Lock and Key (31 page)

There was a bed, made, and a bureau with a bowlful of change on it, as well as a couple of root beer bottle caps. His backpack was thrown over the chair of a nearby desk, where a laptop was plugged in, the battery light blinking. But there were no framed pictures, and none of the bits and pieces I’d expected, like Marla’s fridge collage, or even Sabrina’s tons of cats. If anything, it looked more like the last apartment he’d taken me to, almost sterile, with few if any clues as to who slept, lived, and breathed there.

I stood looking for a moment, surprised, before backing out and returning the door to exactly how it had been. All the way back home, though, I kept thinking about his room, trying to figure out what it was about it that was so unsettling. It wasn’t until I got back to Cora’s that I realized the reason: it looked just like mine. Hardly lived in, barely touched. Like it, too, belonged to someone who had just gotten there and still wasn’t sure how long they’d be sticking around.

“Can I have your attention, please. Hello?”

At first, the plinking noise was barely audible. But as people began to quiet down, and then quieted those around them, it became louder, until finally it was all you could hear.

“Thanks,” Jamie said, putting down the fork he’d been using to tap his wineglass. “First, I want to thank all of you for coming. It means a lot to us to have you here for our first holiday meal in our new place.”

“Hear, hear!” someone in the back said, and there was a pattering of applause. The Hunters were effusive people, or so I’d noticed while letting them in and taking their coats. His mom, Elinor, was soft-spoken with a kind face; his dad, Roger, had grabbed me in a big hug, ruffling my hair like I was ten. All three of his sisters shared Jamie’s dark coloring and outspokenness, whether it was about the pond (which they admired, loudly) or the recent elections (about which they disagreed, also loudly, albeit good-naturedly). And then there were children, and brothers-in-law, various uncles and cousins—so many names and relationships to remember that I’d already decided to give up trying and was just smiling a lot, hoping that compensated. It would have to.

“And now that we have you here,” Jamie continued, “there’s something else we’d like to share with you.”

Standing at the entrance to the foyer, I was behind him, with the perfect view of his audience as he said this. The response was two-pronged: first, hopeful expressions—raised eyebrows, mouths falling open, hands to chests—followed by everyone looking at Cora at once.
Oh, shit,
I thought.

My sister turned pink instantly, then pointedly took a sip from the wineglass in her hand before forcing a smile. By then, Jamie had realized his mistake.

“It’s about UMe,” he said quickly, and everyone slowly directed their attention back to him. “Our new advertising campaign. It rolls out officially tomorrow, all over the country. But you get to see it here first.”

Jamie reached behind a chair, pulling out a square piece of cardboard with the ad I’d seen blown up on it. I looked at Cora again, but she’d disappeared into the kitchen, her glass abandoned on a bookcase.

“I hope you like it,” Jamie said, holding the picture up in front of him. “And, um, won’t want to sue.”

I slipped through the foyer, missing the Hunters’ initial reactions, although I did hear some gasps and shrieks, followed by more applause, as I entered the kitchen where Cora was sliding rolls into the oven, her back to me. She didn’t turn around as she said, “Told you.”

I glanced behind me, wondering how on earth she could have known for sure it was me. “He felt horrible,” I said. “You could tell.”

“I know.” She shut the oven, tossing a potholder onto the island. From the living room, I could hear people talking over one another, their voices excited. Cora glanced over at the noise. “Sounds like they like it.”

“Did he really think they wouldn’t?”

She shrugged. “People are weird about family stuff, you know? ”

“Really?” I said as I slid onto a stool by the island. “I wouldn’t know a thing about that.”

“Me either,” she agreed. “Our family is perfect.”

We both laughed at this, although not nearly loudly enough to drown out the merriment from the next room. Then Cora turned back to the oven, peering in through the glass door. “So,” I said, “speaking of family. What does it mean to you?”

She looked at me over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s a project for school. I’m supposed to ask everybody.”

“Oh.” Then she was quiet for a moment, her back still to me. “What are people saying?”

“So far, different things,” I told her. “I haven’t made a lot of headway, to be honest.”

She moved down to the stove, lifting up a lid on a pot and examining the contents. “Well, I’m sure my definition is probably similar to yours. It would have to be, right?”

“I guess,” I said. “But then again, you have another family now.”

We both looked into the living room. From my angle, I could see Jamie had put the blown-up ad on the coffee table, and everyone else was gathered around. “I guess I do,” she said. “But maybe that’s part of it, you know? That you’re not supposed to have just one.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well,” she said, adjusting a pot lid, “I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jamie’s family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I’ll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jamie.”

Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie’s gaffe. “You will,” I said.

She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. “I hope so. But that’s just the thing, right? Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else. Even that picture of Jamie’s family was only the true representation for that one day. By the next, something had probably changed. It had to.”

In the living room, I heard a burst of laughter. “That’s a good definition,” I said.

“Yeah? ”

I nodded. “The best yet.”

Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn’t actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone’s eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.

I looked into the living room, where Jamie’s mom was now alone on the couch, the ad spread out on the table in front of her. When I joined her, she immediately scooted over, and for a moment we both studied the ad in silence.

“Must be kind of weird,” I said finally. “Knowing this is going to be out there for the whole world to see.”

“I suppose.” She smiled. Of all of them, to me she looked the most like Jamie. “At the same time, I doubt anyone would recognize me. It was a long time ago.”

I looked down at the picture, finding her in the center in her white dress. “Who were these women?” I asked, pointing at the elderly women on each side of her.

“Ah.” She leaned forward, a little closer. “My great-aunts. That’s Carol on the far left, and Jeannette, next to her. Then Alice on my other side.”

