Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
I T’S HOT IN NEW YORK. I MEAN, IT’S HOT IN LOS ANGE LES too, but here it’s a thicker, wetter kind of hot. My hair is drinking it up and preparing to explode. I am regretting my j eans-and-sneakers travel look. Standing outside the terminal at JFK with Dan, I wonder if he’s regretting the flannel. There’s no small talk as we wait, and I really appreciate that. I pull my hair into a ponytail. He takes off his flannel and shoves it in his bag. His jeans are Levi’s—I can tell by the denim—and his white T-shirt is from a pack of three that you get at Target. My jeans are also Levi’s, but my white T-shirt was expensive. Something about this makes me feel dumb.
A green Subaru pulls up, and a man who could be Dan’s twin gets out. He has the same black hair and the same rectangular blue eyes. They fall into a long hug, and I see that they are the exact same height.
When the hug is spent, he turns to me with an outstretched hand. “Hey, I’m Aidan.’’ He’s movie-star handsome with an easy smile that lights up his face.
“Are you twins?” I ask. They are truly identical.
“We are, but Danny and I don’t dress alike. You two are embarrassing.”
“I’m Jane,” I say. “And this was an accident.”
“All the girls in LA try to dress like me,” Dan says, putting our suitcases into the hatchback. “It’s a whole thing.”
“That’s very sad,” says Aidan.
I get in the back seat, and Aidan pulls into the traffic and onto the highway. He’s wearing a wedding ring, but his hands are otherwise just like Dan’s, tan and muscled.
I text Clem: Landed, headed to their house. Turns out there are two of them—Dan has an identical twin who is hot and nice but married
Clem: You just said Dan’s hot
Me: No
Clem: Scroll up, you did
Me: Fine but his subscription to Beanie of the Month Club cancels it out
Clem: Send me a pic of the beanie he’s wearing right now
Of course there’s no beanie. I lean back in my seat and watch them as they talk. Dan and Aidan have the same longish black hair, with the same natural part. The rhythm of their conversation comes in short bursts, that back-and- forth of fragmented thoughts you have with someone whose approval you’re not looking for. I watch the cars go by as the airport disappears in the distance, and I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. I have been highly focused on getting to where Jack is, but in the process I have made myself a house- guest. A houseguest to complete strangers and the one person I really can’t stand. Dan punches Aidan in the arm. Aidan laughs, inexplicably.
*
WE’RE OFF THE highway driving through Oak Shore. It’s a classic small town, like you’d see on TV. Andy Griffith could live here. Library, gift shop, bakery, diner. Old- fashioned streetlights and leafy elm trees. Kids are riding bikes without helmets, steering with one hand while holding ice cream cones. We have pockets of this in Los Angeles, small neighborhoods tucked into corners of the city, but they look different, like they’re too new.
I’m picturing Dan’s family home again. They’ll have a wine cellar with seating, in case you ever wanted to have a conversation about wine that lasted so long you’d have to sit, and framed photos of people in ruffled shirts. His mother will be named Catherine, with all the syllables drawn out.
I’m deciding if Catherine has a French twist or a sensible bob when Aidan turns right off of Main Street, past a berry stand, and down a country road. I scoot up between the two front seats. “Is this farmland?”
“Potatoes,” Dan says.
Twins with Irish names driving me by a potato farm. This feels made up. “Is your family in farming?” I ask.
“Air-conditioning,” says Aidan, and Dan laughs. “But our grandfather worked on this potato farm for most of his life. Our grandmother was actually the Potato Queen in 1951.”
“Okay, stop, now you’re just bragging,” Dan says.
Aidan has the easiest, most generous smile, and I remember seeing that smile twice on Dan, when we first met and right after he called my movie trash. Since then, it’s been a lot of eye-rolling.
“It’s all automated now, but we grew up here, running through the sprinklers in the fields and then rolling in the mud,” says Aidan.
“Mom hated that,” Dan says to the window.
“She did. It’s noisy during the harvest in the fall, but the rest of the year it’s just a vast expanse of peace and quiet.”
Dan turns to me. “Which is why he lives in a house in the center of town.”
