The Hopefuls (3 page)

A
few days after my disastrous trip to the grocery store, we were supposed to go to dinner at Matt's parents' house. This wasn't unusual—we were expected every Sunday—but part of me hoped that just this once we could get out of it, that maybe Matt would agree to cancel.

“I'm sure they'll understand if we tell them we need to unpack,” I said that afternoon. “And we have food now. We can make a real dinner.”

“I already told them we were coming,” Matt said.

“I could even make sloppy joes,” I said. It was a little desperate to try to bribe Matt with his favorite meal, but I wanted nothing more than to curl up and have a quiet dinner. For as long as we'd known each other, Sunday nights were a time we spent together, actually cooking instead of ordering takeout, trying out complicated and involved recipes. When
The Sopranos
were on, we religiously made large pasta dishes and ate in front of the TV. Now Sunday nights were no longer ours. When I'd mentioned that we were never going to be able to watch
60 Minutes
again, Matt just said we could DVR it.

“We'll do sloppy joes another night,” Matt said. He reached out and pulled me onto his lap, put his face in my neck until I laughed and said, “Your loss.”

It honestly didn't occur to me that moving to DC would mean seeing Matt's family all the time. Sure, I figured we'd see them more. Maybe we'd meet for dinner every few weeks—they lived in Maryland, about forty minutes outside of DC, just far enough away to be truly inconvenient. But looking back, it's clear that I was delusional, that I had underestimated the power of the Kellys.

Matt was one of five children. He had three older brothers and one younger sister. And like most big families, they were loud and secretly thought they were funnier and a little more special than everyone else. When Matt's mom found out I was an only child with no cousins, she'd drawn in a sharp breath and said, “Oh, isn't that too bad,” as if I'd just told her that I was an orphan or had cancer. Or maybe an orphan who had cancer. I could tell she pitied me and pitied my parents, that she thought the only family worth having was a large one.

When people complain about their in-laws, I usually just smile and make some sort of sympathetic noise, but I don't offer any details about my own. It's too much to get into, and once I start talking about them, it's hard to stop. I'm sure there are worse mothers-in-law that I could've gotten. I'm sure that's probably true.

Barbara Kelly (called Babs by everyone except her grandchildren, who called her BB) was a tall woman, just a couple inches shy of six feet. Standing next to her, I felt even shorter than I am. (“At least you know he's not marrying you because you remind him of his mom,” Bit said to me at the wedding.) She kept her hair in a brown chin-length bob, and no matter the time of day or the weather, it always looked perfect. I never saw one hair out of place, and sometimes I'd stare at her head and try to figure out how she did it. Babs loved tennis and golf and was often in a tennis skirt, even on the days she wasn't playing. She wore a lot of pinks and greens, favored polos, and usually had a sweater tied around her shoulders.

Early on, it was clear that Babs and I wouldn't have a close relationship, and I was fine with that. She didn't seem all that interested in me, or in any of her daughters-in-law for that matter. She referred to us as “the outlaws” and sometimes made us sit at a different table at family dinners. “Kellys over here,” she'd say, pointing to the dining room, “and outlaws this way.” The first time it happened, I thought it was a joke until I noticed my sisters-in-law heading out to a table on the sunporch and I stood where I was for a moment before finally just following them out there, taking my place at the table of non-Kellys.

We were late for dinner, mostly because I spent thirty minutes searching for a dress that I was sure I'd unpacked. Matt helped me look for it, anxiously announcing the time every seven minutes or so, until I finally just pulled another dress out of the closet to wear so that he'd stop acting like a talking alarm clock.

By the time we pulled up, the driveway was full of cars, a telltale sign that we were the last to arrive. I could feel Matt stiffen next to me—he hated being late, even if it was just to his own family's house. “Sorry,” I said, reaching over to rub his knee. He relaxed and looked over at me. “No worries,” he said, putting his hand on top of mine.

The house where Matt grew up was a large redbrick Tudor with a lawn so green it almost looked fake and rows of white flowering bushes in front. It was such an inviting house, picture perfect, the kind you'd dream about living in one day. And it never failed to amaze me how cheerful and warm it looked from the outside, how different it felt once you went in.

