Family and Other Accidents (6 page)

“As we have no more weed and Jack has no more brothers, I'm going to bed,” Melanie says, pushing herself to her feet. She's not really heavy, but she moves as though she has the extra thirty pounds her mother does. “Merry Christmas and all of that.”

Jack wonders if Mona will walk that way in a few years, wonders if her refusal to get tangled with academia will keep her gait light as Frankie's. Wonders if wondering means he'll be around to see it, wonders if he wants to be.

After Melanie is through the glass doors, the rest of them become aware of the cold. Frankie suggests a game of pool, and they tiptoe inside so they won't wake the parents. Even the basement has been Christmasified—cardboard cutouts of reindeer and paper snowflakes the girls probably made in grade school Scotch-taped to the wood paneling; Santa figurines crowding the tables.

“Reeds versus Lockridges?” Mona suggests as she orders the balls on the table and Frankie gets cues and chalk from the wall-mounted rack.

“Who knows.” Frankie winks, and Jack has no idea who the intended receiver is. “We might all be Reeds one day.”

“You're going to scare away the Reed boys,” Mona says. “Ladies versus gentlemen?”

“Normally, I'd say you're on.” Connor rubs blue chalk on his stick. “But you're girls with a pool table in the basement.”

“You have a pool table in your house,” Mona says, and Jack notices she doesn't say “our house” or “the house” or any other phrase implying residence, even though she lives there now and technically could. He also notices that she and his brother seem awful chummy, or at least more comfortable around each other than they've been for the past year. He can't decide if that makes him happy or if he'd prefer to keep the parts of his life compartmentalized.

“Yes, but you girls actually have balls and cues.” It's hard to be charming when his head feels only loosely associated with his body.

They end up with the obvious teams of Jack and Mona against Frankie and Connor. Jack was in high school when his father had his first heart attack and his parents refinished the basement with the pool and Ping-Pong tables—“recreational therapy,” the doctors had called it. Though his father never used them, Jack and his friends played lots of pool, and he's still pretty good, even stoned. By the time Connor was old enough to play, though, the table was a storage area for boxes of unused things. He's decent with straight shots, but every time he tries to angle a ball off the rim, Jack is reminded of the C his brother got in high school geometry. For reasons Mona explains with only a smile, she's the best of them all, taking trick shots with the cue behind her back. And Frankie is awful, or maybe she pretends to be awful so Connor can guide her hands on the wood pole, position her slim hips against the table's varnished curves. They play three games, Jack and Mona winning all of them easily.

“You hungry, Conn?” Frankie asks, running her pale hands up and down her cue so gratuitously it's laughable. “Jack and Mo can play a winner's tournament, and you and I can check out the leftover cookie situation.”

Connor nods, follows Frankie upstairs. Watching them leave, Jack sits on the end of the pool table and realizes he isn't mad at his brother anymore—not for drinking too much, or getting high, or screwing around with the total sexual predator, not for almost starting a fight or for being disappointed in Jack for becoming their father. But Jack
does
feel as though he might cry, which is strange because he can't remember the last time he cried—when his mother died? the end of
Hoosiers
? He tosses his cue from hand to hand, stares at the cheap carpeting.

“Jack?” Mona's voice is like cotton gauze. Sitting next to him, she runs fingertips through his dark hair. “What's wrong?”

Shaking his head, he touches his lips to her cheek, whispers, “I like your family.”

“But?”

“No, there's no ‘but,' I really like them.” It's true. There's something charming about her mother's horrible sweater and the fact that her father is the fun kind of alcoholic. Even the ghosts of Mona Past and Mona Future are amusing—Melanie because she has given up trying and Frankie because she tries so fucking hard.

“Does my family make you miss your parents?” she asks.

“Maybe.” But he doesn't think that's it; there is a “but,” but he's not sure what it is.

“I'm sorry,” she says. He turns his face to hers, and she kisses his forehead, both eyebrows. He closes his eyes, and she kisses the lids. “I wish I could have met them.”

When Jack thinks about his parents, he thinks about how he wanted his father there when he got his bar results or how he would have liked his mother to yell at the doctors when he was hospitalized with bronchitis last year. Never once in the thirteen months he has been with Mona has Jack ever lamented her not knowing them. That is as close to the “but” as he can get, but he doesn't say anything because a launch sequence has been initiated. He's kissing her harder as she fiddles with his belt; then he's got her on her back on the green felt table. Pulling off her gray pants, he licks her ankle, her calf, her knee, her thigh. He slides down her panties and licks the folds of skin—the only part of her body that's ever warm. She chews her lower lip, and a bead of blood swells at the spot where he bit her in the kitchen. As she comes, her arms fly up, knocking around all the stripes Connor and Frankie couldn't sink.

