Family And Other Catastrophes

“You should listen to some music,” David said, handing her a pair of white earphones, the speaker area lightly dusted with his orangey earwax. They would be so gross if they came from anyone but him. Maybe that was something she could incorporate into her wedding vows.

“I actually popped a Benadryl right before we got on the plane. I’m going to sleep.”

“I wish I could sleep on planes. My neck always hurts and then I wake up as soon as there’s any turbulence. I don’t know how you can be so anxious and still have such an easy time sleeping in public places.”

She laughed. “That was a compliment, right? You should try to sleep too. We won’t get much sleep when we arrive. Everyone is going to ask us how work is going and a gazillion other questions we don’t want to answer.”

“Ugh, I hate talking about work.”

“Me too. I want to talk about fun things.”

“Like parasites?”

She gave him an indignant look. “Like fun things.”

“You’re cute.”

“Want to have sex in the bathroom?” she asked perkily. Sometimes she liked to throw out offers like that. David was too vanilla to ever take her up on them, but they made her appear kinky, so she could fulfill the roles of both seductive “other woman” and loyal, nurturing wife. If she were giving him so much sex, he wouldn’t have any energy left for all the other women she imagined were sneaking around him, waiting to strike as soon as she turned thirty. Sometimes she swore she could hear the popping of their bubblegum and the sizzling of their hair underneath curling irons when she walked down the street.

“Sex in the bathroom sounds illegal, but you can give me a hand job underneath my blanket.” She assumed he was kidding, but he really did have one of those fleece blankets given out by the flight attendant, so maybe he was serious.

“Just you? Like, I don’t get any...you know...under my blanket?” Having sex with a guy in the airplane bathroom was sexy, Pan Am, Mad Men stuff. Giving a hand job under a fleece blanket while everyone on the plane watched reruns of How I Met Your Mother was just sad. But if David really wanted it, she’d look so cold and withholding if she said no.

“Finger banging is harder to maneuver,” he said. “You don’t have to give me the hand job, though. I just thought...” He gave her a flirty smile.

“I’m just joking. I’ll give you the hand job.”

“Wait, seriously? I was joking too.”

“I don’t know why you would joke about that. People do this stuff all the time.”

“Have you?”

“No. Just people do.” He never wanted to hear about, or even think about, her previous sexual experiences, even though on their first date she was twenty-five and had obviously had relationships before him. No one-night stands, though—she was too afraid of antibiotic-resistant chlamydia. He had never even divulged his own number, which led her to believe it was either embarrassingly high or low.

“Okay, you can give me a handie, but only after the safety demonstration.”

“I can give you a hand job? I’m not begging to do it, I was just offering.”

“I mean, can you give me a hand job after the safety demonstration?”

A peppy blonde flight attendant popped her head into the row and reached her arm around David’s lap to make sure his seat belt was fastened. She pursed her mauve lips.

“Sir, in the future please do not have a blanket on your lap when we are checking seat belts,” she said, in a way that managed to be both unnecessarily friendly and unnecessarily rude.

“Uh, sorry.”

“And, ma’am?” the flight attendant asked. Emily realized her blanket was covering her seat belt, as well, and lifted the blanket to reveal that it was, in fact, fastened. Not that it would mean anything, if there were a terrorist on the plane. Why did anyone even check this? They should have been going around making eye contact with all the passengers to check for secret signs of nervousness, the way she once heard people did in Israel. Why didn’t she live in Israel? Her cousin Rebecca did Birthright in 2007 and kept going on about how the police presence “ruined the experience.” Of course, Rebecca was being stupid, because police were the only thing making the experience possible in the first place. Maybe if Emily lived in Israel, she’d feel safer. Except there would be a lot more threats in general—she wasn’t sure if the police presence outweighed the increase in threats.

“Thank you,” the flight attendant said.

“Oh, I have a question,” Emily said.

“Sure, ma’am.”

“Did you call me ma’am because you thought I was old, or because you say that to all women over the age of eighteen?”

She cocked her head. “I’m confused. Would you prefer something else?”

