Chapter 3 #2
“Oh… dear… is that all? It really could have been an email, or you could have just changed your Facebook status.” I gingerly pat my sister’s back while she sobs. “Was it infidelity? Gambling? Did the CTE finally set in?”
“Winifred!” My mom slaps me with her purse. “Honestly, what’s gotten into you?” She looks around furtively. “We cannot have this conversation in front of the neighbors. Mark! Mark!” my mom screeches to my father. “Bring the bags inside.”
“Oh, whoa, all these suitcases and boxes. What, are you guys moving in?” I joke desperately.
“Well…”
“No, no, no, no!” I race down the walkway. “Gran, Gran, put all that back in the car.”
“We’re here to visit you, Winnie!” Dad spreads his arms wide.
“Visit?” the oldest woman says as my dad squeezes me in a back-cracking hug. “Your sister got thrown out on her ass, and now we’re all here to move in with you.”
“Oh, I don’t know if—”
“Nonsense, you can’t turn family out onto the street.”
They shove their way into my house, my sanctuary.
My father immediately sits down on my nice comforter on the sofa.
“Dad—”
“Winnie, are you eating in the living room?” My mom stares distastefully at the bag of peanut butter chips.
“Mom, this is my house. I can eat in my own living room.”
My mom’s ignoring me, folding up the comforter. “Blankets belong in the bedroom.”
“Speaking of,” Gran announces, dumping yet another load of crap in my pristine foyer with its House of Hackney wallpaper, “where am I bunking?”
“Put that back, Fidget,” I hiss at the dog.
Tail tucked, she cleans up the baking supplies while I turn to my family.
Who are here.
Unannounced.
“What a wonderful surprise,” I repeat.
Aaaannd now my eye is twitching. It hasn’t twitched since I left investment banking, where I regularly was awake for fifty-six hours at a time, and now here we are. Back to eye-twitching circumstances.
“I really don’t have the space…”
“Zillow said this was a two-and-a-half-bath, three-bedroom house.” My dad rolls up his sleeves and looks around appreciatively.
“One of those bedrooms is my office.” I run after my dad. “And another is Fidget’s room.”
“The dog has its own room, Winifred?” Mom sniffs. “You desperately need a husband and a child.”
“No, she just needs a turkey baster and sperm.” Gran swats my hip.
My family parades into my dream kitchen. My dad fishes out one of my pans from the cabinet and hefts it in his hand.
“And dirty dishes in the sink.” Mom clicks her tongue.
Kathy collapses, wailing. “I wanted a baby with Knox.”
“Oh, Winnie, help your sister.” Mom chides. “She needs her big sister. You two can share a room again, just like when you were little girls.”
My eye twitching is morphing into a headache.
“Yeah, like, I just don’t see how that’s my problem, you know?
” I press my finger to the underside of my eye socket, trying to relieve the mounting pressure and fury.
“Not to be a bitch, but I told you when you got with Knox. I warned you. I had diagrams, charts, testimonials. There was a PowerPoint presentation! A man is not a plan. Especially not a narcissistic NHL captain.”
“I had a job. I was a model.” Kathy sniffles.
“No one who is serious about modeling stays in Minnesota, Kathy,” I tell her.
“That’s where Knox was. He needed my support.” My sister’s lip trembles.
“Yeah, someone has to wipe his dick off after he plows through all those puck bunnies,” I scoff.
“Winnie! Knox is a good man.” Mom tuts.
“No, he’s not,” I argue. “His PR team just wants all those brain-dead hockey fans to think he’s a good person so they can sell the image of the wholesome hockey kid from rural Minnesota. Kathy was just a prop to sell his transition from kid to wife guy.”
Kathy’s sobbing pitifully now. Dad starts cutting up potatoes, telling her he’s going to make an omelet. Because that’s the cure-all for wasting your life.
“Kathy, I’m sorry, but you were with this man for fifteen years.
I told you he was stringing you along. I told you—no ring, no marriage, no babies, he’s not serious.
Here we are, facing the consequences of your inaction.
You wanted to be a stay-at-home girlfriend and play NHL hockey captain’s wife. ”
I know I sound mean, but I’m so tired of always being the responsible one, the one who has to clean up my sister’s messes.
“Your sister isn’t a gold digger!” my mom hisses at me.
“Damn right she ain’t no gold digger—a gold digger gets paid. I don’t see any gold. I wanna know where the gold’s at,” Gran announces. “She should have gotten preggo.”
“Dad, please don’t use a metal spatula on that pan.” I turn back to Kathy. “It’s tough love. This is Seattle. It’s not Minnesota. You can’t just be a pretty face here. Men expect you to have something to your name. They’re all highly allergic to useless freeloaders.”
“Your sister is not a freeloader, and I expected you to be more supportive.” Mom chastises me as she refolds my dish towels.
“Mom, Kathy can go get a job. She is an able-bodied woman with a high school diploma. Food service is hiring. Dad, that’s Fidget’s dog food, that’s not—”
“Smells okay to me.” He takes a bite.
“You’re feeding your dog human food, and you can’t even take in your family.” Mom is reproachful.
“Take you in? You guys can stay the night here, then you need to go back home to Minnesota. I have a business deal I need to concentrate on. Kathy can live at the lake house with you. She’s not living here with me.