         

When they finish and Jack goes upstairs to Frankie's room, Connor is already sprawled across the bed, long legs and arms everywhere, Frankie nowhere in sight. In the dark, Jack puts on the cotton pajamas Mona gave him as part of his Christmas gift and moves his brother's hot body to one side.

“Hey.” Connor smacks Jack's hands. “Go sleep with your girlfriend. As sort of your Christmas present to me, let me have the whole bed.”

“I'd rather sleep with you. You don't warm your feet on my
stomach.”

“Is that the way to get rid of you?” Connor rolls over and looks at the clock glowing two fifteen. “It's after midnight. Merry Christmas, Jack.”

“So you're Tiny Fucking Tim, now?”

“God bless us, everyone.”

An hour later Jack wakes with the dead weight of Connor's arm across his throat. Pushing him away, Jack remembers the strangling-Mona dream. Connor moans, flops to his front, mumbles something about Beth, who may be someone at school or might be a dream creation. Jack doesn't get to know those things anymore.

He goes to the bathroom and finds Santa figurines even there, in a neat row across the toilet top. Instead of getting back into bed with his brother, Jack goes downstairs. Mona's parents are still sleeping, but they've shifted, solidified into each other. The CD changer shuffles back to Bing Crosby, who, like Mona, dreams of an unrealized white Christmas. Mammoth and bright, the tree glows like trees in movies, the biggest box underneath it is the food dehydrator wrapped in red foil. A blue light sizzles and slowly loses its brightness. Jack worries a short might ignite the dry branches, bends over to unplug the tree, changes his mind and leaves it glowing.

In her bedroom, Mona sleeps on her back. Eyes closed, freckles across her nose, and all that red hair strewn across the pink pillowcase—
a girl from a douche commercial
. For a split second, he imagines smothering her with a pink throw pillow—how her body would shudder, arms fighting him. He climbs into the bed, lays his head on her breasts.

“Jack?” she murmurs, touching his forehead with drowsy fingers.

“Shhh, go back to sleep.”

“Christmas kisses?” she asks, sleepy and childlike.

“Okay.” Inching up so they're at eye level, he lightly presses his lips to hers. Turning on her side, she pulls him closer, kisses more urgently.

“I love you,” she whispers in his ear.

“I love you, too,” he says, and means it, loves warming her hands, loves the way she sleeps on him. Still, he has figured out the “but” from earlier. “But I'm not a Christmas-tree kind of guy.”

“I know, you're a pretending-to-be-Jewish kind of guy.”

Her heated breath raises hairs on his neck. Maybe she does know that her family likes him for the wrong reasons; that she's only in his house to fill the emptiness; that in a parallel universe, he keeps trying to kill her. But he doubts it.

“I'm freezing,” she says, slides frigid hands under his pajama top, then looks at him, suddenly wide awake. “Did it snow?”

“No,” he says without looking through the window.

all those
girlie-girl
things

For almost four years Mona has been living with Jack, but she's still “and guest,” still an accessory. Thumbing the parchment place card with Jack's name written in calligraphy, Mona nods when the waiter comes by and offers to refill her chardonnay. She can't decide if she's sad because she's drunk or just sad. She does know she's annoyed Jack won't dance with her at
his
friend's wedding—annoyed that Jack has spent most of the reception talking with his very pregnant, very married ex-girlfriend; with the ex's parents, who've apparently known Jack for almost three decades; with the ex's cousin, who happens to be an appellate court judge.

“What's wrong, Mo?” It's not Jack who asks, but Connor, seated on the other side of Jack. “You look like you can't keep your shoelaces tied.”

Jack doesn't notice because he's busy being charming and easy. Left foot balanced on his right knee, he trades billable-hour stories with the appellate cousin and the cousin's husband.

“Nothing's wrong, I'm just tired,” Mona says, flattening her cake to a paste with a heavy silver spoon. “I filed a late story last night.”

Connor nods and scrapes fondant frosting from his plate with a fork. Licking the edge, he seems closer to twelve than twenty-two.

“How's school going?” Mona leans forward to talk to him better. A few years ago, she used to hate Jack's brother, seeing him as bizarre competition for Jack's affections. But she likes him now, and Jack is ignoring him, too.

“Same old, same old,” Connor says, too quickly.

If he were her responsibility, she'd pry, but he isn't. For almost three years after their mother died, he was legally Jack's ward, but tonight Connor is drinking wine, reminding them he's old enough now, that he belongs to no one.

“How come the only time anyone ever eats phyllo dough is at a wedding?” he asks.

“Because phyllo dough isn't very good.” Jack eases back in his chair, back into her conversation with his brother. It's as if he finally remembered they were there, remembered the appellate cousin made a comment about Mona's hair not being natural, remembered Connor has been dodging questions about his post-graduation plans all night.