“I mean, I don’t prefer anything because it’s not like I’m going to be hanging out with you loads of times, but I just want to know what calculation went through your mind when you looked at me and thought, She’s a ma’am.” Emily could see David wincing out of the corner of her eye.

“Well, you’re an adult woman, so we say ma’am to be polite.”

“It’s not that polite, though. I mean, you obviously weren’t trying to be rude, but when I hear ma’am I don’t think the person is being respectful. I think my crow’s feet are showing and that I look forty.”

“Well, how old are you?”

“How old did you think I was?”

“I don’t know, thirty-two?”

“I assume you were rounding down not to offend me. You probably meant thirty-five or older. I’m twenty-eight. Thanks.”

The flight attendant looked like she was about to say something but thought better of it and walked off.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” David asked. “She thinks you’re a weirdo now. Why do you always do that? For the last time, you don’t look older than your age. Stop freaking out.”

“Everyone thinks I look older than my age. You only say that to flatter me, which, trust me, I appreciate. But this isn’t just my anxiety. You can attribute a lot of stuff to my anxiety but not this. Everyone agrees with me except for you.” Emily longed for the days when “I thought you were so much older” was a compliment. It was great when she was nine and trying to look grown-up, useful when she was eighteen and trying to buy alcohol, mildly annoying by the time she hit twenty-three and devastating now that she was twenty-eight. Worst of all, nobody else seemed to relate. Even people she thought looked terrible for their age loved to regale her with their arsenals of stories of how they were mistaken for fetuses when trying to see R-rated movies.

David shook his head. “It’s really not you. People are just terrible at guessing ages. The other day at LifeSpin, one of the new trainers asked me if I was there with a parent because you need to be eighteen to have a membership.”

“See? This is exactly what I mean. Everyone else gets guessed as younger. That never happens to me. I was actually offered a free Jazzercise class.”

“If you’re referring to JazzSweat, that’s not for older people. It’s actually super intense. They give you free cashew powder if you get through all six classes without passing out.”

“Sure. Fine. But that flight attendant definitely thought I looked old.”

“No, she didn’t. Even if she thought you were thirty-two, that’s, like, no different from twenty-eight. You’re freaking out over something so tiny. Even for you.”

“Okay. Full disclosure, I asked her that because I actually was offended by her use of the word ma’am but the good news is, she thinks I’m crazy, so now we don’t need to worry about her bugging us while I give you a hand job.”

“You’re actually going to do that?”

“After the safety demonstration.”

DAY 1

Emily

AT SOME POINT during her Benadryl-induced stupor, Emily had gotten chilly, stolen David’s heather gray sweatpants from his carry-on, and put them on underneath her dress. By the time they landed at JFK around seven in the morning, she was too tired, and still too cold, to remove them.

“I thought you said you needed to look good every day this week or it would be embarrassing,” David teased.

“Not now. I’m freezing. Why do they make planes that cold? And then they offer air-conditioning on top of that? When it’s negative a hundred degrees outside, why not offer adjustable heat dials instead of AC? I know why—because they’re sadists.”

“Let’s just get to your mom’s house. We’ll feel a lot better when we see Lauren, my biggest fan.”

“Are you still upset about that? I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s actually not a bad thing. I can finally stop pretending to like her.”

“So you didn’t like her before?”

“I didn’t really interact with her long enough to form an opinion. I saw her—what, once, that time in Brooklyn? We had lunch in that Americana dim sum place with the grilled cheese gyoza.”

Emily turned to David. “Be honest. Is there anyone else in my family you don’t like? I may even agree with you.”

“Same question to you.”

“I like your family.”

“Okay, same answer.”

“Except you don’t actually like them. Your family is a million times nicer than mine.”

“Yeah, my family seems great, but trust me when I say they can be annoying too. What about my brother?”

“Oh, well, I mostly meant your father.”

“He’s not perfect either, believe me.”

“Emily!”

