Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts

by Claire Lazebnik

  Even if I’m right, even if I could bully and provoke and tease him into choosing me over Cathy, the bigger question is Should I?

  And I know the answer to that one.

  * * *

  I hear a honk and jump in my seat. Someone’s trying to get out of the driveway that my car is blocking. Admittedly I’m only over by those couple of inches, but the guy is honking and glaring at me like I’ve bricked him into a dungeon for all eternity.

  I wearily sit up and start the car and drive away from the curb.

  Only…where do I go now?

  My mother’s?

  I picture my arrival there: It’s dark and the house is chilly because that house is always chilly, except in the middle of summer when it’s briefly sticky and hot. The only light that’s on is the one in Milton’s room, but his door is closed. I let myself in, maybe eat a cracker or two in the empty kitchen, maybe watch some TV by myself, then eventually find my way up the stairs to Hopkins’s room, where the bed is lumpy and the sheets are old and every object in it reproaches me for not being as brilliant as she is. My mom’s either lost in a book or still out on her date with some guy who actually likes her, who thinks she’s wonderful.

  No one thinks I’m wonderful.

  No, that’s not entirely true. I stop at a light, and as it switches to green, it’s like something also switches on in my head.

  I could go back to my apartment—the one that I’ve lived in for the last four years. The one that’s warm and clean and bright. The one that belongs to a guy who thinks I’m the center of the universe, who’ll run to the door when he hears me come in, who’ll throw his arms around me and beg me never to leave again.

  I picture that homecoming now: the lit-up warmth of the apartment, the way Tom would drag me into the living room and kiss me over and over again, and then just collapse with me on the sofa and hold me against his chest and tell me he’s never been so scared in his life, that I can’t ever do this to him again. We’d have sex, and it would be more exciting than it’s been in years because of the fear in his heart and the relief in mine.

  We’d go out to dinner. I’d feel safe and relaxed, and the food would taste better than anything’s tasted in the last forty-eight hours. He’d constantly be petting me, rubbing my shoulders, my knee, my arm, checking to make sure I’m really there, that I’ve come back to him. And then we’d go back to our apartment with its big comfortable bed, and we’d watch TV all curled up together until it was time to sleep. And I would sleep soundly again, back in my own bed, with his familiar weight next to me.

  I get off the Mass Pike at Waltham and follow the turns that take me to our street. It’s easy and automatic. I’ve driven this route a thousand times.

  When I’m near our building, I count up eight flights of windows, and sure enough, the light is on in our living room. He’s there. Probably stretched out on the sofa, watching TV, feeling lonely, missing me. He’s left me three more texts and two more voice mails today. I don’t have to listen to them to know that he just wants me to come home. When I walk through that door, he’ll fall at my feet.

  I signal left to pull into the garage. I slow down. I brake.

  But I don’t turn.

  The car behind me honks loudly. I raise my hand in sheepish apology and take my foot off the brake. I accelerate past the building, then change lanes too suddenly and get honked at again by someone else—third time tonight, and I’ve deserved it every time—and take a right at the corner.

  I head back to the Turnpike.

  It kills me to admit it, even to myself, but my mom is right: I’m afraid of being alone. And that’s the only thing that’s making me think about going back to Tom.

  I don’t love him anymore. I don’t want the life he and I have created for ourselves. I want something different. If I went back now, the evening would be lovely. Maybe even the whole next month would be lovely. But eventually the glow of reuniting would fade, and I’d be right back where I started, bored and frustrated, and then either I’d leave him again—and that would be far crueler than anything I’ve done so far, even crueler than what I did to Jacob—or I wouldn’t leave him again, and my life would stall in a place I’ve already outgrown.

  I drive back to my mother’s house—the closest thing I have to a home for the moment.

  It’s exactly the way I pictured it: dark and cold and lonely. Mom isn’t there.

  For a while, I sit alone in the kitchen, feeling sorry for myself. I think about crying. I think about getting into the liquor cabinet. I think about eating chocolate.

  And then I haul myself to my feet, go upstairs, and knock on Milton’s door.

  “What?”

  I open the door. “I want to go to a movie.”

  “So go.”

  “I need you to come with me. What do you want to see?”

  “I don’t want to go to the movies.”

  “We can see whatever stupid-ass science fiction fantasy movie you want. I don’t care. So long as there’s popcorn and trailers.”

  He swivels toward me in his chair. “Science fiction and fantasy are two completely different genres. Science fiction is based on actual science. It’s usually futuristic, but it incorporates real scientific principles we already know or at least can conceive of, whereas fantasy—”

  “I don’t care. Just look online and see what’s playing.”

  “I can get movies streamed instantly to my computer. That’s what Mom and I do when we want a movie night. She makes microwave popcorn.”

  I walk over to his desk and bend down so I can put my face right in front of his. “Here’s the thing, oh brother of mine. I have had a spectacularly shitty weekend. I broke up with Tom and got rejected by…someone else, and I’m bored and lonely and depressed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and all I want right now is to see a movie, and for once in your freaking life, you are going to do something you don’t want to do as a favor to someone else, to your big sister who loves you and who used to give you your bottles and get you ready for school and who’s had a spectacularly shitty weekend as she mentioned earlier. You got that?”

