Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts

by Claire Lazebnik

He comments on how quiet I am. “Your mother bug you about something?”

  I shake my head. “She was fine.”

  “Then why are you so out of it?”

  “I’m not.”

  Fortunately the TV’s on at the bar, and he can see it from his seat, so he’s happy to just go back to sucking down the hamburger and cheering whenever someone gets a hit.

  I watch him eat for a while, and then say, “I made Milton go to the supermarket today.”

  “Yeah?” His eyes are on the TV. “Why?”

  “Because he never leaves the house anymore, and I decided he should.”

  “Oh. Good for you then. How’d it go?”

  “It wasn’t easy for either of us. But it’s a good thing, I think. Something needed to change.”

  “He’s a nutball, your brother,” Tom says genially. Then he winces and says, “Damn it—I can’t believe he didn’t catch that!”

  I sink down lower in my seat.

  “Split a sundae with me?” he says when his plate is cleared.

  “Still not hungry.”

  “Please tell me you’re not trying to lose weight. You’re so miserable when you’re on a diet. And you know I think you look great the way you are.”

  “I’m just full from dinner.” But it’s not really that. It’s something else that’s making me feel sick to my stomach. Some sense that I’ve made a decision. Or that a decision has been made for me.

  Tom orders dessert anyway—with two forks—and eats it quickly, staring at the TV over my head. I don’t use the extra fork.

  On the walk back to our place, he hooks his arm through mine. “Sorry if I was in a bad mood before,” he says. “I was just hungry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  He tries to see my face, but it’s dark out, and we’re walking side by side. “You sure your mom didn’t say anything to upset you?”

  I try to answer but I can’t. I’m trembling and I’m scared he’ll feel it.

  I’m about to do something awful. And frightening. And probably wrong.

  I’m about to jump off a cliff.

  * * *

  In the apartment, I take Tom by the hand and lead him to one of the armchairs and tell him to sit down.

  “What’s up?” he asks.

  I don’t sit down. I stand in front of him, biting my lip while I try to figure out how to say what I have to say. Eventually what comes out is, “I’m thinking I might go stay at home for a little while.”

  “Really? Why? Is your mom okay?”

  I stare down at the floor. The carpet is classic rental apartment wall-to-wall stuff: beige, easy to walk on, easy to vacuum. “She’s fine—she just needs help getting ready for the move. Lots of people were looking at the house today. I think she’ll get an offer soon, and then she won’t have much time to pack up.”

  “With the money she’s going to get for that house, she can hire people to help her.”

  “It’s not that simple. We need to sort through it all and figure out what to keep.”

  He shrugs. “So help her. That doesn’t mean you have to live there. It’s close enough you can go over there whenever you need to, and I hate when you’re gone at night. I don’t sleep well when you’re not here.” He reaches for my hand but I move it away.

  I say, “I think maybe it’s good for us to get used to sleeping apart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I don’t respond, just stand there in front of him, not meeting his eyes, feeling my throat swell up.

  After a moment, he says, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  I whisper, “I’m so sorry. I think I need some time to myself.”

  “No,” he says again, and his voice is rising with real panic. He stands up and grabs my arm. “Keats. I don’t know what this is about—whatever it is, tell me and I’ll fix it—but for god’s sake, don’t start talking like you’re going to leave me.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say again because I don’t know what else to say. I can feel silent tears slipping out, clinging to my eyelids before dropping onto my cheeks.

  “You’re always saying we’ll be together forever. Just last night we were talking about our kids, for god’s sake. What happened since then? What’s changed?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s happened.”

  “Was it something your mother said? I know she doesn’t think I’m good enough for you—no one in your family does. But you’ve said a million times that you’re glad I’m not like them.”

  “I know. I am. And there’s nothing wrong with you at all.” My voice keeps breaking. It’s hard to get the words out. “You’re great. I just feel different now. I don’t even know why. I just do.”

  His eyes search my face for more information, but I have none to give him. “I’m sorry I yelled at you about dinner,” he says so humbly that it breaks my heart. “I shouldn’t have done that. I know I get impatient sometimes. I’ve been taking you too much for granted. I won’t anymore, I swear. I’ll wait on you hand and foot if that’s what it takes to keep you happy.”

  I’m shaking my head, whispering, “No, that’s not it,” but I don’t think he hears me.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.” There’s a suddenly suspicious tone to his voice. “Were you really with your mother tonight? Or with someone else?”

  “My mother and I had dinner alone together.” I recite the facts tonelessly. “We went to Ceci’s. She had a salad. I had pasta.”

  “Give me your phone.” He holds his hand out.

  “What?”

  “Give me your cell phone.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see who’s been calling you.”

  “No.” I step back. “No one’s been calling me, Tom. Not the way you mean. That’s not what’s going on.”

  “Then why won’t you just give me your phone? Show me you’re not hiding anything.”

  I hand it to him reluctantly. “Don’t do this, Tom. Please.”

  He pokes at the phone. “Who’s Mark?”

  “No one important.”

  He throws the phone across the room and grabs me by the wrists. “Who is he?”

  “Jesus, Tom! Mark’s a guy in my office—you’ve met him a bunch of times, and if you actually read those texts, you’d see they were all work related.”

