Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
“Um, everyone, I have an announcement.”
Five heads swivel to Van. Steve and Aunt Sheila are done eating, and everyone else has considerably slowed down.
Alice wonders if there’s a Strega Nona pasta pot situation going on, because she could swear the number of latkes on her plate has only increased, despite how heavily a half dozen of them are sitting in her stomach.
Van clears her throat. “Um, I know it’s not a great time or anything, but, uh…” She spins her fork in her hand. “Stephanie and I are leaving Total Body PT and opening our own practice.”
Alice takes a big sip of wine to hide her face.
Okay, so she was the first in the family to know about this new adventure for Van.
That’s fine. That’s casual. Most people tell their comatose brother’s fake-girlfriend their big life news before they tell their parents or siblings. That doesn’t mean anything.
“Oh my god!” Marie says, half a latke still in her mouth. “That’s so cool!”
But no one else at the table seems pleased.
“Why?” Steve asks, his forehead suddenly wrinkled with frown lines. “Total Body is going well. Why leave something so stable?”
Van bites her lip, but Alice sees her square her shoulders under her blue sweater.
“I’ve told you all about the new management.
We haven’t been happy since it started going corporate, and our contracts expire at the end of the year.
So now is the best time for a spin-off and we’re pretty confident that a lot of clients will come with us.
” She looks down at her plate, her cheeks pink, and Alice wonders if she’s feeling guilty for announcing something so exciting while Nolan’s still in the hospital.
Van keeps going, her words coming out faster now, like she’s apologizing for having to say them.
“We signed a lease, and we’re hoping to start in February at the latest. I was going to tell you all on the first night of Chanukah, but…
you know. Uh, anyway, Stephanie didn’t want to delay the big launch, so it’s being announced next week. ”
Steve harrumphs, but he doesn’t say more. He looks like he wishes he were anywhere else.
“Only you and Stephanie?” Babs asks, and Van nods.
Babs looks lost for words, and Alice doesn’t miss the helpless look she shoots over to Aunt Sheila, or the way Aunt Sheila nods back at her, like she’s encouraging her to say something.
“But, sweetie,” Babs says, her voice hesitant, “what about your health?”
Alice blinks. Van’s…health? Van is quite possibly the heartiest-looking person she’s ever met. She got down the heavy box of blankets without a single grunt of effort just half an hour ago, and Alice hasn’t heard so much as a single sneeze or cough.
Van’s face is stormy now, and her voice is clipped. “My health is fine.”
“But—”
Van cuts her mother off, sterner and more sharply than Alice has ever heard her. “No buts.”
The silence is long and harsh. Alice tries not to breathe.
Something eventually seems to break in Van; her shoulders sag, and she’s softer as she says, “I promise, Mom, my health has no bearing on the new practice. Stephanie and I talked about it, and we’re good.”
Aunt Sheila seems to shrug at Babs, a sort of what can you do style surrender, and Alice’s mind is going a million miles a minute.
What the hell is everyone talking about?
What’s wrong with Van? What kind of health problem could mean she can be a physical therapist with her own practice, walk up and down stairs, stay up late, breathe deeply, live alone with a dog who needs long daily walks?
Maybe, like, Crohn’s? High cholesterol, like Uncle Joe?
Asthma? A cancer in remission that Babs is still worried about?
Whatever it is, Van clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. She avoids eye contact with everyone, staring down at her plate like she regrets ever bringing it up in the first place.
“Well,” Marie says a little too loudly, after way too long of a profoundly awkward silence. “How about a movie?”
Everyone helps clear the table, the relief in the dining room palpable, and Alice welcomes the banging sounds of Babs and Aunt Sheila putting leftovers away. Anything is better than that horrible silence.
Once order has been more or less restored and the banging has ceased, they all roll themselves into the living room to collapse on the two couches that make an L shape against the walls, both facing the TV.
They end up with a “kids” couch and an “adult” couch, with Frank lying on the floor at Van’s feet.
Alice isn’t sure if that’s standard or if Van is avoiding her parents, but either way Alice ends up between Marie and Van, content to slouch in her food coma—or, well, whatever the your-son-is-in-a-real-coma-so-let’s-not-make-coma-jokes equivalent term is—while the Altmans good-naturedly bicker over what movie to watch.
