Futures and Frosting (11 page)

“Yes, he’s still
here.  I need to hang up now so I can beat his ass,” I tell her as I walk up to
the table, hold the phone between my cheek and shoulder, and then use both of
my hands to shove him as hard as I could.  His limp body slides easily across
the table and crashes to the floor on the other side.

“Don’t hurt my
pookie-bear!” Jenny yells through the phone.

I walk around
the table and stand by Drew’s head, looking down at him as he groans.

“Wow, did I
sleep on your floor all night?” Drew asks as he opens his eyes and glances up
at me from the floor.  “You really should consider putting in carpet instead of
hardwood.  This stuff is really uncomfortable.”

Drew rolls over
onto all fours with another groan and slowly stands up, twisting and turning as
he moves to try and crack his back.

“Get.  Out. 
Of.  My.  House,” I tell him as calmly as I can without screaming and waking up
Carter and Gavin.

“Tell him I love
him and that my vagina misses him!” Jenny yells excitedly.

“Jenny says to
tell you that you need to GET YOUR SORRY ASS OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

“Heeeeey, that’s
not what I said,” Jenny mutters.

“Jenny, I’ll
call you back.”

I hang up the
phone and open my mouth to tell Drew to get out of my house again, just in case
he hadn't hear me the first two times, when Gavin comes running into the
kitchen in his pajamas.

“Hi, Uncle
Drew!” he says excitedly as he runs up to Drew.  Just as Drew starts to bend
over to greet him, Gavin pulls his elbow back and catapults his fist right
between Drew’s legs.

Drew falls down
on his knees with a yelp and I laugh.  I know you’re not supposed to laugh when
your child does something he shouldn’t, but I feel this was deserved.  I had
just found Drew passed out in the middle of the table we eat on.  He’s lucky I
didn’t stop Gavin and give him a baseball bat first.

“Gavin, dude, we
had a rule!”

At the sound of
his voice, I turn to find Carter walking into the room rubbing sleep from one
eye.  He kisses my cheek as he steps around me and kneels down to Gavin’s
level.

“Gavin, what was
our rule?” Carter asks while Drew clutches his junk, alternating between
coughing and making some strange whining noise that reminds me of the sound a
balloon makes when you pinch and stretch the opening of it and slowly let the
air out.

“No nut shots
before lunch,” Gavin replies solemnly.

“Right, no nut
shots before lunch.  And do you know what time it is?” Carter asks.

“I can’t tell
time,” Gavin states.

“Have you had
lunch yet?” Carter asks.

“No.”

“Then it’s
before lunch.  Tell Uncle Drew you’re sorry.”

Gavin sighs and
turns to face Drew who has finally stopped moaning and is in the process of
getting back to his feet.

“I’m sorry I
shot you in the nuts before lunch,” Gavin mumbles.  “Can I have some cereal
now?” he asks as he looks at me and away from Drew.

“Sure, baby,” I
tell him with a smile as I take his hand and walk him toward one of the kitchen
chairs.  I take one look at the table and veer us in the direction of a bar
stool at the island instead.  I need to bleach Drew’s ass from that table
before we ever eat there again.

“My testicles
are sitting in my stomach right now.  How can you even think about cereal?”
Drew asks as he limps over to the counter and grabs his keys.

“Your tentacles
are dumb and I’m hungry,” Gavin replies around a mouthful of Lucky Charms as I
finish pouring the milk in his bowl.

“Whatever, kid. 
Thanks for letting me crash, guys.  I’m gonna make like a fetus and head out.”

I let out a big
sigh when the door closes behind Drew.

“The next time I
find him asleep on any piece of furniture in this house, I’m taking it out on
you,” I tell Carter.

He comes up
behind me and wraps his arms around my waist and places a kiss to the curve of
my neck.

“Deal,” he
replies as he rests his chin on my shoulder.

“You realize you
made a rule with your son that states he has permission to punch people in the
nuts
after
lunch, correct?”

“Yeah.  It
sounded good at the time when I made the rule.  He had just shown me for the
second time the power of his punch, and I was crippled on the ground at the
park at the time, so I might not have had full brain function.”

