Family And Other Catastrophes

“Yes,” Nathan said. “The fair blonde lass.”

“You want to intellectually duel someone? Duel her. She loves being told when she’s wrong. Makes her hot.”

Nathan smiled smugly, as if Jason had just made an embarrassingly basic grammar mistake.

“What?” Jason asked. “What is it now?”

“A gentleman cannot duel a lady. For if he did, he would no longer be a gentleman.”

“Oh, brother. How about this? I promise to leave your sister alone if you—”

“Stepsister.”

“Okay. I promise to leave her alone for the entire night, if you go and talk to that blonde lass. I hereby beseech you to flirt with her, serenade her and defend her honor.”

“But why? I don’t know her.”

“Look. I know her. She loves guys like you who are romantic and old-fashioned and whatnot. So if you’re looking for a girlfriend, go talk to her.”

“Intriguing.” Nathan nodded and tipped his fedora. Then, with a whoosh of his trench coat, he headed for Christina. Jason sat back on one of the patio chairs, put his beer to his lips and prepared to enjoy the show.

Nathan

Nathan took a deep breath as he approached her. The closer he got, the older she looked, but she was still pretty. She reminded him of how he always imagined a miller’s wife or tavern wench would look in the books he read—a bit weathered compared to her much more attractive eighteen-year-old counterparts, but comely still with clear blue eyes and flaxen locks. Below her loose-fitting top he could make out a relatively ample bosom.

With all the aplomb he could muster, he bowed deeply, removing the fedora from his head with an elaborate flourish. “Milady...” he said, staring at her feet. After sufficient time, he straightened himself and made eye contact. She looked frightened. Perhaps she had never met a true gentleman before.

“Um...hello,” she said. His stepmother had vanished. For all her faults, she always knew when to make herself scarce.

“What is your name, sweet lass?” he asked, taking her hand. She had a dry, freckled palm like a farmhand, but her fingers were small and delicate.

“Christina,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m the mother of the flower girl. And you are...?”

“Nathan Porter. Best man and second in line to the country seat of Portershire.”

She looked past him to where Jason was sitting. “Okay. Be honest with me. Did my jackass of an ex-husband tell you to come over here?”

“I know not the man of whom you speak.”

“Okay. That’s what I thought. Go back and tell Jason this shit isn’t funny, and if he wants to see his daughter at all this week he’s going to need to act like an adult.”

“Milady, is it so difficult to believe that a gentleman of my age would be interested in you? I value more than just looks, you know, and besides, you’re like a seven at least.”

She sighed. “Go away. Tell Jason to quit it. Bye, Nathan.”

He marched back to Jason, fixing his stare on the balding slob, who was drinking beer before sundown like a tavern drunkard. Nathan stood before him and put his hands on his hips. “Jason,” he said. “That woman is your ex-wife!”

“Yeah, guess I left that out. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.”

“She knew you sent me over. You have disrespected me in mine own home. Now prepare for that duel.”

Jason began to laugh. “Take it easy, buddy. I just wanted to have some fun. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I was trying to mess with her, not you.”

That was more of an apology than Nathan had expected. Back in high school, the popular boys would play similar pranks on him, like the time they told him there was a sword fight tournament being hosted in Gym A, and Nathan didn’t realize that was where the Womyn’s Empowerment Club was having their “safe space” sexual assault discussion group. He was the one who got suspended for a week after that, all because he arrived brandishing a sword and wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. Some people took political correctness much too far.

“I appreciate your apology, good sir,” Nathan said. “But I need assurance that you will not exploit me for your merriment again.”

Jason got up from his seat, wobbling slightly. “Sorry if I took advantage of you. It was just such a perfect opportunity to piss off the ex. You know how it is.”

Nathan nodded. He had never had a girlfriend, but that had not stopped him from plotting his revenge on other women. Already he had made one of his female tormentors cry on Twitter by calling her an imbecile for misspelling lavender. He smiled serenely to himself at the memory of that triumph.

“So you respect me?” Nathan asked.

“Sure. As much as I can respect a guy in a tweed fedora and sneakers.”

“Do I have your gentleman’s word?”

Jason threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah. My gentleman’s word.”

Emily

The air smelled of slightly burnt hot dogs, a childhood smell that filled Emily with nostalgia. She looked around and saw that the two families appeared to be mixing nicely, or at least being polite to each other. Marla and Susan were still talking. Marla was looking ever so slightly over Susan’s head, her chin tilted upward, a very full glass of pinot noir in her hand. Emily heard Susan exclaim “So you’ve actually been to Madison Square Garden? In the Big Apple?”

Meanwhile, her father had cornered Nick by the grill. “I don’t want to bore you with this, but the brutality of the Han Dynasty has been exaggerated by popular media. It was a topic I covered in one of my more famous articles. I’m not sure I would recommend it to you. If you’re not in the field, you might consider it a bit dry.”

