Twenty
SUNDAY NIGHT, AND my mom and I are sitting on the couch in the Weiss-Longos’ living room. I am eating cocktail peanuts while she fidgets.
“Relax,” I tell her. I gesture to the wineglass on the coffee table. “Have some Merlot.” Instead, she taps her foot against the hardwood floor and stares down at her fingernails, which Liv has painted the color of smoked salmon. “Orange means vitality, Kate,” is what she said, “and balance.”
If there’s anything my mother could use right now, it’s balance.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” I tell her, holding the glass out to her until she takes a sip. “Don’t worry.”
It was Liv’s idea to invite Paul Tucci for dinner. She got Pops and Dodd on board right away. I thought my mother would flat-out refuse, but she surprised us all by saying yes. She wouldn’t let Dodd do her hair, though. And she insisted on wearing her rattiest sweatshirt—the two-toned one with the paint splatters and the holes in the elbows—which I couldn’t believe.
“Don’t you want to look halfway decent?” I asked her, when she walked out of her bedroom.
“This isn’t about impressing anyone, Josie,” she said.
And I said, “Well, what is it about then?”
She shook her head, struggling to come up with an answer. “I don’t know. Putting it out there. . . . Moving on. . . .”
“Anyway,” I say now, “you’ve already seen each other twice. I don’t get what you’re so nervous about.”
But I do get it.
Tonight is different.
She found his letters, and she read them, and now, everything she thought she knew has been flipped on its head.
I’m a little nervous myself. I don’t know how things will go tonight. It could be a disaster. But at least we’ll have Liv and Pops and Dodd and Wyatt here with us—the Weiss-Longo buffer zone. If the poop hits the fan, I guarantee one of them will find a way to distract from the splatter. Liv’s outfit alone could do that job.
Here she is, standing in the doorway, holding a tray of cheese. Ruffly black chambermaid’s dress with apron; chef ’s hat; towel, folded over one arm.
“Bonsoir, mesdemoiselles,”she says, sweeping her way across the living room. “Apéritif?”
“I don’t think I can eat,” my mom says. Panic lines erupt on her brow. “I might barf,” she adds.
Right on cue, Pops arrives in the doorway to announce that the pork tenderloin is sizzling, the potatoes have been whipped, and all is well with the universe. He gazes fondly across the room at my mom. “Are we drinking our wine, Kate?”
“Not really,” I tell him. “I keep trying to make her.”
“You need to relax,” Pops says.
“I realize that,” my mother says, “but everyone telling me to relax doesn’t make me relax. It makes me the opposite of relax.”
“OK,” Pops says soothingly. He walks over to join her on the couch, pats her knee. “OK.”
A second later, the doorbell chimes.
Nobody moves.
“Hon?” Dodd calls from the kitchen. “Would you get that? My hands are covered in dressing!”
Pops starts to rise, but my mom beats him to it. “Let me do this,” she says, standing. “I should be the one to do this.”
It is her voice that surprises me, the strength of it.
“You go, girl,” Liv mumbles through a mouthful of cheese.
We watch my mom cross the room, her back straight. This is huge for her, this moment.
How can we not follow?
Standing on the porch, Paul Tucci looks more like Paul Bunyan: plaid flannel shirt tucked into jeans, hiking boots. Only this time he’s not wearing a baseball cap, so I can actually see his hair—wavy on top, a single curl flopping onto his forehead like a question mark.
He holds out a hand to my mom, as though they’re meeting for the first time. “Hello, Katie.”
“Paul.” Whatever she’s feeling inside, she sounds calm. I, on the other hand, am a bundle of nerves.
“I come bearing pesto,” Paul Tucci says, holding out a jar.
“Pesto,” Pops whispers in my ear. I can tell he’s impressed.
Thanks to her bionic hearing, my mom whips around and narrows her eyes at us, like she’s not amused that we’re hiding behind the coatrack.
Pops takes the hint. “You must be Paul,” he says, stepping out into the open. “I’m Gregory.”
The two of them shake hands. Then Paul looks over Pops’s shoulder, meeting my eye-line. “Hi, Josie.” His smile is slow, tentative.
“Hi,” I say back, just as cautious. And then something hits me. It is easier this time, seeing him. Easier than it was at the hospital, easier than the night on my porch. This time, I know something I didn’t before. I know Paul Tucci isn’t a liar.