She turned and saw a young woman with long curly brown hair, a wide friendly smile and a Muppet-like bouncy walk. Emily couldn’t place her at first but squinted and got a better look as she approached. Finally she recognized the ten-year-old frayed cross-body bag with the faux tribal stitching. It was Stephanie Morris, an old friend from high school—so old, in fact, that Emily hadn’t seen her since her sophomore year in college when she was home for spring break. They had gotten coffee in Chelsea, but had very little to discuss other than Stephanie’s love of silent movies and hatred of designer fashion. The two of them once had a lot in common—they were both artistic, extroverted and energetic—but since Vassar, Stephanie had changed dramatically. Of course, Emily hadn’t spent enough time with her to know this firsthand, but she assumed as much from Stephanie’s social media posts. If Stephanie wasn’t posting about the dangers of vaccinations, she was posting about how meditation could cure cancer or how the only good decision a young person could make is to quit her job and live in Bolivia for a year without doing any research first. After Stephanie got her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she went backpacking in Europe and presumably had sex with a flock of rich hippies named Travis or Jared in hostel beds for a year and a half. She had neglected to find another job since returning to the United States. It had been six years. Of course, such important life-changing experiences were a lot easier when your parents paid your rent and subsidized your shrooms habit.

“Emily, is that seriously you?” she squealed. “How are you? You didn’t tell me you were back!”

Emily never told Stephanie when she was back home—because, naturally, they barely knew each other anymore—but every time Stephanie got any whiff of Emily’s return to New York on social media, she eagerly asked her if she wanted to meet up for coffee in Brooklyn. She never stopped to consider that Emily’s parents lived in Westchester.

“Oh, I’ve just been so busy with the wedding stuff.”

“When’s the big day?” she asked, her electric-green-lined eyes widening. She had gotten a nose piercing. That was new.

“Oh, just...in a week,” Emily croaked.

“A week? Oh, so, like, it’s a small ceremony with just you and your parents?”

“Um...not really. We have a few other people coming.”

Emily watched it slowly dawn on Stephanie that she wasn’t invited to the wedding. Eight years ago when they met up in Chelsea, Stephanie had promised Emily that she would give a kick-ass speech at her wedding. It seemed intrusive and weird even then, especially since Emily was single at the time. She racked her brain for all the consoling things she could say to Stephanie—for example, that her parents were limiting her to inviting five friends. Of course, the real reason she invited so few friends was that she didn’t have many friends. Her mother had actually urged her to invite more and said that she feared that she was self-sabotaging by “pushing people away” because it was implausible for a woman her age to have only two close female friends. Surely, her mother assumed, Emily had other friends she was intentionally alienating.

“I didn’t realize you wanted to come,” she said to Stephanie. “Also, we don’t have a raw vegan option for dinner. You’re still raw vegan, right?”

“Yeah, but it could still work out! Especially since I’m currently fasting, except for alcohol, so you wouldn’t even need to provide a dinner for me. I’d even bring my own craft whiskey. Can I still come anyway?”

Emily desperately wanted to turn to David and share incredulous looks, but she knew that doing that would plunge them both into fits of laughter. It would be just like the time they were riding the 47 bus downtown in San Francisco and a middle-aged man wearing nothing but a clown wig and leather harness got on, his soft, leathery penis flopping around like a very large skin tag. Everyone pretended not to notice, because that was the go-to San Francisco reaction to a lunatic. Emily, however, had made the mistake of mischievously glancing at David. He began to laugh, and so did she, and before long the naked clown was serenading both of them with a surprisingly competent rendition of “Every Breath You Take.”

Emily smiled tensely. “Um... I mean... I can talk to my parents and see if they’re okay with it, but they’re being really strict about it. They’re paying and they’re on a tight budget, so it’s kind of their rules.”

“Well, I won’t even eat anything, so I don’t think anyone would even notice me. What day is it again?”

“Next Saturday.”

“Oh,” Stephanie looked down at her hands, as if discovering them for the first time. She shrugged. “Saturday is actually no good for me. I’m going to a reconstructed Druid bonfire that day. Poop! This totally sucks! There’s no way we can do another day?”

“What, like, reschedule my wedding?”

