Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts

  “Out with friends.”

  “I didn’t know you guys ever spent time apart. Mom says you’re joined at the hip.”

  “She’s crazy—we’re not like that at all.” I realize I’m swaying a little on my feet, so I give into it, and let my body shift from side to side, which feels kind of nice, like being rocked to sleep. It occurs to me I’m a tiny bit drunk, and I don’t want Hopkins to know, so I take extra care to enunciate carefully. “How’s work these days?”

  “Way too busy. That’s why I haven’t made it to come see Dad yet. I have to, though. Mom keeps saying she won’t relax until I’ve seen him with my own eyes.” She gives a short laugh. “It’s crazy—she’s surrounded by the best doctors in the whole world but doesn’t trust any of them. It puts a lot of pressure on me.”

  “Mom told me you were coming tomorrow.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. It looks like I’m going to have to postpone my trip for another day or two.”

  I try not to sound whiny as I say, “The thing is…Mom doesn’t want Dad sleeping here alone. If you don’t come and stay with him, I’ll have to keep doing it.”

  “Ask Jacob,” she suggests. “He’s the kind of guy who’ll do whatever you ask him to.”

  “That’s not entirely true.”

  “Really? I’ve always gotten that impression.”

  “Can’t you just come tomorrow? You said Mom needs you to—”

  “You know who really needs me?” she interrupts impatiently. “The twenty-seven-year-old mother of three who was brought in here last night having stroke after stroke after stroke. I think the fact that her kids could lose their mother just might take precedence over the fact that you and your boyfriend can’t curl up together in your matching jammies for a night or two.”

  I’m instantly ashamed of my own pettiness. “Jesus,” I say. “A mother of three? Really?”

  “Yeah, and at the moment she can’t talk or move her legs. The dad brought the kids to see her, which was just— Oh, shit, I think I just missed a call I need to take. I better go.”

  And she’s gone, just like that. But the familiar uneasy feeling she leaves me with—insecurity mixed with jealousy—lingers on even after I hang up.

  “How’s Dad doing?” I ask Jacob, who comes back in the living room a minute after I do.

  “Sound asleep. I should probably confess that I poked him just to make sure he wasn’t in a coma. He moved a little, which was good, but if he wakes up now, it’s my fault.”

  “He won’t. He said those painkillers really knock him out.” Hopkins’s call has successfully killed my buzz, so I retreat to the corner table, reclaim my wineglass, and refill it. We’re on the second bottle now. Well into it, actually.

  While I’m at it, I refill Jacob’s glass and bring it over to him.

  “I better not,” he says. “I’ve got to drive home.”

  “If you get too drunk to drive, you can crash here.” I press the glass on him. “There’s this sofa and the pull-out one in the office. We can do rock-paper-scissors to see who gets which one.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he says, but he puts his glass down without taking a sip.

  I’m bummed. I want him to stay. I don’t want to be there alone, checking every hour or so to make sure Dad’s breathing.

  Because what if he’s not?

  We both look around the room, trying to figure out what to do next. “You want to watch something?” Jacob asks.

  “Definitely.” I plop down on the sofa while he searches for the remote.

  He finds it on top of the TV set—Dad still has the boxy kind you can put things on top of—and comes over to the sofa. I’m sitting right in the middle, so even though it’s the only piece of furniture positioned to watch the TV, he hesitates. I slide over a foot and pat the cushion next to me. “Put ’er down,” I say brightly.

  “Her? Why is my butt a her?” But he sits.

  “Why wouldn’t it be? You sexist?” I’m still clutching my wineglass. Since it’s there, I take another sip. As if in response, my head gives a sudden involuntary bob. It occurs to me I might be pretty drunk. To disprove that theory, I hold myself extra erect and say very clearly: “So what should we watch?”

  “Anything that’s not set in a hospital.” He turns on the TV and flicks past some talking heads and commercials and lands on a show where a handful of overtanned and overmuscled shirtless guys are sitting in a hot tub, shouting at each other and sucking down some beers.