I stand there
for a few minutes, enjoying the feel of Carter’s arms around me as we watch our
son scarf down his breakfast.

“I want to have
your parents over for dinner,” I told him as I turn in his arms and rest my
hands against his chest.  “I want to cook something really delicious, ply them
with alcohol and chocolate, and make them like me.  Or at least drunk enough to
forget why they don’t.”

Carter chuckles
and tightens his arms around me.

“Babe, they like
you.  I swear.  My grandma even said you had spunk.”

“That’s old
person speak for ‘she’s bat shit crazy and I’m afraid I’ll bust a hip just
being in the same room with her when I beat her ass.'  I need a chance to make
a better first impression,” I explain.

“Your FIRST,
first impression was just fine.  You’re forgetting who my best friend is.  The
first time they met Drew he crashed at our house one night in high school.  My
mom found him sleepwalking in the middle of the night.  She walked into the
living room and he was peeing on the couch.  Believe me, they’ve seen it all,”
Carter reassures me.

“Drew is a
moron.  He shouldn’t be allowed in public without a leash and a handler.  I am
the mother of their grandson.  I shouldn’t be talking about a whale’s vagina on
their Facebook pages.  I should be posting pictures of their grandson at a
museum studying the works of Michelangelo and posting status messages about my
philanthropic work like holding babies in orphanages and hugging homeless
people.”

Carter stares at
me quizzically for a few minutes.

“Will you say
something?” I demand.

“Sorry, I’m just
trying to figure out if you’re serious or not.”

“Why the hell
wouldn’t I be serious?  I could totally be that person.  I could be that person
and you wouldn’t even know it,” I tell him indignantly as I cross my arms in
front of me.

“Oh, I’m pretty
sure I would notice if you suddenly turned into a completely different person,”
he tells me with a laugh.

“Are you saying
I’m not a nice person?  That I wouldn’t cuddle a strange baby or make a
homeless guy feel special?  Because I would totally do all of that.  Maybe I’ve
already been doing it behind your back.  Maybe instead of going to the dentist
the other day I went to a PETA meeting and threw fake blood on rich people
wearing fur.  Maybe Gavin has been learning French at night while you’re at
work.”

I crane my neck
behind me to look at Gavin.

“Hey, say
something in French,” I tell him.

“I like french
fries,” he tells me as he looks up from his cereal bowl with milk dripping down
his chin.

“See?” I say as
I turn back to face Carter.  “He can already use a word in a sentence.”

“Okay, stop. 
Take a deep breath.  Of course I think you’re a nice person.  I think you’re an
amazing person.  But I think we all know that you are not a Stepford Wife and
Gavin isn’t conjugating French verbs while listening to Mozart.”

“MY WIENER
EXPLODED!”

Carter drops his
arms from my waist, and I jump around in horror at Gavin’s scream.

“Never mind.  I
just spillded milk on it.  I have a milk wiener now.”

I shake my head
and turn back to face Carter.

“I rest my
case,” he says with a laugh.

I frown and try
to act indignant but Carter can see the wheels turning in my head and cuts me
off.

“I love both of
you exactly the way you are.  I love that you have no filter, and I adore that
Gavin can make grown men cry.  There is not one thing I would change about
either one of you, and if anyone doesn’t like it, they can kiss my ass.  You
guys are my life and my family now.  Nothing else matters.”

Carter bends
down and presses a soft kiss to my lips and pulls me tighter against him.  His
words push aside some of my fears about his family, but it doesn’t change the
fact that I still want to try again with them.  I plan on spending a very long
time with this man.  I'm still not sold on the whole marriage thing, but I
still want him in my life forever, which means I needed to find a way to get on
his parents' good side one way or another.  If I have to get them drunk, so be
it.

“Thank you.  But
I still want to have your parents over for dinner.  I want to at least show
them I can act like an adult most of the time.”

“Oh my God!  You
guys are doing it all wrong.  Obviously we need to go over these rules one more
time.  The dinner roll needs to be thrown
under
hand at the ceiling
fan.  That’s the only way you’ll get the arc you need for a good pitch.  We’re
not going for speed, people.  We’re going for accuracy.  Someone pop another
batch in the oven so we can start the third inning for fuck’s sake!”

