Chapter 11
A HARVEY FAMILY THANKSGIVING
Though we wouldn’t eat until three p.m., we were expected to get to my mom’s house by noon on Thanksgiving Day. Until the food was served, we’d all mill about, eating snacks and helping Mom finish various dishes while Dad and Ron messed with the turkey in the smoker.
Of course, there was the puzzle set up on a folding table in the living room, and we’d all return to it throughout the day until it was done, and then maybe we’d start another.
I’d chosen a really good one for today. It was a collage of action movie covers—everyone likes action movies, even Ron, who mostly likes the Discovery Channel.
I let Barry choose the back-up, and he picked one of the cat-related puzzles from under the TV.
It was a good choice.
I already knew that Barry could make salads—I’d eaten two of the ones he’d prepped for the week and they were delicious—so when he admitted he wasn’t traveling to Canada for the break and would love to spend it with us, I told him his only obligation was to make a salad.
He drove me straight to the store so I could get the ingredients I needed for my cranberry sauce, and he picked up supplies for not one but two salads—a green and a pasta.
I was up before seven to make the sauce, just in case I messed it up, and he’d stirred from his living room slumber at the smell of the cranberries bursting amidst the ginger and orange zest on the stove.
He tried sleeping on his blow-up mattress downstairs but woke with a spider on his face, thus hadn’t tried sleeping in the basement again.
For the last few days, he put the blow-up mattress on the floor in the living room, deflating and rolling it up each morning.
“So early,” he’d muttered on the way to the bathroom, but didn’t go back to sleep.
Barry showered quickly and shaved his cheeks and jaw smooth, though I knew the shadow of a beard would return before dinner.
When he came out of the bathroom shirtless, just wearing dark jeans with the band of his underwear peeking out, I looked away so quickly I almost tweaked my neck.
Professional athlete meant professional athlete body, and the sight inspired memories that were wreaking havoc alongside new pregnancy hormones. Horny ones.
I kept my eyes on the cranberry sauce, which had turned out perfectly.
“Which should I wear?” Barry asked from the living room. Still exposed from the waist up, he held a crisp blue button-up in one hand, a flannel in the other.
“The orange one,” I said. “It’s a family dinner, not a business meeting.”
“Heard.”
Barry retreated into the basement to finish getting ready.
It was impressive to me that he didn’t seem nervous, not as we moved around each other in the kitchen (his shampoo smelled like eucalyptus), not as we loaded into Kate’s Camry (Barry’s long limbs stuffed in the back seat with Greg Senior as he cradled a salad bowl to his chest), and not as we pulled up to my mom’s house (the very house I grew up in, where my three parents were waiting along with Jeremy strewn over the couch).
Barry’s apparent ease was unsettling, because I am at dis-ease around almost everyone, everywhere, when I first meet them.
I imagine that when I inevitably meet his huge, fancy family, I will not be so put together.
“Remember to compliment Mom’s jewelry and whatever my dad cooks,” Kate said as we walked up the driveway. She’d peppered him with information about the family in the car, preparing him more than I’d thought to.
“Right. And Dan?”
“Ron,” Kate and I corrected in tandem.
“Ron is a sweetie,” Kate said.
“You’ve won him over by existing,” I said. And then Kate pulled open the front door and announced our arrival with a loud hello.
As soon as we stepped over the threshold, we toed off our shoes and Barry followed suit.
He nudged his loafers next to my Crocs and padded after me.
The sight of his socks on the linoleum of my childhood home was somehow more intimate than any intimate moments we’d had leading up to this point—including the whole baby thing.
The entryway opens right up to the living room where Jeremy lay sleeping on the couch beneath a pink, purple, and blue blanket Mom crocheted after I’d come out as bisexual in high school. Kate nudged his foot hanging over the side, and he startled awake.
“Hey,” he glared at Kate, but stood and gave her a hug anyway. When he caught sight of Barry, he let out a soft gasp.
“I was sixty-forty on if you were lying about Barry Wright,” Jeremy admitted, still awestruck.
I pinched my brother’s arm. “Why would I lie about that?”
“And which was the percentage you thought she was lying? Sixty or forty?” Kate asked.