For dinner, Liv made place cards for everyone—little tents of white paper with our names on them. Surprise, surprise, she put Paul in the middle, between me and my mom. As an added bonus, she put herself directly across from him—Dr. Steve, ready for her interview.
As soon as we sit down, I shoot her a look: Keep your mouth shut.
Liv widens her eyes: Who, me? She asks Paul to pass the salt and pepper, which he does.
He has long fingers. I notice that one of his fingernails is black and wonder what he was doing when he banged it. That happened to me once in seventh grade, in shop. The hammer slipped while I was trying to build a birdhouse.
“This is fantastic,” Paul says, meaning the food.
“Dodd’s a regular Rachael Ray,” Liv says.
Dodd smiles serenely. “I prefer Julia Child.”
Wyatt hums while he eats; he always has. When he asks for something to be passed to him, he uses his own lingo. “Gravity” for gravy. “Roulders” for rolls. We’re used to it, but you have to wonder what Paul Tucci is thinking. He had a laugh-smile on his face when Wyatt asked him to pass the “stinky little cabbages,” but maybe he was just being polite.
We’re all being polite. Chewing with our mouths closed. Making small talk. No one swears or burps. Everyone says please. It’s unnerving.
“More Merlot anyone?” Pops asks, holding up the bottle.
“Yes, please,” my mom and Paul Tucci answer together. They have both been sipping wine at an impressive pace. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom have more than one drink at dinner. She’s a lightweight. I’m nervous for her, afraid of what might fly out of her mouth at any second. Meanwhile, Paul Tucci’s cheeks have taken on the flushed, feverish look that I have seen on many a high-school boy’s face at many a high-school party.
I consider the image of a teenage Katie Gardner and Paul Tucci packed into someone’s basement rec room on a Friday night, plastic cups in hand, yelling to hear each other over the pounding of the boom box.
I catch Liv’s eye across the table. Liv, who, other than using a French accent, has shown a surprising level of restraint during this meal.
Awkward, I mouth to her.
She raises her eyebrows delicately.
Say something!I want to shout.
But someone else reads my mind. “Hey,” Paul Tucci’s voice blurts out beside me, “is that my sweatshirt?”
I turn to see my mother shaking her head. “No. It’s mine.”
“I know it’s yours,” he says. “I mean, I gave it to you.” He looks around the table at all of us. “I gave her that sweatshirt,” he explains, “for her birthday.”
Wyatt laughs. “Rough.”
“Forgive our son,” Pops says. “He’s missing the sentimentality gene.”
“Well, I love it,” Liv says, squinting discerningly across the table. “Très nineties, no?”
I lean forward to get a good look at my mom’s face, which is pink. Now I know why she wore a crusty, moth-eaten sweat rag to dinner. She wasn’t so much rebelling as testing. Paul Tucci passes!
“I can’t believe you still have it,” he says, staring at her.
“Yeah, well . . . I can’t believe you remember.”
A long pause and then Dodd says, “Why don’t you two . . . go into the den to catch up? We’ll make coffee.” He looks pointedly at Pops and Wyatt and Liv and me, as if it takes a village to make a pot of Folgers.
So my mom and Paul have gone into the den, to talk. Or to drink more wine. Or to do whatever it is they need to do.
It feels weirdly right—fitting—that this is happening in the Weiss-Longos’ house. It’s our house too, in a way. My mom and I have so much history here: the time Liv and I rode down the stairs in a sleeping bag and both ended up splitting our chins open, getting stitches; the time my mom made a birthday cake for Pops and set the oven on fire. We’ve shared a thousand meals, a million stories, laughs, occasional tears—like the summer Dodd’s mother died and we all took the road trip to Florida, and the hotel we stayed in had cockroaches the size of golf balls.
I am reminded, sitting in this kitchen, that this is my family. Maybe we don’t share the same blood, but who cares? That’s what we are.
I am sitting on my favorite bar stool—the one with the rip in the seat. Liv is beside me.
“Well,” she says, looking at her watch. “It’s been fourteen minutes.”
“Fourteen minutes,” I repeat.
“It’s good they’re talking.”
“Yes.”
“So you’ve got yourself a dad, huh, Josie?” Wyatt asks from his perch on the counter, where he is trying to crack walnuts with a pair of spaghetti tongs.
“I don’t know about that, Wy. Let’s see if he sends a Christmas card before we start handing out titles.”