“Oh, of course not! What was I thinking? You probably already paid all the fancy caterers and whatnot. Can we hang out a different day?”

“Let’s totally do that next time I’m in town,” she said with no intention of returning to New York for at least a year. Next holiday season, she would definitely try to go on vacation with David alone, to somewhere warm and peaceful where she could wear a bikini and a breezy cotton kimono. Slighting both sets of parents for the holidays seemed easier than slighting only one—at least they couldn’t be accused of favoritism. The previous year, they had visited his parents, because they had seen her parents the year before that. With her parents in Westchester and his in Fairfield, Connecticut, they could easily visit both in one trip, but whichever family paid for the ticket seemed to feel horribly insulted if they spent even a few minutes seeing the other family. Emily learned that the hard way when she visited her own family for the holidays and made the mistake of seeing David’s parents for lunch one day. For the rest of the week, her mother lamented that they were “stealing” her and deliberately trying to destroy what little Emily’s parents had left of a family. This somehow devolved into the accusation that David’s Catholic father was trying to steal her away and convert her to Catholicism because “for them it’s not enough for Jews to be only two percent of the population, they want us at zero percent.” The holidays had gone from something Emily enjoyed celebrating as a child—in a secular, Claymation-movie-based sort of way—to something she dreaded each year.

“What about Friday?” Stephanie asked. “Are you free to chill at my place?”

“Your place in Brooklyn?”

“Yeah, it’ll be low-key. We can just chill for an hour or so.”

“I mean, I’m staying with my parents in Westchester. Also, that’s the day of the rehearsal, the rehearsal dinner, you know...it’s kind of a busy day.”

“I’m sure you have an hour free. Come see me! I never see you anymore!” She jutted out her lower lip like a kid begging for a rainbow slushy.

“Well, actually it would be like, three or four hours if you include the commute.”

“Figure it out! Don’t be a party pooper! We can smoke a little weed, drink the home brew that my neighbor made and watch Nosferatu. It’ll be rad.”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” She squeezed David’s hand, as if to send a distress signal, but he already knew she was distressed and seemed to have no intention of intervening.

“Sweet, let’s totally do that!” She tried to high-five Emily. “Shit, my Uber is here. I have to go.”

“No worries, I’ll see you later.”

Emily waited until she was gone and turned to David.

“Why does she even like me? What about me is even likable to a person like that?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but her interest in you is just as confusing to me as it is to you.”

“We’re talking about someone who uses her emergency allowance money to go to Burning Man. What does she want with me? My organs?”

“Possibly,” David said with a grin. “Since you went grain-free, your digestive system is probably top-notch.”

* * *

Emily got chills when she saw her father, Steven, behind the wheel of his gray Volvo waiting to pick them up at the airport. This sight brought her back to the terrifying days when Steven attempted to teach her how to drive, shouting “Ah!” and “Ooh!” every time the car went above two miles per hour. Now, at twenty-eight, she was still afraid of actually taking her road test. Fortunately, in San Francisco everyone just took Uber.

Steven looked older to her, even though he and Emily’s mother, Marla, had visited her in San Francisco the year before. He had gained some weight that had settled in his lower face. He had slightly less hair and a slightly longer beard with more gray in both. He was only sixty-three, which she knew wasn’t really that old, but she often felt ripped off when she considered that her older siblings would wind up with more years of living parents than she would. Then again, he was only thirty-five when he had her. Having a child at thirty-five was no longer old by current standards. If anything it seemed recklessly young compared to what people attempted in San Francisco. Emily always dreamed of having her first child at thirty, but now that she was in her late twenties, such an act seemed outrageously premature. People who had children before thirty were part of the multitudes who occupied the land mass between New York and California, watching game shows, trampling each other in Walmart on Black Friday and remaining shockingly unaware of gluten. She knew it was classist to think that way, but she couldn’t help it. She blamed Linda.

