Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts

  Anyway, now I’m glad Tom’s not with me. He hates the way my parents named us, thinks it’s the biggest piece of pseudointellectual bullshit he’s ever heard and tantamount to child abuse. For a couple of years, he tried to convince me to call myself Kiki, but as much as I agree with him that my given name is ridiculous, it’s still my name. Plus…Kiki? That was the best he could come up with?

  “Good thing for your kids you’re not an e.e. cummings fan,” the man says, releasing my hand to turn to Mom.

  “I love him actually. But even I couldn’t be that cruel to my own child.”

  They share a smile.

  “And you’re—?” I say because they seem to have forgotten that no one’s introduced him to me.

  “Paul Silvestri.” The big palm extends toward me again with the apparent intention of shaking a second time. Seems like overkill, but I surrender my hand while I shoot Mom a who the hell is this guy? kind of look.

  She just says brightly, “Dinner will be ready soon. Meanwhile, we’ve got wine and cheese. Keats? A glass?”

  “Yeah, I’ll have white. Jacob, I have a quick question for you. Come here.” I grab him by the hand, pull him to his feet and into the hallway, and practically pin him against the wall. He’s wearing his usual khakis and button-down shirt.

  It must be easy to be Jacob and get dressed in the morning.

  “Who is that guy?” I hiss at him, even though I have a pretty good guess and that’s why I’m reacting like this.

  But he confirms it for me. “He’s your mom’s date.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “I guess she wanted you to meet him. He seems nice.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. She’s not your mother.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he says, and I remember that his mother’s dead. So’s his father. Jacob’s had some bad luck in his life.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I just meant it’s not as weird for you as it is for me. Why didn’t she warn me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought she told you everything.”

  He sighs and gives me a look of frustration tempered by patience. I bring that look out in Jacob a lot. “Just relax. Give him a chance.”

  “I’ll try. But it’s weird.”

  We head back into the kitchen. “I know you’ve had a lot to get used to lately, Keats—”

  “Yeah,” I say, cutting him off. “I think everyone should feel sorry for me.”

  “Too bad. No one does.” He walks away while I snatch a full glass of wine out of my mother’s offering hand.

  * * *

  There’s a place set for Milton at the dinner table, but when we all go to sit down, he’s nowhere in sight.

  “Where’s the boy genius?” I ask.

  “He’s coming down,” Mom says. “He needed to finish something up first.”

  “He always says that. And then he waits to eat until after we’re done, so he won’t have to sit and make conversation.”

  “That’s not true,” Mom says with an uncomfortable glance at Paul. “I often eat dinner with him.”

  “Well, I don’t. Give me a sec.” I get up and leave the dining room.

  Upstairs, I knock loudly on Milton’s door and then barge in.

  He looks up from the computer with a startled expression. “What?”

  “It’s dinner. You have to come join us.”

  “I already told Mom I’d be down soon.”

  “Dinner’s now. Save what you’re doing, or I swear I’ll unplug everything.”

  He heaves a huge, aggrieved sigh and keeps tapping.

  “I mean it, Milton.”

  “I know. I’m saving it! Jesus, Keats.” Another moment of tapping and then he finally gets up and follows me downstairs. He’s wearing black sweatpants that are too small for him—his stomach hangs out over the waistband—and a T-shirt that says, COME TO THE DARK SIDE, WE HAVE COOKIES. I can picture my mother buying that for him, thinking it would make him laugh and giving it to him and then him tossing it in his drawer with an indifferent shrug.

  But who knows? I can never tell with Milton—maybe it did make him laugh.

  I introduce him to Paul who gives him the same kind of heartily enthusiastic greeting he gave me. Milton shakes his hand with a confused look in my direction. He doesn’t know who Paul is or why he’s here. I just shrug at him. I can’t exactly explain it myself. We both look at Mom. She smiles blandly and says, “Sit down so we can eat.”

