Family Affair (8 page)

“Do you think … No, I shouldn’t say,” Ginny says.

“Spill it,” I growl.

“I know what she’s thinking,” Trish says. “And you know, she could be right….”

“Can we cut the cryptic crap and let Layla in on the lightbulb?” I say to the pair, who seem to have discovered a new continent they don’t want anyone to know about.

“She’s talking in third person,” Trish says to Ginny. “Nice alliteration, though. Tell her, Mom.”

Ginny inches her chair toward mine, and I start to get nervous. She takes my hand in hers and smiles at me, which only magnifies the tension. “Honey?” she says.

“Yeah?” I reply, eyebrows raised. And then she inches closer and hugs me.

“Oh my God, Mom, can you
be
more annoying?” Trish spouts. Then she turns to me and suggests, “Brett wants to have a baby.”
He does?

“He does? Did he tell you that?” I ask, as I try to process what they’re saying—and yes, it does kind of make sense. Before he proposed to me he
was
extra-sensitive and almost snappy, though not in a mean way, just tense. The fact that he’s become an almost unbearable ass now could simply be a reprise of that otherwise joyous time. After all, a baby’s a new beginning.

“I think so, sweetheart,” Ginny says. “He’s probably thinking about starting a family of your own, and he’s gathering the courage to bring it up.”

“Wow,” I say.

“I’m gonna be an aunt!” Trish cheers.

“Easy there, Tee,” I say. “Let’s not put the crib before the epidural.”

“No wallpaper borders,” Trish remarks darkly. “We can stencil, maybe.”

“Oh!” Ginny squeals, eyes watery. “You and Brett will have the most beautiful children.”

“Children,” she said. Plural. Little baby Fosters. Little Bretts and Laylas. The more I think about it, the more I like it. It’s weird, I never was one of those girls who thought about her biological clock; in fact, maybe mine’s broken since I am… nearing thirty, but my alarm hasn’t rung. Yet now that they bring it up, it feels right. Coming from such a small family—if I can even call our party of two that—I always knew I’d want to marry into a big family and probably have kids, but I never knew it would happen. I just got lucky with the Fosters. And making a baby with Brett would be the first real blood tie I had to my last name.

As if on cue, the moment I really start to settle into the glorious thought of Brett and me and baby makes three, an infant at the next table starts wailing.

Two things I hate: people who don’t just come out and say what they mean, and strawberry anything. And also when something that’s supposed to be simple and a break from the grind becomes a clusterfuck. So that’s three.

Each year brings the Foster Family Autumn Barbecue—some say Famous, but I’ve taken to saying Notorious—and Layla’s famous (I say notorious) strawberry-rhubarb pie, made with strawberries and rhubarb that she grows in a scrubby patch of dirt in our backyard. It was charming for a while, her playing Young MacDonald in the back forty square feet, but like all things charming, it eventually started to irritate the shit out of me. I don’t want to sound like an asshole; it’s not the idea of growing things in the backyard that gets me. It’s the sanctimony, the “look at me.” And then she puts strawberries in everything. Strawberry shortcake, strawberry cheesecake, strawberries and cream. I swear, one cold night we had strawberry stew. I know everybody else in my family loves the stuff and eats it up, but what about me? I’ve given up saying anything, because it does no good. I just live with it.

The family barbecue is something of a legend around town. Mostly because there are only nine Fosters—my mom and dad,
Scott, Trish, and me; Layla (Foster in name only); and then my dad’s brother, Nate, his wife, Allison, and their daughter, Lucy—yet our little event has over the years morphed into a block party for practically all of Los Angeles.

Nate and Allison are crunchy granola folks. Allison refused to go to a hospital when Lucy was being born and gave birth underwater with a midwife and a lot of bad music playing. They believe in holistic medicine only, which essentially means
no
medicine. Lucy wasn’t even vaccinated, and she’s never had a shot in her life. I guess if she’s healthy, that’s all that matters, and she is. I call it dumb luck. Just not to their faces.

Now, I’m not one to judge—or, rather, I try to keep my observations mostly to myself—but they don’t feed the girl breakfast. They give her chicken noodle soup or purees of vegetables and brown rice in the morning. That’s
not
breakfast. I mean, that’s just un-American. As a favorite uncle, I find it my duty to corrupt her whenever possible. Therefore, the barbecue is one of her favorite days of the year.