  He grips my hands tightly. “Tell me the truth, Keats. Who did you have dinner with tonight?”

  “I already told you: my mother.”

  “Have you been seeing someone behind my back?”

  I’m tired. I just want to curl up somewhere and go to sleep until this is all over and done with. “I’m not leaving because there’s someone else,” I say wearily. “I’m leaving because it’s time.”

  He tugs me closer to him, tries to put my arms around his waist, but he has to hold them there because I won’t. “Please, Keats,” he says, and he doesn’t sound angry anymore, just devastated. “Please don’t do this. You’re the only thing that matters in the whole world to me. I can’t lose you. I won’t have anything.” He burrows his face into my neck, presses his mouth against the skin there, then moves his lips up over my jaw and across my cheeks and then back into my neck again.

  I don’t know what he’s thinking. That his passion will reignite mine? That sex will solve the problem, convince me to love him again? But I don’t want to be kissed right now. I don’t want to have sex. I just want to leave.

  He lifts his head to see how I’m reacting, and I extricate my hands and turn away from him. “I have to pack,” I say.

  “Wait,” he says. “Wait. You can’t.” His fingers scramble at his shirtsleeve. He pulls it up and shoves his arm right in front of my face so I have to see what’s written above his elbow. The sight of it scrapes something raw inside of me. “You can’t leave me,” he says desperately. “See? This is forever.”

  I shake my head and whisper, “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  There’s a moment where we’re both silen
t.

  Then he falls down to his knees on the floor and buries his face in his hands.

  18.

  I can’t stop shaking. My fingers are wrapped around a mug of tea, but I’m not drinking it, just using it to warm my hands. I have chills, even though it’s a warm spring night.

  My mother greeted me very calmly when I showed up at her door. She just took my suitcase, put it at the foot of the stairs, then walked me into the kitchen where she sat me down in the breakfast booth and busied herself making tea.

  “Okay,” she says, settling across the table from me. “Now tell me what happened.”

  “I left Tom.”

  “I gathered that from the suitcase. What brought about this decision?”

  I stare down at the mug. The tea bag’s still in it. I should take it out before the tea turns bitter, but even that simple act seems beyond me. I’ve never felt so exhausted in my life. “I don’t know.”

  “Something must have made you want to leave tonight.”

  “It wasn’t anything he did. I just didn’t want to be there with him anymore. Does that make sense?”

  “More sense to me than to anyone else probably.” There’s a pause. “You know how I’ve always felt about Tom. He wasn’t—”

  I put a hand up. “Don’t start saying mean things about him. Please.”

  She falls silent.

  I put the mug down so I can pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around my legs, which helps steady the shaking a little. “He was crying when I left.”

  She reaches across the table and touches my arm gently. “That sounds miserable. But you did what you had to do.”

  “All he’s ever done is be nice to me. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like this.”

  “That doesn’t mean he deserves to be with you.”

  “I’m nothing special, Mom. I’m no Hopkins.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” She leans back in her chair. She’s wearing an old terry-cloth bathrobe over a nightgown. She was getting ready for bed when I rang the doorbell.

  “You know what I mean. Hopkins is brilliant. I’m not. She saves lives. I…do Costco runs.”

  “She’s a little crazy,” Mom says calmly. “You’re not. She lacks most social graces. You make people gravitate toward you. She’ll probably never have a husband or a family. One day—but not too soon, I hope—you’ll have both.”

  I stare at her, jolted briefly out of my misery. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

  “When do I ever do that?” she says, and I’m surprised to hear myself actually laugh. She shakes her head, rakes her fingers through her gray-threaded dark hair, shifts in her seat. “I’ve never understood how you, of all our children, could have such an inferiority complex. Can’t you see that you’re the lucky one in this family?”

  “If you call not being extraordinarily brilliant lucky.”

  “If you’d stop feeling sorry for yourself for two seconds, you’d see how much easier most things are for you than for your siblings. Have you seen either of them at a cocktail party? It’s a disaster.”

  “I know Milton can’t deal. But everyone adores Hopkins.”

  “Many people admire her. Even more are grateful to her. But they don’t want to confide in her or go out for drinks with her.” She fingers the handle of her mug. “I’ve spent years watching you both when other people are around. People may listen to Hopkins because she’s got the stories and the expertise. But you’re the one everyone wants to sit next to. Like”—she casts about for an example—“like Jacob, for instance. The second you walk into a room, his face lights up. And he’s not the only—what’s the matter?”

  I’ve buried my face in my hands. Words burst out of me before I can stop them. “I slept with him! With Jacob! At Dad’s apartment the night I stayed over. He was there, too, and we slept together. Right on Dad’s sofa!”

  There’s a pause. And then my mother laughs. “Did you really?”

  “It’s not funny! It was a huge mistake. A total disaster.”

  “It does explain why he seemed a little off at dinner the other night.”

  I grab a napkin off the table and wipe my nose with it. “He hates me.”

  “I’m sorry I laughed,” she says. “But honestly, Keats, this is exactly what you’re supposed to be doing at your age. Trying things out. Sleeping with the wrong guy. Making stupid, unforgivable mistakes—and then forgiving yourself. I mean, if not now, when?”

