young man here, darling daughter?” my dad called from the kitchen.
I rolled my eyes. “Get ready,” I whispered to Keats.
He smiled, taking the flowers back.
“Hey!” I said.
“They’re for your mom,” he said, and I took his hand and led him to the welcome warmth of the kitchen.
The sweet smell of my mom’s tomato sauce as it bubbled on the stovetop filled the room. The windows were fogged up, the whole place on the edge of being slightly too hot but somehow managing to be just right.
“Hey, Mom and Dad, this is Keats.”
My dad put down a glass of wine and jumped up from his seat at the table, extending his hand to Keats’s. “Theodore Marx. Nice to meet you.”
“You too, sir.”
“Please, call me Theo.”
Keats nodded. “Sure, Mr. . . .” He stumbled, turning red. “I mean Theodore, Theo.”
I felt myself thaw even more—there was something endearing about a nervous Keats. “Here, Mrs. Marx, these are for you,” Keats said, handing her the peonies.
“Keats, these are lovely. Thank you so much. Let me find something to put them in. Have a seat, guys.” She started digging under the sink for a vase.
My dad began pulling out the dinner plates.
“I can help,” I said, but my dad motioned me back to the table. “It’s your birthday. The one day of the year you don’t have to help out.”
My mom started spooning fettuccini on the plates. “So, Keats, is your family from New York?”
“Um, yeah, my mom grew up on the Upper East Side, but my dad grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut,” Keats said, twisting at a paper napkin. “They met between junior and senior year at Yale, when they were summering at Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Ooh, la-di-da,” my dad said.
“Theo!” Mom said.
“Dad!” I said.
“Nah, it’s okay,” Keats said, settling in the chair. “We’re pretty much as Waspy as you get. My parents’ wedding party included both a Vanderbilt and a DuPont. But if it gets me early acceptance into Yale, I’ll take it.”
“Hmmm,” my dad said.
I cringed. There were few things my dad liked to complain about more than Ivy League privilege and the benefits that came with it.
“Dad, Keats is super into college football,” I said, cutting off my dad’s counterpoint at the pass.
“Yeah, my dad and I went to the Rose Bowl last year,” Keats said.
Mom put our plates down on the table, steam rising from each, and I reached for the bread basket and passed it to Keats.
My dad leaned forward, excited. “So you got to see OSU take Michigan to the bank?”
Keats grimaced. “Um, yeah.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a Michigan fan,” my dad said.
At this point Keats might as well have declared himself a creationist and a Republican, considering that after Ivy League snobbery and Michigan fandom those were the only two Theodore Marx deal breakers left on the list.
Keats cringed and nodded, and my dad grunted.
Time to change the subject.
“Mom,” I said, wiping tomato sauce off the corner of my mouth. “Keats and his brother are planning to take a road trip for a few weeks this summer that replicates Jack Kerouac’s trip from On the Road.”
“Oh goodness,” she replied. “Isn’t your mom worried about you two boys doing that? What if your car breaks down or one of you gets sick?”
I cringed.
“Uh, we’re still figuring that stuff out. But I think it’ll be okay?” Keats said.
My dad, sensing an opportunity, jumped back in. “Keats, has Penelope told you about Willo?”
I shook my head imperceptibly at Dad, but he ignored me.
“You’ll have to come to the museum event next weekend! It’s going to be amazing. You see—”
“What’s the museum event?” Keats asked me, cutting him off.
“Oh, a thing for my dad’s work, no big deal.”
“No big deal?” My dad slapped the table good-naturedly. “It’s only going to be the most amazing dinosaur exhibit we’ve had to date.”
Mom smiled, rolling her eyes. “He’s so modest,” she said to Keats.
Dad got that telltale crazy-professor expression on his face.
“Willo, the dinosaur everyone thought had a heart!” my dad proclaimed. “Of course, it was probably just sand at the end of the day, but Willo’s very celebrity allowed us to mount the exhibit in the first place. The dinosaur circulatory system is fascinating. . . .”
It was just the beginning. Keats nodded politely as my dad steadfastly plowed over any of my mom’s and my efforts to politely change the conversation.
Finally, when a ten-minute discussion of the wonders of the dinosaur circulatory system started to veer into the marvels of the reproductive drive,