  Milton sits next to me and bites his fingernails while he waits for the food to be passed: he never knows what to do with his hands when they’re not on a keyboard. His eyes dart around the dinner table, but the second anyone addresses him directly, he looks down at the plate in front of him and barely responds.

  Paul tries to engage him in conversation, but it’s hard work.

  “What do you like to do in your free time?”

  “Stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Computer games mostly.”

  “Any game in particular?”

  “Not really.”

  A few more useless attempts, and then Paul gives up and, with noticeable relief, turns his attention to me.

  “So, Keats, your mother tells me you work in the English department at Waltham Community College.”

  I nod. Not much to add to that.

  “Do you like the work?”

  “It’s okay,” I say because it is. Okay. The work is easy, the people are pleasant, and the hours are reasonable, but the pay sucks and there’s no mobility. Okay sums it up perfectly.

  “Are you thinking of going back to school one day?”

  “Why do people always ask me that?”

  “Because you’re young and smart,” my mother says, “and you’re a glorified secretary.”

  I scowl at her. “I know I’m a disappointment, but not everyone can be a world famous neurologist.”

  “No one’s asking you to be a neurologist.” Mom glances over at Paul, as if to gauge whether the familial argument is off-putting or not. He smiles at her reassuringly, and she adds, “Ambition isn’t a bad thing, Keats.”

  “Excellent point, Mom. Maybe you should find some of your own.”

  She lifts her chin. “I raised three kids entirely by myself.”

  “Very ambitious of you. And very original—no other women your age have raised children. You really pushed that envelope, didn’t you?”

  “Keats,” Jacob warns me in that pseudofraternal way of his that sometimes I respect and sometimes I loathe.

  “No, she’s right.” Mom takes a sip of wine. “I probably should have been more ambitious for myself, Keats. I regret dropping out of graduate school, but at the time it felt like I didn’t have any other choice.”

  “You’re still young,” Paul says to her. “There’s plenty of time for you to do that now.”

  I raise my eyebrows skeptically.

  “Thank you for the encouragement,” Mom says to Paul very pointedly. “I don’t always get it at home.”

  “I totally think you should go back to school,” I say. “I’ll just believe it when I see it.”

  “I’m already taking a class.”

  “Yeah, I know. Creative writing. You planning to write a novel, Mom? Like everyone else in the entire universe?”

  “Hey, hey, watch it,” Paul says jovially. “I’m taking that class, too! Don’t be too hard on those of us with literary aspirations. They may be foolish, but they’re all we’ve got.”

  “No, it’s great,” I say politely, because you have to be polite to strangers. “Is that how you two met?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you critique each other’s work?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you have kids?” I ask since he seems willing to answer any question.

  “Four,” he says proudly. “Two boys and two girls.”

  “All with the same mother?”

  He shifts uncomfortably. “Actually, no. My ol
dest son has a different mother than the younger ones.”

  “So how many times have you been married?”

  “Only twice!” he says with a desperate gaiety.

  “More wine?” Mom says. “Anyone?” Paul instantly says yes and drains his glass, then holds it out. Mom tilts the bottle to pour him a new one, but only a few drops come out. “There’s another in the kitchen. Jacob, would you—?”

  He’s already on his feet. “Got it.”

  “Can you start a pot of decaf while you’re in there?” I call after him. Since he’s already up.

  Milton says, “May I be excused?” He’s eaten a couple bites of chicken and a big mound of pasta. Mom had bought the meal already cooked at an Italian restaurant, and then served it on platters like she’d made it herself. But since we’d all hung out in the kitchen before dinner, everyone saw her replate the food, including Paul, and I wonder why she didn’t just serve it in the tins. No one was fooled into thinking she’d cooked: all she did was make more dishes to clean.

  “I’d like you to stay down here,” Mom says to Milton, “so you can pick out some furniture for yourself. And then we’ll have dessert.”

  “What’s for dessert?” Milton asks.

  “Cake and strawberries.”

  “Do we have any ice cream?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom says a little wearily. “I’ll have to check.”

  “I’m in the mood for ice cream.”