But we’re not why it’s legendary. Rather, it’s because the entire neighborhood and several crashers from adjacent neighborhoods come every year, resulting in the transformation of Riverside Park into the Foster “Extended Family” Zoo. It’s become not just a family tradition but a local convention, so busy that food trucks and vendors show up like clockwork and generally make a killing.

Layla and I roll up to Riverside Park at eleven-thirty a.m., and it’s already packed. She’s telling me again about this great deal for her and my sister, something about PETCO maybe franchising her photo-booth rights, but it doesn’t sound like it’s set in stone yet. I nod, thinking I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m still thinking about my team’s last game and how they’re not doing as well this year as last.

I bust out my mitt and head over to the baseball diamond as Layla heads toward my dad’s annual poker game. Layla’s been a
part of that game since we were juniors in high school, and she and my dad’s friends take their card playing
very
seriously. As seriously as anyone can take a poker game where there’re potato-salad droppings on the table.

Layla says that they all have certain tells and she knows when someone’s bluffing nine times out of ten. She says my dad purses his lips and flares his nostrils and tries to look worried when he has a good hand. When he has a bad hand he massages his earlobe and smiles. Get it? He does the
opposite
. She says that Crazy John DeMarco will hum Sinatra when he has shit for a hand to bluff happiness, and if he’s quiet he may actually have something. Elvis Presley songs can go either way. Rick Bennett keeps looking at his cards if they’re bad, and looks around the table if they’re good. And so on. I think she’s full of crap—but then again, there’s a reason I’m not part of the game, which involves a serious losing streak that began as soon as I started playing and ended when I retired. I prefer my sports to require the movement of all four limbs, anyway. I don’t even consider poker a sport, honestly, though the poker activists insist that it is. And with all the money it’s generating these days—as was the case with the British Empire, the sun never sets on Texas Hold ’Em—I guess they can call it whatever the hell they want.

“Your wife is taking Dad
downtown,”
Scott says when I return from the baseball game, with a head nod to signal that he’s impressed. As if that would be a shock. As I said, Layla is Scotty’s dream girl. Unfortunately, she’s also his sister-in-law, so
that
ain’t gonna happen. It’s sweet, though. Sometimes when I see the way he looks at her, it reminds me of what I have. He’s measured every girl he’s ever dated against the Layla stick, and sadly, few measure up for more than a couple months.

“I know, little bro. She’s the wind beneath your wings.”

Scott takes my cue and starts to sing the tired Bette Midler classic. “‘Did you ever know that you’re my’—hey! How awesome would that be for a gyro commercial?” he asks, all excited.

“Like the Greek sandwich?” I question. “Did you ever know that you’re my
gyro?”
“It’s genius.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Except
not.”
“Put down the Hateorade, dude. That is gold!”

“They don’t make commercials for gyros.”

“Because they don’t know me,” Scott says. “Maybe that’s my new career.”

“Writing commercials for products that don’t advertise?”

“Milk advertises!” he says. “It’s not a brand of milk. Just milk. And cheese does. In fact, so does soup. ‘Soup is good food’?”

“That’s Campbell’s,” I correct.

“Milk still does,” Scott points out, with a little less oomph than before. Then he mutters, “And so does cheese.”

I’m already over the picnic. I’m ready to go home and have a nice quiet day with my wife. Maybe we can get over the tension that’s been dogging us lately with some time on the couch. And on the kitchen table. And on the rug. It’s hard not to get bored having sex with the same person year after year, but I will say this: Layla rocks the bedroom when she wants to. She and I always had sparks. Which is probably why I get so frustrated with the way things are now. Because they were so mind-blowing once upon a time and they’ve really faded.

But when I glance over at Layla and catch her laughing—no doubt at one of my dad’s stupid jokes (the newest one’s about a beer, a mop, and a skeleton who can’t hold his liquor)—I know I’ll be stuck here all day. She’s got Lucy on her lap, and she’s throwing a disgusting mud-and-saliva soaked tennis ball for Sammy Davis Junior, my parents’ black Lab-terrier mix. She looks over to Scott and me and smiles.

Great
. I guess we’re skipping the table and the rug tonight. What a surprise. She’s going to want to stick around for the long haul.

