you do have news,” he grates, “I know it’s not mine.”
I tilt my head. “We haven’t had anything newsworthy happen in quite a while, have we?”
“Speaking of news!” Deborah interrupts, dying to pivot the spotlight back onto herself. “I’m coming up on my fifth anniversary at the newspaper.”
“We know,” Harold mutters, spreading a cloth napkin across his lap. Deborah stares at him pointedly until he tucks a second napkin into his collar. I give it a year before she’s got him wearing a bib. “We all know.”
Deborah spoons more artichoke hearts onto his plate, much to his dismay. “They might not know.”
She texted Nicholas three times this week about it, hinting that if he wanted to take her out for a celebratory lunch she’s upholding boycotts with Ruby Tuesday, Walk the Plank, and Applebee’s because of spats with the staff.
“Congratulations,” Nicholas says automatically.
“Yes, it’s quite an achievement, isn’t it? I think I’ve solved more problems than the mayor! Lately I’ve been rescuing marriages left and right, but when you read tomorrow’s column you’ll see that even I can’t save the lady who recently wrote in begging for my help.” Deborah smiles like the cat that ate the canary. “She’s having an affair with the handyman.”
“I wish Nicholas were handsier—I mean handier,” I say, stealing the spotlight right back. “I’ve been performing maintenance duties by myself. But I’ve been getting better results, interestingly enough.”
Nicholas’s stare is dehydrating. “Sounds unlikely.”
“Maintenance duties?” Deborah repeats, turning to him. “Has something broken? Naomi shouldn’t be trying to fix anything. She could make it worse.”
“I have no choice,” I tell her in a low, conspiratorial voice. “It’s a desperate situation, and Nicholas won’t use his tools.” I tap my mouth with a fingernail, watching him go rigid.
“Nicholas has no use for tools,” Deborah says emphatically, unaware that we are speaking in encrypted hate. “If something isn’t working, call a professional.”
“Good thinking. Do you know which handyman that lady was writing in about?”
Nicholas is fed up. “Being handy is unsatisfying when your fiancée is so obviously distracted and barely pitches in,” he tells me with thunderclouds sweeping over his expression.
His hands are hot and sweating. I can tell by the way the fork in his grip fogs up. This is what he gets for calling me a doll on the shelf. I don’t engage with his parents enough at dinner? He’ll regret saying that.
“Harold,” Deborah barks.
Harold jumps.
“What?”
“The kids are living in a broken-down hovel. Make them call a repairman.”
The idea of Harold making Nicholas or me do anything is ludicrous. He can’t make himself stay awake for the duration of a commercial. Harold only gets up from his chair if it means walking to another chair. He and his wife are presently wearing matching burgundy sweaters, fur from his back and shoulders creeping around a Peter Pan collar in a way that has me side-eyeing how Nicholas will age. He stopped having an opinion of his own in 1995 and lives for the moment he’s told he’s allowed to go to bed.
Trust this: you don’t want to know more about Harold. He’s like three-month-old lasagna left in the back of the fridge. With every layer it gets worse.
He drinks seltzer water with every dinner and his white hair sprouts from the top of his head in short tufts of cotton, same as his out-of-control eyebrows. If you’re sitting directly opposite him, his hair is see-through and colors everything behind it with whimsical fuzz. He communicates chiefly through snorts, grunts, and belches. Once, I walked in on him while he was leafing through a Playboy and he said, “Have you ever been with an older man, Nina?”
My boss, Mr. Howard, says he knew Harold when they were younger and Harold’s “work trips” to Nevada in the eighties were actually stints at Bella’s Gentleman’s Club. Like the innocent, na?ve sunbeam that I am, the words gentleman’s club conjured up genteel images of men playing cards and smoking cigars. Then Zach told me what it actually was and it left me equal parts traumatized and enthralled.
I still haven’t let Nicholas in on this discovery. It’s a pulled punch I’m saving for after I’ve already knocked him down but need to make sure he can’t get back up again. I’m getting my goddamn lemon cake and your mom is uninvited to the wedding. Roundhouse kick. I’m wearing a tuxedo and we’re eloping. Jab to the throat. We’re never naming our daughter after Deborah. High kick. I haven’t flossed in a year.