“Well, yes. It’s too much peace and quiet for me.”
At the end of the road there’s a small shingled house with a sprawling rose garden out front. The roses are red, which strikes me as overly romantic. I wonder if they were planted when the people living here were newlyweds.
We pull into the driveway, and Aidan says, “This is us,” and gets out of the car. I run this pretty little house through my brain, trying to reconcile how a person as pretentious as Dan could come from a home as unpretentious as this. There’s a low wooden table by the front door with a serrated knife and a bucket of recently cut roses. We are inland from the ocean, but when I get out of the car, I can still smell a bit of the salt air.
A woman who must be the mother of these twins comes out and throws her arms around Dan. Her hair is the same shade of black with a single white stripe along her face. This is not a perfunctory greeting hug. Dan’s face is in her hair; her arms encircle him like he’s the thing that will keep her from drowning. I don’t know what it’s like to have a child, and I don’t know what it’s like to live that far away from my mother. But I am self-conscious for all of us as this hug draws on.
Aidan seems unfazed and carries our suitcases around the hug into the house. She takes Dan’s face in her hands. “You’re thin, Danny. You look terrible.”
He turns to me. “Mom, sorry, this is Jane Jackson. From work. Jane, this is my mom, Maureen.”
“Call me Reenie,” she says, taking both of my hands in hers. She is the source of the wide navy blue eyes. “You’re so pretty. Danny didn’t say. But of course you are. Danny always likes a pretty girl.”
“Thank you,” I say, trying not to make it sound like a question. “And thank you for having me. I know it’s a big week with the anniversary.”
“Well, of course. Danny hasn’t brought a girl home in years. What was her name? Esme? Ethel?”
Dan is the tiniest bit flustered, and I like it. I like seeing him take a few steps off his high horse and squirm a little like the rest of us. “Elizabeth. Her name was Elizabeth. And Jane is not my girlfriend. Like I told you on the phone, she works at the studio and needs to be at the festival this weekend. That’s all.”
“Oh, all right, if that’s how it’s going to be,” Reenie says with Dan’s trademark eye-roll. It’s more playful on her. “Come meet everyone.”
Everyone. How many people could possibly be in this little house? She leads me inside into a neat entryway. There’s a staircase carpeted in seagrass and children. There are four of them, between three and seven, I’d guess. Dan dives into the pile of them like they’re a ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. When he emerges, he has one on each knee, and one hanging from each arm. He seems to have bathed in them, and some of his hardness washes off. He catches me noticing and quickly lowers the two on his arms to the ground.
“I’m Sammy,” says a little boy. “Who are you?”
“Rude,” says Reenie, giving a fake swat. “This is Uncle Danny’s girlfriend, Jane.”
“I’m not . . .” I start.
“It’s a bit of a madhouse around here this week,” says Reenie. “Come.” We pass a wooden table with a framed photo. Five nearly identical boys, in ascending height order with the twins in the middle.
“Who?” I say to no one.
“These are the boys,” she says. “It was the Fourth of July. This is Brian, Finn, the twins, and baby Connor. Can you tell which one’s Danny?”
The children rush past me toward the back of the house as I pick up the frame and look at the boys. I had no idea Dan had so many brothers. I study the twins. Hair brushed identically. Matching blue-and-white-striped shorts and red sweatshirts. One is grinning into the camera; the other is staring at something in the distance. I point at the starer. “This one.”
“Ah, you know him well,” she says and laughs. “Come.”
“Five sons and four grandchildren,” I say almost to myself. It’s impossible to imagine it.
“Oh, I have seven grandchildren, plus one on the way,” she says and leads me to a rustic but neat kitchen where pots are bubbling on the stove. She rushes to stir something, and Dan rests his hands on the back of a spindled kitchen chair and takes a breath.
“Are you ready for this?” he asks.
I look down at the farmhouse kitchen table. It’s three long planks of wood with a lazy Susan in the middle—salt and pepper, hot sauce, sugar, Splenda, honey, and a tiny votive candle. Someone’s thought of everything.
“Ready for what?”
“My family.” He says it quietly, like it’s a secret, like he doesn’t want his mom to hear.
