The eating part of Mom’s birthday brunch is pretty uneventful. I mean, there’s definitely some tension between Mom, Dad, and Grandma (who at one point says through a mouthful of bagel, “Good thing you’re not seated near any doors, Russ. Wouldn’t want one to bump you again!”), but it’s subtle enough not to ruin everyone’s good time.
With most of the food consumed and the table littered with used napkins and muffin crumbs, Paige holds up her mimosa and toasts Mom for being “a superwoman in every respect,” whatever that means, and her personal hero, and Dad follows that up with his own toast, recalling for maybe the eight hundredth time how he first met Mom in a student-directed production of Romeo and Juliet. She was Juliet, Cory was Romeo, and he was Mercutio. “I’m just so grateful Cory isn’t into women,” Dad says, and we all laugh even though he’s made that joke before. “This story might have turned out very differently if he were.”
“No way,” Cory says. “The chemistry between you two was undeniable. I mean, Dana and I might have slept together a couple of times, but it wouldn’t have been a long-term thing.”
“You wish,” Mom says.
Leili and Azadeh are playing it cool, but I assume they’re just as shocked as I am to hear adults casually talking about sleeping together.
“No, but seriously,” Dad says. “Happiest birthday to my smart, beautiful wife. Dana is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I feel so lucky that she’s—” For a moment, I think he’s choking on a stray piece of bagel, but then I realize he’s holding back tears. Oh god.
“Look at you, Russ, getting all emotional,” Ed says.
Of course now there are tears in my eyes too, and a quick peek at Mom confirms that she’s not holding it together either.
“No, no,” Dad says, smiling, “I just thought of something sad I read in the news. Totally unrelated to Dana.”
“Oh sure, yes, of course,” Ed says.
Dad finishes up his toast and never actually releases any tears. I help him put candles on the chocolate peanut butter ice cream cake we got Mom (it says “Happy Birthday to the Queen”). We all sing to her, barely on-key. I slice and serve the cake. Grandma brings the chocolate babka to the table. I offer to refill people’s coffee. Only Ed and Leili take me up on it. (Leili drinks coffee, Azadeh and I don’t. We’re not as sophisticated as her.)
After cake, Leili, Azadeh, and I hightail it up to my room, not realizing seven-year-old Ava has followed us. I give her my phone to play with, and her attention is instantly absorbed, her index finger flying across the screen at lightning-fast speed while she sits cross-legged on my bed in between Leili and Azadeh.
“Sorry for the weird parts down there,” I say as I rotate back and forth in my spinny desk chair.
“Nothing was that weird,” Leili says.
“I love it,” Azadeh says.
“Your grandma is a little intense.”
“You mean racist?” I say.
“Eh. Our grandmother’s pretty much the same person, just racist and judgmental about different stuff.”
“Are all grandmas that way?” Azadeh asks. “That’s eerie.”
“You think your dad’s gonna tell her about his—” Leili starts to ask.
I rapidly shake my head, not wanting Ava to hear.
“About his what?” Ava asks, not looking up from the phone.
“New job,” I say. “He got a new job.”
“Oh,” Ava says, disengaging as soon as she hears it’s something she doesn’t care about.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope so. I feel like she should know.”
“Well, I don’t want to be there for that,” Azadeh says.
“Dad was telling us the other day,” Leili says, “how not so long ago in America, they used to not tell cancer patients that they had cancer.”
“Wait, what?” I say.
“Yeah,” Azadeh says. “They would tell the parents or the spouse, but not the person who it was happening to. They thought it would only make things worse if the person knew they had cancer.”
“Does your dad have cancer?” Ava asks, this time looking up from the phone.
Dammit. We keep forgetting Ava has ears.
“No,” I say quickly. “He doesn’t. His new job involves working with kids who have cancer.”
“Oh,” Ava says. “A boy in my school had cancer. Jake Reese. But he’s better now.”
“That’s good,” Leili says.
“What are you even doing on there?” I ask Ava.
“Playing Feather Frenzy,” she says. “It’s really fun.”
“I didn’t know I had that.”
“You didn’t. I downloaded it.”
I give Leili and Azadeh a look like What the hell? Which reminds me of what I actually wanted to talk about up here. “Wait, so, Oz…you and Roxanne!”
