A Toast to the Good Times

Chapter 8



Paisley rounds the corner into the kitchen looking half-asleep.

“Mom? Is everything okay?” She pauses when she sees me sitting at the kitchen table. “Oh, hey. Um, so, Landry is here.”

I’m stuck between wanting to scarf down the last of my Nutella-coated breakfast deliciousness and just bolting like the sad sack of crap I’m turning out to be.

“Yes. Landry is here.” Mom looks back and forth between the two of us while we avoid eye contact at all costs. “He’s here because you asked him to come here?”

“I did!” Paisley’s big green eyes get all luminous, like one of those scarily eager anime kid’s. “I just...I was so sick of all of us being apart for every single holiday! I wanted us together. For once. Finally.”

Perfect. It’s selfless and fits the season and would probably have flown if I never opened my big mouth before and screwed everything up.

“Landry says you’ve got something to tell him. To tell us.” And by us my mother means why didn’t you tell me first, I’m only your mother for God’s sake.

Paisley does this nervous tick thing where she grabs her hands and squeezes them together like she’s going to rip them off of her wrists.

“It’s not, like, some big thing. You know? Not like anything that’s so weird. I mean, it’s kind of a big thing, but also something we’ve been talking about for a while now, and I think it’s going to be good in its own way, because it will be something I can really use, spiritually and emotionally and in life, you know...”

We have no idea.

Mom’s eyes are wide, and she’s inching one hand closer and closer to her heart and pulling at the fabric of her snowflake pajamas like she’s about to go into cardiac arrest.

I’m stuffing as much food in my mouth as I can, because, whatever half-baked, crazy-ass idea my sister came up with, it’s going to rock this holiday off its damn foundation. I can feel that.

Henry bursts in from his morning run, breathing loud and stretching his leg behind his back to keep his muscles loose.

“What’s going on in here?” He interrupts Paisley’s long-winded explanation and looks back and forth between us.

“I was just saying...”

Before Paisley can go down her long, windy, say-nothing-meaningful road again, I cut her off and jump in. “Paisley’s news. Mom, uh, was asking about her news, and we’re waiting for her to tell it.”

Henry drops his foot and his grin goes from maniacal to shit-eating.

He knows.

Figures. My charming baby brother is an undisputed expert in knowing how to cozy up to anybody and get any information he wants. He’s been that way since he was a tiny kid. For all I know, he’s probably a triple agent working for three superpowers, disguised as baby-faced Henry Murphy, all American kid.

“Great. Sounds great, Pai. Don’t let me stop you.” He grabs a crepe from my plate.

Under any normal circumstances, I would have attempted murder with my fork, but Paisley has thrown us all off kilter.

Dad stomps in at that second. He looks around, growls in my direction, and snaps, “Has anyone seen my cigars? The good ones I kept in the box in the back?”

Based on Henry’s carefully conducted stretching routine and strategically innocent face, I’d be willing to put a sizable wager on the fact that my brother swiped Dad’s cigars and probably made a small fortune off of them on eBay.

When no one answers, my father looks Paisley over and his face wrinkles suspiciously. “What’s going on, pumpkin pie? Why do you look so damn serious?”

“Well...” My sister pulls a long piece of red hair and chews on the ends a little while my mother gasps. It took her three years to break Paisley of that habit. My sister drops her hair and looks around nervously. “Um, I kind of planned to tell you all at dinner.” She laughs weakly. “When Calvin was here with me and we could explain—”

“If that little prick got you pregnant, I will squeeze the life out of his body with my bare hands!” Dad roars.

Henry snickers, obviously enjoying the show, my mother goes pale and grabs onto the back of the ugly yellow kitchen chair, and Paisley shakes her head frantically.

“No! Daddy, no, nothing like that. I’m not pregnant.” In the pause before her next words, everyone but Henry, who already knows whatever Pai’s real news is, lets out a huge sigh of total relief. “But it is about Calvin—”

“Don’t tell me you’re marrying that douche-hole,” I groan.