“No, phyllo dough actually sucks,” Connor says. “We should order a pizza later.”

In nearly identical black suits, Jack and Connor are a matched pair. If Mona had to give a police artist details to make sketches of them, she's not sure the descriptions would be very different—bushy eyebrows, black eyes, cheekbones high and broad. But Jack's nose is straighter, and Connor is thinner. They have the same dark hair, cut almost the same way—longer in the front—but Connor's doesn't part evenly in the middle, and he's not nearly as comfortable with his long arms and legs.

“Pizza's fine,” Jack says. “Whatever you want, kid.”

“You in on the pizza action?” Connor asks Mona.

“Sure,” she says, distracted by Jack's ex-girlfriend swaying in the arms of her doctor husband on the dance floor.

Anna—“AnnaFram,” as Connor calls her, squishing together her first and maiden name as if it were one word—is the rare woman who looks good pregnant, olive skin flawless, shiny dark hair piled on her head in a way that's somehow casual and elegant. Looking at Anna's swollen round breasts, Mona yanks up the front of her own dress, wonders what possessed her to think her B-cup boobs could support the black strapless.

Anna's sister is the bride. A cute girl, Carrie has wilted since the ceremony—without the veil, her updo looks weird and her lips have paled from reception-line kisses and chicken in puff pastry. Still, she and her groom look happy, dancing and giving warm nods to each new pair to join them on the floor. The song is familiar, yet Mona can't quite place it—something from crepe-paper-covered OU formals.

“Please dance with me.” Mona reaches for Jack's fingers on the table. “Just this one song.”

“I really can't dance.” He clasps her hand between his and smiles at Mona, but also at the couple across the table. “Best just to accept it as a character flaw.”

“Jack.” Even as she whines his name, she realizes she's whining and that she probably shouldn't. She probably
is
drunk. “It's just your friends.”

“Happy or sad?” Jack asks.

It's a game they play, based on a bookmark they saw at the University Hospital gift shop when Jack's brother broke his shoulder in a biking accident four summers before. The bookmark offered a series of questions, the first one being “Are you happy or sad?” If you answered happy, it proclaimed you had nothing to worry about. At the time they laughed at the simplicity of it—no qualifiers, ifs, ands, or buts—happy or sad. Now they use it as a way out of arguments not worth fighting over.

“Sad not to be dancing,” Mona says to her smushed cake.

“Conn will dance with you.” Jack lets go of Mona's hand, nods toward his brother. “And he's actually good at it.”

“Yeah, I've been taking swing lessons.” Connor swallows his wine. Standing, he takes Mona's fingers and bends into a strangely formal bow. “Ms. Lockridge, may I have this dance?”

At that very moment, AnnaFram appears and floats into Connor's chair, even though she's assigned to the head table with her sister.

“You're doing better than I ever did.” Anna winks at Mona in a way that is annoying because it seems sincere. “Jack and I spent senior prom by the punch bowl.”

Feeling blood rush to her cheeks, Mona can't think of a way to get out of it, so she allows Connor to lead her out to the raised center of the ballroom.

Dancing with Jack's brother is embarrassing. Not because Connor is that much younger, only five years, no younger than she is younger than Jack. What's humiliating is that Jack saw her, and probably Connor, as a problem easily fixed—send the kids off to go play, let the grown-ups talk. Still, after the first song, she relaxes against Connor's chest, feels the bones of his torso through his jacket. Drakkar Noir haunts his collar, and she remembers giving him a bottle as a Christmas present last year, wonders if he wore it tonight specifically because he knew he would see her or if he liked it so much that he wears it every day.

“So you guys and the Frams grew up together?” Mona asks. Until the fine-grained linen invitation arrived, she'd heard virtually nothing about these Frams, was aghast and unsettled to find out they had been a huge part of Jack's youth.

“Yeah, they lived next door,” Connor says. “Mrs. Fram spent all this money redecorating, and she wouldn't even let you go into certain rooms. AnnaFram and Carrie practically lived with us.”

In the years Mona has lived in Jack's house, she's seen no signs of any of it, and she wonders about the artifacts. Where are the pictures of Jack and Anna at high school dances? Shots of the girls dressing Connor up like a cowboy? Where are the stuffed animals won at Cedar Point? Love letters Anna wrote Jack during college?

“Did Anna and Jack break up when she met her husband?” Mona asks, and Connor's shoulders tighten under her arms.

“I guess they just wanted different things,” he says, hesitantly. “I mean she's already working on her second kid, and Jack, well, you know.”

“Sure,” Mona says, and Connor loosens, drums along with the song, tapping the rhythm where he holds her at the waist. But she wonders if she does know.

“And then she asks me,”
Connor sings the words in her ear in a way that's both spooky and oddly endearing—something Jack would never do.
“Do I look all right? And I say yes, you look wonderful tonight.”