“Yeah,” Azadeh says, smiling down at my bedspread.
“That’s— This is— Like, Roxanne is so cool! How long has this been going on?”
“We started getting closer at summer practices,” Azadeh says, “but it only became something…more…like, in the last two weeks. It’s really new.”
“I just found out three days ago,” Leili says.
“You were so relieved,” Azadeh laughs.
“I wasn’t! Well, maybe a little. If Roxanne’s your girlfriend, I don’t have to be jealous the same way I would if she’s your best friend.”
“You don’t have to be jealous in either case,” Azadeh says, reaching past Ava to playfully shove Leili. “She’s not, like, stealing me away from you, dodo.”
“I thought Roxanne was straight,” I say.
“So did I,” Azadeh says. “I’m the first girl she’s ever been attracted to.”
I put both hands on my head and make my Whaaaaat? face.
“I know, right?” Leili says.
“This is the best thing ever,” I say. “Can I…be nosy for a second?”
“Maybe,” Azadeh says.
“You two have, like…kissed and stuff?”
Azadeh gets red, smiling with her hand over her eyes. “We have.”
“Aaaaaahhhhhhhh! Oz!”
“I really like her.”
“My parents kiss sometimes,” Ava says, in between dramatic swipes.
“Hey, are you gonna tell your parents?” I ask. (Azadeh came out to them last year. “I think Mom’s gonna need some time to get used to the idea,” she had said, “but of course Papa’s fine with it. He’s always trying to show how ‘woke’ he is. His words.”)
“At some point,” Azadeh says. “I just don’t want to tell them I’m in a relationship until I’m sure it actually is one. Same with the field hockey team.”
“Oh wow,” I say, the realization dawning on me, “this is like on Friends when Monica and Chandler started secretly dating!”
“That’s what I said!” Leili practically jumps off the bed.
“Uh, yeah,” Azadeh says, “except not, because I’m not keeping it a secret from you two.”
“Don’t ruin it,” I say. “This is exactly like Friends.”
“It really is,” Leili says.
“Um, you’re getting a text,” Ava says, holding my phone out. “From Evan.”
“Oh,” I say, trying to keep my tone neutral even though I’m actually thinking, Gimme my phone back, what did he say?!
How was the peacock? he’s texted, followed by a bird emoji and a fork-and-knife emoji. We were texting all day yesterday, a delightful distraction from Dad’s supermarket fall. When I mentioned we were having a birthday brunch for my mom, he asked if we’d be serving any meats. Only peacock, I said. Hence his text.
“What super-funny thing did Evan say today?” Leili asks.
I can’t help but hear the sarcasm, but I pretend not to. “Oh, it’s stupid.”
“Seems like you’re sort of seeing somebody too,” Azadeh says, but unlike Leili, her tone is playful and affectionate.
“Oh no,” I say. “It’s not really like that.”
“Come on, Winner,” Leili says. “Even Ava knows it’s really like that.”
Ava looks up and nods, then returns to her game.
“Okay, maybe it’s like that, I don’t know. But I don’t want to be annoying about it. Like, I really am sorry that he and Tim invaded our lunch table this week.”
“Evan’s fine,” Leili says. “It’s Tim who’s the dingus. But it’s not a big deal. You and Evan are actually really cute together.”
I feel myself blushing.
“Are you going to write back?” Ava asks, holding the phone in my face. “Or can I go back to playing?”
“Oh.” I want to respond, but I don’t want to seem like I’m putting Evan ahead of Leili and Azadeh. It’s silly because Azadeh seems to have no problem texting Roxanne while she’s with us. But I don’t want to follow her down that road. At least not yet. As Leslie Knope once said, “Ovaries before brovaries. Uteruses before duderuses.” I tell Ava she can keep playing, then look to see if Leili’s registered my bold act of sisterhood. Unclear.
“Okay,” Ava says. “Why does your screen have cracks on it? It makes it hard to see some of the feathers.”
“I threw my phone the other day. Do you want to keep using it or not?”
“I do, I do,” Ava says, going back to her app.
“So, are you and Evan going to, like, go on a da—” Leili is in the middle of asking when we hear a huge thud from downstairs, followed by Grandma Mitzie screaming.
“What was that?” Leili asks.
