Gram spoke with a gentle air of apology, but Pat still took the comment hard. No one else would have been able to tell, but our years of family gatherings have boiled down to hours of studying one another locked in either awkward silence or awkward conversation. We all watch Pat’s shoulders draw back. We know he will leave soon. The party is just about over.
Gram puts her plate down on the floor beside her foot. She has seen the sign, too. She’d better say what she has to say before her audience disperses. “While you all finish your meal, and before we eat the lovely cookies my grandchildren have made, I’d like to say a few words.” She folds her hands in her lap. “I want to thank each of you for coming. It has been a few years since we’ve all been together as a complete group, and this gathering was important to me. I think it is important for us as a family. Since Patrick died our family has drifted—”
With the mention of Papa’s name, whatever is frozen in Pat freezes a little deeper. Perched on the folding chair, he looks as if you’d have to use an ice pick to get at anything living inside him. This unnerves me, because I suddenly realize that I have this tendency in myself. I know I have looked like Pat does right now, frozen and locked away, unreachable. I know that deep in there he probably feels smug and safe. But he’s wrong. He’s not safe; he’s dead. I don’t want to look like that. I don’t want to be sitting like a Popsicle on a folding chair in the middle of this family when I am fifty, completely alone, with no kids and no husbands who stick.
“Are you all right?” Gracie whispers.
I look down and see that my knees are shaking. My legs look like they want to dance. I shake my head, neither affirmative nor negative.
Gram says, “I want that drifting to stop. If I have to continue to force you all to come together like I did this time, I will. But there will come a time when I won’t be here, and you’ll have to gather, or disband, on your own.”
“I knew Mom was sick,” Theresa says in a shrill voice.
“You don’t need to talk like this, Mother,” Mom says, but whereas Theresa sounded scared, Mom sounds annoyed.
I stare at my knees. I watch them shake, and wonder what I should do to make them stop.
“I am not sick,” Gram says. “But I am an old woman. I have been fortunate to live for as long as I have. I’m not trying to upset you children. I just need to tell you what it is that I want.”
“What do you want, Mother?” Ryan looks prepared to get up out of his wheelchair and give it to her.
“I want this family to come back together. I want us to know each other, and to help each other. I think it is very important, especially now that we have a new baby on the way.”
This stops my knees from dancing. I look up. I feel the ripple of wonder and curiosity pass around the room, from folding chair to folding chair. Gracie’s fingernails bite into my arm.
The mood in the room changes. Everyone looks—gradually, unbelievably—hopeful. Mom’s grin lurks around the corners of her mouth. Pat’s eyes are blue again; there has been a slight thaw. Theresa balances herself on the edge of the couch. Dina has lost her bored smirk. I see the McLaughlins’ thinking, collectively, with wonder, A new baby.
Gram goes on. “This child is a second chance for us as a family. I want to get together every holiday from now on, and maybe once a month as well. If that seems like too much, then perhaps once a season would suffice.”
No one is listening to Gram. All they care about now is if she spoke the truth. She doesn’t sound like herself—did the car accident knock her into senility? Who could be pregnant?
Eyes dart from face to face. I can practically hear their thoughts. Kelly is too old, it can’t be her. Meggy? She is forty-six, so it is possible, but very unlikely. Theresa and Angel are only forty-one, though. If Angel is the one who is pregnant, it will be a miracle. In fact, it is common knowledge that she and Johnny have recently, finally, given up trying to have