Family and Other Accidents (31 page)

“If that's what you want to believe.” Jorie turns away from her sister, starts looking through the old CDs alphabetized on built-in wall shelving.

“So I heard you were voted Girl You Most Want to Fuck,” Keelie says. “That's the kind of thing that makes Mom and Dad really proud.”

“Well at least people want to fuck me,” Jorie says without turning around. “You know, because I'm not fat.”

Taking down Bruce Springsteen's
Born to Run
album, she checks the playlist on the case. A few seconds later she hears Keelie walk away.

To be fair, Jorie has almost forgotten “Thunder Road” was her parents' song, almost blotted out memories of driving around strapped in her child seat in the back of the Jetta while her parents sang in the front. She
does
, however, experience a momentary happiness when the harmonica's whine starts, and her mother stiffens in the dweeb's arms. But then her mother breaks away from Steve, gray eyes circling the room for the source of the music. Jorie is surprised that she can't look at her and bows her head. Her mother excuses herself, scurrying down the hall so no one will see her fall apart. From across the room, Steve squints at Jorie. She shrugs and goes back to her room.

         

Holding the poster at arm's length, Jack feels himself becoming misty-eyed and philosophical.

“Amazing, isn't it?” Connor asks.

“Didn't Dad get this for me originally?” Jack asks. “On like the one family vacation the four of us ever took. New York or something?”

“Not New York, D.C. I was five.” Connor says, and Jack is surprised, both because his brother is right and because Connor rarely talks about their father. “Dad had to work and Mom thought it would be nice if we all went. But then she had a headache, so he had to take us around, and you kept sneaking off to call Anna Fram.”

“That's right. It was like a hundred degrees, and Dad almost punched the paddleboat guy at the Lincoln Memorial.”

For the second time in as many hours, Jack finds himself thinking of his father and mother. About how when he had been an orphan at twenty-five, his brother fifteen, people always assumed their parents must have died together in some sort of accident, car wreck, plane crash, fire. How else could you be careless enough to lose both parents so early? But now he's at the age where most people he knows have lost one if not both of their parents, where no one makes those assumptions anymore. And he wants to say something, feels that uneasiness he did on the phone with his niece last month.

“It all comes back around.” Jack shakes his head, because that's not quite right. “Everything is just so fucking fluid, you know?”

“Is that why Mona's here?” Connor raises his eyebrows. “Are you guys back together again?”

“Yeah.” Jack nods. “I think so.”

“What about Kathy? I thought you were engaged.”

“We were; we are. I don't know.” Jack sighs. “But Mo and I have Ryan, a fucking barrel of history. That stuff's important.”

Connor just looks at him.

“It's something you should probably think about with Laine.” Jack's not entirely sure but adds, “That guy with her is a total putz.”

“Steve's a good man.”

“Maybe.” Jack shoos Connor's words away. “But she's still crazy about you—”

“Jack, she's happy or almost happy, a lot happier than before.”

“She still loves you,” Jack says, and Connor shakes his head, says that's not always enough. But Jack wants to say more, in truth more for himself than for his brother. “All I'm saying is that these things are more fluid than you might think.”

“Is ‘fluid' like some new word you just learned?” Connor asks, and Jack tries to remember where he did pick it up, why it's suddenly become his mantra.

“Eh, I think some guy used it in a
New Yorker
cartoon,” he says. “I've been trying it out.”

         

Jack is in the middle of a sentence, something about Ryan and an L train and the Lincoln Park Zoo, when it hits Connor, something akin to being thrown an object too heavy to catch. He's not just tired anymore but exhausted, the bedroom and the skyline through the window, a series of spinning floating colors, bleeding out of their lines.

“.         .         .         And the judge is standing next to me, right there at the lion cage,” Jack is saying, but Connor holds up his hand to cut him off.

Jack's eyes slim, and he sets his diet soda on the nightstand. All the humor is gone from his voice, he asks, “You okay, kid?”