I am kidding, but not. I don’t think I could ever call Paul Tucci “Dad.” It would feel fake. A dad is someone who held you on the day you were born—who has never missed a birthday, or a soccer game, or a parent-teacher conference. Besides, I don’t know what it means yet, him being here. I don’t know if it changes anything. I don’t know if I want it to.
“Coffee’s ready,” Dodd says, holding up the pot. “And I made cheesecake, and brownies. Oh, and there’s Häagen-Dazs. Three different kinds. . . . I wasn’t sure, you know . . .” he turns to me, “what Paul would like.”
“Right.” I smile weakly, realizing that we are all thinking the same thing: Who is this guy, really?
“Don’t worry,” Pops says sweetly to Dodd, leaning over to smooch his cheek. “Everyone loves your cheesecake.”
Wyatt makes a gagging sound—it’s unclear whether it’s the cheesecake or the kissing that offends, but either way no one calls him on it because now my mom is standing in the doorway.
“Josie?”
Her face looks calm, but rosy, like she’s just gotten back from a run. Sometimes I forget how pretty she is. Long, dark eyelashes. High, delicate cheekbones with just a smattering of freckles. I see her face every day, but I don’t really notice it, the same way I don’t really notice the wallpaper in my bedroom. Meanwhile, here she is, beautiful.
“Yeah?” I say.
She wants me to come into the den with her and Paul, to talk. Suddenly my stomach is flipping all over the place. Talk? About what? What do they expect me to say? We’re supposed to be eating cheesecake!
“OK,” I tell my mom. Then, “I’ll meet you in there, though. I have to go pee first.”
“Go pee,” she says. “We’ll meet you in there.”
I don’t really need to pee. What I need to do is stare at myself in the bathroom mirror for a while, to see if I’m ready, if I can deal. Staring back at me is a girl with big brown eyes and a ponytail that’s half falling out of its elastic. She looks a little freaked. Not a lot, but a little.
I have this fantasy, while I’m standing in the bathroom—a fantasy I’ve never allowed myself to have before. I will walk into the den and my mom and Paul Tucci will be sitting on the Weiss-Longos’ couch, holding hands. They will see me in the doorway, and they will smile. They won’t have to say a word because I will know. They have never stopped loving each other. They are getting back together.
“You’re an idiot,” the girl in the mirror says to me. Or I say to her. Either way, it’s true.
Of course I don’t expect my mom and Paul Tucci to get back together. That would be ludicrous. Asinine. But I can’t help the image; it just pops in there. It’s because, when you’ve spent sixteen years without something, and that something suddenly appears, you don’t know what to think. You have no way to process it. All you can do is stare at yourself in the mirror until you are ready to leave the bathroom.
Am I ready?
No.
But somehow my feet are moving.
Walking down the hall, I picture another gem of a scenario. I picture Paul Tucci on the couch next to my mom. “Katie, please,” he’s saying. “Let me buy you and Josie a beach house on the Carolina coast.”
“No,” my mom says, shaking her head and frowning.
“It’s the least I can do,” he says, “after all you’ve been through.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“But I feel responsible.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Maybe not,” he says. “But I do.”
“OK,” my mom says. “You can buy us a beach house.
“Great,” Paul Tucci says.
“And we’d like a ski condo too. Josie’s never been skiing.”
“Of course. She’s my daughter. She can have whatever she wants.”
Am I an idiot? I am such an idiot.
In the real den, not the den in my mind, they are sitting in separate chairs. When I walk in they are gasping for air, like something hysterical just happened and they can’t stop laughing. Which throws me.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Josie,” Paul Tucci says, pulling himself together right away. “Hi.”
I stare at my mom, who is still giggling. I say, “Are you drunk?”
She shakes her head, unable to answer.
“Just reminiscing,” Paul explains. “High-school stories.”
“Oh,” I say.
I take a seat on the couch, across from them.
My mom gives one last shuddering snort, then smiles.
“You should really lay off the booze,” I tell her.
“Honey,” she says, ignoring my comment. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Why?”
She looks at Paul, who clears his throat and looks at me.
I’m about to blurt out that it’s time for dessert—Dodd’s world-famous cheesecake—but I don’t. I realize I want to hear what he has to say.
“Josie.” Paul’s brown eyes are on mine.
“Uh-huh.” My mouth is a cotton ball. I know this is where the big pronouncement comes in, but I have no clue what it will be.
