Chapter 4
NEIL
The family chat was still going three days after the party, which is how you know it was a good one.
Roone had posted a blurry photo of Dad mid-toast with his eyes closed, and everyone was pretending it was a masterpiece.
Kath sent the clip of Mom crying at the slideshow.
Somebody found a shot of me caught with my mouth full of shrimp.
I sent back the crying-laughing face with a line about how the photographer should be fired, got the little thumbs going up one after another.
For a few minutes I sat on the couch, feeling the easy warmth of being liked by people who've liked you your whole life.
That's my job in this family, if you want to call it a job.
Lorna keeps the history. Mom keeps everybody fed.
Dad keeps the checkbook. I keep it light.
Somebody has to be the one who says the thing that lets the air out of a room before it gets too heavy, and I've been that guy since I was a kid, since before I can remember choosing it.
It's not nothing. A family that laughs together doesn't come apart.
I believed that. It felt, most days, like something close to a value.
So when I noticed Tessa had gone quiet, I noticed it as a problem I knew how to fix.
She hadn't laughed at the party. I'd seen it.
I'd been mid-laugh myself when I looked over to catch her face.
Her face wasn't in on it. My chest went cold for a second before I turned back to finish laughing anyway, because Lorna was rolling, the whole room was up, and you don't stop a thing like that when it's cresting.
Then the car, the green beans, tell me what happened to the turkey.
Then a week of her being polite in a way she isn't usually polite with me.
Stepping off the book. Letting the chat scroll past her.
I'm not a fool. I could see she was hurt about the Thanksgiving story. And I could see the fix, which was simple: get Lorna to lay off it. Take the story out of rotation. Problem's the story, so retire the story.
I called my sister Saturday from the garage, where I do my calls, because the garage is mine.
"Twice in one week," Lorna said. "To what do I owe."
"The party was great," I said. "You crushed the toast. Mom's still floating."
"She really is. Did you see her with the slideshow?"
"I saw." I turned the socket wrench over in my hand, not using it, just holding it. "Hey. Can I ask you something. The Thanksgiving bit. The gas-station pie."
"My greatest hit," she said, warm.
"Yeah. Listen, can you maybe give it a rest for a while? Going forward?"
A pause, not a cold one. Curious. "Where's this coming from?"
"Tess is a little sensitive about the kitchen stuff," I said. "You know how she is about her work, everything being exact, all that. I think the cooking one gets under her skin a little. It's not a big deal. I just figure, we've all heard it a hundred times anyway, right? Retire the jersey."
I heard the words come out of my own mouth.
I didn't say the story isn't true. I didn't say Tessa didn't do those things.
I said she was sensitive. I handed my sister a wife with a tender spot instead of a story that was false.
I kept the wrench turning in my hand, and I did not, on a Saturday in my garage, go anywhere near what false would have meant.
"Oh, honey, I'd never want to upset her," Lorna said, and she meant it, that's the thing, she absolutely meant it. "It's all in love. She knows that. Everybody knows that."
"Sure. Course."
"I mean, it's just a funny thing that happened.
We laugh about all of it. Kath's wedding cake, the pie, the year the tree fell.
Nobody's keeping score." A little pause on her end, the kind she uses when she's deciding whether to say the softer or the sharper thing.
"She's not usually so touchy. Is everything all right with you two? "
"We're fine," I said, too fast, the way you answer that question when the answer is complicated. "It's nothing. Just — go easy on the pie one. That's all I'm asking."
"Consider it retired," she said warmly. "For you. But you tell her, if it bothers her, I'll pull it. I don't want Tessa sitting there miserable while we're all having a good time. That's the last thing I want." A beat. "She could've just said something, you know. To me. Years ago."
"Yeah. I know."
"You're a good husband." Then, lighter, almost to herself: "You always did need me to smooth things over for you, didn't you. Some things don't change. Tell her I love her."
I laughed, because it was the kind of thing she says. It sat wrong in my chest and I didn't look at why.
I hung up feeling like a man who'd fixed the sink. I actually stood there in the garage a second admiring it. I'd handled it. No blowup, no drama, no forcing anybody to eat crow — just a quiet word between me and my sister, the whole thing solved. This is what I'm for.
The galley notice came in on my email that same afternoon, though I didn't open it till later.
Hollis Print & Bindery — Your project "Fifty Years of Bishops" — proof ready for review.
I wasn't even on the committee, but Lorna had put me as a backup contact because I'm the one who answers emails.
I flagged it to look at later and went inside to tell Tessa the good news.
She was at the table with her laptop closed in front of her, not doing anything, which she never does.
"So I talked to Lorna," I said. "About the Thanksgiving story."
She looked up. "You did."
"Handled it." I couldn't quite keep the pleased out of my voice, and I'm not proud of that. "She's pulling it. Retiring it. She said the last thing she wants is you sitting there upset while everybody's having fun. She was great about it, honestly. Said to tell you she loves you."
Tessa didn't say anything for a moment. I waited for the thing I'd expected, some version of relief, a loosening.
"What exactly did you tell her," she said.
"That you were a little sensitive about the kitchen stuff. That it gets under your skin." I spread my hands, the case obvious. "And she said no problem, she'll drop it. That's a win, Tess. That's the whole problem gone."
"Sensitive," Tessa said.
"You know what I mean."
"I know exactly what you mean." Her voice had gone somewhere I didn't have a map for, quiet and very level, a courtroom voice, one I had never once had aimed at me across our own table. "You told your sister I have a tender spot. You didn't tell her she's been telling a lie."
"It's not a lie, it's a—" I stopped. Not because I had an answer. Because her face had that thing again, the party thing, and this time there was no room full of laughter to turn back toward.
"You fixed it so she'd stop hurting my feelings," Tessa said. "You didn't fix that she's wrong."
My phone buzzed on the counter. The galley, probably.
I didn't reach for it. I stood in my own kitchen, having very clearly just done something good, and watched it turn to something else in my wife's hands.
For the first time I felt the edge of how much I did not understand about what I'd been managing all these years.
"It's ready to print, by the way," I said, dumb, reaching for the phone after all, wanting a fact I could hold. "The book. Lorna's book. Proof just came in."
Tessa looked at the phone in my hand like it was evidence. "Of course it did," she said.