“So far, they’re a lot nicer than you, but if you insist, I’ll reserve judgment.”
“All right,” he says and opens the door to the patio. The sound that greets us is deafening. At first I think we’ve walked into a children’s birthday party, balls and screams flying across the lawn. Then I think they’ve invited the town for a barbeque to welcome Dan home. But all the men in this small crowd look similar, and I realize they’re all Finnegans. I feel like I’ve walked into a fashion shoot for a l aid-back, high-end men’s clothing line. All of them with their sharp jaw lines and sculpted muscles pressing against cotton in a way that suggests they’ve just gotten off a fishing boat or a rowing machine. “Here we go,” Dan says.
A long table is set with white napkins and jelly jars full of yellow daisies. There’s a picnic blanket on the grass for the kids. Beyond the grass is an expanse of potato fields. Perfectly straight lines of dark green bushes converge in the distance. Some kind of shed covered in ivy blocks a portion of the view, and I wonder if I am the only one who wants to tear it down. This field would be completely Zen without that eyesore.
A leaner version of Dan crosses the patio to greet him. “Ya ugly fuck! How are you?”
I turn to Reenie for an explanation, and she just beams. Dan is a lot of things. Ya grumpy fuck, sure. Ya pretentious fuck, okay. But ugly, for sure no.
“I’m good.” Dan hugs him. “Good to see you, ya old bastard.”
The old bastard laughs. “I’m Brian,” he says to me and pulls me into a hug. “I’m the oldest, which is why I get so much respect.”
“This is Jane,” Reenie says to everyone. “Can we try to act civilized for just one night? Danny’s brought a girl home.” She makes big eyes at the crowd for emphasis.
“What? Did you lose a bet?” another one says to me. He’s a bit fairer than the others, his hair more brown than black, but with the same navy blue eyes. “I’m Connor. You look familiar.”
“He’s the baby, but we call him the professor,” Brian says.
“Because he’s a professor?” I literally don’t know how to jump onto the freight train that is this family.
“He’s a dentist. Big shot.” This is from a shorter man who has to be Dan’s dad. He is the source of the cheekbones and sturdy jaws. “I’m Cormack Finnegan. Welcome.” He shakes my hand and gives me a beer.
All of these brothers look like they were produced from a Xerox machine, differentiated by some slight smudges in the printing. Aidan introduces me to his wife, Paula, who gives me a hug and says, “Thank you for not being platinum blond. Brian dates so many platinum blondes, and I get confused as they come and go. For a while I was just calling them all Heather, and twice I was right.” This appears to be a joke, not that it’s one I get, but all of the brothers are laughing, including Dan. “Don’t try to remember any of our names, it’s impossible,” she says. “And avoid the children, the worst of them are Finn’s.”
Connor’s wife, Marla, is both pregnant and carrying a baby, and I don’t know quite how to process this. “Hello,” I say. “I don’t see how . . . Is that your baby?”
“Baby?” she asks and then looks at the baby like she’s surprised to see it there. “God, no. Whose baby is this?” she shouts into the crowd. Everyone laughs, and Aidan claims the baby.
Dan doesn’t speak directly to me, but he stays close like he’s responsible for me, worried I might get trampled in the crowd. I think of how much time I used to spend as a kid searching for my dad’s face in a crowd, and I wonder what it would be like to be surrounded by so many people who look just like you. Reenie calls to Aidan from the kitchen, and he hands me the baby. “Katie, this is Auntie Jane, be right back.”
“I’m not . . .” I start again. But Katie is in my arms and has one fist wrapped around my hair and another in her mouth. She’s staring up at me with those deep blue eyes like she’s a hundred percent sure I can handle this. We have a quiet moment where the din of the crowd softens and she and I lock eyes. I don’t know what to say to a baby, so I make my oof face and she laughs. Just a tiny I love you too.
“She likes you already,” says Reenie, leading me to a seat at the table. I don’t know if I’m responsible for this baby now or if she’s just the general responsibility of this giant, pulsing Finnegan organism. We all sit, and no one makes any move to take the person in my arms.