I’m not cleaning up after her. Not again.
Not this time. I warned you, Kathy. You made terrible decision after terrible decision.
Maybe you can get a job at the burger place down the street from Mom and Dad’s. ”
My dad looks guiltily at the floor.
“It’s just, ah, Winn…”
“No. You guys have a nice house on the lake. She can babysit.” I hear myself getting shrill.
“That, uh…” My parents look at each other.
“It wasn’t their house,” Gran declares as she opens a bottle of red. “Stay-at-home girlfriend here tied the family fortune to a man who was never going to commit.”
The expensive wine glugs into a mug.
“What do you mean that’s not your house? Yes, it’s your house!”
“It was Knox’s house. He bought it, and Mom and Dad live there, but since he broke up with me…” The explanation devolves into unintelligible wails.
My mom gathers Kathy to her chest and murmurs, “Daddy’s almost done with the omelet. That will make you feel better.”
“What happened to the money from the sale of your house, our childhood home?” My eye is bouncing all over the place. I press my index finger to my eye socket.
“It’s expensive to be the captain’s wife, Winn, you know that,” Dad cries. “Kathy needed Botox, and NHL players expect their wives to be blond, and she can’t go to the Stanley Cup finals in those old jeggings.”
“Then Knox should have fucking paid for it. Oh my god. What is his number?” I demand. “I’m calling him right now. This is bullshit.”
“He changed his number ever since he took up with that girl. And she is a girl.” Gran side-eyes me. “Girl with a lowercase g.”
“He says she’s more fertile than me.” Kathy sobs. “He said he woke up one day and decided he wanted a big family like Ryan West, and that I was too old to have lots of children, so he went out and found her.”
“I think that he probably was already banging her, but sure.” I cross my arms.
Kathy makes a pained noise.
“Believe what you want. It’s too late now.”
“Look, I’ll cook for you, Winn,” Dad says earnestly.
“And I’ll clean,” my mother says distastefully. “And you can have your sister work at the coffee shop.”
“I’ll work there too!” Gran salutes. “I’ll earn my keep. I’m not like the rest of these losers.”
“No, no one needs to earn their keep.”
“Oh, thank God.” Kathy sags. “I’m too distraught to work.”
“No one needs to earn anything, because you’re not staying here.”
“You can’t kick us out on the street.”
“I’m not throwing you out. I’m throwing you into the motel down the street.”
“Your sister can’t stay in a motel when she’s in a crisis!” Mom cries.
Fidget huddles up next to Kathy, who wraps her arms around her, and Fidget lovingly licks her face.
“Alexa!” My dad’s yelling at the home automation system. “Alexa, play ‘We Are Family.’ Alexa, play—”
“Adding to your shopping list.”
Now I have a migraine.
Kathy sniffles. “Winnie, please let us stay.”
“Honestly,” my mother scoffs, “of course we’re staying, Winifred. Stop this nonsense. Now, come on, Kathy, let’s get you to bed. Winnie, Kathy’s staying with you!” she yells as she helps Kathy up the stairs.
My stairs.
“Your father and I will sleep in the guest room, your grandmother can sleep in the laundry room on a cot, and you can still have your office, see? We’re no trouble at all.”
“I’m not sleeping on no cot.” My elderly grandmother, disturbingly spry, sprints up the stairs after my mother.
“How do you like your eggs, Winn? Hey, you got any ketchup?” My dad rummages around in my fridge. “Man! My lucky day. A strawberry croissant! It’s like you knew I was coming!” He beams at me.
“Winnie, when was the last time you washed these sheets?” Mom calls.
Ding dong!
When I installed that doorbell, I had visions of hosting fun Friendsgivings and themed parties and answering the door like I was in a Nancy Meyers movie. Then I remembered that I don’t like my family that much and Carolina is my only real friend.
“I hate this doorbell.” I wrench the door open, and the guy in a green shirt almost falls off the porch.
“Uh…” The tired-looking DoorDash guy peers at me.
“I have an order of Caesar salad, smothered chicken and waffles with extra gravy, and five orders of cauliflower nuggets and a mozzarella stick, no sauce? I thought that might have been a typo, so I put some in anyway.” He beams. “Thanks for the hundred-dollar tip.”
He sucks in a breath when he sees the anger on my face.
“Fidget!” I yank the Alexa plug out of the wall.
“Oh.” He sees my uninvited houseguests. “That’s nice. A little family visit.”
“They are not staying.”
“Winifred, didn’t you already eat dinner? You’re ordering DoorDash?” my mom tuts from the stair balcony.
The border collie shoves herself between my legs, politely takes the bag from the delivery driver, and sprints back upstairs.
“Aww,” I hear my sister say. “Fidget brought me a snack.”
My life is a mess.
My family needs to be gone ASAP, or I’m not going to make it.
And let’s be realistic. My sister’s not getting a job that will pay her a wage high enough to evict my family. Not here in Seattle, anyway.
She has exactly one skill set: being a rich man’s girlfriend. And for that, I need a boyfriend. Someone handsome. Shallow. With lots of money. Preferably multiple houses so he can put my parents in one and Gran in another.
I smile. The DoorDash guy flinches.
I know the perfect billionaire. One who deserves to be subjected to my family for all eternity, as long as they both shall live.
Now I just need to convince him to put a ring on it.