  Milton’s mouth has fallen open. He closes it, but his eyes are still wide with shock. “You really broke up with Tom? Mom said so, but I didn’t believe her.”

  “I did.”

  “Wow. I never thought you’d leave him. What happened?”

  “It was time for me to grow up,” I said. “And I’m dragging your sorry ass along with me, whether you like it or not.”

  “To the movies, you mean?”

  “For a start,” I say grimly.

  * * *

  The next morning, I wake up early and can’t get back to sleep. I go down to the kitchen and start the coffeemaker. I’m sticking some bread in the toaster when Mom comes in from the garage. “Oh, hi,” she says a little uncomfortably. She’s wearing the same outfit she had on last night.

  My eyebrows shoot up. “Look who’s doing the walk of shame!”

  “The walk of shame?”

  “You’re wearing your clothes from the night before.” I wag my finger at her. “Don’t deny it, Mom. You had a sleepover.”

  “Is that what you young people call it now?”

  “Only the under ten crowd. So is this meaningful?”

  “Not really.” She puts her purse down and runs her fingers through her hair, which is looking a little bumpy and unkempt. “To be honest, I’d had too much to drink last night and didn’t think it was safe to drive home.”

  “So…you slept on his sofa?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She smiles and jerks her chin at me. “How are you doing? I tried calling you a couple of times last night to let you know I wasn’t coming home, but you didn’t answer.”

  “Sorry. My phone was off. We were at a movie.”

  “We? Who’s we?”

  I grin. “Milton and I.”

  She’s reaching for a cabinet door, but she halts, her hand frozen in midair. “Are you serious? Milton
went out to see a movie?”

  I nod. “We saw Androids of Titan at the General Cinema.”

  “How was it?”

  “The movie was awful, the popcorn was great, and the company was extremely decent.”

  To my surprise, she darts forward and throws her arms around me. “You’re incredible,” she says.

  “You better look the word up,” I say. “You’re using it wrong.”

  She breaks away and sniffs the air. “Oh, good, you’re making coffee. I’m dying for a cup.” She’s whirling around, the way she does, darting to the cabinet, then coming back by me to go to the coffeemaker, her voluminous skirt flaring up around her.

  I reach out. I grab a fold of her skirt. I hold on to it tightly. She stumbles and grabs the edge of the table to steady herself. “What are you doing, Keats? Let go of me!”

  “I’ve just always wanted to do that,” I say, and then I release the fold of her skirt and let her fly away.

  * * *

  Over the next week or so, I get a lot of sad e-mails from Tom, a few more texts, and one truly heartbreaking, drunken, sobbing phone call one night, but I refuse to see him or talk for more than a minute or two, and eventually he stops trying to contact me.

  Meanwhile, Izzy, who’s always kind, always compassionate, always agreeable, calls me a “heartless bitch” in an e-mail. She writes, Tom came over last nite and cried like a baby. I thought I knew you. I thought we were friends. But maybe you never cared about any of us. You must be a good actress. Sorry if I don’t feel like clapping for this particular performance.

  It hurts, but there’s not a lot I can do about it. I send her back a note that says, I’m sorry. I miss you. She doesn’t respond. So I guess I’ve lost my closest friend.

  I left most of my stuff at the apartment, so I pick up a load one day when I know Tom will be at work. I leave behind anything that belonged to both of us. The big items were all really Tom’s: the apartment, the furniture, the TV set and sound system. I had made myself part of his life, but now I want my own life.

  I’m just not sure exactly what that will be.

  So far I’m just a twenty-five-year-old single girl living in her sister’s old room, working at a job that’s not really leading anywhere.

  For a few days I give in to self-pity. Then I get sick of the self-pity and decide to improve whatever parts of my life I have control over.

  The first step I take is the simplest. I tell Milton I’m reclaiming my old room. He asks me why I don’t just stay in Hopkins’s room. “Wouldn’t that be easier?” he says hopefully.

  “I like mine better.”

  I have nothing but free time on the weekends now, so I spend the next one cleaning out his trash and moving his equipment back into his room. Then I go through all of my old stuff, putting aside what I want to donate to charity, which includes a lot of little gifts that Tom gave me during our first few years together.

  I’m tossing into the Goodwill-destined box a small purple teddy bear he gave me for my sixteenth birthday when I’m suddenly struck by how truly weird it is that a guy in his twenties pursued a girl so much younger than him. At the time, I was so convinced ours was an epic Love for the Ages that I never questioned our age difference, just wished other people would see how irrelevant it was.

  But now I wonder: why did he feel so much more comfortable with me than with girls his own age? Was there something wrong about that?

  And that makes me wonder how different my own life would have been if I hadn’t had the same steady boyfriend from fifteen on. Would I have met more people, made more friends, been more involved in high school and college? Would I be stuck in a dead-end job and living with my parents at the age of twenty-five? Had I stopped growing and challenging myself because of Tom?