Cormack pulls chicken kebabs off the grill, and Reenie brings roasted potatoes from the kitchen. The sun lowers over the potato fields and the humidity starts to lift. Aidan’s wife, Paula, takes Katie from me and is feeding her something from a jar. I meet Finn and his wife, Eileen, and their small brood just as we’re sitting down, and I’m counting on my fingers: this is five; it has to be all of them. And only Dan and Brian are single. In a shocking turn of events, a sum total of zero Finnegans are pretentious or hairsplitting, even Dan, actually, now that he’s home.
Dinner is served, and I am starving. I find kebabs hard to deal with, and I forever hope that someone else will unkebab them for me. There’s always the possibility of the awkward moment where your fork catches on the spear and you pull too hard and send a chicken cube flying across the table. So I start with the potatoes and the salad.
“How are things looking for the festival?” Dan asks Finn. Mention of the festival refocuses me. I’m on a business trip, a mission to confront my past and win my future. I don’t need to be worried about what I’m supposed to be talking about with these absurdly attractive strangers.
“Good, I think. I only see the parts I’m involved in, mostly wires.”
“I can’t wait till it’s over,” Cormack says to me. “This thing causes such a frenzy. Brings in money, but it definitely disrupts the peace and quiet. As you can see.” He gestures to the full table.
Aidan rolls his eyes, and it’s appealing on him. “He’s just annoyed that Paula, the girls, and I are freeloading. We rented our house for ridiculous money for the week, so we’re crashing here.”
Dan drops his fork. “How’s that going to work?”
“Oh, it’s fine, honey,” Reenie says. “You two are grownups.”
“Mom. We’re grown-ups who work together. And honestly, we barely even do that. I thought we’d have two rooms.”
And boom, just like that, there’s just one bed. My face goes hot, and I concentrate on the brain-surgery-level work that is getting this kebab off the spear. I have an elbow in the air for leverage and tug with increasing pressure until it gives and, you guessed it, flies across the table.
“Janey Jakes!” Connor says and starts to laugh. I can feel it: I’ve just made my oof face. Braces sparkling, glasses in disarray. He has seen my essential awkwardness, and he knows who I am. I sit up straighter and try to Mona Lisa my features. “I knew you looked familiar, but you’re so hot now.” He looks at Dan, then his wife, Marla. “If that’s okay to say.”
“What’s Janey Jakes?” Paula asks.
“Holy shit,” says Aidan. “You are her. Danny, are you joking? How did you not tell us this?”
Dan turns to me and stares. He scans my face and my hair, like the PIN for his debit card is hidden there. Then he turns back to Aidan. “Are you talking about the geek from Pop Rocks ? There is no way.”
“Was that the show Connor loved that you guys were always watching? With the catchy song?” Reenie asks.
“ ‘Jump-Start Love Song,’” Connor says, then starts singing and strumming his hands on the table. “ I want to write a jump-start love song, figure out how we went so wrong.” My face goes hot. This is a nightmare. I came to New York to pose as a Hollywood dealmaker, not a chronic punch line.
Aidan joins in. “I don’t know how you’ve stayed gone so long, calling you back with my jump-start love song.” They all start to laugh.
“I don’t know what you nitwits are talking about,” Cor- mack says, effortlessly forking a piece of chicken.
“I never watched it,” Brian says. “It was after Finn’s and my time. But God, these guys were so into it.”
I must not be here. It’s like they’re all talking around me, so I sit and wait to be addressed directly.
Aidan says, “Dad, she’s Janey Jakes, from Pop Rocks,” And then, finally, to me, “You are, right? There’s no way you’re not.”
“I am,” I say and wince a little. I wait for one of them to say, Poor Janey, do do do do do do.
Dan turns all the way toward me, as if I’ve just appeared. He scans my face again in that unnerving way he has of taking in every single detail. “Seriously?” He almost whispers it.
“How could you not have noticed this?” Paula asks.
“Or talked about it?” Reenie asks. “How long have you two been together?”
“Mom. Since this morning. We’re not together. Wow,” he says, looking at me. “Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it.”
