Lock and Key(81)

I glanced behind me, wondering how on earth she could have known for sure it was me. “He felt horrible,” I said. “You could tell.”

“I know.” She shut the oven, tossing a potholder onto the island. From the living room, I could hear people talking over one another, their voices excited. Cora glanced over at the noise. “Sounds like they like it.”

“Did he really think they wouldn’t?”

She shrugged. “People are weird about family stuff, you know? ”

“Really?” I said as I slid onto a stool by the island. “I wouldn’t know a thing about that.”

“Me either,” she agreed. “Our family is perfect.”

We both laughed at this, although not nearly loudly enough to drown out the merriment from the next room. Then Cora turned back to the oven, peering in through the glass door. “So,” I said, “speaking of family. What does it mean to you?”

She looked at me over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s a project for school. I’m supposed to ask everybody.”

“Oh.” Then she was quiet for a moment, her back still to me. “What are people saying?”

“So far, different things,” I told her. “I haven’t made a lot of headway, to be honest.”

She moved down to the stove, lifting up a lid on a pot and examining the contents. “Well, I’m sure my definition is probably similar to yours. It would have to be, right?”

“I guess,” I said. “But then again, you have another family now.”

We both looked into the living room. From my angle, I could see Jamie had put the blown-up ad on the coffee table, and everyone else was gathered around. “I guess I do,” she said. “But maybe that’s part of it, you know? That you’re not supposed to have just one.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well,” she said, adjusting a pot lid, “I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jamie’s family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I’ll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jamie.”

Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie’s gaffe. “You will,” I said.

She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. “I hope so. But that’s just the thing, right? Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else. Even that picture of Jamie’s family was only the true representation for that one day. By the next, something had probably changed. It had to.”

In the living room, I heard a burst of laughter. “That’s a good definition,” I said.

“Yeah? ”

I nodded. “The best yet.”

Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn’t actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone’s eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.

I looked into the living room, where Jamie’s mom was now alone on the couch, the ad spread out on the table in front of her. When I joined her, she immediately scooted over, and for a moment we both studied the ad in silence.

“Must be kind of weird,” I said finally. “Knowing this is going to be out there for the whole world to see.”

“I suppose.” She smiled. Of all of them, to me she looked the most like Jamie. “At the same time, I doubt anyone would recognize me. It was a long time ago.”

I looked down at the picture, finding her in the center in her white dress. “Who were these women?” I asked, pointing at the elderly women on each side of her.

“Ah.” She leaned forward, a little closer. “My great-aunts. That’s Carol on the far left, and Jeannette, next to her. Then Alice on my other side.”

“Was this at your house?”

“My parents’. In Cape Cod,” she said. “It’s so funny. I look at all those children in the front row, and they’re all parents themselves now. And all my aunts have passed, of course. But everyone still looks so familiar, even as they were then. Like it was just yesterday.”

“You have a big family,” I told her.

“True,” she agreed. “And there are times I’ve wished otherwise, if only because the more people you have, the more likely someone won’t get along with someone else. The potential for conflict is always there.”

“That happens in small families, too, though,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, looking at me. “It certainly does.”

“Do you know who all these people are, still?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Every one.”

We were both quiet for a moment, looking at all those faces. Then Elinor said, “Want me to prove it?”

I looked up at her. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

She smiled, pulling the photo a little closer, and I wondered if I should ask her, too, the question for my project, get her definition. But as she ran a finger slowly across the faces, identifying each one, it occurred to me that maybe this was her answer. All those names, strung together like beads on a chain. Coming together, splitting apart, but still and always, a family.