For Keeps (18 page)

Twenty

SUNDAY NIGHT, AND
my mom and I are sitting on the couch in the Weiss-Longos’ living room. I am eating cocktail peanuts while she fidgets.

“Relax,” I tell her. I gesture to the wineglass on the coffee table. “Have some Merlot.” Instead, she taps her foot against the hardwood floor and stares down at her fingernails, which Liv has painted the color of smoked salmon. “Orange means vitality, Kate,” is what she said, “and balance.”

If there’s anything my mother could use right now, it’s balance.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” I tell her, holding the glass out to her until she takes a sip. “Don’t worry.”

It was Liv’s idea to invite Paul Tucci for dinner. She got Pops and Dodd on board right away. I thought my mother would flat-out refuse, but she surprised us all by saying yes. She wouldn’t let Dodd do her hair, though. And she insisted on wearing her rattiest sweatshirt—the two-toned one with the paint splatters and the holes in the elbows—which I couldn’t believe.

“Don’t you want to look
halfway
decent?” I asked her, when she walked out of her bedroom.

“This isn’t about impressing anyone, Josie,” she said.

And I said, “Well, what is it about then?”

She shook her head, struggling to come up with an answer. “I don’t know. Putting it out there. . . . Moving on. . . .”

“Anyway,” I say now, “you’ve already seen each other twice. I don’t get what you’re so nervous about.”

But I do get it.

Tonight is different.

She found his letters, and she read them, and now, everything she thought she knew has been flipped on its head.

I’m a little nervous myself. I don’t know how things will go tonight. It could be a disaster. But at least we’ll have Liv and Pops and Dodd and Wyatt here with us—the Weiss-Longo buffer zone. If the poop hits the fan, I guarantee one of them will find a way to distract from the splatter. Liv’s outfit alone could do that job.

Here she is, standing in the doorway, holding a tray of cheese. Ruffly black chambermaid’s dress with apron; chef ’s hat; towel, folded over one arm.

“Bonsoir, mesdemoiselles,”
she says, sweeping her way across the living room.
“Apéritif?”

“I don’t think I can eat,” my mom says. Panic lines erupt on her brow. “I might barf,” she adds.

Right on cue, Pops arrives in the doorway to announce that the pork tenderloin is sizzling, the potatoes have been whipped, and all is well with the universe. He gazes fondly across the room at my mom. “Are we drinking our wine, Kate?”

“Not really,” I tell him. “I keep trying to make her.”

“You need to relax,” Pops says.

“I realize that,” my mother says, “but everyone
telling
me to relax doesn’t
make
me relax. It makes me the
opposite
of relax.”

“OK,” Pops says soothingly. He walks over to join her on the couch, pats her knee. “OK.”

A second later, the doorbell chimes.

Nobody moves.

“Hon?” Dodd calls from the kitchen. “Would you get that? My hands are covered in dressing!”

Pops starts to rise, but my mom beats him to it. “Let me do this,” she says, standing. “I should be the one to do this.”

It is her voice that surprises me, the strength of it.

“You
go,
girl,” Liv mumbles through a mouthful of cheese.

We watch my mom cross the room, her back straight. This is huge for her, this moment.

How can we not follow?

Standing on the porch, Paul Tucci looks more like Paul Bunyan: plaid flannel shirt tucked into jeans, hiking boots. Only this time he’s not wearing a baseball cap, so I can actually see his hair—wavy on top, a single curl flopping onto his forehead like a question mark.

He holds out a hand to my mom, as though they’re meeting for the first time. “Hello, Katie.”

“Paul.” Whatever she’s feeling inside, she sounds calm. I, on the other hand, am a bundle of nerves.

“I come bearing pesto,” Paul Tucci says, holding out a jar.

“Pesto,”
Pops whispers in my ear. I can tell he’s impressed.

Thanks to her bionic hearing, my mom whips around and narrows her eyes at us, like she’s not amused that we’re hiding behind the coatrack.

Pops takes the hint. “You must be Paul,” he says, stepping out into the open. “I’m Gregory.”