  My mother gets up and makes her way into the kitchen, and I suddenly feel sorry for her. She invited a guy she liked to meet her kids and then…well, he met her kids.

  Inspired by sympathy, I make an effort, turn to Paul, and ask him some questions about the creative writing class. He’s happy to answer, and Jacob joins in our conversation.

  Not Milton, though. He stares at the table and waits for Mom to come back and tell him whether there’s ice cream or not.

  “There isn’t, just whipped cream,” she says. “But no dessert until after the whole picking-out-furniture thing.” I get the feeling she’s bribing Milton into not fleeing, the way a parent might tell a toddler he’ll get a cookie if he sits nicely during dinner.

  “Why should I pick out anything?” Milton asks Mom after we’ve all gotten up from the dinner table and moved into the foyer. “I don’t have my own place yet.”

  “I just want to make sure you get your fair share,” Mom says. “We’ll figure out what to do with it—put it in storage, keep it at your father’s place or at mine when I get one. We just need to know what we should hold on to for you.”

  “I only want the stuff in my room.”

  “That’s all yours.” Mom’s voice softens when she talks to Milton. I think she forgets that he’s twenty now. To her, he’s still the little boy who needs her. “But someday you’ll have a place of your own, and you might want our old coffee table or maybe a lamp—”

  “All I want is the stuff in my room. Can I go now?”

  Mom raises her hands and lets them drop hopelessly at her sides. “Fine,” she says. “Go. I’ll pick out some things to put aside for you.” He’s gone before she even finishes the sentence, so she turns to me and repeats it: “I’ll pick out some things to put aside for him.”

  “Do you honestly think he’ll ever have his own place?”

  “You better hope so,” she says crisply. “Because Dad and I will be dead one day.”

  “Lovely. You know, if you just made him go outside now and then—”

  “Please, don’t start with that now, Keats. Here.” She picks up a stack of Post-it notes in different colors, which are sitting on our old narrow marble table. “You can be green. Stick one of these on anything you like.”

  I unenthusiastically accept the pad of little green Post-its. “This feels weird. I shouldn’t get to just mark anything as mine, not if I’m the only one doing it. It’s not fair.”

  “I’ve already marked a few things for Hopkins—in yellow.” She points to the little flap of yellow paper on top of the marble table. “See? I thought this would be great in her apartment.”

  I hadn’t even thought about wanting the table, not for a moment, but now that I see it’s been claimed for Hopkins, it occurs to me that it’s pretty cool—and maybe even valuable—with its thick slab of dull gray-and-rust marble and spindly wire frame.

  Mom didn’t even ask me if I wanted it before marking it for Hopkins.

  But then I think, Hopkins should get it. She’s the one saving lives. She’s the one my mother wants to have get it.

  Mom has turned to Jacob and is fanning out a couple more pads in her hand. “Blue or pink?”

  “He gets a color?” I ask. “I mean, I’m fine with it, but—” I stop, not sure how to point out that it’s a little weird for Jacob to be included without sounding mean.

  “I’m representing your father,” Jacob explains as he—​predictably—​goes for the blue. “Your mother asked me to see if there’s anything he could use in his new apartment.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “But I think Jacob should pick out something special for himself, too,” Mom adds. “He’s been a huge help to both of us over the last few years.”

  “That’s very nice of you, but I don’t need anything.”

  “Nothing here is worth much,” Mom assures him. “It’s a sentimental value kind of thing only, so don’t be noble about it.”

  “And even our sentiment isn’t that valuable,” I say. “Let’s be honest.”

  Paul, who’s standing a few feet away, a genial smile on his face, guffaws at that. I can’t tell if it’s sincere or not. I wonder what he makes of all this.

  My mother is wearing a touch of makeup tonight and looks pretty fabulous. She’s really too young and too pretty for him now that I look at them both. Also too smart and too interesting. I got the sense over dinner that she was a little bored with him, a little impatient with the conversation. And now, as he gives that overly hearty laugh, I see a very brief expression of distaste flit across her face. Or maybe it’s discomfort.

