33. Chapter Thirty-Two London
Chapter Thirty-Two: London
Y OU’RE INVITED.
What: Emergency Young family meeting. Yes, there will be snacks.
Who: Paris, Troy, Brooklyn, Savannah, and London.
Where : Savannah’s pool house
When : November 1. Be there at nine am, or else.
The ominously written e-card arrives in my text messages bright and early the morning after the night that I should have been going to the SB19 concert with Gloria.
Fortunately, I found out from her Instagram stories that she went with Raina.
I feel bad that I left her, but at least she’s with someone who loves her.
Someone who can actually show her that they care about her. More than me.
When I don’t respond to the text message after five minutes, my phone rings. Groaning, I let it go to voicemail as I boil water to make a cup of pu’erh tea.
“ London, you had better not be running away from this family. I know that we’re more like the dysfunctional Young family in Crazy Rich Asians than The Brady Bunch , but you’re still a Young.
So be there. Please?” The surprising addition of the word please at the end of Savannah’s voicemail seals it for me.
I’ve already taken the time off from work to go on vacation with Gloria, leaving me with no excuse to skip.
I reply with a thumbs up emoji and drink my tea, wondering what my siblings could have to say that would warrant this meeting.
It’s most likely that Savannah is the instigator.
She is the one whose wedding was ruined by our parents.
That day will probably live on in ignominy forever among our cousins and her friends.
A twinge of guilt flickers in my chest. I hadn’t even thought to text her and see how she was holding up.
Instead, I wallowed in self-pity and patted myself on the back for confronting our parents.
Never once did I think of how my siblings would be dealing with the fallout.
I was too busy focusing on how I had suffered at their hands that I didn’t consider the shock their divorce would be to my brothers and sister as well.
Shaking the thoughts from my head, I finish my tea before heading to Savannah’s.
“You made it,” Savannah says when I get out of my car and walk around to the back towards the pool house.
“Shouldn’t you be on your honeymoon right now? Or working?” I scan the driveway, spying Perry’s motorcycle and my other brothers’ more sensible cars. "Where’s your husband, anyway?”
“Micah is at work. I’ve been using up my sick days. And our honeymoon wasn’t scheduled for another week, so I’m not missing it. Thanks for coming.”
“I only came for the snacks,” I lie, even though I’m full from my breakfast—leftover garlic fried rice that Gloria insisted I take from her fridge when she left for the Philippines .
We lapse into uncomfortable silence as we walk toward the pool house.
Sav and I have never been close. She’s always bossed me around the most out of our siblings.
Though she’s closest in age to me, and we’re both lawyers, our personalities have always clashed.
She’s bossy. Overbearing. Prone to bending everyone to her will.
I just want to keep the peace and make everyone get along.
I guess we both failed in our goals.
“How have you been?” I say.
“Fine.” She’s never this tight-lipped.
My brothers are sprawled across the various pieces of wicker furniture, including Perry who has his feet propped up on a pink lawn flamingo. I perch on the arm of the couch and snag a chip off the bowl on the table. “Who called this meeting?”
All my brothers point at Savannah, like a childhood game of “not it” when Mom would ask who wanted to wash the dishes.
“I wanted you all here to talk about our parents’… divorce.” Savannah says the word ‘divorce’ like it’s a bomb that will detonate if we talk about it too loudly.
“What’s there to talk about?” Perry shrugs, shovelling his chip in a bowl of spinach and artichoke dip. “We all saw it coming, didn’t we?”
Troy, Brooklyn, and Savannah look at him with contempt.
“Well, I saw it coming,” Perry amends, crunching into the chip. “That’s why I never wanted to come home.”
And here I thought he was always just too busy with work and whatever flavour of the month he was taking on his motorcycle.
I clear my throat. “I never wanted to believe they would actually divorce. Sure, they fought all the time, and complained nonstop about each other…”
Okay, now I really sound like I was in denial .
“You never told us any of that,” Savannah says, sounding surprisingly hurt.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you these things!” The pent-up hurt and rage I’ve held over the past few months—no, years—explodes. “You could have seen it yourself if you ever came home! If you ever bothered to talk to Mom or Dad instead of brushing them off or ignoring them!”
“They don’t tell us that stuff,” Brooklyn says calmly, ever the level-headed one. “I guess they figured since we—well, since I have my own family, they probably didn’t want to burden me with it.”
“What about the rest of you?”
Perry rolls his eyes. Of course. He’s never home, he’s been avoiding it on purpose.
Troy shrugs. “Dad and I were never close. And Mom doesn’t talk to me like she talks to you.”
“Mom and I always butted heads,” Savannah says. They had no shortage of screaming matches when Savannah lived at home, over things as frivolous as the length of Savannah’s cutoff shorts.
“So it was just me,” I say. “The whole time, none of you saw this coming except Perry?”
“You don’t get it,” Brooklyn says, his tone still serene like he’s a yoga teacher trying to lull me into a false sense of peace.
“The four of us… Well, except Perry, we didn’t see the things you did.
We still remember when our parents danced in the kitchen, or went on dates, or held hands, or had civil conversations that didn’t devolve into contempt for each other.
You were too young, London. You missed all that. ”
I grab a handful of chips from the bowl without eating them, crushing them between my fingers.
Sav glares at me. “If you aren’t going to eat my snacks, don’t leave crumbs on the furniture. ”
I roll my eyes. Classic Savvy. “Whatever.”
“ So mature,” Brooklyn says.
“Stop fighting,” Troy says. “We’ve had enough of that.”
We fall silent. I brush the chip crumbs off my fingers and onto a napkin.
I’m tired of being the first to apologize, the first to make peace. For once, I’d like someone else to take on the peacekeeper role.
“For the longest time, I told myself I shouldn’t have my own family because if I left, no one would take care of Mom or hold our parents’ marriage together.
I told myself if I had kids, they’d grow up in a home that was just like ours,” I say with a sigh.
“I guess I was wrong. No matter how hard I tried to be everything for them…”
“You couldn’t.” Perry’s voice surprises me. “Stop blaming yourself, London. I know I wasn’t there as often as you were, but I saw how you tried.”
Tried to anticipate my mom’s moods and feelings so I could cheer her up. Tried to say what would make my father happy, to distract him from his rages by being the best son I could be.
“You’re never going to be enough for them, London,” Perry says. “They shouldn’t have relied on you to distract them from their failing marriage. I think we all did, because we didn’t want to face the truth.”
Sav takes a deep breath. “You never had to be the perfect son, or brother, London. I know I’ve always bossed you around and asked a lot of you, but…
I guess I did it because I knew you cared about me, and it was too easy to take advantage of that.
But it was never your job to make all of us happy.
And you should never hold yourself back from having a family, because your heart is too big for that. ”
Tears spring to my eyes and I quickly wipe them away. The familiar urge to hide how I’m feeling—to put on a cheerful face to keep everyone else from worrying—rises in my chest. But I let it go.
“Thank you, guys. ”
The urge to hide is replaced with gratitude for the siblings I have. We’re not the ideal, cookie cutter family I’ve wanted for so long. No family is perfect. But the one I have does care, and that matters more.