But I’m already out my bedroom door and cascading down the stairs. I peek into the family room, which is empty, then dash into the kitchen, where Dad is lying on the floor surrounded by everyone else, Grandma and Mom hovering directly over him, both looking sheet-white.
“Ohmigod,” Grandma is saying. “Ohmigod.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Dad says. I don’t see any blood on his face this time. “I just…Can you give me a little space?”
“Here,” Cory says, ushering Grandma aside, then crouching down and using his masculine beardy energy to lift Dad to his feet.
“Thanks, Cory,” Dad says, wobbling slightly. Ed and Mom are standing behind him, in case he topples over again.
“Of course, man. You okay?”
“Yeah. Just thought the brunch was getting boring. Tried to spice it up a bit.” Everyone laughs (not Grandma), in that unsure way where you can tell they’re all sort of nervous.
“Mission accomplished,” Cory says.
“Seriously, though,” Dad says. “I think I just slipped on something.”
It’s a good effort on his part, but nobody’s buying it.
“Is this what happened the other day, too?” Grandma asks. “Is that why you have the Band-Aid on your forehead?”
“Mom,” Dad says, “it’s not— Let’s not—”
“Let’s give him a minute, Mitzie,” Mom says, taking charge.
“Fine, fine,” Grandma says, eyebrows raised as she takes a step back.
Having just experienced one of Dad’s falls less than twenty-four hours ago, I feel like the veteran of the group, who should be offering expertise from time spent on the battlefield. Really, though, Fletcher Handy did most of the helping yesterday, so maybe I don’t have much advice beyond Let’s give Fletcher a call!
“Here, this might help,” Paige says, worming her way into the inner circle to hand Dad a paper cup of orange juice. She teaches second grade, where I imagine juice is the answer to many traumatic situations. “In case your blood sugar is low.”
Leili and Azadeh appear in the doorway with Ava, who—likely sensing the tension in the room—runs to Paige and hugs her legs, causing her to accidentally slosh some of the orange juice onto the floor just as Dad is about to take the cup.
“I got it, I got it!” Grandma shouts, bounding toward the paper towel roll, grateful for an activity into which to funnel her panicked energy. Within seconds, she’s on all fours in between Dad and Paige, sopping up the minor OJ spill.
“Thanks, Paige,” Dad says, taking the now-slightly-less-full cup from her. I know he’s mortified. Falling in front of me, Fletcher, and some old man is one thing, but this is different. His wife. His best friends. His mother. They may not know the details yet, but his secret is out.
Everyone hovers around for a little while longer, making sure Dad is all right, before Paige says she and Ava should head home for when Ben (her husband, Ava’s dad) gets back from his business trip, and the whole brunch deflates. Ed and Cory say they’ve gotta hit the road before traffic back to Manhattan gets too bad. Leili and Azadeh always have lots of family over for Sunday night dinner, so they need to help cook and set up. Part of me thinks they’re glad to leave, and I don’t blame them; Grandma is the only one who doesn’t seem to be going anytime soon, so it’s still pretty tense here. I feel bad that Mom’s celebration is ending on such a downer note.
“So now can we talk?” Grandma asks, seconds after Leili and Azadeh have exited the premises.
Dad takes a deep breath. “Sure.”
He, Mom, and Grandma sit down at the kitchen table, and I take that as my cue to get the hell out of there. I attempt to do some of my chemistry homework, then pace aimlessly around my room, half trying to hear the slow-motion car crash going on downstairs. At one point, I’m pretty sure Grandma is sobbing, and that’s when I start frantically scrolling through my phone for music. I put on “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips, an old song I first heard and fell in love with in one of my all-time favorite movies, Bridesmaids. It’s super-cheesy, so I always start out listening to it ironically, but then it actually ends up making me feel good.
There’s random meowing in the middle of the first chorus, and I look down to see a text from Evan: So?
I forgot to respond to his earlier text.
Tastes like chicken, I write before chucking my phone onto the bed (much more carefully than last time).
As I wait for him to write back, I move around at the foot of my bed, doing my version of dancing. It involves lots of head-shaking. Fists in the air. It’s not something I’d attempt in public. “Don’t you know, don’t you know things will change?” Wilson or Phillips asks. “Things’ll go your way, if you hold on for one more day.”
I don’t think any amount of holding on is going to make Dad better, but it’s nice to pretend for the duration of the song.