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Lexi, Gail, Abby, and Rachel ambled into the kitchen a few minutes later. At seventeen, fifteen, and fourteen, they were among the most terrifying creatures Andrew had witnessed as of late. They looked at the world with an understanding he would never know. They were on the verge of their entire lives.
“Hey girls,” Kelli said. “You come in here to help me and your Uncle Andy?”
“What? No way,” Lexi said with a funny smile. “We’re here because the speaker system is taken over with the game, and we want to practice our dance.”
“Oh, no. Here we go again,” Kelli said playfully as she leaned back against the counter. “A new routine or a different one?”
“Mom, come on. The dances change constantly,” Lexi said. “And if we’re going to go viral, we have to keep working.”
Lexi spoke with the matter-of-fact tone that Kelli had once worn with her younger sisters and brother. She placed her phone on the counter and connected it to a Bluetooth speaker further up the counter. It bubbled up then offered a firm, “You are now connected to MONTGOMERY BLUETOOTH.”
“Easy as that,” Kelli said.
Lexi, Rachel, Gail, and Abby got into a line after that. They crossed their arms over their chests and nodded their heads in time to the beat, four times in a row. Then, their right foot burst out to the side in almost perfect unison, and they built up the first several steps in what seemed to be an elaborate routine over the top of a horrible pop song.
At least, the song was horrible in Andrew’s ears.
When they stumbled on a dance move, Lexi stopped the music and instructed the other girls on where they had gone wrong. Andrew watched perplexed. Kelli’s elbow found his rib as she said, “I bet this is like watching aliens from another planet for you, isn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
Lexi turned and arched her eyebrow with curiosity. “Do you not know this song, Uncle Andy?”
“Never heard it in my life,” Andrew told her.
The girls exchanged gasps. Even Kelli chuckled and said, “Wow. I feel like that song’s been crammed into my skull. I’ll never lose it.”
“Yeah. It played on every single radio station all summer long,” Rachel informed him. “Where were you?”
Mostly alone in my apartment, trying to relearn how to walk.
“Guess I missed out,” Andrew said.
“Were you living under a rock?” Gail asked.
“I guess I was. And it wasn’t even a very nice rock,” Andrew said with a smile.
The girls giggled. He could see it reflected back in their eyes: they thought their Uncle Andy was rather funny. This was all he could have ever dreamed for.
“All right. Let’s get him in the group,” Abby said suddenly.
The other girls looked perplexed. Andrew muttered to Kelli under his breath, “Are they talking about me like I’m not here?”
“I think they’re having a business meeting,” Kelli whispered back. “You know how it is in the entertainment industry. It’s hard to get everyone on-board.”
The girls completed their meeting, turned to face him, and cleared their throats in unison. If their goal was to operate as a kind of in-unison-forever dance-troupe, Andrew thought they had a pretty good chance.
“We’ve decided to offer you a place in our dance troupe,” Lexi announced. She seemed to be their leader, as she was the oldest.
“I see,” Andrew said.
“The thing is, there’s a higher likelihood of going viral if you include an older family member in your dance video,” she continued. “Like, people always go viral with their dads, for example.”
“And we’ve asked our dads. They don’t want anything to do with it,” Gail affirmed.
“I see,” Andrew said. “So, your last chance has fallen on my shoulders, huh?”
“Don’t think of it that way,” Lexi told him. “Think of it as an opportunity to let the world see you shine.”
Andrew had never been a gullible person. In the previous seventeen-some years, in fact, he had grown increasingly pessimistic, prone to not believing what he read in the news or what people told him.
But now, with these four bright-faced and optimistic teenage girls in front of him, he was frozen. How could he possibly tell them how little he thought of the internet? How could he explain that he hadn’t moved his body in a dancing motion in years?
“Okay. I’ll give it a try,” he told them.
Kelli’s jaw dropped. Her eyes glittered with good humor. “Wow. Uncle Andy. You’re really back, aren’t you?”
“Don’t rub it in,” he said as he took a delicate limp toward the girls. As he went, he smacked his hand on his thigh and said, “Just so you girls know, I have a bum right leg. I can still put weight on it; I can still move it. I just might have to switch up a few moves.”
“No problem,” Lexi told him. “When I twisted my ankle in cheerleading, I learned to switch up some of the moves so I could still perform.”
That was the funny thing about kids. They didn’t allow the world to weigh them down. They found ways to ease around the pain and move forward. It was something humans necessarily forgot along the way.
Why was that?
The girls instructed him as best as they could, given the circumstances. They showed him the head-nods and the hip-tilts and the foot motions, which they eventually sped up to match the sound of the song. They played the same song so many times that it, too, was crammed into the back of Andrew’s skull. After a while, he even found that he rather liked it.
Thirty minutes later, they managed to record their first dance. Kelli held the phone as they performed in the space near the piano in the living area, and her face was stoic and firm the entire time to ensure that she didn’t shake the phone around. When they finished, the girls and Andrew hovered around the phone to watch. Although there were a few hiccups, a few forgotten motions, Andrew had done better than all right and the girls made sure to tell him how pleased they were.