I took a deep breath as we walked in the front door. The two of us almost collided right into Rebecca, who was married to Matt's oldest brother, Patrick. She was standing in the front hall, holding their two-year-old, Jonah, and bouncing him up and down, saying, “Shhh, you're okay. You're okay.” Jonah's eyes were bright, but he wasn't crying and he gave us a serious look.

“Hey, buddy,” Matt said. He rubbed Jonah's cheek with his finger. “Rough day?” Jonah smiled a little and hid his face in Rebecca's shoulder.

“He fell outside,” Rebecca said, leaning her face into Jonah's hair. “The older boys were running around and knocked him down.” She sounded accusatory, as if we were responsible for the roughness of the Kelly grandchildren. Then, without saying anything else, she turned away from us, and bounced and shushed Jonah into the living room.

Matt turned to me and raised his eyebrows, and I couldn't help but smile back. Rebecca was a difficult person to like, and even though I tried to defend her since she was an outlaw like me, it wasn't easy.

Apparently, when Patrick had announced he was going to propose to Rebecca, Babs gasped and said, “You're really going to marry that Jewish girl?” Patrick had repeated this to Rebecca (why, I don't know), and she'd despised Babs ever since. You couldn't really blame her, I guess.

Now, Babs went out of her way to show everyone that she was completely fine with a Jewish daughter-in-law. Sometimes when she gave a toast at dinner, she'd say, “Mazel,” and raise her glass toward Rebecca. More than once someone burst out laughing, and everyone had to yell “Cheers” and clink glasses loudly to cover it up. It was no surprise that Rebecca often opted out of Sunday dinners, and sent Jonah to the house with Patrick, claiming she had a migraine.

Rebecca also had seasonal affective disorder, which she talked about all the time. It was the third thing she told me about herself when we met. She spent two months a year in Florida, sometimes more. Jonah was an only child (which upset Babs greatly), and Rebecca and Patrick were almost always following him around and trying to get him to eat, as though he was going to starve right there. It wasn't at all unusual to see one of them crawling on their knees after Jonah, holding a banana or a cereal bar out, saying, “Do you want a 'nana? Take a bite of the 'nana. Take a bite. Try a bite. Just one bite.” And then they'd shake their heads at each other, like they couldn't believe he wasn't eating. Being around them for more than an hour made you consider never having children, just in case there was a small chance you'd turn into them.

We walked into the kitchen and found Babs talking to the housekeeper, Rosie, about the dinner. Babs never really cooked, just gave instructions, but from the way she talked, you'd think she prepared it all herself. Rosie had worked for the Kellys for more than twenty years, and I often wondered how she managed to listen to Babs talk without screaming.

When Babs saw us, she put her palm up to Rosie in a “stop talking” motion, even though Rosie hadn't been the one talking. “There you are,” Babs said. “I was wondering why you were so late. I was beginning to worry.”

“Sorry,” Matt said, “traffic was bad,” at the same time I said, “It was my fault.”

“I figured,” Babs said, and I had a feeling it was me she was answering. She held my arms and kissed my cheek. “The girls are out back,” she said, which meant, leave the kitchen. “There's some wine open on the bar.”

I headed over to pour myself a glass of white wine, and watched as Babs pulled Matt toward her. “How's the job?” she was saying. “How's it going? Tell me everything.” She made it no secret that Matt was her favorite. His brothers called him the Golden Child or sometimes the Chosen One. At first, I thought this was kind of mean, but then I heard Babs talk for fifteen minutes about how Matt once loaded the dishwasher without her asking, and I totally got it.

“It's just because I'm the youngest,” Matt said once.

“You're not the youngest,” I said. Meg was the youngest by far—almost ten years younger than Matt.

“You know what I mean,” he said, like it wasn't a big deal he'd just disregarded his sister's existence. “The youngest boy.”