  “You’ve been doing a pretty good job of doing all that. And you’re not exactly twenty-five.”

  “I know!” she says, clasping her hands to her chest with sudden delight. “It’s like that book we read when you were a kid, about the mother and daughter who change bodies—”

  “Freaky Friday?”

  “Right. You’ve been living the life of a middle-aged woman. I mean, that job of yours…” She sighs. “That job was meant to be done by a sixty-year-old woman who’s just happy to get out of the house because her husband was forced to retire and has nothing to do and is driving her crazy with all his little projects around the house, and she can’t take it anymore, so—”

  “You’ve thought about this way too much. And it’s really a perfectly good job.”

  She shakes her head. “Between that and being with Tom since forever, you’ve been living older than your years for too long. You need to get your youth back.”

  “If I do, will you start acting your age? Let Dad move back in? Get a boring office job? Knit and bake?”

  “God, no. I cut my own wild years too short. I’m owed a few more.” She cocks her head at me. “See? This is what happens if you don’t act out when you’re young—you do it when you’re my age. And I’m the first to admit it’s not a pretty sight.”

  “You’re fine.” I release my legs and put my feet back on the floor. I start to say something, then stop.

  “What?” Mom says.

  “It’s just…” I hesitate, then say in a rush, “Why’d you call him the wrong guy?”

  “What? Who?”

  I evade her eyes and play with my mug, pushing the handle back and forth, watching the liquid slosh gently up the sides. “Jacob. You said I slept with the wrong guy.”

  “I did?”

  “You said that I was doing exactly what I should be doing at my age, like sleeping with the wrong guy. So that implies you think Jacob’s the wrong guy.”

  “Oh, right. I guess I did say that. I just meant it in a general sense.”

  “So you don’t think Jacob is the wrong guy?”

  She waves an airy hand. “Oh, I love Jacob, you know that. And if you want to marry him in ten years, I’ll perform the ceremony myself. But any man is the wrong man for you right now. You need to spend some time alone, Keats. Get to know yourself. Seek out new experiences and new possibilities. Then, when you’re thirty—or forty—you can think about finding the right guy.”

  “Thirty or forty?” I repeat with horror.

  “There’s no rush.”

  “Most women your age would want grandchildren.”

  “I do,” she says. “I really do. And let’s be honest—you’re my best and possibly my only hope for them. But I can wait.”

  “Hold on.” My phone’s vibrating. It’s been doing that on and off since I got there, but I’ve been ignoring it. I pull it out of my pocket and see I’ve missed four calls and seven texts. All from Tom. I show Mom. She sighs but doesn’t say anything. I put the phone back in my pocket.

  Eventually I say into the quiet of the kitchen, “Was it awful, telling Dad you didn’t want to be married to him anymore?”

  “I suspect,” my mother says slowly, “that it wasn’t all that different from what you just went through. Minus the tears—your father isn’t the crying type. But the anger, the resentment, the hurt—all pretty much what you experienced. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do.”

  “I’m sorry I made you feel bad about it.”

&nbs
p; She salutes me with her tea mug. “Welcome to the Heartbreakers of America Club, Keats. It reads a lot better than it lives.”

  “I never want to go through that again.”

  “Me neither.”

  I close my eyes and let my head rest back on the chair. “I’m exhausted. I want to crawl into bed and sleep for a million years.”

  “Go ahead. You’d better use Hopkins’s room, though, since Milton’s taken over yours. I have no idea if the bed’s made or not.”

  “I’ll check.” I get up, but she catches at my arm.

  “Keats, I’m serious about this. I don’t want you to become one of those women who go straight from one guy to the next because they’re afraid of being alone. Sooner or later in life, everyone’s alone. You need to get comfortable with yourself now while you’re still young, so you don’t make unnecessary compromises later out of fear.”

  I promise her I’ll try and go up to bed.

  There isn’t a single book in Hopkins’s room that I can read to get my mind off of Tom, just stacks of the comparative religion tomes, anatomy textbooks, and science journals she was already reading back in junior high. I’d kill for the distraction of a junky romance novel, so I slip into my old room thinking I’ll steal one off the shelves, but Milton’s asleep on the bed in there—still wearing his sweats and the shoes he put on that afternoon, like he was suddenly overtaken with exhaustion—so I leave quickly and empty-handed.

  As tired as I am, I can’t get to sleep until past dawn. The mattress is awful—both thin and lumpy—and I’m not used to sleeping alone. I toss and turn for hours and then fall asleep so late that by the time I wake up again, it’s almost noon, and when I make my way downstairs, Mom’s rushing around, getting ready to meet Irv at a museum.

  “A museum?” I say, sitting in my sweatpants and tank top at the breakfast booth, idly watching her search for her purse and coat. “That’s your idea of a date? Walking around a museum?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s boring. It’s what old ladies do.”

  “Just check in on Milton, will you? Make sure he gets some lunch at some point.” She leaves.

  I watch some TV and think about doing some packing, but I’m not really in the mood to poke through dusty old books and papers. I’m bored and restless. And lonely.