I notice that the porch is already a mess, particularly around Aunt Meggy and Uncle Travis. Travis has somehow managed to drop three entire rolls off his plate, and not bothered to pick any of them up. He has also lost a handful of green beans to the wooden porch floor. He is obviously more concerned with taking care of his beer can than with holding his plate steady. And Aunt Meggy keeps picking food off Aunt Theresa’s plate because she is too lazy to get up and refill her own. While transferring crackers and forkfuls of cheese spread, she has also managed to drop a fair amount of food.
“Can you believe that we have to clean up after these people?” I whisper to Gracie. “I don’t have time to spend a day scrubbing the damn floors. I have work to do.”
Gracie just shakes her head. She seems intent on being quiet to the point of invisibility. She might as well have not shown up. She and I are usually allies at these events. We rarely leave each other’s side. We roll our eyes at each other, and whisper jokes about Uncle Travis and our cousin John. We rescue each other from boring conversations, and from the moments that sometimes arise when one of our aunts or uncles asks a question that is far too personal. But today Gracie has made it clear that she will not engage. I’ve never maneuvered my way through one of these family events without my sister, and I can’t believe she is going to make me start now without so much as an apology.
I turn my back to her and try to pay attention to the stilted group conversation. Uncle Ryan, still patting the arms of his wheelchair, tells us that Dad bought his building, but that it’s all right because he will not have to move out. Uncle Johnny, during the half hour when we are going around the porch giving a sentence or two about how our job/school is going, tells us in excruciating detail about a new super-powered, mega-memoried computer he just bought.
“Mega-memory,” Dina, Meggy’s daughter, says, “just like Lila. A smart computer and a smarty-pants.”
I smile at Dina. This is the other side of our family gathering’s polite conversation—small jabs and burns. Dina is at her third high school in as many years due to disciplinary problems. She is a mean kid, but, by the unspoken rules of the family, she is allowed to cut at me and I’m not allowed to respond. The reason is that I have been more fortunate then she has by drawing Mom as a parent instead of Aunt Meggy. I was raised with money and privileges and Dina was not. So, no matter what Dina says to me, I’m supposed to take it.
To distract myself, I think about the review for my oncology rotation. I give myself thirty seconds to come up with as many different kinds of cancer as possible. Uterine, throat, colon, ovarian, esophageal, cervical, prostate, skin, pancreatic, liver, lung, breast, brain.
The rest of the family gives a forced smile to Dina’s comment, and then the subject is swiftly changed. As in all awkward moments, Mom turns to Uncle Pat, who sits, tall and thin, in the corner of the porch next to Gram, and offers him more food. She doesn’t seem to notice that his plate is still full from the first serving she gave him. Uncle Pat is in his third marriage, to a woman named Louise, but he showed up today alone without an explanation. Gram keeps touching his arm, and Uncle Johnny gives him a wave from the other end of the porch whenever they make eye contact. I think Uncle Pat reminds everyone of Papa, which is ironic since Papa hated Pat. But in a family of nervous, awkward, quiet people, Pat holds his quiet with a kind of peace. I don’t look down on my mom for her idol worship of him. It seems understandable. When I was younger I used to fight my cousins for a seat on Uncle Pat’s lap. I once gave my cousin John three silver dollars out of the silver-dollar collection in my mother’s underwear drawer just so I could sit in the front seat of Uncle Pat’s car when we went for ice cream.
It is Uncle Pat who initiates the next phase in the gathering, which is when the kids separate from the