I lean back in my chair. It’s been a long seventeen years trying to be taken seriously. Braces off, better haircut, moderate success. One piece of flying chicken has shattered my hard-earned smoke screen. But on the other hand, the only way I’m going to get anywhere with Jack this week is by playing the Janey Jakes card. And the stakes are very low here. I’m not trying to date any of these guys. I’m never going to see any of these people again.
“That was me,” I say. “Until I was sixteen.”
“Connor was so into Hailey Soul,” Aidan says.
“We all were,” says Dan. “I mean every guy in the country.”
“Well, you’re hot now,” says Connor.
Marla says, “Honey, the more you say it, the weirder it gets.”
Connor makes a face like he’s pretending to be embarrassed and turns back to me. “You were funny as hell on that show. Your timing, everything.” He’s laughing as if he’s rewatching the episode where I accidentally booked us a mobile pet-grooming truck as a tour bus.
“Thank you,” I say. I am surprised at how calm I sound. I take a sip of wine and decide to just go with it.
Dan leans back in his chair and looks around like he’s reconsidering everything he’s ever known. His eyes settle on me in a way that reminds me of the day we met. “You know, the first time I saw you, I thought I knew you. Remember? On the street with the hawk? I was a little distracted, but then I swear I recognized you.”
“Is that when you started dating?” Reenie asks.
“No, it was when I was considering dating her.”
This is the first either of us has ever acknowledged the brief moment that our relationship was going in a totally different direction. I’m uncomfortable opening that door, so I slam it shut. “Days before he ruined my career,” I say.
“You didn’t need me for that,” he says and raises his eyes to me in challenge.
I let out a breath and lean back in my chair, feeling myself relax again. Arguing with Dan is a safe space.
“She picks terrible scripts,” Dan goes on.
“Of course,” I say. “And I’m sure you all know Dan has a PhD in The Notebook’’
Everyone at the table laughs. They laugh hard, and I like it. There’s no satisfaction like saying the right thing at the exact right time and getting that happy energy in return. It takes me back to the early days of Pop Rocks, before Pantheon Television learned that it was a lot cheaper to work with a laugh track. (I’d later think that the laugh track is to a live audience what porn is to sex. It can sound the same from the next room, but really, it’s not the same at all.) The laughter around the table now is raucous and alive, like they’ve been waiting all day to let it out.
Finn is wiping his eyes. “Jane, literally, he would watch The Notebook and sob. It was part of his whole quiet-time weird thing, so we’d leave him alone . . .”
Aidan says, “But we knew when to come in . . .’’
“Minute fifty-four,” says Brian. “Tears, like clockwork.” Everyone laughs again, including Dan.
“It’s true,” Dan says. “Watching The Notebook was the only way I could get them to leave me alone.’
“Until minute fifty-four and the tears,” Connor says. “Then we pounced.”
“He’s an introvert,” Finn says with air quotes, as if the whole idea of introversion is a made-up excuse for people who don’t want to deal. They all laugh again, but Dan doesn’t.
“What happens at minute fifty-four?” I ask. “That can’t be the end when they die in each other’s arms. Which, incidentally, is ridiculous.” It’s freeing to be so far from home, so far from my mom that I can speak this essential truth to strangers.
“Of course you hate it,” Dan says. “The most romantic part.”
“Yeah,” says Marla, pulling a child onto her lap. “What’s annoying about them dying like that?”
“It’s absurd. It’s more likely it was a murder-suicide than they both just spontaneously died,” I say.
Dan turns to me in mock seriousness, but there’s a smile behind his eyes. He likes this debate as much as I do. “She died, and then he died of a broken heart immediately after. It’s true love, Jane. Look it up.” They’re all looking at us, and I wonder if they have any idea how long the two of us can argue about this movie.
“Doesn’t happen. Not a thing.” I take a bite of my salad. “So what happens at minute fifty-four?”
“Noah comes back from the war and sees his dad,” Dan says to his plate.
“Dude, you’re such a wuss,” says Connor. “I don’t know how your fake girlfriend can stand it.” Dan shakes his head while his brothers laugh. He’s on the outside but is somehow fine with it. I look around the table at all of these happy people and know there’s something here that I want.