I was kind of lying when I said I had plans, except that it turned out I really did have plans, I just hadn’t known about them. That night, Luke informed the rest of the family that he’d invited the Marquands over for a barbecue on Sunday, which was the day before Labor Day and two days before the start of school. Aaron was flying in on Saturday, so he’d be coming with them.
I spent a long time getting ready for that barbecue. I washed my hair that morning and scrunched it under a diffuser so it was just about as curly as it could get—which was pretty ridiculously curly—and used some gel that made the copper highlights catch the light. Since it was still super hot and we were planning on swimming, I put on my favorite dark-red bikini and covered that with a floaty, transparent printed dress.
As I was leaving my room, I heard Jacob calling out from his and checked on him. He was just waking from a nap. Mom had recently moved him from his crib to a small bed that looked like a race car, but he never got out of it by himself, just sat up and cried until someone rescued him, like he’d always done in the crib.
“Hey, baby dude,” I said, and picked him up. His diaper felt heavy through his shorts. He wasn’t anywhere close to being toilet trained yet—since he didn’t talk or seem to understand all that much, it was hard to explain the whole potty concept to him. “Have a nice nap?”
He rubbed his forehead against my bare shoulder and I nuzzled his sweat-damp hair. I liked him best like this, right after a nap, when he was all drowsy and cuddly.
“We’re going to have a barbecue,” I told him. “Hot dogs. I know you like hot dogs. And Daddy will be home all day. Fun, right?”
He didn’t react, just rested against me, breathing lightly.
“We have guests coming over. You remember Michael? And Crystal? And little baby Mia?” I was never sure what he understood and what he didn’t. Sometimes it seemed like your words meant nothing to him and then all of a sudden he’d go and grab something you were just talking about and bring it to you. “Let’s find you something special to wear.” I pulled a shirt out of his drawer.
Instantly he started arching back in my arms—so violently that I almost dropped him—and shaking his head and making a low moaning sound that I knew would turn to screaming in a second if I wasn’t careful.
“Sorry,” I said, dumping him back on the bed. I quickly crammed the shirt into the dresser. “It had buttons. I know. Forget that. See? All gone now.”
Jacob had a button phobia. And of course he couldn’t tell us why.
I changed his diaper and helped him into blue board shorts and a soft white T-shirt—clothing he approved of—and carried him downstairs.
Mom was in the kitchen, getting instructions from Carlos, our part-time chef, who had come in early to make a bunch of salads and marinate the meat. “If you dress the lettuce salad too soon, it will get soggy,” he was telling her when we walked in. “But you want the dressing to tenderize the kale salad for at least half an hour. In fact, I think I’ll put it on right now—it won’t hurt and you might forget.”
“Yes, do that,” Mom said cheerfully. “I’ll definitely forget.” She was wearing a navy blue maxi sundress and a pair of amazing sparkling sandals. I eyed those sandals covetously and decided I would borrow them soon.
I put Jacob down and he ran over to Mom and hugged her legs.
“Hey, baby,” she said, absently patting his head while she glanced around the kitchen. “Where are the hot dog buns?”
“In the bag on the table. Whole wheat.” Carlos was bald, but shaved bald, and his eyes were younger than his mouth and chin. He was somewhere between forty and sixty, but I had no idea where. He came twice a week and cooked lots of dishes, which he left in the refrigerator so we could heat them up whenever we wanted a meal; he also prepared food for special events like this. “I wanted to get sea bass for the fish but I didn’t like the way theirs looked, so I got cod instead. I made a romesco to go with it. All Luke has to do is grill it and then put the sauce on. But tell him not to overdo it. Fish should always be slightly undercooked. Now, let’s talk about the corn.”
“As fascinating as this is . . .” I said, and left them to it.
nine
I deliberately didn’t run downstairs when I heard the guests arrive. I took my time, not wanting to seem too eager to see Aaron—I knew that Luke and Michael were into the idea of matching us up and didn’t want to encourage them. It was one thing for me to joke about how he was my future husband and another thing for them to try to make it true.
I waited about ten minutes, and by the time I came down, they’d all already traipsed through the house and gone out back.
In addition to an enormous lawn, the swing set Jacob loved so much, an Olympic-sized pool, a hot tub that could fit fifteen people, a guesthouse, and a still-under-construction combination exercise and screening room, we had an entire outdoor kitchen and living room in the backyard. I think Luke enjoyed the idea of himself grilling slabs of meat like any American dad, but I kind of doubted that most American fathers had the setup he did: a built-in propane-fed grill, a wood-fired pizza oven, a full-sized outdoor refrigerator, an ice cream freezer/fountain—complete with spouts for hot fudge and caramel—and a farmhouse sink with hot and cold running water.
“Is this a thing?” I said to Mom when the real estate agent first walked us through the house and grounds almost four years ago. “Do people have stuff like this?”
“Not many,” she said.
“Come the revolution, we are so guillotined.”
“I’ll show them photos from the studio you and I shared back in Philadelphia,” she said. “They’ll let us go.”
Luke was busily firing up the grill when I joined everyone outside. Jacob was relaxing in Mom’s arms, gently wiggling his fingers in front of his eyes. (He liked to do that. Lorena called it “making pictures in the air.”) Michael and Crystal were talking to Mom, and Aaron was watching Megan the nanny give baby Mia a bottle. Apparently the Marquands didn’t go anywhere without her.