The Hopefuls(9)

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We were late for dinner, mostly because I spent thirty minutes searching for a dress that I was sure I’d unpacked. Matt helped me look for it, anxiously announcing the time every seven minutes or so, until I finally just pulled another dress out of the closet to wear so that he’d stop acting like a talking alarm clock.

By the time we pulled up, the driveway was full of cars, a telltale sign that we were the last to arrive. I could feel Matt stiffen next to me—he hated being late, even if it was just to his own family’s house. “Sorry,” I said, reaching over to rub his knee. He relaxed and looked over at me. “No worries,” he said, putting his hand on top of mine.

The house where Matt grew up was a large redbrick Tudor with a lawn so green it almost looked fake and rows of white flowering bushes in front. It was such an inviting house, picture perfect, the kind you’d dream about living in one day. And it never failed to amaze me how cheerful and warm it looked from the outside, how different it felt once you went in.

I took a deep breath as we walked in the front door. The two of us almost collided right into Rebecca, who was married to Matt’s oldest brother, Patrick. She was standing in the front hall, holding their two-year-old, Jonah, and bouncing him up and down, saying, “Shhh, you’re okay. You’re okay.” Jonah’s eyes were bright, but he wasn’t crying and he gave us a serious look.

“Hey, buddy,” Matt said. He rubbed Jonah’s cheek with his finger. “Rough day?” Jonah smiled a little and hid his face in Rebecca’s shoulder.

“He fell outside,” Rebecca said, leaning her face into Jonah’s hair. “The older boys were running around and knocked him down.” She sounded accusatory, as if we were responsible for the roughness of the Kelly grandchildren. Then, without saying anything else, she turned away from us, and bounced and shushed Jonah into the living room.

Matt turned to me and raised his eyebrows, and I couldn’t help but smile back. Rebecca was a difficult person to like, and even though I tried to defend her since she was an outlaw like me, it wasn’t easy.

Apparently, when Patrick had announced he was going to propose to Rebecca, Babs gasped and said, “You’re really going to marry that Jewish girl?” Patrick had repeated this to Rebecca (why, I don’t know), and she’d despised Babs ever since. You couldn’t really blame her, I guess.

Now, Babs went out of her way to show everyone that she was completely fine with a Jewish daughter-in-law. Sometimes when she gave a toast at dinner, she’d say, “Mazel,” and raise her glass toward Rebecca. More than once someone burst out laughing, and everyone had to yell “Cheers” and clink glasses loudly to cover it up. It was no surprise that Rebecca often opted out of Sunday dinners, and sent Jonah to the house with Patrick, claiming she had a migraine.

Rebecca also had seasonal affective disorder, which she talked about all the time. It was the third thing she told me about herself when we met. She spent two months a year in Florida, sometimes more. Jonah was an only child (which upset Babs greatly), and Rebecca and Patrick were almost always following him around and trying to get him to eat, as though he was going to starve right there. It wasn’t at all unusual to see one of them crawling on their knees after Jonah, holding a banana or a cereal bar out, saying, “Do you want a ’nana? Take a bite of the ’nana. Take a bite. Try a bite. Just one bite.” And then they’d shake their heads at each other, like they couldn’t believe he wasn’t eating. Being around them for more than an hour made you consider never having children, just in case there was a small chance you’d turn into them.

We walked into the kitchen and found Babs talking to the housekeeper, Rosie, about the dinner. Babs never really cooked, just gave instructions, but from the way she talked, you’d think she prepared it all herself. Rosie had worked for the Kellys for more than twenty years, and I often wondered how she managed to listen to Babs talk without screaming.

When Babs saw us, she put her palm up to Rosie in a “stop talking” motion, even though Rosie hadn’t been the one talking. “There you are,” Babs said. “I was wondering why you were so late. I was beginning to worry.”

“Sorry,” Matt said, “traffic was bad,” at the same time I said, “It was my fault.”

“I figured,” Babs said, and I had a feeling it was me she was answering. She held my arms and kissed my cheek. “The girls are out back,” she said, which meant, leave the kitchen. “There’s some wine open on the bar.”

I headed over to pour myself a glass of white wine, and watched as Babs pulled Matt toward her. “How’s the job?” she was saying. “How’s it going? Tell me everything.” She made it no secret that Matt was her favorite. His brothers called him the Golden Child or sometimes the Chosen One. At first, I thought this was kind of mean, but then I heard Babs talk for fifteen minutes about how Matt once loaded the dishwasher without her asking, and I totally got it.

“It’s just because I’m the youngest,” Matt said once.

“You’re not the youngest,” I said. Meg was the youngest by far—almost ten years younger than Matt.

“You know what I mean,” he said, like it wasn’t a big deal he’d just disregarded his sister’s existence. “The youngest boy.”

I carried my wine out to the patio, where Jenny and Nellie (who were married to Matt’s brothers, Michael and Will, respectively) were sitting on wicker chairs, drinking their own glasses of wine. Behind them, their husbands were throwing a football around with their boys, and their daughters, Grace and Lily, were sitting cross-legged on the ground a little ways away, braiding friendship bracelets. It was a rule at the Kellys’ that none of the kids were allowed to have any screen time, and the girls almost always had a craft with them.