If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (23 page)

“I don’t think you’re horrible. Not even close.”

“Whatever. But you have to know. I complain a lot about Noah. And if I had to do things over again, I’d probably do them differently
because I made a lot of dumb choices. But that isn’t to say…” I didn’t know how to put it, but I
had
to say it somehow. I had to make this one thing clear. “It’s just… I
do
love him, you know. I did from the moment I first looked at him. No, even before that. It’s not ever about not loving him.
All my complaining and moaning and wondering about the past—it’s not because I don’t want him around. I’d—” What could I say
that didn’t sound stupid and sentimental? “He’s my son, you know?”

“I know,” he said. “You can tell. And not just because you almost got me fired out of concern for him. It’s just… you can
tell.”

“All right, then,” I said. I unhooked the leash, and Eleanor Roosevelt dashed up to the house as happily as she’d dashed toward
the gate a half an hour earlier.

I
sneaked a glance at Andrew as we came inside. I had thought I couldn’t read his expression because it was so dark outside,
but even in the brightly lit foyer I didn’t have a clue what he was thinking.

I felt a little like I’d just peeled off all my skin, exposing everything that was soft and vulnerable and private underneath.
It was too late to regret it.

I hung up Eleanor Roosevelt’s leash and then Mom called
us into the dining room, where the others were already seated and waiting for us to eat dessert.

She’d just served us all slices of pumpkin and pecan pie when a cell phone rang.

“Sorry,” Melanie said, snatching up her phone. “Be right back.” She left the dining room, phone clutched to her ear.

“What
did
we do before cell phones?” my father said dryly. “Meals must have been so boring with everyone actually sitting and eating
and talking to one another.” He appealed to my mother. “Am I allowed to go ahead and eat my pie or would
that
be considered rude?”

“Oh, go ahead,” she said, waving her hand with a resigned sigh.

Another phone buzzed audibly. Andrew gave a little uncomfortable laugh. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s me. But it’s just a text.”

“You can check it if you want,” I said. “Don’t let my dad scare you.”

He pulled the phone partially out of his pocket, glanced down at it, then pushed it back in. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just Gracie
again.”

Mom’s head kind of snapped around at this. She studied Andrew for a second and then turned expressionless eyes on me.

“Can I get my own cell phone for Christmas?” Noah asked. He was shaking the can of whipped cream vigorously.

“You’re six years old,” I said. “What would you do with a cell phone?”

He upended the can over his plate and pressed against the neck so a thick ribbon of whipped cream spurted out. “Call people.”

“Who do you need to call? That’s enough whipped cream.”

He kept going with the whipped cream. “You, when you’re late picking me up.”

I snatched the can away from him and set it upright on the table. “That’s way too much. I told you to stop. And I’m almost
never late.”

He picked up his spoon. “Well, you
could
be, if I had a cell phone.”

My father laughed. “I like his logic.”

“Don’t encourage him.”

My mother said, “Noah, pass the whipped cream to Andrew.”

“
Coach
Andrew,” I corrected. The last thing I needed was for Noah to start tossing around a teacher’s first name at school. Dr.
Wilson would love
that
.

Melanie came back in.

“Everything okay?” Mom asked.

“Fine. It wasn’t the kids.” She sat down. “It was my mother.”

“Oh, we should have called her earlier!” said
my
mother, who had a strong—and to me inexplicable—sense of duty toward Colleen, who clearly felt that her life was sufficiently
fulfilling without any additional attention from her ex-husband’s second wife. “We invited her to join us, you know, but she
had other plans.”

“You’ve told Melanie that seven times,” I said. “In my hearing, anyway. Probably a few more when I wasn’t around.”

My mother cleared her throat slightly. “I’m sorry if I repeat myself sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Hey, go easy on your mother,” Andrew said. “She’s a nice lady.”

“Thank you,” Mom said to him and they shared a smile.

“I go easy on her,” I said, annoyed. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t notice things.”

“So what’s next on the list of activities?” Mom said, a little too brightly. “Anyone up for a game of Scrabble?”

“And here you thought we’d be boring,” I said to Andrew.