“Landry, watch your mouth!” my mother cries, but she’s mostly on autopilot, waiting with bated breath for Paisley to just come out with it, whatever the hell it is.

“Dad just called him a prick,” I point out and level my father an understanding look. He crosses his arms and calls a silent truce. For this moment, on the matter of Paisley’s slimy tool of a boyfriend, my father and I stand in solidarity.

“This is your father’s house,” my mother reminds me. Like I need reminding. She glances at my dad and adds, “And you watch your mouth, too, Tommy. No wonder Landry speaks the way he does.”

My dad stands a little taller, like the fact that he passed the unique ability to call a douchebag a douchebag on to me makes him proud. Which crumbles a little more of the hate wall we’re on either side of.

“I’m not getting married,” Paisley mumbles, but this declaration is less emphatic than the last one.

It’s not that I think she’s lying, necessarily.

I just think she might be waiting for old Cal to put a ring on it.

Well, a shiny engagement ring. To replace the lame promise ring that means they can make sheep eyes at each other until we all wanna puke, but they aren’t getting it on. Which is actually a really good thing.

My vomit threshold is really low when it comes to Calvin.

We all wait, arms crossed, faces a mix of gleeful triumph, breathless anticipation, and total confusion with a pinch of disgust.

“Just tell us already, Paisley!” Mom almost shrieks.

“Okay!” Paisley bites her lips, hops from one foot to the other, closes her eyes and says in a mad rush, “I’ve been called. I’ve been chosen. The Lord has blessed me with a clear path and a clear heart and a clear mind.”

My mother puts a hand to her mouth to suffocate the horror, I think.

“Oh, Paisley. Are you sure you want to do the convent thing? Remember how hard it was on Aunt Maryellen? She didn’t get over that for a long time. She always regretted being a nun while she had a good figure. She couldn’t catch a man when she finally left, and that ate at her.”

“Maryellen looked like a stuffed sausage all the time I knew her,” Dad scoffs. “And she couldn’t catch a man because she had the disposition of an eighty-year-old shut-in hypochondriac when she was twenty-five.”

“Not a nun!” Paisley shouts, holding her hands out like she’s surrendering. “Not a nun. No. Okay. Let me just come out and say it. Alright. I’m going to just tell you. Okay. I...” She looks around and clears her throat. “Yes, okay, I have been chosen to go on a year-long mission trip to Chad!”

I can hear Henry breathing heavy from his run. I can hear the shuffle of my mother’s slippers, I assume as she attempts not to faint. I can hear my father’s wordless fury.

Then it all explodes as only a Murphy family catastrophe can.

“Chad?” Dad pounds on the counter with his fist. “What kind of idiot picked Chad? They didn’t need any missionaries in the bowels of Hell? Because I think that would have been a better place!”

“Dad,” Paisely sighs. “It’s not like you can just choose where to go. You’re matched based on your skill set and the needs of people all over the world. Plus, you wanted Henry to go to Kuwait to do that contractor stuff.”

“Henry is a man!” my father fumes, pointing to our little brother, who looks pretty un-mannish with Nutella on either side of his mouth. “Henry would be working with the armed forces around him, Paisley. Those are the people with the big guns. Not a bunch of peaceniks who want to sing Kumbayf*ckingah when shit hits the fan!”

“The other side of the world.” Mom waves a hand in front of her face and her lips tremble. “Really? Is that what you’re thinking? Because there are children right here in America you could be helping, Paisley! People right over the bridge in New York City. Do you know the kind of parasites you can catch in a place like Chad?”

“Yeah!” Henry adds with boneheaded enthusiasm. “Did you see that Discovery Channel show where the guy had the tapeworm that was poking out of his arm? Like, he could see it trying to burrow out under his skin?”

Mom presses the heels of her hands to her eyes and moans before crossing herself and saying a Hail Mary.

Paisley glares at Henry, then reaches for Mom’s hands.

