Chapter 25: Siblings. Jesus.
Back to the future: Five and a half years ago. Marcine, Ohio, at Dutch’s wedding.
I’ve got the blonde pinned against one of the bandstand pillars, one of my hands halfway up her shirt, the other holding myself steady, braced against the railing. I’ve definitely met better kissers in the three years since Jenny and I broke up — this girl alternates between a full-mouthed, moaning sloppiness and this weird sort of pecking thing that I can’t really say turns me on, but I’m drunk and she’s drunk and her hair’s almost the same color as Jenny’s, and so I don’t mind the fact that —
A hand grabs my elbow, yanks me away from the bandstand pillar. I spin unsteadily in the direction of the hand and am confronted with a wavering rendition of my three siblings. In my drunken haze, they look like a superhero movie poster, the three of them spread out and serious, staring at me with solemn eyes. The only thing they’re missing is fucking capes.
Dutch stands point, one hip popped to the side, hands on the hips of her strapless white wedding gown. PJ is behind and to her right, looking profoundly uncomfortable; Gerry is behind and to her left. From the way he sways, from the slackened face and drooping eyelids, it’s clear he’s either very high or very trashed.
“Anika?” the blonde says behind me. And then she must see my siblings, because I hear an, “Oh!,” and out of my peripheral vision, I see her slip away. I turn, open my mouth to call her name, but realize I can’t remember it.
I spin towards my sister, almost losing my balance in the process. “What the fuck, Dutch?”
“Don’t you ‘what the fuck’ me, Anika,” my sister says. “This is my wedding.”
“No, it’s not. Your wedding was hours ago. This is the fucking recep…” I lose the word for a moment before I find it again. “The reception,” I finish with a slur.
Arms still tight against her chest, she lifts a single finger and points at me. “We’re having a family intervention,” she declares.
“A family…” My face twists into an ugly sneer, and I point at Gerry. “If you want to have a family intervention, have it for the fucking junkie.”
Gerry points unsteadily at himself. “Hey, not cool. This isn’t junk. I’ve been clean for months. This is just… wedding punch and way too many champagne toasts.”
“This isn’t an intervention about drinking, anyway,” PJ says. “Although you’ve been doing it a lot since you’ve been home.”
I lean against the pillar the blonde girl (damned if I can remember her name) was occupying a moment earlier, mainly because Gerry’s swaying is making me feel seasick and I need something that will anchor me.
“This is about you and that girl,” Dutch says, practically spitting the word “girl.”
I point in the direction of the missing blonde. “Who? Her? What’s wrong with — ”
“Not her,” PJ interrupts. He’s using his stop-playing-around-this-is-serious-business big man voice. “Jenny.”
The name strikes like a poison dart in my chest. And as if he really did impale me in the heart, I stand there practically fucking bleeding, mouth gaping, not able to say shit.
Gerry chuckles, because apparently the way my siblings have just blindsided me amuses him.
“Jenny’s married now,” Dutch informs me.
“I know that,” I say. “You think I don’t know that?”
“And she has a son,” PJ adds.
“I know that.”
“It’s been over between you two for three years, Anika, almost four,” Dutch continues. Her face softens, and if I didn’t know my big sister inside and out, I would almost say her tone has become sympathetic. “You have to stop acting like this is just a temporary break.”
“I know it’s over. And I’m not acting like it’s a temporary break. Hell, I was fucking acting like it was over five minutes ago, in case you didn’t notice, until you three musketeers came over here and so rudely interrupted.”
Gerry laughs again. “And everyone says I’m the one living in denial.”
“I saw you with her, earlier today,” PJ says, taking a step forward. “You had lunch together. And left the restaurant together.”
“So what? You’ve got a problem with people who are friends with their exes? You’d better not be implying what I think you’re implying,” I say. “Jenny’s been my best friend since high school. And we’re still friends. We can still hang out.”
“For her, maybe you’re just friends,” Dutch says. “For you, no. You cannot hang out with her anymore, because for you, it’s not about being ‘friends.’”
“The fuck? So you’re Mom now? Telling me who I can and can’t hang out with? Telling me I can’t — ”
Dutch cuts me off. “She’s moved on. You haven’t. That’s the difference. And we’re sick of watching you torture yourself over her.”
PJ coughs gently against a closed fist, a sign he’s about to say something that might actually be — God fucking forbid — confrontational. “You forget I’m staying at Mom and Dad’s, too. I heard you last night after you got home from hanging out with her.”