The two of them shake hands. Then Paul looks over Pops’s shoulder, meeting my eye-line. “Hi, Josie.” His smile is slow, tentative.

“Hi,” I say back, just as cautious. And then something hits me. It is easier this time, seeing him. Easier than it was at the hospital, easier than the night on my porch. This time, I know something I didn’t before. I know Paul Tucci isn’t a liar.

For dinner, Liv made place cards for everyone—little tents of white paper with our names on them. Surprise, surprise, she put Paul in the middle, between me and my mom. As an added bonus, she put herself directly across from him—Dr. Steve, ready for her interview.

As soon as we sit down, I shoot her a look:
Keep your mouth shut.

Liv widens her eyes:
Who, me?
She asks Paul to pass the salt and pepper, which he does.

He has long fingers. I notice that one of his fingernails is black and wonder what he was doing when he banged it. That happened to me once in seventh grade, in shop. The hammer slipped while I was trying to build a birdhouse.

“This is fantastic,” Paul says, meaning the food.

“Dodd’s a regular Rachael Ray,” Liv says.

Dodd smiles serenely. “I prefer Julia Child.”

Wyatt hums while he eats; he always has. When he asks for something to be passed to him, he uses his own lingo. “Gravity” for gravy. “Roulders” for rolls. We’re used to it, but you have to wonder what Paul Tucci is thinking. He had a laugh-smile on his face when Wyatt asked him to pass the “stinky little cabbages,” but maybe he was just being polite.

We’re all being polite. Chewing with our mouths closed. Making small talk. No one swears or burps. Everyone says please. It’s unnerving.

“More Merlot anyone?” Pops asks, holding up the bottle.

“Yes, please,” my mom and Paul Tucci answer together. They have both been sipping wine at an impressive pace. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom have more than one drink at dinner. She’s a lightweight. I’m nervous for her, afraid of what might fly out of her mouth at any second. Meanwhile, Paul Tucci’s cheeks have taken on the flushed, feverish look that I have seen on many a high-school boy’s face at many a high-school party.

I consider the image of a teenage Katie Gardner and Paul Tucci packed into someone’s basement rec room on a Friday night, plastic cups in hand, yelling to hear each other over the pounding of the boom box.

I catch Liv’s eye across the table. Liv, who, other than using a French accent, has shown a surprising level of restraint during this meal.

Awkward
, I mouth to her.

She raises her eyebrows delicately.

Say something!
I want to shout.

But someone else reads my mind. “Hey,” Paul Tucci’s voice blurts out beside me, “is that my sweatshirt?”

I turn to see my mother shaking her head. “No. It’s mine.”

“I know it’s
yours
,” he says. “I mean, I gave it to you.” He looks around the table at all of us. “I gave her that sweatshirt,” he explains, “for her birthday.”

Wyatt laughs. “Rough.”

“Forgive our son,” Pops says. “He’s missing the sentimentality gene.”

“Well, I love it,” Liv says, squinting discerningly across the table. “
Très
nineties, no?”

I lean forward to get a good look at my mom’s face, which is pink.
Now
I know why she wore a crusty, moth-eaten sweat rag to dinner. She wasn’t so much rebelling as testing.
Paul Tucci passes!

“I can’t believe you still have it,” he says, staring at her.

“Yeah, well . . . I can’t believe you remember.”

A long pause and then Dodd says, “Why don’t you two . . . go into the den to catch up? We’ll make coffee.” He looks pointedly at Pops and Wyatt and Liv and me, as if it takes a village to make a pot of Folgers.

So my mom and Paul have gone into the den, to talk. Or to drink more wine. Or to do whatever it is they need to do.

It feels weirdly right—fitting—that this is happening in the Weiss-Longos’ house. It’s our house too, in a way. My mom and I have so much history here: the time Liv and I rode down the stairs in a sleeping bag and both ended up splitting our chins open, getting stitches; the time my mom made a birthday cake for Pops and set the oven on fire. We’ve shared a thousand meals, a million stories, laughs, occasional tears—like the summer Dodd’s mother died and we all took the road trip to Florida, and the hotel we stayed in had cockroaches the size of golf balls.