“There you are, Emily!” She saw Marla waltzing over to her, her palazzo pants rippling in the wind. “I was looking all over for you. I’m calling a small family meeting outside. Wipe under your eyes, by the way, your mascara is melting.”

“Calling a family meeting at another family’s home?” Emily asked. “Come on, that’s pretty rude.”

Marla feigned pearl-clutching, which actually consisted of clutching her amber necklace, and appeared less satirical than she intended. “Oh no, Emily! Maybe they’ll tell David not to marry you! The horror!”

“That’s not—” Emily paused. She wouldn’t pick this battle.

“If you must know, Emily, I’m doing this here because I fear you and your siblings would lash out at me if we were in private. Discussing this in a public setting makes it more likely that you’ll all behave appropriately.”

Emily wondered how Marla defined appropriate, but she decided not to say anything about it. Having done many “inappropriate” things in her childhood, which Marla still held up as examples of her missed social cues, she wanted to avoid having any of these failures paraded again. One incident in particular was a tantrum she threw at the age of eight when her mother refused to let her get a second candy bag at FAO Schweetz. She’d thought that, twenty years later, such a story would be merely funny or forgettable, but it still embarrassed her deeply, since Marla always made a point to relate all her modern-day anxieties to this one moment and harp on the fact that she was “much too old” to be getting so upset in public. “This is just like that time at FAO Schweetz,” Marla would say, as Emily cried to her on the phone about a fear or hang-up that had nothing to do with candy. “You have problems handling a lack of control.”

Emily followed Marla to a handmade wooden bench at the far end of the patio, where Lauren and Jason were already sitting. Matt sat at the end of the bench, looking like a startled deer. Marla glared at him.

“Matt,” she said sharply, “this is a family meeting.”

Matt nodded and slunk away. Emily took his seat on the bench.

“Mom, you didn’t have to be so mean to Matt,” Lauren said.

“He needs to stop following you everywhere. He’s worse than Ariel.”

“Actually, Ariel is profoundly independent. We still do skin-on-skin bonding, but he doesn’t insist on it.”

“I see.” Marla turned to face the group. “Okay, I’m just going to say it. I want us to work together on what I think you’ll all agree are some troubling issues facing our family.”

“What issues?” Jason asked.

“It’s no surprise that we aren’t exactly close. As I get older, I want to spend time with my children, and while both you and Lauren live within driving distance, or a quick train ride on Metro-North, I rarely see you. And Emily, I know you live all the way in California, but we haven’t seen you since two Christmases ago. I can’t even remember the last time we saw you for Thanksgiving.”

“You and Dad always go to the Vineyard on Thanksgiving.”

“Yes, but only because we anticipate that you won’t want to come home. Meanwhile, Lauren doesn’t even celebrate Thanksgiving.”

“That’s because it should be called National Genocide Day,” Lauren said. “Although to be fair, that’s every day of American history.” She leaned back as if waiting to collect high-fives.

“Look, I’m not here to blame any of you kids. It’s not your fault that we aren’t as close as we should be. I take full responsibility for being too trusting. I was silly to assume you would all want to stay in touch with me as I got old.”

“Mom, don’t do this,” Emily said. “We just have our own lives—it doesn’t mean we don’t want to see you.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “since we’re all together this week, I’ve decided that we should do a special family exercise. I think it will help us repair what has gone wrong.”

“What is it, Mom?” Emily asked. She feared some kind of competitive team-building exercise, like the trip to Six Flags that ClearDrop organized, where everyone had to go on rides together in a group of thirty, and nobody could separate. But no, Marla was too cultured for something like that. Emily still recalled the disdain in her mother’s voice when she found out that her friend Naomi’s daughter got married at Disneyland with some guy dressed as the genie from Aladdin officiating.

“Well,” Marla said, her voice cracking theatrically, “I sometimes feel that I have failed you as a mother, considering how none of you are particularly close. Lauren, when you were born, I was hoping you would become a best friend for Jason, and Emily...”

“I know I was an accident, Mom.”

“Well, I did tell your father that the antibiotics I was taking might interfere with my birth control, but when he gets in the mood...anyway. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that we need to bring this family together before the wedding. If we’ve fought this much only a few hours in, just imagine how this week will be. This might be the last time we all see each other before I die.”

“Are you sick, Mom?” Emily asked. Her throat tensed up.

“I could be,” said Marla. “Many cancers are asymptomatic. But in terms of actual diagnoses, no. Nothing that I know of.”

Lauren groaned. “Mom, you can’t just say something like that to Emily.”

“I apologize, Emily,” Marla said. “But death is a reality, and I will die someday. And I don’t want that to happen before we have all come to terms with our problems.”

“So what’s the plan?” Jason asked, frowning at his empty beer bottle.

Marla took a deep breath. “Family therapy.”

Lauren looked incredulous. “Dad actually agreed to this?”

“Dad won’t be involved. Just me. This is about you kids, not him.”

“Then why would you be there?” Lauren asked.