  I thrust the thoughts away—what’s the point of asking myself these questions now?—and focus on making my room neat and organized. One thing at a time. A small step forward is better than none. And until very recently, I hadn’t taken even a small step forward in a long time.

  Once my room’s organized and packed up except for the stuff I’m actively using, I tackle Milton’s room over his objections. He calms down when I tell him he can keep working on the computer while I clean up around him. Once I start making a dent in the chaos, he stops objecting and even admits he likes it better this way.

  One day I force him to go with me to Staples, so we can pick out some racks to keep all his computer stuff organized. He’s reluctant to go, but once we’re there he’s impressed by the electronic supplies and in no rush to leave.

  Mom’s home when we unload our purchases. “Are you actually bringing more stuff into this house?” she asks. “When we’re supposed to be packing it up?”

  “It’s all to get better organized, which will make the house look neater and sell faster, speed up packing, and be useful at the next place.”

  She thinks for a moment, then says, “Can you do the kitchen next?”

  So whenever I’m home, I work on getting the entire house in order. It slowly becomes more and more livable. I throw out huge garbage bags filled with junk and make at least one trip each weekend to Goodwill with a trunk full of clothing, books, and knickknacks.

  Once the surfaces and cabinets are cleaned up, I convince Mom to hire a cleaning service to come through. They’re there for nine hours, and after they leave, the house smells better than it has in years.

  I had forgotten how big this place is, how many corners you can get lost in or read a book in or stare out a window from. It makes me a little sad: I’m falling in love with my home again just as I’m about to lose it forever.

  Milton’s still fighting that idea. He takes a day off from what he calls his “work” (something about designing a video game) to research what it would take to get the house declared a historic landmark. The results are discouraging—we don’t meet any of the criteria—but he keeps sending e-mails to people in the Massachusetts Building Department and even to our local congresswoman, trying to convince them.

  The Evanses are thrilled with all the work I’ve done. “The house looks a thousand times better,” Charlie says on their next visit. “It’s time to do a huge open house and to advertise the hell out of it.” There have been a few showings over the past week or so, but no nibbles yet. They’re ready to push harder.

  Charlie asks if Mom and I might want to have dinner with him and Cameron to talk about strategies and preparations for the open house. Mom says yes, of course, and they make a date for Friday night.

  “Why?” I ask her after they’ve gone.

  “Why not? You need to get out of the house.”

  “You’re telling me that? You let Milton be a complete shut-in for the last two years, and you’re already nagging me to get out of the house?”

  She just laughs. “I figure my chance of success is better with you. Seriously, Keats, you should be out having fun.”

  “That doesn’t explain dinner with the Evanses.”

  “Cameron’s cute.”

  “He’s not uncute,” I admit, and then my own words give me a jolt. I teased Jacob by talking that way the night we slept together. I brood over that in silence, which Mom takes as acceptance of our dinner plans.

  I’ve gotten several e-mails from Cathy over the last few weeks and seen her once at the office. She seems to be spending a lot of time with Jacob. She keeps inviting me to go out with them and seems genuinely to want me to, but I keep coming up with excuses to say no.

  It’s not that I don’t want to see Jacob. I do. I miss him. Now that my father has completely moved out of the house, Jacob doesn’t come by anymore, and the couple of times I’ve visited my dad, he hasn’t been there.

  But it’s because I miss him and want to see him that I know I have to turn down Cathy’s invitations. So far it seems like they’re making each other happy. I don’t want to get in the way of that. And there’s still a selfish part of me that wants their relationship to fail, that still wants Jacob for m
yself. And it would be wrong to sit across from them at dinner, secretly rooting against their happiness.

  * * *

  Mom and I go out to dinner with Evans fils and père. She wears a pretty blue silk top over a black-and-white skirt. I wear jeans and a tank top. “Are you sure that’s nice enough?” she asks when I join her at the garage door.

  “Positive.”

  The restaurant is a dark and expensive steak house, and as soon as the waitress hands us our menus, Charlie Evans leans across the table and says grandly, “Order anything you like! It’s on us!”

  If I look at Mom, I’ll crack up, so I determinedly stare at the menu and master my twitching lips.

  The men order martinis and steaks. Mom and I each get a glass of wine and a salad.

  At first the conversation is general and mostly about the real estate market, but Cameron addresses me directly at one point, and from then on we have two separate conversations, which is fine with me. I like Cameron better than his father—sometimes you can still see a person peeking out from under the slick veneer with Cameron, but veneer is all you get with his dad.

  He’s curious about why I’ve moved back home after living away for so long. I explain that I wanted to help Mom get the house ready to sell and that my “previous living arrangement” had fallen through unexpectedly.

  I don’t feel like going into detail about that.

  “Do you know where you’ll live once the house is sold?” he asks. “With your mother?”

  “I think I’ll probably get my own place.”

  “I can help you find an apartment.”

  “Thanks. I may take you up on that.”

  “What neighborhoods are you thinking about?”

  “I haven’t gotten that far.”

  “In Boston proper? Or somewhere more suburban?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Do you like older buildings or newer ones?”

  “I don’t really have a preference.”

  “Do you want a doorman?”

  “I’m fine either way.”