  “This,” I say and put my hand over his to get him to stop pushing the buttons. “Stay on this.”

  His fingers twitch under mine. “You really want to watch this?”

  “I don’t not want to watch it.”

  “You actually like this crap?”

  I flutter my eyelids. “I don’t not like it.”

  “You going to keep talking like that for the rest of the night? Because nothing’s keeping me here now that the pizza’s gone.”

  “I’m not going to not talk like this.”

  “Do I have to leave?”

  I promise I’ll stop.

  We watch in silence for a moment. I realize then that my hand is still on his, on the remote, so I withdraw it. “Am I allowed to change the channel?” Jacob asks hopefully.

  “No.” I don’t know why I’m forcing him to watch some horrible reality show about people I would go out of my way to avoid in real life. I mean, if I walked into a bar and these characters were shouting and hooting in there the way they are on the screen, I’d turn around that second and leave.

  But I guess I’m enjoying the irony of watching Jacob watch these idiots—brilliant academician comes face-to-face with the lowbrow sordidness that’s reality programming.

  I keep sipping my wine until this glass—my fourth?—is gone. I lean over and put it on the side table. My head’s starting to feel a little rolly, like it needs to be propped up on something or it will fall over, so I curl up sideways and rest it on the sofa pillow that’s between me and Jacob. When he turns his head to see what I’m doing, his face is just a few inches from mine.

  “You okay?” He sounds mildly concerned.

  “I’m fine. Just tired. It’s been a tough week.”

  “Poor Keats.” His face is a little too close, his light gray eyes a little too intense. So I shut my eyes. It’s easier than moving.

  I feel his hand on my leg and open my eyes to see what he’s doing. He’s just patting my knee. All very fraternal and comforting. His voice is low, soothing. “I know how rough this has all been on you. Not just your dad, but all the stuff going on with your mom, too. All the changes. Let me help in any way I can. I’m truly happy to stay over here until your dad’s better if that makes your life easier.”

  It’s a good thing Jacob is basically a brother to me, otherwise the whole situation would be awkward, between the wine, the dark, the intimacy—and the fact that on the TV, one of the orange-tanned guys is now feverishly kissing a similarly hued girl who’s wearing only a bikini top and the briefest Daisy Dukes I’ve ever seen. They’re at a bar, but it doesn’t seem to be restraining them in any way—his hands are going everywhere, under the bra, inside her shorts.…

  I wonder what it would be like to go out in public in a tiny pair of cutoffs and a bra. I can’t imagine it. I mean, I literally can’t even imagine it. I’m like those little Orthodox girls who redress Barbie dolls in modest outfits with long sleeves and dowdy skirts: I instantly put more clothes on my imaginary self.

  “It’s okay,” I murmur drowsily. “You do plenty for Dad. More than anyone else.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  There’s a pause. We sit there very cozy, my head practically on his shoulder, his hand still gently touching my knee. It occurs to me that if Tom were to walk into the living room right now, he might not like what he saw. But it’s Jacob—I can cuddle up to him, and it doesn’t mean a thing. He’s like the sane brother I never had.

  “It is a little weird,” I say after a mom
ent.

  “I know. She’s supposed to be his best friend’s girlfriend if I’m understanding this correctly.”

  It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about the TV show.

  “No, not that.” My tongue feels thick in my mouth, and it’s making the words come out distorted. I lick my lips and work hard to form the sounds correctly. “I mean that you’re willing to spend so much time on my father. It’s weird. It’s not helping your career any at this point, is it?”

  “It’s never been about my career,” he says. “You know that. I’ve told you how much it’s meant to me to get to work with him, even just to spend time with him. If I can pay him back for all he’s given me in some small way by helping out now—”

  My eyes hurt. No, it’s my head that hurts. It’s the part of my head that’s right behind my eyes. I yawn, which makes my head ache more, which makes me irritable, which makes me say irritably, “You do know he’s not actually your father, right?”

