and even healthy for people in long-term relationships to fantasize like that.

  Anyway, the idea of making out in my dad’s old room is kind of weird and interesting, and I’m tempted to let Tom keep going but also scared of being caught, so I just hang over him, trying to decide what I want to do, feeling my body respond even while I’m weighing the options.

  The body’s close to winning out when there’s a clatter on the steps. We spring apart so violently that Jacob, who emerges into the office, can’t miss the fact he’s interrupting something.

  “Sorry,” he says and turns red. He retreats down a step.


  “No worries,” Tom says genially. He’s up on his feet and has recovered more quickly than I have. He points to the box of books in front of him. “Almost finished with this one. Should I carry it down when I’m done?”

  “That would be great.” Jacob comes all the way up into the room but avoids making eye contact with either of us. “Hold on,” he says, peering into the box. “Are these supposed to be the ones we’re giving away or the ones we’re keeping?”

  “I packed the ones that were on the floor.”

  “But they were sorted out,” Jacob says. “There were two piles.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Tom says. “Didn’t realize we were supposed to keep those separate. I just figured we should get them boxed up and out of here as fast as possible.”

  I feel my heart sink. It’s not a big deal—Jacob can just sort them out again—and Tom meant well, but I feel bad anyway, like it was my fault Tom messed up.

  “Can I help?” I ask Jacob, who has sunk down to his knees in front of the box and is pulling books out.

  “Grab another box, will you? I’ll hand you the books we don’t want to keep, and you can pack them as we go. I’ll keep the ones we want in here.”

  I look around, see the tower of boxes—Mom must have gotten this batch from the supermarket because they all have food names on them like VLASIC PICKLES and VELVEETA—and bring one back, passing by Tom who’s shoved his hands in his pockets and is leaning against the angled wall as he watches Jacob fix his mistake.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asks as I go by.

  I glance at my watch. It’s past eleven. “Why don’t you run out and pick us up some lunch?”

  “What should I get?”

  I’m squatting on the floor, taking the books that Jacob hands me and packing them in the box, trying to figure out how they’ll fit in there best. “Whatever you think.”

  “What about you, Jacob?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I can grab something later.”

  I say, “God knows what Mom has in the kitchen or how long she’ll keep us working here. Tom might as well get lunch for everyone.”

  “Yeah, okay, thanks.” Jacob goes back to sorting books.

  “You still haven’t told me what to get,” Tom says to me.

  “Something Milton will eat. Maybe bagels?”

  “How many should I get?” Tom asks.

  “Whatever you think.”

  “A dozen?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “How much cream cheese? One of those bigger containers?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  He lingers one more moment uncertainly and then says, “Should I go now?”

  I nod, and he disappears down the stairway.

  For a little while, it’s quiet in Dad’s office. Hot, too. There’s an AC unit in one of the windows, but no one’s turned it on today and we’re having one of those weird April heat waves. It would have been the perfect day to go to the beach.

  “Look at this,” Jacob says and leans over to show me a book: it’s a simple cover, but the title is in a language I can’t identify.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a translation of Political Systems.” He moves his hand to reveal Dad’s name at the bottom, the only part that’s in English.

  “Is that Russian?”

  “Bulgarian, I think.” Jacob carefully inserts the book between two others in the box in front of him. “This must be his only copy—I’ve never seen it before.”

  “I wonder how it sold in Bulgaria.”

  “As well as any American book about philosophies of government sells in Bulgaria, I would think.” He’s done sorting through the books on the floor; he stands up and starts going through the bookshelf, pushing some books to the side, pulling others out. “So,” he says after a moment. “How’s life treating you these days?”

  “Same old, same old.”

  He laughs and squints at a book spine. “You sound like an old lady sometimes, Keats. You’re turning twenty-five next week, right?”

  “I can’t believe you know that.”

  “Your dad likes me to keep track for him. April twenty-​second?”

  “You’re better than those online birthday alarms.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  We work for a moment, and then I say, “How’s Dad dealing with the move?”

  “He’s okay.” There’s a pause. Then he says, “Only okay, though. He’s never been a big fan of change. And now that he’s seventy-five, it’s even harder for him. Sometimes he gets confused about where he is.”