“Good to meet you, man.” Barry clapped Jaremy’s hand and brought him into a bro hug I was sure Jeremy would freak out about with all his friends for the next week.
“Finally!” Mom fluttered in from the kitchen in her “Some People Drink, I Bead” apron—though, to be clear, she did drink, too. “Hannah, I need your help with the potatoes.”
Mom did a double take upon seeing Barry standing beside me.
“You are very tall,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Barry, this is my mom, and my brother Jeremy.” Barry smiled without teeth, but even without the teeth his smiles were warm and lovely, spread out over his cheeks and wrinkling the lines by his eyes.
Mom melted for it immediately and swept him in for a hug before either of her daughters.
“Call me Shirl,” Mom said, and the back door slapped shut behind Dad and Ron as they made their appearance.
More hugging ensued—Jeremy and I hugged each other with one arm as I still held the cranberry sauce container, then Dad who gave me a loud kiss on my head, Ron who gave a “hi, sweetie,” then finally Mom, who whispered about how handsome Barry was in my ear.
All the embraces finished, we made our way to the kitchen where we deposited our offerings on the counter.
The kitchen was hardly big enough for three people, more of a hallway than an open space—no island—but all seven of us were squished in there while Mom took our coats, each held over her arm with Barry’s black scarf on top, and Dad asked Barry about how he’s liking the new team, if he thought they were making it to the playoffs, if he liked meat, if he knew anything about smokers.
“Let him breathe,” I said. Dad wore a Harvey Janitorial polo, but not one of the old gray ones. He’d gone for cobalt, practically dressing up for the occasion.
“Fine, fine.” Dad held up his hands but winked at me still. He brought me in for another hug because he couldn’t help it and patted my stomach.
“Any news about the baby?” Dad asked. “When will we know the gender? They should have told you by now.”
“They did tell me,” I grumbled. “I want to keep it a surprise.”
“Ooh, we can have a reveal party,” Mom said as she reentered the kitchen.
“It’s the sex, Dad,” Jeremy corrected from the kitchen table. “Sex is science, gender is a society thing.”
“Well, ‘sex reveal party’ doesn’t sound very good, now does it?” Dad asked.
“A pregnancy is sex reveal enough,” Ron said, and Mom swatted his arm with the pink dishtowel over her shoulder, though she laughed, too.
“We’re not having a gender reveal party.” I made eye contact with Barry, and he nodded like my decision seemed reasonable. He stood next to the fridge, squished between Ron and my dad, a head taller than both.
“Sex reveal,” Jeremy reminded, amid my parent’s complaints at the news.
“Sex, whatever. We will not be revealing the sex of the baby with colored cake, or fireworks, or—”
“I was thinking a confetti balloon,” Mom said.
“Great idea, Shirl,” Dad said, and Ron agreed.
“Kate can do it, she’s so good at stuff like that,” Mom said.
“I am,” Kate said. She was already using the small slice of counter she could access to cut up limes for her margaritas.
“No party,” I said, louder than expressly needed. “Keep this up and I won’t tell you the gender—”
“Sex.”
“—the sex until I have her.”
For a moment, the only sound in the kitchen was the slow rolling of the potatoes boiling on the stove. Both Kate and Barry looked wide-eyed at me as I thought about what I’d just said—what I’d just announced to the whole family.
Before I could backpedal, the kitchen was filled with the eruption of everyone all at once.
“A girl?” Mom’s voice was already wobbling.
“You mean it?” Dad said.
Jeremy was laughing, thrilled he didn’t have to keep the secret anymore and jumping around us saying he called it, he’d so called it, right away he had called it, he knew all along, baby girl, baby girl, baby girl.
Ron held Mom around her shoulders, which were shaking with her little happy crying.
Dad brought Barry in for another hug, full-frontal, lifting Barry’s feet off the ground for a moment before turning to me and giving the same treatment.
“Be careful with her, Stephen,” Mom called to Dad, who put me down immediately and smoothed my hair before planting three more kisses there. I wiped the spittle off my forehead as Kate leaned toward me.
“So much for keeping it a secret,” she murmured.
“We’ll never hear the end of it,” I said.