I am reminded, sitting in this kitchen, that this is my family. Maybe we don’t share the same blood, but who cares? That’s what we are.

I am sitting on my favorite bar stool—the one with the rip in the seat. Liv is beside me.

“Well,” she says, looking at her watch. “It’s been fourteen minutes.”

“Fourteen minutes,” I repeat.

“It’s good they’re talking.”

“Yes.”

“So you’ve got yourself a dad, huh, Josie?” Wyatt asks from his perch on the counter, where he is trying to crack walnuts with a pair of spaghetti tongs.

“I don’t know about that, Wy. Let’s see if he sends a Christmas card before we start handing out titles.”

I am kidding, but not. I don’t think I could ever call Paul Tucci “Dad.” It would feel fake. A dad is someone who held you on the day you were born—who has never missed a birthday, or a soccer game, or a parent-teacher conference. Besides, I don’t know what it means yet, him being here. I don’t know if it changes anything. I don’t know if I want it to.

“Coffee’s ready,” Dodd says, holding up the pot. “And I made cheesecake, and brownies. Oh, and there’s Häagen-Dazs. Three different kinds. . . . I wasn’t sure, you know . . .” he turns to me, “what Paul would like.”

“Right.” I smile weakly, realizing that we are all thinking the same thing: Who is this guy, really?

“Don’t worry,” Pops says sweetly to Dodd, leaning over to smooch his cheek. “Everyone loves your cheesecake.”

Wyatt makes a gagging sound—it’s unclear whether it’s the cheesecake or the kissing that offends, but either way no one calls him on it because now my mom is standing in the doorway.

“Josie?”

Her face looks calm, but rosy, like she’s just gotten back from a run. Sometimes I forget how pretty she is. Long, dark eyelashes. High, delicate cheekbones with just a smattering of freckles. I see her face every day, but I don’t really notice it, the same way I don’t really notice the wallpaper in my bedroom. Meanwhile, here she is, beautiful.

“Yeah?” I say.

She wants me to come into the den with her and Paul, to talk. Suddenly my stomach is flipping all over the place.
Talk
? About what? What do they expect me to say? We’re supposed to be eating cheesecake!

“OK,” I tell my mom. Then, “I’ll meet you in there, though. I have to go pee first.”

“Go pee,” she says. “We’ll meet you in there.”

I don’t really need to pee. What I need to do is stare at myself in the bathroom mirror for a while, to see if I’m ready, if I can deal. Staring back at me is a girl with big brown eyes and a ponytail that’s half falling out of its elastic. She looks a little freaked. Not a lot, but a little.

I have this fantasy, while I’m standing in the bathroom—a fantasy I’ve never allowed myself to have before. I will walk into the den and my mom and Paul Tucci will be sitting on the Weiss-Longos’ couch, holding hands. They will see me in the doorway, and they will smile. They won’t have to say a word because I will know. They have never stopped loving each other. They are getting back together.

“You’re an idiot
,
” the girl in the mirror says to me. Or I say to her. Either way, it’s true.

Of
course
I don’t expect my mom and Paul Tucci to get back together. That would be ludicrous. Asinine. But I can’t help the image; it just pops in there. It’s because, when you’ve spent sixteen years without something, and that something suddenly appears, you don’t know what to think. You have no way to process it. All you can do is stare at yourself in the mirror until you are ready to leave the bathroom.

Am I ready?

No.

But somehow my feet are moving.

Walking down the hall, I picture another gem of a scenario. I picture Paul Tucci on the couch next to my mom. “Katie, please,” he’s saying. “Let me buy you and Josie a beach house on the Carolina coast.”

“No,” my mom says, shaking her head and frowning.

“It’s the least I can do,” he says, “after all you’ve been through.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“But I feel responsible.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Maybe not,” he says. “But I do.”

“OK,” my mom says. “You can buy us a beach house.

“Great,” Paul Tucci says.

“And we’d like a ski condo too. Josie’s never been skiing.”