I carried my wine out to the patio, where Jenny and Nellie (who were married to Matt's brothers, Michael and Will, respectively) were sitting on wicker chairs, drinking their own glasses of wine. Behind them, their husbands were throwing a football around with their boys, and their daughters, Grace and Lily, were sitting cross-legged on the ground a little ways away, braiding friendship bracelets. It was a rule at the Kellys' that none of the kids were allowed to have any screen time, and the girls almost always had a craft with them.

“Aunt Beth, look.” Grace held up the bracelet so that I could see. I walked over to them and squatted down.

“Oh, I like that one,” I said. “I love the blues and greens and how it's on an angle like that. I used to know how to do that.”

Lily put her hand on my arm. She was seven, a year younger than Grace. “Grace can teach you. She's teaching me.”

Grace nodded in a businesslike way. “She's doing a good job, too.”

“Girls, don't monopolize Beth,” Jenny called. “Let her breathe.”

“I'll be back,” I told the girls, running my hand down Grace's hair.

I adored my nieces. They were probably my favorite members of the whole Kelly family. When I first married Matt, I often felt awkward around everyone, not sure where I belonged. Grace and Lily were a great distraction—if I was holding a baby or chasing around a toddler, it gave me something to do and made me feel useful. They were the greatest buffer anyone could have asked for.

Jenny and Nellie were always grateful to have me take a baby from them—Babs wasn't the kind of grandmother who gave bottles or offered to change diapers—and I was always eager to do it. The first time I went on vacation with all of the Kellys, I shared a room with Grace, who was just a baby. (We weren't married yet, so there was no chance of me sharing a room with Matt.) I still remember the relief of waking up to her little smiling face staring at me, how she offered her spitty hand to me through the bars of the crib, and laughed when I held it in mine. I remember thinking that at least one person in the family really liked me.

“Sorry about that,” Nellie said, as I sat down with them. She made a face. “They've been talking about showing you the bracelets all week. Be careful, because I have a feeling I know what you'll be getting for your birthday.” She and Jenny laughed and I smiled.

Michael and Will were only a year apart—forty and forty-one—and they were often mistaken for twins. Jenny and Nellie had been friends since high school, and now co-owned a store in Chevy Chase called Pink Penguin, which sold ribboned headbands, flip-flops adorned with flowers, and painted bobby pins. The store had a monogram machine that they used on everything you could imagine. Until I met them, I didn't own anything with my initials on it, and now I had monogrammed slippers, towels, sweaters, blankets, beach bags, and clutches.

My sisters-in-law were always friendly to me, and made a point of inviting me to lunch or dinner with them, which I appreciated. But I always felt a little bit like the third wheel with them. They'd been friends for over twenty years, lived two blocks away from each other, and had three children each (two boys and one girl), who all went to the same school. Their lives were so intertwined, and no matter how much time I spent with them, I was always on the outside.

“Where's Matt?” Nellie asked. “Did Babs steal him?”

“Yep. He's inside telling her every single thing that happened to him this week. No detail too small to leave out.”

They laughed, and I sat back in the chair. The basis of my relationship with Jenny and Nellie was that we all understood how ridiculous our mother-in-law was with her boys. They were the ones who taught me not to be scared of Babs, not to get upset when she said something insulting, and I was forever thankful for that. When Nellie was seven months pregnant, Babs had watched her walk into the house and commented that Nellie was gaining “a great deal of weight” in her legs. Nellie had laughed and said, “No kidding.”

The two of them resumed the conversation they'd been having before I got there, and I half listened as Jenny talked. “So, what I was saying is that Emma's mom—remember Emma? She's the one with the bowl cut? Well, her mom, Susie, just wouldn't admit that Emma had a learning disability, when it was so obvious to everyone that she did. Anyway, they finally figured out that she was dyslexic or something, but in the meantime, Emma developed a stutter. Like, a really bad one. I know, the poor thing. Like it could get much worse? Anyway, then she started seeing a speech therapist and then we find out that Susie is having an affair with the therapist. And now she's leaving her husband for him. Do you believe it?”

The two of them laughed and wiggled, but also made sympathetic noises to pretend they cared about Emma. Poor Emma, I thought. Poor little dyslexic Emma. Jenny and Nellie were horrible gossips, and hearing stories like this made me pity the other mothers in the school.