“Because I’m going to be the therapist,” Marla said triumphantly, as if revealing a stunning M. Night Shyamalan twist.

“You can’t be the therapist for your own children,” said Emily. “That’s unethical.”

“Ethics are important up to a point, but it’s also important not to be too rigid about them,” she said. That, at least, was true. Marla bravely resisted societal pressure to be ethical. “Frankly, Emily, when you call me unethical I think you’re projecting. What you really fear is that your own moral flaws will be uncovered. Don’t be afraid of that. This is for personal growth.”

“And if I don’t want to go to this?”

“Then I will cancel your wedding.”

“What?”

“I’m serious.”

Emily had a feeling she wasn’t serious—after all, too many deposits had already been put down, the guests were all set to arrive, it would be a massive embarrassment—but why argue? If she didn’t say yes to the therapy, she would have to deal with constant unpleasantness for the next six days. And perhaps it would be a good outlet to tell Jason and Lauren about all the times they had wronged her. She enjoyed complaining about other people, and if she could do it in an environment where nobody was allowed to yell at her for it, that would be even better.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” she finally said.

She turned to Lauren and Jason, who both reluctantly nodded. At first she wondered why they didn’t put up more of a fight, and then she remembered that her parents paid for Lauren’s rent and Jason’s divorce lawyer.

NIGHT 1

Emily

“WHAT KIND OF bars even exist in Westchester?” David’s feet dangled from the tiny bed in Emily’s childhood bedroom. Emily was curling her hair with a thick pink-handled curling iron. She wore a formfitting white dress and a gold key pendant necklace that he had given her for her birthday the previous year.

“Some place called Celebz. Jason says he’s been there before.” She finished the last step of her makeup routine—extra-thickening mascara—and put the mascara tube back into her makeup bag, full of the department-store splurges she had made specifically for her wedding week. She felt a twinge of shame when she saw the $50 Tom Ford lipstick in peach-pink, but she genuinely felt it was the only shade that didn’t make her look haggard.

“You don’t need to get all dressed up. It’s just a bar. This is going to be the Zoogli barbecue all over again. Watching you run off screaming with barbecue sauce on your white skirt was pretty hilarious for me, but you were upset for days.”

“That’s because it was a Club Monaco skirt that I bought at a sample sale and I never would have been able to afford it otherwise, smart-ass. My reaction was completely justified. Also, the Zoogli barbecue was in California, where everyone dresses like eighteen-year-old coders. New York is different. No hoodies and sneakers at clubs.” She hoped he didn’t take this as a critique of his usual night-out uniform of a white T-shirt and jeans. She thought it made him look like a Calvin Klein model, but her girlfriend Jennifer told her he had the same fashion acumen as Homer Simpson.

“Yeah, but Westchester? I don’t want to trash your home county or anything, but all the bars I’ve seen so far look like pizza parlors.”

“There have to be a few places that are heating up. It’s Saturday. Jason will know a good place.”

* * *

“Ready for the party countdown?” Jason was behind the wheel. “The British GPS bitch says we’ve got five more minutes.” Emily sat in the back seat with Lauren and Matt, while David rode shotgun. Lauren had done her version of dolling up: bright blue eyeliner, red lipstick, a Ramones T-shirt that showed off her arm tattoos, too-long bootcut jeans that were frayed at the cuffs, and red Converse sneakers with doodles on them. “Ariel drew on my shoes,” she boasted when she caught Emily looking. “That’s just how little of a fuck I give about clothes.”

“Are you sure this place is good?” Emily asked Jason.

“Pretty decent.”

“Am I overdressed?”

“Nah. Well, maybe a little. But at least you didn’t think it was sexy to dress like the guys from Superbad like Lauren.”

“I didn’t wear this to be sexy,” Lauren said. “I wear what I fucking want. Just because I’m not as desperate for male approval as Emily—”

“Hey, I didn’t even say anything!”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m just used to getting judged. The hardest person to be in this world is a woman who dares to veer the tiniest bit outside Western standards of femininity.”

“What about a disabled albino hermaphrodite in Rwanda?” Jason said.

“Actually, it’s called intersex. And I’m not here to play the oppression Olympics.”

“Well, no, unless you’re the one winning. Hear ye, hear ye, the white woman in her thirties, whose parents pay her rent, is oppressed! May as well be straight out of a refugee camp.”

“The only reason I even need Mom’s money is because our patriarchal society devalues a gender studies degree. For women, receiving money from parents is actually a form of indentured servitude. If I were a man, society would be handing me money just for showing up, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t have to. You’re saying this from the lofty, privileged perspective of a white cis man.”

“What’s cis?” Jason seemed legitimately confused this time.

“It’s what you are. But it’s not my job to educate you, so Google that shit.”

“How is it spelled, like sissy? How can I Google it if I don’t know how to spell it?”

“Forget it. You have no interest in learning anyway. And like I said, it’s not my job.”

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