“You're drunk, aren't you?” she asks.

“I think I am, milady.”

“Good,” she says, because it seems like something Jack wouldn't say.

She thinks about this thing Connor assumes she knows. In theory Jack
should
be good with children. When Mona started dating Jack, she'd been vision-blurring jealous of the time and effort Jack put into his orphaned brother—chauffeuring Connor all around Cleveland's suburbs, sitting through swim meets and parent-teacher conferences. Secretly, Mona had been thrilled when Connor packed his Nissan Sentra and headed off to school in Boulder instead of Case Western where Jack had wanted him to go.

Now she feels guilty and embarrassed for having felt that way. Now she
does
like Connor, as he hums in her ear,
“It's time to go home now, and I've got an aching head. So I give her the car keys, and she helps me to bed.”

“Yep.” Connor stops humming. “I'm definitely drunk.”

“Me, too.” She laughs, rich and throaty, even though she doesn't feel that way, even though she's still annoyed, still hurt. “Tell me a secret.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know, something you haven't even told Jack.”

“It's not like I tell him
everything
.” Connor stretches out the word, making it luxurious.

“So tell me something he doesn't know.”

“Okay, it's fitting for today,” he whispers. “Beth and I were engaged for five weeks.”

Mona remembers the petite brunette Connor brought home two Easters ago.

“Really?” She looks over at Jack; he's talking to the Fram uncle. She wishes he were jealous—jealous she's dancing close with someone else, jealous she's sharing secrets with his brother.

“Yeah, I went out and got a ring and got down on one knee and everything,” Connor says. “And she did all those girlie-girl things—crying and kissing and saying yes. But then she got into Stanford med school, and things just fell apart. I told her I'd go with her, but she said no. I haven't talked to her in a month.”

“Oh, that's so sad,” Mona says. And it does seem horribly tragic in an adolescent way. “I'm really sorry.”

“Ehh.” Connor shrugs against her. “I guess it's better it happened now rather than five years from now.”

The next song starts—a watered-down version of “Brick House,” and she doesn't want to try it in high heels.

“I'm sorry,” she says again.

Disengaging herself from Connor's arms, Mona turns him over to Anna's three-year-old daughter. Curly-haired and cherubic in a frilly blue dress, the girl swings Connor's hands back and forth, flashing ruffled panties.

Starting back to the table, Mona thinks about the cute slope of Anna's nose, the way her dress lays over her changing body, and walks out of the ballroom to the ladies' lounge to check her makeup.

Any question concerning her sobriety is answered in one of the stalls, when Mona rolls down her panty hose and flops onto the toilet seat. The world is hot and wiggly, her lips thick and dumb. It's nothing short of rocket science to work her tights back up her legs, wash her hands at one of the mirrored vanities, and apply lip gloss. She's trying to snap into some sort of clarity when a toilet flushes and AnnaFram appears at one of the sinks, rummages through her purse.

“One of the things they don't tell you about being pregnant is that you have to pee all the time.” Anna smiles as she runs her hands under the faucet. “It's a giant pain in the ass.”

“I can imagine.” Mona nods, wonders if Anna is making some slight, an implication that Mona will never know the hassles of pregnancy peeing because she's with a man whom Anna already tried and discarded.

“You and Conn looked cute out there.” AnnaFram dusts her face with a fat powder brush. “It's freaky to see him all grown up; he was kind of like my little brother, too.”

And then Mona
does
feel guilty for knowing a secret about Connor that Jack doesn't, for leaving him alone at table fourteen with the uncle who makes sexist jokes and has endless questions about a malpractice suit.

“Yeah, Conn turned out okay,” Mona says, and then goes back to her table in the ballroom and stands next to Jack's chair.

The Fram uncle is leaning in, gesturing broadly as he talks. Jack doesn't look up, but his arm snakes around Mona's waist. Finally the uncle's story ends, and Jack smiles at her. With his free arm he grabs her middle, and she falls into his lap, despite her cocktail-length skirt.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey yourself,” she giggles. Public affection is rare from Jack, and Mona checks to see if he's looking around; he isn't.

“You look good.” Jack runs his thumb along the top of her dress. “I like this.”

“Dance with me,” she whispers in his ear. Bold from the wine, she lets her tongue linger over the lobe, traces the C curve.

“I can't—” His breath catches as she slithers in his lap, feels his cock swell through his suit pants. “Mona,” he says her name in a way that means yes and no at the same time.

On the dance floor, the bride and groom bend to the music. And Mona wants to ask if she and Jack will get married, will have children, wants to ask if she, like AnnaFram, could be erased from his house and his life. But she's not ready to hear the answer to that yet. So she asks the question she knows he'll answer right.