“Was this at your house?”

“My parents’. In Cape Cod,” she said. “It’s so funny. I look at all those children in the front row, and they’re all parents themselves now. And all my aunts have passed, of course. But everyone still looks so familiar, even as they were then. Like it was just yesterday.”

“You have a big family,” I told her.

“True,” she agreed. “And there are times I’ve wished otherwise, if only because the more people you have, the more likely someone won’t get along with someone else. The potential for conflict is always there.”

“That happens in small families, too, though,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, looking at me. “It certainly does.”

“Do you know who all these people are, still?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Every one.”

We were both quiet for a moment, looking at all those faces. Then Elinor said, “Want me to prove it?”

I looked up at her. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

She smiled, pulling the photo a little closer, and I wondered if I should ask her, too, the question for my project, get her definition. But as she ran a finger slowly across the faces, identifying each one, it occurred to me that maybe this was her answer. All those names, strung together like beads on a chain. Coming together, splitting apart, but still and always, a family.

Despite Cora’s concerns, when dinner did hit a snag, it wasn’t her fault. It was mine.

“Hey,” Jamie said as we cleared the table, having told Cora to stay put and relax. “Where are the pies?”

“Whoops,” I said. With all the time in the closet, not to mention the chaos of turkey for eighteen, I’d forgotten all about the ones over at Nate’s.

“Whoops,” Jamie repeated. “As in, whoops the dog ate them? ”

“No,” I said. “They’re still next door.”

“Oh.” He glanced into the dining room, biting his lip. “Well, we’ve got cookies and cake, too. I wonder if—”

“She’ll notice,” I said, answering this question for him. “I’ll go get them.”

It had been bustling and noisy at our house for so long that I was actually looking forward to the quiet of Nate’s house. When I stepped inside, all I could hear was the whirring of the heating system and my own footsteps.

Luckily, I’d set the timer, so the pies weren’t burned, although they were not exactly warm, either. I was just starting to arrange them back on the cookie sheets when I heard a thud from the other side of the wall.

It was solid and sudden, something hitting hard, and startled me enough that I dropped one of the pies onto the stove, where it hit a burner, rattling loudly. Then there was a crash, followed by the sound of muffled voices. Someone was in the garage.

I put down the pies, then stepped out into the hallway, listening again. I could still hear someone talking as I moved to the doorway that led to the garage, sliding my hand around the knob and carefully pulling it open. The first thing I saw was Nate.

He was squatting down next to a utility shelf that by the looks of it had been leaning against the garage wall up until very recently. Now, though, it was lying sideways across the concrete floor, with what I assumed were its contents—a couple of paint cans, some car-cleaning supplies, and a glass bowl, now broken—spilled all around it. Just as I moved forward to see if he needed help, I realized he wasn’t alone.

“. . .
specifically
said you should check the keys before you left,” Mr. Cross was saying. I heard him before I saw him, now coming into view, his phone clamped to his ear, one hand covering the receiver. “One thing.
One thing
I ask you to be sure of, and you can’t even get that right. Do you even know how much this could cost me? The Chambells are half our business in a good week, easily. Jesus!”

“I’m sorry,” Nate said, his head ducked down as he grabbed the paint cans, stacking them. “I’ll just get it now and go straight there.”

“It’s too late,” Mr. Cross said, snapping his phone shut. “You screwed up.
Again.
And now I’m going to have to deal with this personally if we’re going to have any hope of saving the account, which will put us even more behind.”

“You don’t. I’ll talk to them,” Nate told him. “I’ll tell them it was my fault—”

Mr. Cross shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice clenched. “Because that, Nate, is admitting incompetence. It’s bad enough I can’t count on you to get a single goddamned thing right,
ever
, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to have you blabbing about it to the clients like you’re proud of it.”

“I’m not,” Nate said, his voice low.

“You’re not what?” Mr. Cross demanded, stepping closer and kicking a bottle of Windex for emphasis. It hit the nearby lawnmower with a bang as he said, louder, “
Not what
, Nate?”

I watched as Nate, still hurriedly picking things up, drew in a breath. I felt so bad for him, and somehow guilty for being there. Like this was bad enough without me witnessing it. His voice was even quieter, hard to make out, as he said, “Not proud of it.”

Mr. Cross just stared at him for a moment. Then he shook his head and said, “You know what? You just disgust me. I can’t even look at your face right now.”

He turned, then crossed the garage toward me, and I quickly moved down the hallway, ducking into a bathroom. There, in the dark, I leaned back against the sink, listening to my own heart beat, hard, as he moved around the kitchen, banging drawers open and shut. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I heard him leave. I waited a full minute or two after hearing a car pull away before I emerged, and even then I was still shaken.

The kitchen looked the same, hardly touched, my pies right where I’d left them. Past the patio and over the fence, Cora’s house, too, was unchanged, the lights all bright downstairs. I knew they were waiting for the pies and for me, and for a moment I wished I could just go and join them, stepping out of this house, and what had just happened here, entirely. At one time, this might have even come naturally. But now, I opened the garage door and went to find Nate.

He was down on the floor, picking up glass shards and tossing them into a nearby trash can, and I just stood there and watched him for a second. Then I took my hand off the door behind me, letting it drop shut.

Immediately, he looked up at me. “Hey,” he said, his voice casual.
I hide it well,
I heard him say in my head. “What happened to dinner? You decide to go AWOL rather than do your thankful list?”

“No,” I said. “I, um, forgot about the pies, so I had to come get them. I didn’t think anyone was here.”