In the months when Connor had been sickest, Jack had flown back and forth from Chicago to Boston to yell at doctors and demand answers when Connor was too weak, Laine too frazzled. And Jack would be there again if Connor asked. Be there to get Connor into the office of every specialist in the Western world, to throw money around, to threaten lawsuits. But things are different now. Jack has his own son, his estranged wife, and a fiancée back in Chicago. And Connor is no longer a kid.

“I'm just really tired,” Connor says. “I'm going to go to the bathroom, splash some water on my face.”

Jack nods, says he should find Mona.

Someone is in the bathroom in the hall, so Connor goes to the one in the master suite. It's unlocked and dark, but when he pushes open the door and flips the light switch, Laine is sitting on the edge of the tub, long legs out in front of her, head droopy. She's not an emotional woman, but he can see she's upset, a crumpled piece of toilet paper in her hand. Immediately on her feet, she sniffles back whatever it is she is sniffling and smoothes the seams of her long black skirt.

“I'm sorry.” Connor starts to back away, unsure what's appropriate anymore. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” Laine waves the hand with the crumpled tissue.

“What's wrong?”

Laine shrugs with open palms. “Listen.”

And he does. Springsteen's raspy voice floating through the condo, so faint it's almost imagined. Seventeen years ago, driving around with Laine in the rusting Nissan Sentra. Both of them young and pretty, Laine's stomach growing with Jorie. Even then he wasn't sure he loved her, knew only that he should because she was smart and capable and he was lucky to have her.

“Jorie put the song on.”

“I'm sorry,” he says, and she looks down again. “I don't know why she does these things to you.”

“Well, whatcha gonna do?” she asks. “Are you okay? You look a little piqued.”

Telling her would be so simple, would make things better. If he told her any of it, she would take charge, make him better through her platinum will alone.

“Conn?” Eyebrows pitched in tents of worry, she looks so much like Jorie, or at least how Jorie used to look before her run-in with Clairol. It would be easy to tell Laine, but he won't. He's not her responsibility anymore. It's not her job to help him die, because he doesn't want the burden of loving her if he lives.

“I'm groovy sweet like a peppermint stick,” he says, and she smiles, perhaps the saddest smile he's ever seen.

“I miss you saying that.” She's saying she still loves him. And it makes everything in his body throb that he's still hurting her, after all these years of hurting her, after she's married to the kind of guy she should have married in the first place. She puts her hand on his shoulder, steps closer than Steve Humboldt would probably like. “Do you ever miss me?”

He knows she's really asking if he still loves her.

“Lainey, I don't—” he stops. He doesn't what? Doesn't love her? Isn't it some kind of love that makes him not want to hurt her so badly that he can't finish the sentence? “Of course I miss you.”

Neither one of them says anything, and they're once again aware of Springsteen, so faint it's almost gone. Her fingers are still on his shoulder, and she's close enough that he can smell the chocolate on her breath from the fondue. Taking her hand off his shoulder, he holds it, slides his other arm around the back of her waist and starts swaying to the music.

At first she looks confused, but then she laughs, a laugh that is sad, but also not sad. So they dance, on the marble of the bathroom floor, their image reflected in the mirrors over the double sink and the clean black porcelain of the Jacuzzi and the shower.

And he thinks that maybe Jack is right, maybe things are in flux, changing direction on a whim. Isn't it true that everything in his life is the way it is because of a series of glitches, because his mom got pregnant when she thought she couldn't? Because his parents died? Had his father lived five, maybe ten more years, Connor might have gotten to know him like Jack did, may have gone to law school, too. Had his mother not kicked the bucket when he was fifteen, would he have known Jack at all, or would his brother have remained a holiday cameo in Connor's life? Had Laine not gotten knocked up in grad school, would Jorie have been born at all? And Keelie? Or would he and Laine simply have parted ways after a few months of hot sex in public places? So maybe he'll find his way back to Laine, even though she's married to Steve Humboldt, such an aww-shucks good guy for a banker. Perhaps Connor and Laine have forty more years in them, or maybe he's sick and
that
glitch will stitch up the gap between his girls.