  That last sentence feels like a punch in the stomach. I have a vision of Dad wandering around Harvard Square, lost and alone. “You don’t think it’s Alzheimer’s, do you?”

  “To be honest, I was worried about that, but I asked Hopkins and she said it’s just a combination of age and depression.”

  “She’d know.”

  “It’s useful having a neurologist in the family.”

  “Mom should have just let him stay here,” I say. “It’s his house, too. I hate to think of him all alone. I bet that’s why he’s so depressed and out of it.”

  “It’s not like she kicked him out because she wanted more space for herself—she wants to sell it and move. Understandably—it’s way too big.” His fingers fly along the book spines, tapping here and there. “I think she’s actually looking out for your dad, making sure he’s safely settled somewhere before all the craziness of showing the house and packing it up begins. He would have hated all that.”

  I think about that. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Mom let Dad stay as long as it was comfortable for him here and then made sure he had a decent new home before their lives got disrupted.

  “She’s dating,” I say and wait for his reaction. I want to see what someone else thinks of that bit of news.

  But all he says is a calm “I know.”

  “You know? How do you know? I only just found out.”

  “Your mom happened to mention it to me the other day.”

  “She told you before she told me? What else has she told you that she hasn’t told me?” I’m sort of joking, but not entirely.

  He turns so he can look down at me. “Nothing, Keats. Don’t make a big deal out of this. I was moving some of your dad’s stuff out, and I heard a guy leaving a message on her machine, and she told me she was starting to date.”

  “You should have called me immediately.”

  “It was none of my business.”

  “Oh, right,” I say. “It’s none of your business when it’s a question of letting Keats in on the whole thing. But it’s completely your business to start asking questions the second you hear a strange man’s voice on my mom’s voice mail.”

  “Keats—”

  “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

  “Oh, for god’s sake.” He goes back to studying the book titles.

  I jump to my feet. “That means there is. Tell me.”

  “No, that means you’re being annoying.”

  I walk over to the other box and snatch up the Bulgarian translation of my father’s book. I hold it by the spine, letting the pages dangle. “Tell me or the book gets it.”

  “Give me a break.” He makes a grab for the book, but I skip back out of his reach. “There’s nothing to tell. Put the book down, Keats.”

  “I’m serious.” I cross over to the window and stick the book halfway through the narrow opening. “Tell me or the book plunges to its death.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  I cock my head at him. “I’m terrifying you by threatening to harm a book. It’s a little bit funny.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Wow, it’s really slippery,” I say. “Oops—almost dropped it!”

  He runs over, but then he hesitates, too self-conscious to actually wrestle with me for the book. I think girls make him nervous: he’s never brought a girlfriend over to our house, and he comes to a lo
t of holiday meals with us. So either he hasn’t had a serious relationship since he started working for Dad, or he’s good at keeping them secret. Given how available he always seems to be, I’m guessing the former.

  He reaches toward the window, but I knock his hand away. “Don’t try anything funny.”

  “Fine.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “Put the book safely down, and I promise to tell you whatever you want, you lunatic.”

  “Tell me and I’ll put it down,” I say, just to torment him.

  “At least hold the book inside, will you?”

  I pull the book back to the safe side of the window. “So—what else have my parents told you that they haven’t told me? What family secrets am I being kept out of?”

  He shakes his head wearily. “Nothing that I know of.”

  I make a darting motion with the book, but he’s anticipating that and grabs it out of my hand. I don’t fight him for it. Game’s over. “Is Dad dating, too?”

  He inspects the book carefully, then looks up. “Do you really need me to answer that?”

  “Is Mom serious about any of these guys?”

  “Not that she’s told me.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because you’ve known me for a very long time and I’ve never lied to you.”

  “Never lied to me that I know of. Anyway, there’s lying by omission.”

  “I’m not doing that, either.” He slips the book back in the box. “What are you worried about, Keats? That your mother will marry someone else one day and leave your father alone forever? He’s already living by himself.”

  “She might miss him now that he’s gone.”

  He regards me for a moment, his light gray eyes lingering thoughtfully on my face. “I know they’re your parents, Keats,” he says gently, “but their marriage ended a long time ago.”