had reached a point where mess was self-eviscerating.
“There,” said Jennifer, and just the slightest hint of Newfoundland leaked out: “Thar.” The children gathered around, the two girls and Finn, who was wearing fairy wings. The three heads bobbed and sucked the juice, then scattered.
“We made it on this website. I can’t remember what it’s called. Didn’t you get it? Sophie’s head was on the turkey? Olivia’s this big tree—” James and Ana shook their heads, murmuring shared obliviousness. “Oh, darn it. I’ll see if Mike can find it before you go. It was hilarious. I really thought I put you on the list …”
As if summoned, Mike appeared beside his wife. Ana was always struck by their physical similarity, except in opposite sizes. Both had a kind of ruddy plainness, with wide unblinking eyes and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of their noses. Mike was taller than James, though years at the computer had caused him to fold at the neck, collapsing his upper half. Jennifer was the kind of small that made Ana feel gargantuan; she had a little boy body except for her large breasts, breasts that had been feeding babies for years, it seemed. Their eldest, Jake, was sleeping at a friend’s house, a reward for completing a tournament of some kind.
It had been silently agreed, years ago, that James was a bad uncle, not only for lack of trying, but because he couldn’t stay on top of the volume of accomplishment that rushed out of the large brick house. Everyone was gifted. Everyone was a genius. What happened to such people in adulthood? No one ever said: Meet my friend, Dave. He won an award for Best Handwriting. The future pointlessness of all these accolades made it hard for James to respond in the present. Driving home from evenings at Mike and Jennifer’s, fuming, he delivered the same anecdote: “Studies have proven it’s the B students who run the world.” But that morning, when he saw Finn scribble on a piece of cardboard and hold it up for offer, he understood, just a little, the full force of parental pride, the greed for a child’s future. He understood, for the first time, why his brother and his wife bored others so relentlessly.
“Can we help?” Ana asked, nodding toward the woman at the sink, her apron tied tight around her waist, dividing her body like the twisted end of a wrapped candy. The plates from dinner formed a tall pile, tilted at an angle from all the uneaten food between them. The carcass of a large chicken spilled its bones greasily over the edge of a white serving plate.
“Oh God no. That’s what we pay her for. Right, Julie?” said Jennifer. The young, dark-skinned woman looked over and smiled, holding up her yellow washing gloves as evidence.
The four began to walk out of the kitchen, which took a while, passing the large marble island, the rack of gleaming pots and pans raining down from the ceiling.
“Did you get a new countertop? Something’s different,” said Ana, stopping in her tracks.
“You notice everything, Ana,” said Mike, leading her back to the island. “We couldn’t take the granite anymore. It seemed really dated. Maybe it was an indulgence, but we thought, Let’s go marble. Now or never.”
“Now or never” was one of Mike’s favourite expressions. James could never figure out what the hurry was. Mike’s life seemed entirely ungoverned by clocks. He had worked at home for the past few years, since the sale of his company. Once, after an occasion-less bottle of four-hundred-dollar wine, James had asked his brother to describe, in detail, a week in his life. It was worse than James had imagined, involving early morning on-line trades, sailing lessons, an Italian tutor, a trainer. The children were shuttled to and fro by a squadron of nannies and housekeepers. A couple of times a week, Mike did this job himself, to stay “connected.” James thought of him in his luxury minivan with the TV screens blaring, idling as the girls jumped out and ran up the steps to the private French school. He pictured Jake wending his way across the grassy concourse of his Eton-like campus while Mike waved at him at the end of the day, cranking up his $10,000 sound system, listening to music he’d downloaded not because he liked it, but because it appeared on lists as Most Downloaded. Beyoncé. Jack Johnson. Mike had always been without taste, and in James’s eyes,