Layla is a goddess. Her hair—Jesus, it’s like you expect it to be fake. It’s sumptuous, like on a Botticelli or a Titian. But if you pull it, it’s real. Because I have. And her little fingertips? They have no creases. Like she’s carved from stone. But they’re not cold or stiff or anything. Pygmalion made her; then she kicked him in the nuts, ran away, and developed a personality.

Layla is a
goddess
. I’ve spent more hours sketching her face than any art project I ever had in school. How the fuck did my dumbshit brother get so lucky?

I don’t know which I hate more: the fact that I didn’t get her or the fact that he did.

At least she and Brett stuck around for the whole barbecue. I could tell he was anxious to take off.

I’m feeling thoroughly maternal. I’m hyperaware of my ovaries. It’s unreal. I guess that’s the power of suggestion. So because I want to try harder, because I want to surprise Brett with unwarranted sweetness, and because it’s Wednesday, I decide to bake brownies and bring them to his team at school. I’ve perfected the brownie. If I wasn’t about to get rich off our pet photo booths, I would totally be the next Mrs. Fields.

Brooke stops by on her way to her job interview and relentlessly makes fun of me for baking.

“You are so lame,” she says.

“Stop sweet-talking me like I’m your boss,” I tease. “How many jobs have you lost in the last two years?” Brooke, for some strange reason, keeps taking jobs as a personal assistant, yet she has the worst attitude and personal skills of anyone I’ve ever known. She doesn’t quite match the whole phone-answering, errand-running job description, so she’s constantly getting fired.

“What I was going to say, if you hadn’t so rudely cut me off, is that you are so lame if you don’t let me have one of those brownies.”

I fill Brooke in on the latest news, particularly the possible
PETCO deal, the forms Trish and I filled out to apply for loans, and Brett maybe wanting a child. She goes off on another rant.

“Jesus, really? You, too? You’re already Miss Married. Can
one
of my friends not get pregnant and move to New Jersey?”

“First of all,” I say, “I’m not pregnant. The idea is that we will potentially discuss it and maybe start trying. And second … New Jersey? Why the hell would I move to New Jersey?”

“I don’t know,” she says, with a wave of her hand. “My friend Lily did that. I never saw her again.”

“I couldn’t care less about Lily, or Rosemary, or the Jack of Hearts,” I say.

Brooke just looks at me, confused.

“Do you not own
Blood on the Tracks?”
I ask. “Never mind. I promise you I will never move to Jersey,” I solemnly swear. “I think only New Yorkers do that, anyway.”

“Thank you. May I please have a brownie?”

“You may. But take it to go; I gotta hit the road. Good luck on your interview. Try not to tell them you got fired last time for calling the boss’s wife a fat cow.”

Brooke shrugs. “She was.”

• • •

I show up like Susie Homemaker with my basket of goodies at the end of Brett’s practice, and as I scan the sea of would-be brownie munchers (way to turn something completely innocent and make it sound eight kinds of
wrong)
, I hope I made enough. I do the math in my head: I made three pans and cut three rows in each, divided those into six sections, which made eighteen per pan times three is fifty-four brownies, minus the three I put aside for Brett and the one that Brooke snatched, equals a total of fifty. I think Brett usually has around forty-five guys, so provided the team hasn’t grown, I’m good.

As I walk onto the field, secure in my math and brownie-to-player ratio, I notice a female form in front of me. Granted, college
girls do not look like college girls anymore—at least they don’t look like we did when
I
was in college—but there is a seriously stacked girl out there.

My approach goes unnoticed by Brett, but one of his dutiful players tips him off.

“Coach,” he says, and when Brett looks up, the kid nods in my direction.

“Hey, you,” he says, as he gives me a one-armed hug. “Come to photograph a different breed of animal?”

“Yes,” I say, as I pull back the plastic wrap atop my basket. “The eating habits of the UCCC Condors. I know they’re carnivores, but I come in peace to tempt them with chocolate.” Then I lean in and talk out of the corner of my mouth. “There are three more for you at home.”

“Well, I have to say this is … unexpected. Definitely.” Brett half smiles and gives me a look, and then he takes the basket and holds it up to the team. “My lovely and loving wife has brought me treats. Her world-renowned death-by-chocolate brownies. I know you girls are all trying to watch your figures, but if any of you step up and actually show me the hustle”—and here he jams an entire brownie into his mouth, then speaks with his throat full and teeth streaked with chocolate—“I mi’ be willug to share nem.”