After my mother
finishes her explanation, she hefts the wooden cutting board up to her shoulder
by the handle and readies herself for the pitch.

“Carter, if you
bend over like that in front of me again, I might have to grab that sweet
little tush of yours and call your mother and thank her.”

I’ll toast to
that.

I raise my wine
glass in the air for a toast while Drew does a couple of practice throws.

“I got this one,
Mom. Dear Mrs. Ellis, thank you for pushing Carter out of your vagina and
having such good genes that he has the most perfect ass I’ve ever seen,” I say
with a snort and a wink in Carter’s direction.

“Um, thank you?”

My eyes go wide
and with my wine glass still held above my head. I turn around slowly and find
Carter’s parents standing in the dining room doorway looking around at the
scene in front of them in shock and awe...but mostly shock.

In hindsight, I
should have known better than to listen to anything my mother suggests. 
Carter’s parents had canceled coming to dinner at the last minute because his
father was feeling under the weather.  How was I supposed to know they would
just show up an hour after dinner was over only to find me talking about her
vagina, her son naked from the waist up with his shirt tied around his
forehead, my dad sitting in the far corner of the room with a bowl of mashed
potatoes in his lap, Drew wearing an apron that said, “I didn’t wash my hands
before I fondled your meat,” and Liz and Jenny crawling on all fours around the
kitchen table, eating the broken pieces of dinner rolls off of the floor and
giggling.

From now on when
my mom says, “Beating a dead horse around a bush during a blue moon won’t fix
anything,” I’m going to plug my ears and walk away.

Two
hours earlier

“Does it make me
a bad person if I feel really bad that your dad doesn’t feel well, but feel
even worse for myself because I did all this work and now they won’t see it?”

Carter laughs
and uncorks a bottle of wine.

“I still can’t
believe you thought their anniversary was the perfect day to have my parents
over for dinner.”

He pours me a
glass of wine as I slide on oven mitts and pull the roast out of the oven.

“Daddy, I wanna
help cook the food.  What can I make?” Gavin asks as he comes bounding into the
kitchen.

“Well, I think
Mommy’s got everything just about done.  How about you take people’s coats as
they come in the door?”

The doorbell
rings and Gavin, happy with the chore he has just been given, scampers off to see
who is here.

“I know.  It was
a crazy idea to do this on their thirtieth anniversary, but I just wanted them
to come here, have a nice, family dinner and see that I can be a normal,
well-balanced adult.  What better day to do that than on a day where everyone
has to rejoice in their love, and it would be against the spirit of the
marriage in general if anyone said the words whore, vagina, or penis out loud?”

I set the
roaster pan on top of the stove and toss the oven mitts onto the counter.  The
sound of Gavin answering the door puts a halt to our conversation.

“Hi, Uncle Jim. 
Give me a dollar and I’ll cut you.”

Carter hands me
the glass of Chardonnay and sighs.

“How did he go
from, ‘Can I take your coats please?’ to ‘I’m going to murder you for ringing
the doorbell.’?”

I shrug and take
a sip of the chilled wine.

“Maybe it’s a
blessing in disguise your parents couldn’t come.  I think we need a trial run
to get this normal thing down pat first,” I tell him with a smile.

“I am
not
going to say I told you so,” Carter says with a kiss to my cheek.

“Good.  Because
if you did, I’d have Gavin take your coat and shiv you.”

Carter walks out
of the room when the doorbell rings again to make sure Gavin doesn’t make good
on his cutting threats.

With my wine
glass in one hand, I start placing serving spoons in all of the side dishes and
then pull out the big carving knife so Carter can cut the roast.  While I work,
I listen to the sounds of a football game coming from the television in the
living room and my family and friends talking quietly amongst themselves as
they show up.  Even if Carter’s parents couldn’t make it, I know it will still
be a good day and a great dinner.

“Claire Bear! 
Who is this sexy beast you have answering the door for you now?”

I choke on a mouthful
of wine and turn to see my mother walk into the room with her arm linked
through Carter’s.  “Have you been working out, Carter?” she asks as she rubs
her hand up and down his bicep.