“It’s top secret,” Quinn says for me. “I barely even know any of the details.”
“How mysterious,” Bradley says in a lawyerly deadpan. His sandy-blond hair is slicked back with product and he’s wearing a crisp, charcoal blazer. He’s five years older than me, but he looks younger thanks to a multi-step skincare routine and a hundred-dollar haircut.
Mom says, after wiping her mouth on her fabric napkin, “You can’t tell us anything?”
I bobble my head. “I can tell you that it would be a pivot for me.”
This grabs Dad’s interest. “Am I hearing that there’s law school in your future? Finally reconsidering? You’re not too old, you know.”
“No, it’s… it’s still in the same realm that I’ve been working in, Dad,” I say. Even if that’s a stretch. A big one.
“You’re so young. Don’t go making any big changes,” says Mom. “Carver & Associates is such a great firm.Sucha great firm. The internet says so!”
The name of my former place of employ makes my neck hot and my hands clammy. “I know, but…”
“Is it a different firm? Were you poached?” Dad asks. Reading between the lines, I can tell he believes this to be the only suitable reason to leave by choice. And I’m not about to tell him it happened by force. My family has very strong opinions about work and money. Because work and money equate to success, and success allows you to keep up appearances, and appearances, in our neck of New Jersey, are everything.
“No, it’s nothing like that. But it would require us to relocate for a year.”
“Relocate? Not far I hope,” Mom says, aghast.
The farthest away possible,I think. But Dad speaks before I can respond.
“What about the house? I suppose you expect us to come and check up on it if you take this new post?” Dad seems annoyed by this. Even though he was the one that told me that as soon as I could I should invest in real estate. He’s how I got the idea for me and Quinn to take our honeymoon fund and turn it into a starter-house fund instead. An idea that soured faster than milk, considering Quinn hates this place.
I learned more about Quinn last night than I have in the last year. Have we not been talking? Or have I just not been listening?
“No, of course not. We’d work that out.” I look to Quinn, who is busy staring down at his plate. Not eating. Not speaking. Maybe not even blinking.
Dad sets his fork down. “Well, son, I guess you know what’s best for you.” His words are unconvincing at best and sarcastic at worst.
“And I suppose it’s okay if you move for a year. Yes, I suppose it’s okay. As long as you’re back for Christmas,” Mom adds, eyes brimming with worry. As if, at any point, I was asking for their permission. They must sense that I crave it. Even if I’m too old for that.
I chuckle once more to try and lighten the mood. “That’s the one day a year IknowI’d have off.”
Interrupting the moment, Quinn’s phone starts ringing. Mom’s gaze transfers to Quinn with irritation. She’s a stickler about phones at the table. Always has been.
“Sorry, everybody,” Quinn says. He’s clearly a little embarrassed as he stands up from his chair. “It’s my mom. She wasn’t supposedto call this early. I’ll just, uh, run upstairs and take this.” He does a little dip and exits the room. His napkin was still on his lap when he left, so it flutters to the floor in his wake like a lilting white flag of surrender. I scoop it up and set it on his chair.
Mom exhales heavily before returning to her meal. The only sounds for a long while are the clanking of utensils and people chewing. Until Angelica pipes up.
“Did I mention I gotthreenew dresses?”
“You did,” Nan says. “Now hush up and eat your ham before it gets cold.”
19MOTHER, MAY I?QUINN
I shut myself in our bedroom and answer the call.
“Hi, Mom,” I say into the phone, summoning cheeriness. “Merry Christmas.”
On the other end, there’s loud chatter and the clinking of slot machines as coins spew out of their mouths. When Mom and Dad divorced after a shotgun wedding and twelve miserable years of “making it work,” Mom moved us south to be closer to the beach and Philadelphia, where her family is originally from. She got a job working as a cocktail waitress in one of the casinos on the Atlantic City boardwalk. I spent a lot of Saturday afternoons in that casino food court, reading books and eating floppy, undercooked pizza.
Mom always said she liked the fast-paced nature of the work at the casino, but I have to wonder how true that holds when you have to work on Christmas Day. Not that she’d be here if she wasn’t working. Mom loves Patrick, don’t get me wrong, but aside from our wedding day, where she put on her best show, she is vehemently anti-Hargrave. She thinks they think they’re better than her, when in reality, I’m pretty sure they don’t think about her at all, which I guess is its own kind of slight.
“Merry Christmas, my baby. Sorry I’m calling early.”
“That’s okay,” I say, happy to have had an excuse to leave the dining room, which was growing stuffier by the second.