“If this goes viral, we might need to have you back in the troupe,” Lexi told him. “I hope you’re ready for that.”
Before filming, Kelli had snuck a tray of chocolate chip cookies into the oven. On cue, the oven timer blared out, and she shuffled back into the kitchen to draw out the gooey batch. Andrew re-entered the kitchen to fully take in the sight: his favorite sister, a tray of freshly-baked cookies, Christmas decorations hanging in every corner. It was enough to take his breath away.
Gail snuck up behind him and switched the song on the Bluetooth to an old Christmas classic: “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
“That’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?” Andrew said with a laugh.
Gail shrugged. “It’s a beautiful song. It always makes my mom cry.”
Claire entered the kitchen and placed her hands on her hips. “What always makes Mom cry?”
“This song,” Gail said. She stretched out her arms and beckoned for her mother to come toward her. Claire did. She scooped her daughter up in a hug and then pretended to ballroom dance with her to the gorgeous, sweeping music.
Lexi and Rachel joined up into a partnership; then, Laura and Steven even joined, with Steve insisting that he’d only come into the kitchen to steal a chocolate chip cookie. Kelli tapped Andrew’s elbow and said, “I don’t want to beg, but...”, and Andrew flung his arm around her, grabbed her hand, and twirled her round-and-round, the way she had done for him when he’d been just a little boy and eager to spin around until he got dizzy.
These moments were blissful. They ached with nostalgia, yet cried out with something else: the urgent desire to make something new with the people Andrew loved the most in the world. Maybe it was the drama of the Christmas music; maybe it was the string instruments getting to him or the bravado of the singer’s voice. It didn’t matter, though. Regardless of it all, he was home.
A shadow appeared in the doorway. For a long moment, Andrew forced himself to avoid it, like a memory he didn’t want to look at too closely. But as the song closed out, the shadow stepped forward. Lexi dropped her arms from around Rachel; Gail and Claire moved to the side. Instantly, Kelli’s smile dropped, and she drew her hands away from Andrew so she could greet the newcomer to the room.
Mike.
The man was now middle-aged. It was strange to see him: the same anger permeated through the back of his eyes, but his skin had brewed up a healthy round of wrinkles, and his cheeks sagged just the slightest bit. He was still strong, muscular but not exactly the kind of guy Andrew had punched all those years ago. He wore a beautiful suit that told the world just how important he was.
“Hey babe,” Kelli said.
Another Christmas song began on the Bluetooth. Mike looked at the Bluetooth speaker like he wanted to order it to be burned.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“Just a dance party,” Lexi said. She had lost all the spark she’d had previously; she looked at her father like he had more power than he deserved.
“Is there any chowder left?” Mike asked.
“Of course,” Kelli replied. She snapped into action. In seconds, some of the delicious soup was in a bowl, turning round and round in the microwave.
As the microwave roared, Steve, Laura, Gail, Rachel, and Lexi abandoned the kitchen. Andrew couldn’t find an escape, and Michael blocked his way. Claire remained, tilting her weight from side-to-side like she wanted to say something but didn’t have the strength.
“Hey Mike,” Andrew said. He was surprised that he’d been the first to say anything.
When Mike lifted his eyes to Andrew’s, he felt it: the memory of the last time they’d seen one another. Mike still hated him for it. The anger remained in the air between them.
“Hey Andy,” he said flatly.
“The girls taught their Uncle Andy one of their famous dances,” Kelli said. Her voice was as bright as it could be, and it sounded terribly false in Andrew’s ears. “They think he’s their secret to going viral.”
Mike didn’t bother to answer. The microwave beeped, and Kelli stirred up the chowder before she passed it over to her husband. He didn’t thank her before he stalked out of the room to eat in front of the game.
Anxiously, Kelli grabbed a cookie from the tray and nibbled at the edge. She then wandered out of the room after him, leaving a Kelli-sized hole in Andrew’s heart all over again.
Andrew’s eyes found Claire’s immediately. She shook her head delicately as she stepped toward him. With a cookie in her hand, she whispered, “I really haven’t seen much of Kelli lately.”
“What do you mean?”
“She keeps her distance these days,” Claire said. “Mike’s pissed almost everyone off in the family, and I think it embarrasses her that she’s stuck around this long. I’ve only talked to her about it a handful of times. Each time, she deflected as best as she could. You know how we in the Montgomery family are Olympic deflectors.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Andrew said with a heavy sigh. “I just would have thought, after all this time, she would have found a way out.”
“Time is a strange thing,” Claire said. “I have to think it went like this. She was in her late twenties. She had three very young children. After a fight between her little brother and her husband, her little brother took off and went to war. The whole thing devastated her and she blames herself for it. I think she wanted to prove it to herself that she had done the right thing, but the guilt has destroyed her.”
Andrew shook his head as devastation clouded his vision. “I never wanted her to live like that and it’s not her fault I left.”
“She never wanted you to live the way you did, either. But now, we’re here together. Maybe we can pick up the pieces as we go,” Claire returned.