“No, I didn’t. And Scrabble sounds like fun.” He glanced at his watch. “If I’m not overstaying my welcome.”

“Not at all. We’d be insulted if you left this early.” Mom rose to her feet. “Rickie and I will clear the table and make some
decaf. The rest of you go into the family room and set up the game. We’ll be right in.”

Noah said, “I don’t want to play Scrabble. Can I watch TV?”

“No,” my mother and I said at the same moment.

In the kitchen a moment later, Mom said to me, “Get the coffee started while I load the dishwasher.”

“Yes, sir.” I gave her a mock salute.

She bent down and opened the dishwasher door. “So who’s Gracie?”

“Andrew’s girlfriend.” I eyed her warily. “Why?”

“I just didn’t know he had one. Is it serious?”

“How should I know?”

Her back was to me as she shifted steadily between the sink, where she was scraping dishes, and the dishwasher, where she
was inserting them.

“And why do you care?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

I got the can of coffee grounds out of the freezer and poured some directly into the filter without bothering to measure.
“If you’re trying to imply something, just
say
it.”

“I’m not implying anything.” She kept moving back and forth, scraping and loading, scraping and loading.

“I’d like to remind you that
I
didn’t invite him here tonight. You and Melanie did.”

“I know.” More scraping and loading.

I went to the sink. “I need to fill the pot.” She moved aside, keeping her wet hands suspended over the sink while I ran water
into the carafe.

“You should use the filtered water,” she said.

“This is faster.”

“It makes better coffee.”

“You want to do this?” I held out the pot to her. “Be my guest.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” she said. “I’m just giving you some advice.”

“If you’re going to ask me to do a job, don’t criticize the way I do it.”

She didn’t say anything. As I turned away, pot filled, I could see she was pressing her lips together tightly, the way she
always did when I didn’t agree with every word she said.

I poured the water into the coffeemaker and punched it on. “I’m going to the family room.”

She didn’t reply.

I think all the wine I had at dinner actually helped my Scrabble game: good words seemed to come more easily. Or maybe they
just
seemed
like good words. Because there were six of us, Melanie and I doubled up. Noah was supposedly my dad’s partner, but he mostly
just sat on the sofa and yawned and fidgeted. Mom and Andrew played alone and were easily the strongest players.

“You’re kind of smart for a dumb jock,” I told Andrew after he scored forty-five points on one word.

“I don’t know how to respond to that.”

“Thank you?” I suggested.

He shot me a look.

It
seemed
like he was flirting with me.

Was he?

It was actually
my
phone that rang next. Ryan.

I said to Mel, “Go ahead and play for us.” As I put the phone to my ear and left the room, I saw that Andrew was watching
me. Well, good. He had taken Gracie’s phone call. I had a right to take this one.

“Hey,” Ryan’s voice said. “Having a nice Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah.” I relaxed against the hallway wall. “You?”

“Delightful. Since Gabriel managed to escape to Hawaii, it was just me and Mom and a couple of turkey dinners from Koo Koo
Roo.”

“Your mother eats turkey? And here I always thought the undead dined exclusively on blood.”

“Shut up.”

“If your brother hadn’t cheated on Melanie, you would have been here with us, you know.”

“I was going to invite you to come over, but you’re making me wonder if that’s such a good idea.”

“I can’t, anyway.” I glanced back through the doorway to the family room. Noah was leaning against Andrew’s knee, studying
Andrew’s tiles, while Andrew whispered in his ear and pointed to the board, clearly conferring with him on the next word.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” I said into the phone.

“So?”

“I can’t just leave.”

“How about later?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Well, call me if you decide you can.”

“Yeah, okay.” We said good-bye and I hung up.

“Who was that?” Mom asked as I came back into the family room.

“A friend.”

“Anyone I know?”

I didn’t answer, just perched on the arm of the upholstered chair Melanie and I had been sharing and watched as Andrew arranged
some tiles on the board. “Pill,” he announced.

“Four points,” Mom said.

“Noah came up with it,” Andrew said cheerfully. “I was completely stuck, but he saved me.”

