“Yeah, sure, someday.”
“How about today?”
“Today? Ah, I don’t know if they’re around.”
“What about this supper you always go to on Sundays? When am I going to get invited to that?”
“Sweetie, you don’t want to come to Sunday supper, believe me. It’s a duty, it’s not fun. The food is horrible.”
“It’s not about the food. I want to meet your family.”
“You will.”
“What is it? You ashamed of me or something?”
“No, definitely no. It’s not you.”
She’s about to pin the blame on her parents, on her mother’s Catholicism and her father’s singular obsession with Boston teams, or on Meghan’s irresistible feminine mystique, but then the real reason presents itself, clear and unavoidable. She’s the reason. She’s standing in an old T-shirt and underwear, barefoot in her tiny kitchen, her feet cold on the dingy linoleum floor, and she doesn’t feel worthy of being with him. She’s practically twitching with discomfort over revealing this much of herself to him, as if the more of her he sees, the less of her he’ll realize there is. Her kitchen exposes her lack of sophistication, her bedroom a lack of maturity, her living room a lack of elegance. The thought of adding her parents and brothers and where she grew up, the real Charlestown, not the Pottery Barn Toonie version, of him seeing her lack of education and culture, the statues of Mary and Jesus and Kermit the Frog in every room and the jelly jars her parents use as glassware, makes her feel far more naked than she was ten minutes ago.
And if he sees all of her, maybe he won’t love her. Boom. There it is. They haven’t said that word yet, and she’s sure as hell not saying it first. For all her yoga training in vulnerability and living authentically, she’s still a chicken. What if he meets her family and they’re incapable of embracing a Yankee-loving black Baptist, and he takes this into consideration along with the substantial list of everything else about her that isn’t perfect and decides that he can’t love her. She’s not worthy of his love.
She’s standing at the counter with her back to him, pouring granola into mismatching bowls, thinking about Felix rejecting her, and her body doesn’t know the difference between the real deal and simply rehearsing this shit. It’s monkey-mind madness, and she knows better than to invest energy in this completely invented story, but she can’t help herself. She predicts their breakup in blow-by-blow, excruciating detail, always initiated by him, at least once a week and three times since they woke up today, every imagined split pulling more threads from her heart, knitting into a bigger, tighter knot in her chest.
Coward. She should own who she is, where she’s from, and how she feels about him. She loves Felix. She should tell him and introduce him to her family. But the risk feels too big, the cliff too high, the chasm between what they have now and what they could have too wide. Like jumping could kill her.
“Another time. Really, I don’t even know if my dad and JJ will be there today.”
Felix’s mouth goes tight, and he lowers his head as if he’s searching for meaning in the ugly pattern on the linoleum floor.
“You know what, I’m not hungry. I should get going.”
He leaves the kitchen and returns in a moment, fully dressed.
“See ya,” he says, and barely kisses her on the cheek.
“Bye.”
She should stop him, invite him to supper, apologize. Instead she says nothing, paralyzed and mute, and lets him go. Shit.
She sits at her crappy kitchen table, stunned to be suddenly alone, and doesn’t touch her oatmeal and banana. She wishes she’d gone to Andrea’s class, that Felix had stayed, that she wasn’t such a stupid coward, that she knew how to walk her yoga talk. The kettle whistles, jolting her out of her seat. She pours the boiling water into one mug and leaves the other empty on the counter. Sipping her green tea, she replays what just happened and rehearses what she might say to him next. She hopes he’ll forgive her and call her later. She hopes to God she didn’t just end their relationship, that she didn’t just lose him. But mostly, she hopes he didn’t bump into her parents on his way out.
CHAPTER 11
Katie is sitting between Patrick and Meghan on the couch in her parents’ living room, wondering what Felix is doing. She almost invited him to Sunday supper today, had the words ready and wrapped in her mouth, but at the last second, she chickened out and swallowed them instead. He hasn’t brought up meeting her family since they fought about it last week, so the issue seems dropped for now. But she’s going to have to bring him one of these Sundays. She can’t keep Felix a secret forever.
JJ and Colleen are sharing the love seat opposite her, their legs and bodies pressed against each other, JJ’s arm draped over Colleen’s shoulders. They look so happy. Katie wishes Felix were here.
Her mom glides into the room, practically tiptoeing, places a six-pack of Coors Light and a chilled bottle of Chardonnay on the coffee table without a word or looking at anyone, and returns to the kitchen. She’s back a moment later with a bottle opener and three jelly jars and leaves again. Everyone looks at one another. That was weird.
They aren’t allowed to start drinking until supper is ready. It’s a strict rule. Patrick shrugs, leans over, grabs a beer, and cracks it open. Katie twists the bottle opener into the cork and pulls it free. JJ takes a beer, and Katie pours a glass of wine for Meghan.
“Wine?” Katie asks Colleen.
“No thanks, I’m good for now.”
“Where’s the remote?” asks Patrick.
“I dunno. You live here,” says JJ.
The boys search the room without getting up off their asses.
“Pat, go put it on,” says JJ.
“Nah, you do it.”
“I’m comfortable here with Colleen. Get up, see if anyone’s playing.”
“B’s aren’t on till tonight.”
“Go see what else is on.”
“I’m still lookin’ for the remote.”
Patrick leans back into the couch, his heels together, knees spread out, and sips his beer. Katie shakes her head. Her brothers are pathetic. The room does feel strange, oppressive even, with the TV off. In fact, Katie can’t remember ever being in this room without it on. It’s as if they’re missing their fifth sibling, the one who never shuts up and demands all the attention.
Colleen pries herself out of the love seat, marches over
to the table with the angels and frogs, and returns with the remote.
“Thanks, hun,” says JJ, grinning at Patrick as he turns the TV on.
He’s flipping the channels, not landing anywhere, but the light and noise coming from the screen give them all a common purpose, and the room instantly feels brighter, familiar again. Katie sighs and smells Windex. That’s weird. It usually smells like whatever animal her mom is boiling this week. Her obsession with ironing aside, her mom isn’t exactly famous for domestic tidiness. Wiping all the dusty figurines and surfaces down with Windex typically only happens when they’re having company. Katie inhales again. Only Windex.
With the exception of bacon, which somehow bypasses everything she knows and believes and still makes her mouth water, she has a hard time stomaching the smell of Sunday suppers. But the house doesn’t smell like bacon or chicken or lamb. Has her mother finally figured out how to remove the taste and smell from food?
The front door opens, and her dad stands before them in the living room, carrying a plastic bag and three pizza boxes, smiling as if he’s Santa delivering a sack of toys.
“I’ve got pepperoni, plain, vegan cheese and veggie for Katie, and a salad for our little rabbit.”
“Where’d you get it?” asks Katie.
Papa Gino’s doesn’t do vegan anything.
“The North End.”
“Wow, really?”