Paul takes a deep breath. “I want to be here,” he says.
When I speak, my voice is so low I can barely hear it. “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . in whatever capacity you want me to be”—he hesitates—“a presence, in your life, I will be. From now on.”
I shake my head. I’m not saying no, I’m just trying to understand. “Do you mean moving back here?”
“That’s a possibility,” he says, “at some point.”
I can’t speak, so I nod.
“I’m committed to my job until the end of the school year. But it’s only a two-hour plane ride from Raleigh-Durham . . . and we can talk on the phone, and e-mail. . . . And if you want, at some point . . . I’d like for you to meet Lauren.... .”
“Lauren,” I repeat.
“My fiancée.”
It takes me a beat to remember—Big Nick told Liv that Paul had a girlfriend, and Liv told me. But apparently we never got the engagement memo. And now it feels like a bucket of ice water has been dumped on my head.
“Right,” I say.
I turn to my mom, to see how she’s taking it. Her face is smooth and she’s nodding, like she already got the news. And for some unfathomable reason, she’s OK with it.
“Lauren’s great,” Paul Tucci says. “She teaches first grade,” he adds, as though this proves her greatness.
I nod again, not knowing what to say. Then something comes to me. “I hated my first-grade teacher.”
Paul laughs.
“I did! Remember her, Mom? Mrs. Butterfield? She was mean. And she smelled like Limburger cheese.”
“Limburger cheese?” my mom says. “Did you even know what Limburger cheese was when you were six?”
“I love Limburger,” Paul says. “All the stinky cheeses, in fact. Camembert. Stilton. The stinkier the better.”
Something hits me. We don’t know each other at all. I swallow, look down at my lap.
“Josie?” he says.
I shake my head.
“What is it?” my mom says.
“Nothing. Just . . . this is so weird. How do we do it? Where do we start? You know?”
“Well,” my mom says slowly. She looks at Paul, and then she looks at me. “I think you already did.”
I know what she’s doing. She’s trying to sound all supportive and encouraging. She wants to prove that she’s fine with everything. Fine with Lauren. Fine with me and Paul Tucci suddenly starting this . . . relationship . . . when he hasn’t been here for the past sixteen years. He’s missed my whole life. How can she be OK with that?
“Whatever,” I mutter.
I hear how snotty my voice sounds, and it’s not how I mean it. I mean that she doesn’t have to pretend; she should just admit how she’s feeling.
Maybe Paul Tucci can read minds, or maybe he wants to put things in perspective. Either way, he reaches out to punch my mom’s shoulder—lightly, like a brother—then turns to me. “We just . . . muddle our way through it.”
I understand now—he means all of us. We’ll muddle our way through it together.
I start to make a crack about him and Lauren, my mom and Jonathan on a double date, but then I remember my mom and Jonathan are on a break. Anyway, Paul’s face is serious. He’s looking for a real response, not a joke. So I tell him I wish he hadn’t missed the last sixteen years.
“Me too,” he says, and his voice sounds a little choked. “But I’d like to be here for the next sixteen. And the sixteen after that.”
I pause to do the math. “I’ll be forty-eight,” I say. “And you guys will be . . . sixty-four. God.”
My mom shakes her head, as though she can’t imagine herself old.
Neither can I.
Suddenly I want to see my whole future. I’d like to deal out some of those tarot cards and see the three of us, thirty-two years from now. How many marriages will there be? How many children? Will we all be in the same place for Christmas?
Everything I’m imagining is hopeful, but then I worry I’m deluding myself. I want to believe what Paul is saying—about being here—but I’m scared he’ll change his mind. No matter what, I will take my mom’s side. She’s been here from Day 1. And she has never left.
“Josie?” my mom says now. “Are you OK?”
I nod.
“Are you sure? You look—”
“I’m just thinking.”
“About .... ?”
I shake my head, trying to come up with an answer. When I finally say, “Cheesecake,” Paul laughs.
“Cheesecake?”
“Yeah,” I say. Then, “How do you feel about cheesecake? Do you like it, or is it not stinky enough for you?”
“I love cheesecake,” he says.
So I gesture toward the doorway. “Dodd’s cheesecake is out there . . . you know, waiting for us.”
Paul says, “I hate to leave a cheesecake in the lurch. . . .”
I take this as my cue to stand. Also as my cue to hold out a hand to my mom, to pull her up. So the three of us can walk out together.