  It’s definitely not infatuation, which is a relief. I’m not ready for my mother to start getting all starry-eyed over some stranger.

  “Let the games begin!” she says. “Scatter and tag, my children. Scatter and tag.”

  “This family is so freakin’ weird,” I mutter as I walk away.

  I wander alone into the living room. Mom was telling the truth when she told Jacob we didn’t have anything valuable. This room has the nicest and best preserved furniture in the house, and even so, there’s not much anyone would want: two matching faded sofas bought at some department store in the ’80s (not old enough to be vintage or new enough to be fashionable), two plaid armchairs that I never liked, a plain wooden coffee table that’s way too big for my apartment, a piano that—

  Wait, the piano is interesting.

  My job is so uncreative: it would be nice to come home and do something artistic, like play the piano. I’d need lessons, of course, but I bet I’d learn faster now than I did when I was young and resistant to the whole idea of practicing.

  I wander over and check it out. It’s an upright Kawai in decent shape, although the hinges on the bench feel a little loose when I open it to see what music books might still be inside.

  I pull out my cell phone and call Tom to ask him if we want a piano.

  “Why would we want a piano? Neither of us plays.”

  “It’s free, and I took lessons for years.”

  “I’ve never once seen you play.”

  “I stopped when I was twelve.” The truth is I gave up when it became clear that I would never come close to being as good as Hopkins. My teacher, Mr. Chesley, thought he was motivating me by constantly talking about how my sister had been one of the greatest students he’d ever had, but it just made me want to stop trying.

  I run my fingers along the shiny black wood, which is dulled now by a layer of dust. “It’s pretty nice. Pianos are valuable, aren’t they?”


  “Are you thinking we’d sell it?” Tom asks.

  “No, just saying. Maybe I could try taking lessons again.”

  “Well, we don’t really have space for it, and I don’t see the point, but it’s your call. If you really want it, we’ll figure something out. Are you coming home soon?”

  “Not for a little while. Hey, Mom has—” I’m about to tell him about Paul Silvestri, but Jacob comes into the living room and I stop.

  Jacob realizes he’s interrupted a phone conversation. “Sorry,” he says and moves back toward the door.

  “It’s fine,” I say and then into the phone, “Gotta run. Bye.” I turn off the phone and beckon Jacob in with it. “I’m just trying to decide if I want the piano.”

  “You play?”

  “Not really. But I’m thinking I might like to try taking lessons again.”

  “The only song I could ever play was ‘Heart and Soul.’”

  “That’s basically it for me, too.” I sit down on the piano bench and pat the space next to me. “Let’s see if we remember how to do it.”

  “This won’t be pretty.” He sits down next to me. “Which part do I do?”

  “I’m taking the easy part.” I start with the doo, doo, doo, doos. I have to say “doo, doo, doo, doo” as I do it to keep the rhythm steady, and Jacob laughs at me. I make a face at him, and then he starts in on the melody. We’re terrible at first, both of us messing up and choppy and out of sync, but gradually we improve until it’s clunky but recognizable.

  We start bouncing our bodies from side to side in rhythm to the music, and Jacob sings, “Heart and soul, I fell in love with you,” and then I sing, “Heart and soul, just like pink shampoo,” and we keep making up nonsense lyrics and playing until I finally shout, “How do we stop?” and he says, “Like this,” and just stops playing and so I do, too, after one last loudly sung “Doo, doo.”

  We both jump at the sound of applause behind us. We turn around, and my mom and Paul are standing there, laughing and clapping. We both get up and give exaggerated bows.

  “That was great,” Mom says. “I think the piano’s a little out of tune, though.”

  “I think we’re out of tune,” Jacob says.

  “I always was,” I say. Mr. Chesley used to get excited because Milton could identify any note without looking, and apparently Hopkins learned to read music almost instantly, but to me he was always saying, “Can’t you even hear that that’s the wrong note, Keats? Listen. Can’t you hear that?” I never could.