“There aren’t really Chanukah movies,” Van says softly to Alice as Marie seizes control through the simple expedient of being the only one who knows how to use the remotes. “So we usually end up watching a random Adam Sandler movie.”
“This one has a bar mitzvah scene,” Marie says, still defensive from the bickering even though she won. “It counts.”
Steve seems to be the only one still grumbling, but all the women ignore him, and Marie presses play on The Wedding Singer.
Alice hasn’t seen the movie in years and it’s even funnier than she remembered, so she inadvertently takes a large sip of wine right before one particularly funny moment (“Julia Gulia”), which results in her making a relatively horrible noise as she swallows it all at once to keep from spitting it out with laughter.
“Um, what the fuck was that?” Van asks, reaching over like Alice might need the Heimlich. “You alive?”
“I’m fine,” Alice chokes, her eyes watering, trying to wave off Van’s concern, but she still can’t exactly breathe.
All the commotion is too much for Frank, who leaps up onto the couch to personally make sure she’s okay, which is very sweet but does involve him standing directly on her legs, all sixty pounds of him boring down into her thighs, and his tongue licking her entire face.
“Oof! Frank, hon—okay, that was inside my mouth—ouch, baby, not to body-shame you, but you’re heavy as shit.”
Marie laughs, helping Alice haul Frank off herself, pulling him down to sit between the two of them. Alice slides over to make room for him, which means she’s now pressed into Van’s side.
Van shifts around, and Alice is about to kick Frank off the couch so she can scooch back into the middle and stop making Van uncomfortable, but then suddenly everything feels better.
It takes Alice a beat to realize it’s because Van has been trying to extract her arm, and now it’s draped over the back of the couch, right behind Alice’s shoulders.
Alice knows it’s to make more room on the couch for their bodies, not because she’s trying to, like, hold Alice or something ridiculous like that, but still.
Tell that to her stupid brain and her horny body, which are firing off warning signals like she’s a tween on a first date.
“Pause it,” Babs says after a few more minutes. “It’s donut time.”
Alice is incredibly full, but Aunt Sheila insists that’s part of the holiday, so Alice manages to eat half of a truly delicious jelly donut, covered in a generous helping of powdered sugar that immediately goes everywhere.
Apparently much of the kitchen banging was Babs and Aunt Sheila making them from scratch, which Alice didn’t even know you could do.
It’s dicey to eat a jelly donut on a couch without all of the jelly splatting out onto your lap, but somehow Alice manages.
After her donut triumph, Alice’s eyelids start to feel heavy, like they’re as weighed down by fried food as the rest of her is. The only thing keeping her awake is the slight chill in the room as the temperature outside keeps dropping.
Babs must be feeling the cold too, because as soon as she’s brushed the powdered sugar off her shirt she immediately digs through the blankets—the ones that were already out and the others Van got down from the closet earlier—and hands one to each person.
Alice wonders if the donuts were slightly hallucinogenic, because no way is everyone being given their own blanket with sleeves?
“Is that…are these Snuggies?”
“Yup,” Marie says, happily burrowing into the one her mom hands her. “Mom’s obsessed.”
“You can knit in them!” Babs says, like this is something Alice has been struggling with her entire life.
“Oh no, but we brought some to the hospital. So we’re short one.
” She looks up from the box, dismayed. She has one in each hand, a blue and a pink, but she, Van, and Alice are all blanket-less.
She looks around the room quickly, clearly taking stock, and before Alice can say anything, Babs walks over and hands the blue one to Van.
“You two girls can share,” she says, gesturing between her and Alice.
“Since that dog is making you sit so close together anyway.”
“He has a name,” Marie says, tucking part of her blanket over Frank’s skinny back, clearly offended by “that dog.”
Alice decides to focus on how cute Frank looks all covered up, only his enormous head poking out, instead of what it’ll be like to be cuddled up under a blanket with Van.
Van takes the blanket with a quiet “Thanks, Mom,” and Alice wonders why Babs doesn’t want to share one with her literal husband.
Wouldn’t that make more sense than to encourage Alice to snuggle even closer to her boyfriend’s extremely hot sister?