Chapter 8
Lucy
The lawn has been mowed. I sit in the driveway with the engine off and look at it.
It’s Friday night, and my mom invited me over for dinner.
Imagine that. I never thought I’d live to see the day.
So, here I am. There are no trash bags leaning against the bin.
Even the grass against the house is short, so I suspect someone owns a weedwhacker.
When I walk in, the house smells like garlic and butter.
The TV is off in the living room. The curtains are open.
Country music is playing in the kitchen.
The light in the house is yellow and warm in a way I do not have words for.
Bear is at the kitchen table reading a book, which means I must be seeing things.
He looks up. “Hi, Lucy.”
“Hey, Bear. A book?”
He nods. “Tyr’s making chicken parm.”
My heart stings in my chest, so I inhale. “Chicken parm?”
“He made it last night. It’s so good. He’s teaching Mom, so she’s making it tonight just for you.”
I stop where I am and feel my lungs constrict. “Mom’s cooking?”
“Yeah.”
My mom doesn’t cook. I walk to the kitchen to be a witness. She’s at the stove with an apron on. The apron is white with a navy stripe, and I have never seen it before in my life. Tyr is at the counter next to her, grating cheese into a bowl. He looks up when I come in.
“There she is.” He smiles warmly.
My mom turns. “Lucy! You’re early.”
“I’m exactly on time,” I say.
She looks at Tyr. “Then we’re late.”
“We’re not late,” Tyr says, going back to the cheese. “We’re fashionable.”
“You guys are going to make me sick,” I announce.
My mom giggles. Like giggles.
Is it bad that I’m waiting to watch her crash and burn? The feeling in my gut swirls, so I shove it down.
I set the bag down on the counter. “You brought the wine?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
“What is it for?” I ask when she takes it.
“Cooking,” she says in a high-pitched tone.
“Here I thought we were getting drunk off of wine.”
“We most definitely can,” she says.
“You’re old enough to drink?” Tyr asks.
My mom swats him. “She bought the wine, Tyr. Hello? Where have you been?”
He resumes his task while she opens the bottle and sets it aside.
We sit down in four chairs.
Bear’s homework has been moved to the counter.
There’s a candle in the middle of the table — Yankee, vanilla.
Tyr serves us like we’re at a restaurant.
The chicken parm is on real plates. The salad is in a real bowl.
There’s Camdend, sliced, in a little basket lined with a dish towel I do not recognize.
The food is good. It is annoyingly, genuinely good.
“This client of mine,” Tyr is saying, halfway through dinner, “calls me last week. Says, Tyr, I need a wine fridge in this closet. I say great, send me a photo of the closet. He sends me a photo of the closet. I say, sir, that closet is load-bearing. He says, what does that mean. I say, that means if I take that wall out so you can put your Pinot in there, your second floor falls into your kitchen.”
Bear laughs, mocking what the collapse would sound like.
My mom laughs too.
Tyr eats a bite of chicken. “He still wants the wine fridge. He keeps texting me. I keep telling him, sir, it’s a bedroom or a wine fridge, you cannot have both.”
“Is he getting the wine fridge?” Bear asks.
“He’s getting an under-counter unit in the kitchen. He’s mad about it.”
“Why is he mad about it?”
“Because he wanted the closet.”
“That’s stupid.”
“That’s a man with too much money and not enough engineering, kid.”
“What’s engineering?”
“Engineering is the difference between a wine fridge and your house falling down.”
Bear takes a bite of Camdend and considers this.
I’m eating my salad and trying to remember the last time the three of us sat at this table at the same time and ate food. I cannot.
“How’s school, Lucy?” My mom asks after a long, quiet moment.
I think about school, and I think about all the bad days I had in high school, and how she never asked me then. I ignore the resentful feelings and smile. “It’s as good as your chicken parm. I didn’t know you could cook.” I smoothly change the subject.
She smiles. “Learned from the best.” She grabs Tyr’s hand and witnessing her affection makes this entire situation hurt just a little more than it already does.
“How’s the cog psych thing going?”
“It’s going.” I force a smile, but I think my lips just press together and form a line. “I’ll be fine.”
“What’s your favorite class this semester?”
I blink at her, not liking all these sudden questions. She’s asking because she has no fucking clue about my life and needs to play catch up. “Um,” I take a moment to think about my honest answer instead of the anger swimming in my chest, “I guess Real Analysis.”
“Is that the math one?” she asks.
She would have no idea if it was math or not. I take a bite. “Yeah.”
“What’s Real Analysis?” Tyr asks.
