Uncle Ian didn’t want any part of it.”
I hadn’t really asked him much about his family’s financial situation but never once had taken him as the tobacco empire type.
“What does living comfortably mean?”
“Um, I dunno. They don’t worry about money.”
I said the first thing I could think of that could determine a household’s wealth because asking for his family’s net worth would be tacky. “How many toilets do you have in your house?”
“What? Like, how many bathrooms?”
“Yeah, how many bathrooms do your parents have in their home?”
He furrowed his brow and went silent for a few seconds, counting.
What the fuck?
“Nine.”
“You have NINE fucking bathrooms?”
“Well, there are seven in the main house, and two in the guesthouse.”
He had a guesthouse? Like a maid’s quarters?
“They’re coming back. Thanks for never telling me that you were a tobacco czar,” I complained. His degree of wealth was so hugely different from my family’s financial situation, it was hard to even comprehend its immensity. Nine bathrooms. Even Jane’s well-to-do family had only five.
My mom and dad each carried two plates. Mom had piled her plates high with crab legs and claws. My dad’s extra plate showcased a precarious tower of mussels. They jutted out their chests, as if they’d caught the seafood themselves.
Nolan’s parents came back with small salad plates and kid-size soup bowls. My mom made the tsk tsk tsk sound. “We paying forty-five dollar each person. You eating rabbit food. That’s bad decision. You should eat crab, or mussel, or shrimp.” My parents dug right in, skipping their usual prayer before meals. They were so enticed by the buffet that they forgot to thank God for his blessings. Like the blessing of seafood buffets with unlimited crab legs.
Nolan and I had our turn at the buffet, with the goal of leaving the parents minimal time to interact without our supervision. We divided and conquered: he attained the meat and seafood plate, and I got the veggies, fruit, and dessert. We did it silently, with Nolan looking over at me. I wasn’t in a talkative mood, not even chatty about all the breadth of desserts on display, which included a chocolate fountain. We were both seated again in less than forty-five seconds.
The table went quiet, with everyone digging into their food, no one knowing what to say next. Nolan Senior broke the silence. “So, Melody, I hear you make and play games for a living. I’d love to get paid for that!” He guffawed at his joke, which was a pretty good one, by parent standards. I grinned and nodded.
“It’s definitely different from your farming business,” I said with a shallow laugh.
He asked, “So what game are you working on now?”
Hmmm, how could I explain to Nolan’s tobacco-heir parents that my game involved male strippers who tried to save the world from ultimate destruction? Everyone waited for me to speak. Even my parents leaned forward, pausing their crab cracking, eager to hear about my job. And I didn’t know what to say.
And then, Nolan jumped in. “Her game is top secret. They don’t want any leaks. It’s like Apple and how they make everyone sign nondisclosures and stuff.”
I smiled politely. Thank you, Nolan.
Nolan’s dad winked at me. “Well, we can’t wait to see it when it launches. Maybe Jo and I can download the game on our phones.” I tried to picture Nolan’s mom and dad playing a stripper shooter game in cooperative game mode. Two sixtysomething-year-olds with stripper avatars taking on the world’s survival, blasting zombies and aliens with machine guns and grenade launchers. Oh my god, that would be amazing.
My parents ate two plates of seafood each, and then had some kind of cream pie that they shared with each other. Their culinary preferences were quite different from the spread the MacKenzies had eaten. They had ended their meal with fresh fruit, cottage cheese, and black coffee.
My dad wiped his mouth with his napkin. “So you are farmers.”
“We don’t need to talk about work, Dad.” I needed to intervene before things got awkward with the money stuff.
Chest puffed, Nolan’s dad boomed, “Oh, we don’t mind. We’re hoping our boy will come home soon to take over the family business when he gets his business degree.”
Nolan Junior and I exchanged looks. Is that why he didn’t want to graduate?
“The family’s been farming tobacco since the late 1800s,” Nolan Senior added, sitting up straighter, proud of the family heritage.
My dad wrinkled his forehead when he said “tobacco.” Then his eyes grew wide. “Did you