  There’s a pause. “Yes, Keats, I know that,” Jacob says evenly.

  “I’m sorry you don’t have one of your own, but that doesn’t mean you can have mine.”

  I feel a sudden movement. He’s shifted away so abruptly that the pillow he was leaning against falls down, and my head goes down with it. I tumble sideways and have to struggle back to a sitting position.

  Jacob’s gotten to his feet.

  “What?” I say. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Nothing.” He takes a step back. “It’s late. I’m going to take off.” Behind him, the scene on the TV changes. The main guy is working out at a gym now, straining to lift more weight than seems physically possible; he’s swearing as he strains to raise the barbell, but the curse words are bleeped out with such deliberate clumsiness that every fuck is emphasized rather than obscured.

  My eyes flit back and forth from the screen to Jacob’s face, which looks slightly sinister in the flickering TV light.

  He says “bye” and turns.

  “Wait, why are you going?” I jump up and stumble over my own feet. I grab onto the sofa arm to steady myself. “The show’s just getting good.”

  “I think I can manage to tear myself away. Don’t forget to check in on your dad now and then.”

  “Wait. A second ago, you were settling in to watch TV with me. What happened?”

  He averts his face. “Nothing.”

  “He says ‘nothing,’ but he doesn’t mean it.”

  A pause, then, “You know. You deliberately say things…” He trails off. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m sorry I said Dad wasn’t your father. I was just joking.” But the apology seems absurd—Dad isn’t his father.

  Plus it just seems to annoy him more. “Really, Keats? That was a joke? Which part was supposed to be funny? The part about how my own father’s dead or the part about how I’m so pathetic and needy that I’m trying to steal yours?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. I want to get him to turn his face back toward me, to smile his good ol’ Jacob smile at me the way he always does and not be so angry. I don’t like having Jacob angry at me. It feels wrong. I’m allowed to be annoyed at him and to needle him and bug him and ignore him, but he has to be nice to me. That’s just how it works with us. “I had too much wine—I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

  “It’s not just tonight. You say stuff like that all the time. For some reason you seem to think it’s okay to say really mean things to me. I know you get tense around your family, so I try to give you the benefit of the doubt most of the time, but tonight”—he gestures forlornly at the empty living room—“your family’s not even here.”

  “I know.” I move closer to him so I can put a consoling hand on his arm. “And you’re right: I do say mean things to you sometimes. I don’t know why.”

  Even with his face turned away from me, I can see a corner of his mouth. It tugs upward in a failed attempt at a smile. “I guess I just annoy you.”

  I’m horrified by the very idea. Jacob doesn’t annoy me. He couldn’t annoy anyone. I slide my hand up his arm to reassure him. “No, you don’t. I swear you don’t. You don’t annoy me. I like you, Jacob. I always have.” And just to prove my point, I rise up on tiptoe and give him a friendly little kiss on his cheek.

  He doesn’t react, and I’m worried he didn’t feel it so I repeat the kiss, only a little closer to that visible corner of his mouth. Then I say, “I just like to tease you, that’s all.” It makes sense to me. Siblings tease each other, right? And Jacob and I have this brother/sister thing going on. His head rises ever so slightly, and that allows me to press my lips right on the edge of his mouth, where his lips carve into his cheeks.

  “Keats,” he says hoarsely, only it comes out as more of a question, more like “Keats?”

  I make a soothing noise and slide my hand up along his shoulder. He’s so much slighter than Tom. Tom works out a lot, and his shoulders are so wide they feel like they go on forever when I try to reach around them. But Jacob’s thin, and my arm easily twines around his other shoulder.

  “I don’t want you to feel bad,” I say. “Or to be mad at me.”

  I can always get Jacob to do what I want him to do. He scolds me sometimes and gets frustrated, but in the end he always does pretty much what I want. And right now I want him not to feel bad and also to like me again.

  I press myself against his arm and rise up to give him another sisterly peck. Right before I do, he shifts a little toward me like he’s about to say something, and that makes the kiss land almost on the center of his mouth.