“Please listen, Mom, listen. It’s a whole group. The school we’re going to has been established for years. These people know what they’re doing, I swear. I’ll be just as safe as I would be here.”

My sister’s voice is frantic.

“...blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus...” Mom mutters.

Dad stomps to the door, puts a hand on the knob and announces, “This entire family has gone bat-shit crazy. My father warned me that you kids would be payback for all he’d had to put up with when I was a kid. But never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I’d have kids like you!”

We each get a solid sneer before he slams the door, rattling the glass.

Mom is half-wailing now and has fled the room to find her rosary.

Paisley looks at me, her eyes filled with tears she’s so close to shedding. “Landry? Landry, do you think I’m an idiot for doing this?”

“No, Squirrely.” I put my arms around my sister’s shoulders and rock her back and forth while she cries hard. “Idiotic would be marrying Calvin or agreeing to incubate his demon spawn. What you’re doing is just kind of nutso. But good-hearted nutso.”

She pulls back and wipes the tears away with the back of her wrist. “Yeah?”

And I say the thing I’m always waiting for my parents to say to me, even though I’m an adult, and it shouldn’t f*cking matter.

Because I’m a human, so it does kind of matter. It just does.

“Yeah, Squirrely. It’s good-hearted and brave. Brave as hell. And I’m proud of you. I’m proud that you’re leaving this little Podunk town behind and doing what you’re passionate about. And I feel like those little kids in Chad will be lucky to have someone as amazing as you there with them.”

Paisley knots her arms around my waist and squeezes until I’m sure she’s crushing vital organs. When she talks, her voice is all muffled in my shirt.

“Thank you, Landry. Thank you so much. I knew you’d understand. I knew you’d say what I needed to hear.”

Henry catches the last of her words.

“Hey, I was supportive, too.”

“You told me Calvin would probably get eaten by a lion and made me watch that parasite show with you,” Paisley accuses, her eyes narrowed.

Henry looks at me with a self-congratulatory grin that I can’t help but mirror. “Well, he’s got a point about the lions and Calvin, Squirrely. Your boy isn’t too bright—”

“Or too fast,” Henry adds.

“Or too brave,” I tack on, and we’d have kept going for hours, except that Paisley’s lip trembles all elementary-school tear-fest style, and, before we know it, she’s rushing out of the kitchen and up to her room.

“Nice going, dick-cheese,” Henry says, shaking his head.

“Are you serious? You’re the one who’s telling her that her lameass boyfriend is gonna get mauled,” I point out.

“Yeah, just now I did,” Henry says, slapping the counter in almost the exact place our father pounded his fist a few minutes before. “But I’ve been here, listening to her cry and be all nervous for weeks now. Maybe even months. Where the hell have you been, Landry?”

All jokes are off. Henry stares at me, his eyes accusing.

I flounder for something, anything, to take the pressure off.

“I’ve been in Boston, man. You know that. You coulda come to see me.”

“You could have f*cking invited me,” my little brother lashes out. “I didn’t even have your damn address, dude. What was I supposed to do? Stalk you and just end up on your doorstep? What if you didn’t want me?”

“Who the hell are you? Paisley? Since when did you need me to send you an invitation in the mail with little bows on it before you could come see me? We’re f*cking brothers, Henry.”

We stand across the kitchen from each other, breathing hard, not blinking, pissed as hell.

“Really?” he finally gets out, shaking his head like he can’t believe me. “You’re gonna put all that shit on my shoulders? Like it was my fault. Dude, you really are such a ball sack, it’s unbelievable.”

He smacks the wall on the way out of the kitchen, and I’m left alone, left behind, the remnants of our Christmas Eve brunch turning colder with every passing second. I try to take a bite of crepe, but it’s like ash in my mouth, and I have to throw it down and just sit, surrounded by the rotting remains of the best breakfast to hit the Murphy house all year, alone, secure in the knowledge that every single member of my family thinks I’m a hopeless, idiotic piece of shit do-nothing.

Jingle f*cking bells.