My mom asks, “What are you doing in it?”
With my mouth full, I say, “Measure theory right now.”
“What’s measure theory?”
I look at her, the frustration building in my chest. She never asks me about these things, and I know she’s only pretending to care because she has an audience.
I look at Tyr, trying to decide if I’m going to revert to the child who was always left alone and not heard, or if I’m going to remain the level-headed Lucy I’ve become in college.
I swallow. “It’s the part of math where you ask what counts as a length.” I nod.
She repeats, “What counts as a length? Huh, interesting.”
She has no clue what I’m saying, so I explain, “Yeah. There are sets of points on a line that don’t have a length, and there are sets of points that have a length but no points, sort of, and you have to figure out the rules for which is which.”
“That sounds hard.”
Tyr raises his eyebrows like he’s impressed.
“It’s a little hard.”
My mom winks. “You always liked the hard ones.”
“Yeah.” I look down and take another bite. I think I handled that well. I look over at my mom, watching her closely. I’m not sure if I should keep my guard up or let it down. Honestly, I don’t know how to act at all.
Bear, halfway through his second piece of Camdend, announces, “Mr. Calhoun caught Brody Mancuso with a vape today.”
Tyr looks up. “In school?”
He nods. “In the bathroom.”
“Any of your friends doing it?” Tyr asks.
He shakes his head. “A girl in another class got caught last week.”
“What?” Mom and I say at the same time.
Tyr says, “Don’t start, kid. That stuff wrecks your lungs. They’re not as cool as the kids doing them want you to think they are.”
“I know,” Bear says, looking at me. And that’s the comfort I needed to know that I also recognize that this first family dinner isn’t normal in this house, and he feels it.
Tyr nods and goes back to his food.
“That’s too young to be vaping,” I say.
“That’s horrible,” my mom adds. “I will kick your ass if you touch that stuff.”
Bear looks up at her, then at me. He hides his smile because we both know she’s bluffing.
“I won’t,” he says.
I try to remember a single time in the last decade that anyone other than me said something like that to my brother in this kitchen, and there hasn’t been a single time. I hate to say it but my mom’s too late. She looks at me, and I grab my glass of wine.
After dinner, my mom stands up to clear the plates.
Tyr says, “Sit down, I got it.”
She sits back down.
He looks at Bear. “Help me out, kid.”
Bear gets up without arguing. They take the plates to the sink. Tyr is washing. Bear is supposed to be drying but he is mostly just standing there holding the towel and listening to whatever Tyr is saying to him. Mom watches them for a second. Then she turns to me.
“You okay, baby?” she asks, and I still.
“I’m great.”
She looks at me, asking as if she actually cares. “You sure?”
I don’t want to make this more awkward than it already is, so I nod. “Yeah, Mom. Why?”
“You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m fine,” I say, but there’s something at the bottom of my throat that’s trying to crawl out.
She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand once. Once. Then let’s go and picks her glass back up. My heart starts racing because of her touch. I cannot trust my face for another sixty seconds in this kitchen.
I stand. “I’m going to use the bathroom.”
“Okay, baby.”
The bathroom is clean. The towels smell like detergent.
There is a candle on the back of the toilet that has been used.
There is a hand soap I do not recognize.
The bathmat is new. The chihuahua is quiet, which is new.
I sit on the toilet with the lid closed and count to sixty.
My hands are trembling. I refuse to cry.
I go back out.
Bear is at the table again with his Switch. Tyr is on the couch in the living room watching what my mom put on, which is HGTV. She’s in the kitchen pouring herself a second glass — half a glass, not the whole bottle.
“I should head out,” I say.
“Already?”
I nod. “I’m tired. I had a long week.” That’s an understatement of what I’m feeling in my chest.
“Okay, honey.”
I go around the table to Bear. He pauses the Switch and stands up to hug me. He hugs me harder than he usually does.
“See you on Wednesday?” I say. “Call if you need anything.”
Tyr stands up off the couch when he sees me leaving, which is, I’m sorry, the most old-fashioned move I have ever seen in this house. He waves, keeping his hand up.
“Thanks for coming to dinner, Lucy. Drive safe.”
“Thanks. You too.” I hide the wince I feel happening in my body. I blink, looking at Bear. He doesn’t say anything.
I turn to my mom and hug her. She holds it longer than she usually does.
“Plan to come back next weekend if you can.”
“For dinner again?” I ask, trying not to sound surprised.
“Yeah,” she smiles.
“I’ll try.”
“Drive safe.”
She closes the door after me. I hear the deadbolt slide.