I'm Glad About You(24)

She returned the old-fashioned phone receiver to its cradle in the kitchen and reported back to the audience that had appeared in the kitchen.

“Dennis is having a party tonight.” There were as usual a mob in there—Andrew, Stella, Megan sitting down, Lianne pouring juice for three toddlers, Mom at the stove. Most of them didn’t even hear her. It was the way, finally, you dealt with so many people: You just tuned everything out. Except for Rose, who glanced up from the stove, where every burner was covered with some sort of pot.

“Oh, Dennis!” she said, with a fond interest. She was one of his many fans in high school; whenever he came over to hang out, he flirted with her shamefully. “Where is he living now?”

“You know, I’m not sure. He had a place somewhere over in Clifton for a while, I guess he’s still there.”

“Maybe you should find out where his apartment is before you go to a party there,” Lianne advised. Pure Lianne, Alison thought. Can’t say anything nice, and in such a stupid way.

“He’s house-sitting for his dad right now,” she announced, as if the room in general had inquired as to Dennis’s whereabouts. “In that huge place on Grandin Road.”

“Well, the kids wanted to go to a movie tonight, so I don’t know what the car situation is,” Lianne observed, looking at her mother with a worried parental superiority. Alison wanted to smack her but the truth was that every one of her siblings had assumed that tone one by one, as they started having kids. The unspoken addendum to any sentence being But the kids might need that! Alison and Jeff and Megan, the last unmarried Moores, had frequently rolled their eyeballs at each other whenever someone started indulging in the whole you wouldn’t understand because you don’t have kids line of logic. But Megan was married and pregnant now and Jeff was off in Germany. Alison just had to weather this one alone.

“Well, we have Andrew’s car and Paul’s car and your father’s car,” Rose informed Lianne. “And your car, right?”

“Do we know if Andrew and Paul are doing anything later on? Weren’t some people going to Skyline?”

“Oh, they were going to do that around five, I don’t think that will interfere with movie plans.”

“Well, that’s when we would be going, right around five. They’re little kids, we need to get them home early, Mom. They need to be in the bathtub by seven thirty.”

“How many people were thinking of going?”

“To what, Skyline or the movie?”

“Either one.”

“Well, that’s my point, it sounds to me like everyone is going to one or the other.”

“I don’t think your father is going to want to go to Skyline, or a kids’ movie.”

“Okay, then everyone except Daddy. That’s still everyone.”

“Except for me,” Alison inserted.

“But that’s the point, it’s just you, taking a whole car, which would leave us sort of stranded.”

“Would it?”

“Our car sits eight,” Andrew noted.

“Yes, but you’re going to Skyline. Which will leave us with just one of the vans, and Dad’s car, and Mom’s.”

“And Paul’s car, right?”

“We don’t know what Paul’s doing.”

“If you’re going to the movies at five, it shouldn’t be a problem,” Alison said, trying not to look like her head was about to explode. “I’m sure Dennis is not expecting anyone till at least eight or nine.”

“Well, but we might want to go get a bite after the movie.”

“I thought the whole point was to get the kids home early.” In spite of her best intentions, Alison’s tone shifted into something a shred too aggressive and Lianne bristled. She turned back to the sink, started shoving dishes around loudly, and then she sighed, clearly communicating how selfish she thought Alison was being. Everyone in the room exchanged glances with everyone else while simultaneously avoiding eye contact with Alison, who felt herself immediately in the doghouse for having crossed a line with Lianne even though Lianne was acting like a colossal idiot.

“I think it will be all right,” Megan said. “Who knows how long the movie will take, but Skyline is so fast! Those guys will be in and out in no time. If Alison doesn’t need the car before six thirty, there should be no problem.”

“I don’t think I’m going to need it until eight,” Alison said, trying to sound innocent and reasonable.

“I just think it helps to plan these things out,” Lianne commented. “You didn’t tell us anything about a party until just this second, it would have helped to have some warning.”

“I didn’t know about it until this second.”

“That’s not my fault.”

This could have gone on forever, but the transportation problem was in fact sorted out—everyone made it home from both Skyline and the movie by seven—so there were cars aplenty. Alison took her mother’s, a sky-blue Oldsmobile a shred less massive than all the other vehicles crowding the driveway, and headed across town to the problematic party—problematic in more ways than one—on Grandin Road.





seven





IT WAS HARD to go inside. She stood for a moment, shivering in the December night and wondering what on earth she was going to say to Kyle when she saw him in the middle of a sloppy crowd of drunks, with a total stranger standing next to him as his wife. The last time they had seen each other—almost a year and a half ago now, in Seattle—she had said unforgivable things to him, and then they had made out on her bed with a loveless fury before he abruptly stood and left the room, her apartment, and her life. The morning after this final encounter, as Alison stepped into the shower, she had stopped, in shock, at the sight of her naked body in the bathroom mirror. Her breasts were covered with bruises. He was willing to maul her, but not make love to her, no matter how desperately they both wanted it.