There's no way to know. So they dance in the bathroom until they think the song ends, but the music is so soft it's hard to say exactly when that is.

         

Her aunt and uncle are fucking in Keelie's bedroom.

Jorie watches from the floor of the Jack-and-Jill bathroom separating her bedroom from Keelie's. She's on her hands and knees by the toilet, contemplating puking, and can see everything through the gap in the door. Mona is bent over at the waist, her hands on the lacy white bedspread while Jack presses himself into her from behind. He moans, his face like Brandon's when he hovered over Jorie on Wednesday.

She knows she should leave, that it's not right to stare, but she wants to see, so she crawls across the tile for a better look.

“Jack,” her aunt moans, reaches behind her for his hips and ass, squeezes them.

“Oh God.” Her uncle's words are choked and broken. “I love you, Mona.”

Her aunt quivers and falls forward onto the bed, her uncle after. He kisses her neck, covers her in his weight, his body draped across hers. Then Jorie can't watch anymore, feels everything in her digestive system definitively working in reverse. She makes her way back to the toilet and stares into the bowel, listening to the sounds of her aunt and uncle zipping, giggling, and buttoning in the next room.

Before she can actually vomit, the door is thrown all the way open.

“Jorie?” her uncle asks, and she catches a glimpse of his square-toed shoes and the cuffs of his trousers, then whips her head around to puke up vodka and more vodka and chewed crudités.

When she finishes, she sits on the floor, looks up at him.

“Do you want me to get your sister?” her uncle asks.

“No.” Jorie shakes her head, feels heat on her cheeks.

He squats next to her, elbows on his knees, hands hanging between his legs. It makes her think of his penis, then of Brandon's penis swollen and purple.

“Can I get you a soda or crackers?”

“Mmmmnnnn.” Jorie shakes her head again. “I'm okay.”

“You just had a little too much to drink?” he asks gently. When Jorie hesitates, he adds, “I won't tell your parents.”

She nods and mumbles a thank-you.

“Yeah, it'll be our secret. And between you and me, your father has had plenty of secrets.” Her uncle's eyes are her father's eyes, his hands her father's hands, and she realizes this might be the only conversation she's ever had with him.

“Uncle Jack?” she says.

“Yeah?” he looks at her and nods. Even in her alcohol haze, the moment seems an important opportunity to ask about her father or her childhood or something.

“I slept with Brandon,” she says.

         

It takes Jack a minute to realize that Brandon must be the pretty boy who had been loitering around the bar. It takes significantly longer to figure out what he wants to say to his niece. Almost a quarter century has passed since he screwed up this conversation with his brother, and if genetics do the job, he'll probably be dead before his own son exchanges his games for girls. This might be his only shot to pass on any wisdom.

“Didn't you used to be a blonde?” he says, and she looks at the floor. He tries again. “Did you enjoy it? The sex, I mean.”

She shrugs.

“Do you love him?”

“He loves me.” Jorie shrugs again. “Or he thinks he does.”

“Well, there's your problem.” Jack relaxes back on his heels. “It'll be better when you love the person, I promise.”

Eyes wide and wet, she looks at him, and he feels as though he's said something of value. Then Jorie's body shudders and she lunges toward the toilet again.

The door to the hall swings open, and Connor is there looking from Jack to Jorie and then back. Palms on his thighs, Jack pushes himself to his feet.

“I think the shrimp salad was bad, your kid and I aren't feeling so great,” he says.

“Thanks,” Connor says. “I think I can handle it from here.”

As he's walking out of the bathroom, Jack notices that his brother looks dimmed, and he starts to wonder if there are things Connor isn't telling him.

“Kid,” Jack starts. Now, more than ever, he wants to say what he's been trying to say all night, before he wanders out of this bathroom and into the party, before he takes a plane a thousand miles back to his complicated life by the lake. But he can't get it out. So Jack claps his brother's shoulder, nods, opens his mouth but then closes it.

“Fluid?” Connor asks.