  “What are you doing?” he whispers in that same low, guttural voice. I can’t read his expression. It’s too dark in the room, and I’m having trouble focusing my eyes, and anyway he won’t really look at me.

  “I’m just trying to make you feel better,” I explain. “It’s the least you can do for someone when you hurt their feelings. Hurt his feelings. That’s what my mother would say. She corrects people’s grammar all the time. Not yours so much, though—you don’t make grammatical mistakes. I really admire that about you.” Just to prove how much I admire that, I kiss him on the lips again lightly. “I…Really…Do…” I punctuate each word with another little kiss.

  It’s kind of hypnotizing kissing him like that, and it’s not like he’s moving away or pushing me off or anything. He’s just letting me do it.

  He shakes his head silently, warily, but he still doesn’t pull away.

  “Now come on back over here,” I say and kind of tug him by the waist back toward the sofa. “You’ve had too much wine and shouldn’t drive yet.”

  “I’ve had too much wine?” he says, but he lets me drag him back. I reach the sofa and pull him down with me so we fall in a tangle on the sofa together. We wriggle until we’re side by side, and then I curl up against him again, only even closer this time, my arms going back around his shoulders, my face right next to his.

  “Look,” I say, nodding toward the TV. “They’re at the beach. Who goes to the beach at night?” He obediently watches the show, and I steal the opportunity to nip gently at his ear. You know. In fun. Playfully. Because we’re pals.

  His next breath is more of a shudder.

  The woman and the guy on the reality show start making out again.

  “They look like they’re having a good time,” I point out and flick my tongue lightly at the top of his ear. “I guess she likes him better than she likes the other guy. She seems to.”

  “I think,” Jacob says in a very low voice, “that he should get as far away from her as he can. She’s trouble.”

  “You are an enemy to love.” I can feel warmth coming off of his neck, so I nuzzle down into it. In a friendly way.

  Something snaps in Jacob. He rears up in his seat and turns on me, and all of a sudden, he’s pushing me down on the sofa, and his weight is falling on top of me, his mouth is searching out mine, his hands are grabbing my arms and pinning them up over my head, and I can’t tell if he??
?s angry or not. All I know is that I’m aroused, and he’s aroused, and I don’t really think of him like he’s a brother, not really at all, not anymore.

  11.

  I’m twenty-five years old. I’ve only ever slept with one man, which maybe isn’t such a remarkable fact. Lots of twenty-five-year-old girls have probably only slept with one guy.

  Well, some anyway.

  But I’ve also only ever kissed one guy on the lips.

  Only one guy’s hand has ever crept under my top, down my jeans, cupped me anywhere, nestled under my hair, held my jaw and pulled my mouth open to his, stroked me, touched me, entered me, felt me, known me.

  Until now.

  I think about that briefly, about how the only other guy who’s ever touched me is Tom, the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, but the transient Should I think about this more? moment quickly disappears in a rush of other sensations. Jacob feels so foreign on top of me, so new and different. It’s exciting. I want to think about that. I’m wild with curiosity, each new type of contact making me wonder what the next will feel like.

  Tom’s lips are thick. When he kisses me, I feel like my mouth is losing some kind of war with his. He sucks at my lips, absorbs them, surrounds them. Jacob’s kisses are completely different. As wild as his sudden attack on me was, the kisses that follow are gentle and tentative. I feel like I should give him some encouragement, so I tongue his mouth open, and that seems to give him the confidence to use his own tongue, which I like, so I respond with even more enthusiasm…and things just keep building from there.

  I’m warm with Jacob on top of me, but his weight—so much less than Tom’s—isn’t nearly so heavy as the alcoholic lethargy that’s making my eyelids droop and my limbs swoon into the sofa. My arms, my legs, my neck, my feet, my captive hands—they’re all quiet for now, but my mouth is wide awake, and my breasts and hips are eagerly arching up toward him. I don’t feel like I’m in control of those parts of my body. They’re doing what they want.