There was an insult hiding in there, but I wasn't about to go find it.
"Sam designs multimillion dollar homes and supervises the construction, Agapi," Tiel said. Ah. Thatwasher sister. "One of his houses was featured inVoguelast month."
To be fair, it was the internet start-up billionaire whose home I restored that was featured inVoguein last month. The accompanying photo shoot took place at the Manchester-by-the-Sea home, and there was a brief reference to our restoration of the property.
But I knew what Tiel was doing. I liked seeing her step up to the plate for me.
Agapi nodded, taking this in, and pointed at Tiel with her glass. "What are you doing now? I know you said you hadthings going onand that was why youdidn't want tomind Anatola while I was at the restaurant, so…did you find work? Or are you just focused on wedding planning now?"
Okay, my turn. This bitch was going down.
"Tiel has quite a bitgoing on. She's one of the top music therapy professors in Boston," I said, "and her research has been used as the gold standard in early intervention for children on the autism spectrum. There aren't enough hours in the day for all the private therapy and consulting requests she gets."
She caught my eye, and the corner of her lips tipped up into a small, shy smile.
"I thought you were a kindergarten teacher," one of her cousins said. She was either Nicola or Nicolina, also known as Nicki or Nikki, and that wasn't confusing at all. She turned to Mrs. Desai. "Where did I hear that?"
Mrs. Desai pressed her palms together as she lifted her shoulders. "We never hear from you," she said to Tiel. "And you're always between jobs. How can we possibly keep up with your life?"
Vikram was seated at the far end of the table, and if he was listening to this bullshit, it didn't show. In the few hours that we'd been here, it was clear that was his standard operating procedure. He was pleased to see Tiel and showed a reasonable amount of hospitality toward me, but either didn't notice or didn't care about the quips, barbs, and thorny comments lobbed in her direction.
My patience for that shit was thinning.
I was ready to throw down for my girl, and it didn't matter to me whether it got me tossed out on my ass because I already knew this shindig wasn't ending with a group hug. Call it cynicism, call it pessimism, call it whatever the fuck you wanted. Every horseman of the dysfunctional family apocalypse was accounted for, and Tiel's mother, the queen shit-stirrer, was itching to unleash them.
"There's so much demand for Tiel's music therapy expertise that she's often pulled in many directions," I said. "She's sought-after in her field."
That explanation didn't work for Mrs. Desai. She shook her head and scowled at her plate. "Music therapy," she repeated. "Is that like physical therapy?"
"They're similar," Tiel said. She was busy chasing food around her plate, but I hadn't seen her take a bite yet. "Like physical therapy, it is often used as a complement to medical and educational interventions, although music therapy is expressive in nature and physical therapy is not. My work usually integrates the Nordoff-Robbins approach to accommodate children across all levels of functionality."
The table, including the two folding tables extending this gathering across the hall and into the living room, fell silent.
"That sounds like some new age shit," Agapi's husband, Tony, said. He was the butcher, and from my brief conversation with him, I determined that he enjoyed discussing two topics: meat and the Philadelphia Eagles. That didn't leave us with much to talk about.
"We're in my mother's house, watch your language," Agapi hissed. She turned back to Tiel. "Why would someone need music therapy? Like, what does that do? What's the point?"
"Whatever the point needs to be," Tiel said. "Some kids need to work on anxiety. Others need help learning how to stabilize their moods or increase their tolerance for frustration. Some are non-verbal and others don't speak much, and they need to develop tools for self-expression. There's no one prescription; it's whatever they need."
"I'm with Tony. That's some hippie-dippie-fruity-crunchy business," yet another cousin, Penny, said. "It's like the people who believe in crystals and chakras. If you put a rock on my body, it's not going to do anything. How could it?"
"People pay for this?" Nicolina-or-Nicola asked. "Wouldn't listening to the radio do the same thing, but free?"
"It's a little more complex than that," I said. "And Tiel's hourly rate is quite high."
"It must be nice to have that kind of cash sitting around," another cousin, Demitria, said. "My kids better not need that stuff. We've got a brand new house and a mortgage to pay. No room for singing kumbaya and beating drums, or whatever you're talking about. Kids need to toughen up. They're not all special stars."
"Plenty of kids are very special stars," Tiel said. "They just need people who can help them shine."
"Nope, kids need more discipline. I got the belt, and look at me. I turned out fine," one of the husbands—Stavros-call-me-Stav—said. I couldn't keep track of who went together.
"I think you're doing important work," one of the aunts, Daphne, said. "You just never know what will make a difference, and sometimes you have to try everything."
Another cousin—I think that one was Irene—pointed at us, wagging her fork. "What about you? You're an architect, so you're building a house, right? You know, for when you're married? You better get to work on having kids soon." She aimed her fork at Tiel. "That clock is ticking, and you're not getting any younger. My neighbor's daughter-in-law waited until she was thirty-two, and ended up spending fifty grand on fertility treatments. They didn't even have a baby; they ended up divorced."
I wanted to snatch every one of those words from the atmosphere and steal them far away from Tiel. She didn't need this woman loading her up with baby anxiety, not when I knew she was already loading it on herself.
And yes,of courseI knew she was stressed about trying to conceive. Few were those who recognized the perfectionism in her, as they were often distracted by her rambling and rainbow-inspired attire. But I knew there was no prodigy without a thick thread of perfection. Tiel was well-acquainted with hard work, but she was also accustomed to getting good at things quickly.