“Well done, Noah,” Melanie said. “You want to help us with ours?”

“Okay,” he said and came over to us and peered at the letters while Mom played her turn.

She got “query,” ending on a triple-word box. “Thirty-eight points,” she said with satisfaction. “Mom always wins,” I informed
Andrew.

“Wait until Noah’s older. He’ll take her down.”

I was a little skeptical about that, since Noah’s brilliant idea for me and Mel was for us to make the word “ear” using the
“r” from “query,” which gained us exactly three points. I would have said no since there were plenty of better options, but
Melanie was the kind of adult who liked to encourage kids’ confidence, so she immediately plunked down the tiles.

My dad said, “I seem to have lost my teammate.”

“I can help you too,” Noah said and went over to him.

“It’s good to be the only kid,” I observed.

Once the Scrabble game was over (to no one’s surprise, my mother won), we played a couple of other games: Apples to Apples,
at Noah’s request, and then a simple parlor game that
Andrew taught us where you had to guess which adverb people were acting out.

My parents were in heaven; they loved playing games like this. When I was little, we’d play hours and hours of board and parlor
games, but once I was a teenager I just wanted to go online or watch TV and couldn’t imagine anything dorkier than playing
games with my parents.

Tonight, though, even I was having a good time.

At around nine-thirty, Andrew looked at his watch and said, “I should go.”

“But I wanted to play Quelf,” Noah said.

“Another time.” Andrew rose to his feet. “You guys wore me out with all that football. Which reminds me”—he turned to me—“should
I come play with Noah on Sunday?”

“Isn’t Gracie getting back then?” I asked.

“She won’t be in LA until midday. There’s plenty of time.” He shook Dad’s hand, kissed Mom on the cheek, thanked them both,
hugged Melanie and gave
her
a kiss on the cheek, bumped fists with Noah… and then just kind of nodded at me. “See you Sunday,” he said and headed toward
the door.

Why hadn’t he kissed me too?

“I’ll walk you down to your car,” I said suddenly.

My mother turned to look right at me when I said that. I pretended I didn’t notice.

I followed Andrew to the living room, where he retrieved his jacket and tie, and then we left the house. I closed the front
door behind us and we walked down the gravel path.

Andrew said, “That was a nice evening.”

I glanced sideways at him. Why hadn’t I thought he was cute that first time in Louis Wilson’s office?

Because I’d been angry at him. I tried to remember that anger and it seemed an eternity ago.

I liked his face now. He was cute in a way that grew on you.

We were already at the car. “Well, thanks,” he said and unlocked it.

I rubbed the short hairs on the back of my neck. He had said I should grow my hair out. Why had I cut it so short? Just to
prove something? I was an idiot. “Thanks for coming,” I said.

He nodded and opened the car door. “See you.”

“Wait,” I said. He waited. “What do you want?” I asked abruptly.

“Excuse me?” He looked a little startled.

“I mean for Sunday. Cookies? More cupcakes?”

“Oh. You really don’t have to make me anything.”

“I’m going to anyway, so you might as well choose something.”

“Well, then…” He thought a moment. “How about brownies?”

“Brownies it is.”

“Make them safe for Noah.”

“Yeah, I will.”

He opened the car door and stood there a moment, sliding his hand idly along the door edge. There was this weird moment. A
pause. Neither of us was moving or saying anything, but it felt like one of us should. Like the evening had changed something
and we needed to acknowledge it before he left.

Or at least that’s what it felt like to me. For all I knew,
he
was thinking about having a mug of cocoa when he got home.

He broke the silence. “Well, good night, Noah’s mom.”

“You still don’t know my name?”

“I just like calling you that.”

“Fine,” I said. “Good night, Noah’s coach.”

Another pause. He looked down the street, absently, and then swung his head back toward me. “Okay,” he said. “Good night.”

“Again with the good night?”

“Sometimes it takes a few of them to get me to actually leave. Especially if I had a good time and don’t want to go.”

“So… you had a good time?”

This time he didn’t look away during the pause. He studied me for a moment, thoughtfully. “Rickie—”

“Ha—so you
do
know my name.”