Emily’s boss was an overachieving blonde Amazon who firmly believed that a person was incapable of committing to another person properly until they were both forty and had a net worth of over a million dollars (each). Linda proudly regaled her with stories about how she had the foresight to freeze her eggs at the age of thirty-seven, only to fertilize them at the age of forty-eight when she met her sixty-year-old husband. “In this technologically advanced day and age,” Linda said, in her usual chipper but abrasive tone, “women no longer need to get married. My little Harper won’t get married until I’m dead. That’s the rule.” Then she laughed and added, “Not literally, of course. But she better not be under forty, or I’m not paying for that wedding! Unless she’s already at C-level. She’s gifted, so it’s not a totally crazy idea!”

Whenever Emily thought about how difficult her own mother was, she contemplated little three-year-old Harper, only allowed to watch PBS and forbidden from playing with dolls or anything that would discourage her from a career in science or engineering, the only acceptable fields for a woman in Linda’s world, despite the fact that Linda worked in PR. Linda didn’t want Harper wearing makeup or pink frilly dresses, but Linda got her roots touched up every few weeks, wore fitted, surprisingly sexy sheath dresses to work and never left the house without her fuchsia lipstick and heavy mascara. Eventually, Harper would start asking questions, especially if she was really so gifted, and the result wouldn’t be pretty. Emily still recalled Linda’s chilly, thin-lipped response when she had told her about the possibility of an American Girl Place opening up in Union Square and how much fun Harper would have there. Poor Harper was a science experiment from day one, as if Linda were playing The Sims and wanted to build the perfect Sim from the beginning—complete with the right genetics, the right skills, the right interests. But wait! Screw Harper! Harper only saw her mother for two hours a day, but Emily had to work with her and suffer her unsolicited pseudo-maternal advice for nine hours a day. Every time Linda opened her mouth to dispense some pointless aphorism, usually along the lines of “dump your fiancé and focus more on your career, but of course you can have it all, just not in your twenties,” Emily cringed as she realized she was literally growing older with every second that she spent with her. Emily deserved far more sympathy than stupid Harper. Harper was naturally blonde anyway—life would come easily for her.

“Emily!” her dad called out. She ran toward the car. The sweatpants were too hot now that she was being hit with the humid air of New York in June, not to mention that her legs were double-insulated with both sweatpants and blood-clot-preventing socks. Sometimes she felt she should be compensated just for living with anxiety and all the inconveniences that came with being a hypochondriac. Could she possibly enroll herself in some kind of medical study? It would certainly beat scheduling Linda’s meetings all day.

“Good to see you, Professor Glass,” David said, climbing into the back.

“Haha, ‘Steven,’ please. So how’s work? Is there going to be an IPO?”

“We’re out for a second round of funding. Once that closes, we’ll start the countdown to an IPO. So fingers crossed and say a prayer.”

“I’m an atheist, so I don’t pray,” Steven said, peeling out and cutting off a taxi, then nervously slamming on the brakes so that the taxi almost rear-ended him. “But it is fascinating how, historically, people have resorted to prayer as a way to feel in control of a completely chaotic universe.”

“Oh...well, I just meant—”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to bore. I recently wrote a book on early Jainism but you probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. So who’s your funding coming from? Google? It seems like they’re buying up everything.”

“No, actually—”

“Apple?”

“No, um...it’s a VC firm called BluCapital.”

“Like Blu-ray? I’ve heard of Blu-ray.”

“No, it’s...it’s something else. I don’t want to jinx it anyway.” Emily could tell David wanted the topic to end. Whenever they traveled back East, people Steven’s age were always ravenously interested in his work for a start-up. Half of David’s stepmother’s friends thought he worked for Amazon, and the only reason he didn’t correct them was that he didn’t feel like explaining what he actually did.

“So what happens when you do the IPO?”

David fiddled with the zipper on his backpack. “We’ll hopefully make some money.”

“I’m sorry, but what is your company called again?”

“Zoogli.”

“Right, right. And what does Zoolie do again?”

“Zoogli, and we—well, we are the liaison between mobile tracking SDKs and the mobile app developers. We help to aggregate spend in a way that is more accessible for the developer. Our slogan is, So easy, even a marketer can get it.”

“Oh, so you make apps? I have this flashlight app on my phone, it’s outstanding.”