Kate passed mismatched glasses of her margarita mixture around (fresh beet juice, lime, ginger, agave, tequila—though no tequila for me) and held it in the air.
“To the newest Harvey,” Dad said, and everyone cheered.
Barry smiled over the rim of his glass at me while he drank.
The next few hours before dinner weren’t as embarrassing as I’d feared they’d be.
Everyone settled down from the impromptu announcement relatively quickly.
Dad had to check the meat, Mom had another whole casserole to prepare.
Jeremy set up the puzzle table and we got to work on the action movie one while Barry was stuck talking to Ron and Mom.
Ron was a gentle man. He never had any kids with his late wife, but he acted immediately like we were his own children, always there for advice, or slipping us five-dollar bills on our way out—for Slushies, he’d say.
He asked Barry about benefits in the league, his 401K, the sort of investments he was interested in, and had he done much with crypto?
Dad was in and out of the house, joining their conversations with quips about the economy or whatever else he’d heard on the news that morning.
They were all very interested in Barry’s private life: how many siblings he had, if he wanted to play for Utah until retirement, if he was seeing anyone.
He wasn’t.
“Props to him for keeping up with the inquisition,” Jeremy said. Kate and I hummed in agreement as we worked on finishing the edges of the puzzle. “Where’s your date, Katie?”
“He’s not my date,” I said. And then, after a moment, to Kate, “What date?”
“No date.” Kate fit the last edge into place and reached for a pile of the same color pieces. “Jeremy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Yes, I do,” Jeremy said. “Katie has been going out with my physics professor—”
Jeremy cut off with a wince, no doubt induced by a sharp kick from Kate under the table. I looked between the two of them, trying to see if he was lying. This was the first I was hearing of Kate doing any dating at all, no less a physics professor.
“You think Jeremy is smart enough to take a physics class?” Kate asked.
“It’s a general I put off,” he defended. “He’s young and cool.”
Kate didn’t say anything, just kept sorting pieces.
“She would have told me,” I said, but Kate was blushing. I could see the pink crawling up her neck.
“I saw them at Frontier together last week,” Jeremy said. But surely Kate wasn’t going to our favorite restaurant with hot, cool science professors without telling me? Kate texted me when she saw a funny bird, she barely left her house, I would have known.
“I’m not seeing anyone.” Kate fit together another piece.
Jeremy gasped and leaned on his elbows. “Stop lying.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “You are.”
Kate sighed and finally looked up. In the kitchen, I heard Mom laugh at something Barry said, but I didn’t know what.
“I’m not seeing him,” Kate said. “It was one date.”
“Ha!” Jeremy was moments away from another “I was right” chant, but Kate and I cut him off with a glare. The moment of unity did nothing to quell the betrayal.
“When?”
“Last Sunday,” Jeremy said.
“Sunday?”
Kate had been on a date, probably shared a damn cinnamon roll with him, a professor, almost a week ago and hadn’t mentioned it once?
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kate threw her hands up in the air.
“I don’t know, Hannah, I didn’t think about it.”
“Did you kiss?” I asked. I turned to Jeremy. “Did you see them kiss?”
“No,” Kate said before he could answer. “I met him at Paws and Claws. He asked me to lunch, I said yes, that’s all.”
“Are you going to see him again? Has he been texting you?” I reached for her phone on the table. She batted my hand away. “What’s his name?”
“Daniel Gonzales,” Jeremy said. “But he has us call him Danny.”
So not only had she gone on a date with a professor, she’d also gone on a date with a cool professor? And she hadn’t told me?
“Can we keep it down?” Kate scolded. “Mom will go to town with questions if she thinks I’m dating. Please.”
Jeremy and I looked at each other before slowly nodding.
Mom had a few crusades she loved most, one of which being getting Kate to start dating again.
She was relentless in trying to set Kate up with people, and Kate was right that Mom wouldn’t shut up about it if she knew.
But this wasn’t the last she’d hear about it from me, not by any means.
“Speak of the devil,” Jeremy whispered as Mom walked into the living room.
“Girls,” she nodded toward the kitchen, “I need you.”
With one last meaningful look at Kate from me, we followed.