I feel a little faint, and it’s not just the wedding punch. “What do you mean, you heard me?”
“I heard you crying, sis.”
“The fuck you did.”
Dutch squints at me. “Did you sleep with her? Since you’ve been back in Ohio — did you two…?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.”
“Oh my God. You did. Didn’t you?”
I look away.
“She’s married!” Dutch cries.
“You said that already,” I mumble.
PJ sighs, looks down at the ground. “I could hear you crying all the way from the kitchen when you got home last night.”
I grip the bandstand railing. “So I was emotional. I’d had too much to drink…”
Gerry lifts a finger, tries to shake it at me as he smirks. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you? That’s not an excuse.”
“Shut up, Gerry,” Dutch snaps. Turning back to me, she says, “How many dates have you gone on in the last three years?”
“I’m not doing this right now, assholes.” I turn to walk away, but my sister grabs my arm.
“How many, Anika?” she demands.
“I date! I fucking… I was just… There was a girl…” I wave hopelessly towards the place in the crowd where the nameless blonde disappeared to.
“I’m not asking how many women you’ve screwed in the last three years,” Dutch says with a mighty eye roll. “I’m asking how many you’ve dated. How many people you’ve had a relationship with that lasted longer than a couple of nights.”
“Okay, so I haven’t — ”
“I know how many,” she says.
“Oh, because you always know the fucking answer, right? So why d’you even ask?”
“Zero,” she says, ignoring me. “And yet how often do you talk with that girl?”
Dutch is starting to really piss me off.
“You never liked Jenny,” I say, my voice turning cold. “You’ve always treated her like she’s — ”
“How often do you talk with her?” Dutch repeats, so fucking shrill I have the urge to cover my ears with my hands.
“We Skype sometimes.”
“And what does ‘sometimes’ mean?” PJ asks.
I shrug and shake my head, looking past them in the direction of the basketball courts, the ones at the far end of the park. The ones I shot hoops in not long after I found Jenny crying, sitting with Grace Adler in my apartment.
“Once or twice a week,” I mumble.
“Dammit, Anika.” Dutch lets out a huff, pinches the bridge of her nose. “You’re right. I’ve never liked Jenny. Want to know why? Because she’s always used you and manipulated you and treated you like the consolation prize she could always come back to if nothing better came along. And she’s still doing it. And now we’re finding out you’re talking with her every week, and you slept with her after being home for less than a week, even though she’s married? This has got to stop.”
PJ nods in agreement, takes another step towards me, but cautiously, like I’m an unstable animal who might charge him at any moment.
“We think it’s time for you to cut Jenny loose, sis,” he says. “It’s killing us to see you like this. We thought you’d start to move on after you left and went to Europe, but it’s clear that hasn’t been happening.”
“How do you know?” I ask bitterly. “When’s the last time you bothered to call me?”
Gerry lifts a wobbly index finger again. “But I know. ’Cause you and me, we’ve been talking some. Right?”
I turn my head towards my wasted baby brother. Aha. So here’s the real Judas. He’d called me out of the blue after his latest stint in rehab, telling me he’d always felt closer to me than to PJ and Dutch, and that he wanted to start repairing our relationship, making amends. And I, wanting to be a supportive older sibling, had fallen for it. We’d been talking every week for almost two months. And I’d cried on his virtual fucking video chat shoulder over the unhealing wound that was Jenny more than once.
Now I was kicking myself. Never trust a fucking junkie.
“You need to stop talking to her,” Dutch says.
I feel the heat of tears rising in my eyes.
“Stop calling her, stop texting her, stop liking her baby photos on Facebook,” my sister continues. “And you definitely have to stop fucking her.”
“It was only once,” I say in my defense. “And I know it shouldn’t have happened — we both know that.”
“‘It was only once’ is an addict’s line,” Gerry says. “Takes one to know one. You need Jenny rehab.”
I look skyward. “It’s been three years,” I tell my brothers and sister with a shaky voice. I sniffle. “Three years. It’s not supposed to still hurt this bad after three years, is it?”
“You’re such a soft-hearted idiot,” Dutch says, and this time there’s no mistaking it; her voice is just as shaky as mine. Her arms finally unfold from her chest, opening wide as she steps forward. “C’mere, brat.”
And because my back is pinned against the pillar of the bandstand, and because I’m drunk, and because I’m tired of hurting, and because, fuck it, I need my big sister, I let her wrap her arms around me and I drop my face into her wedding-day hairdo. Gerry crashes into us from the side, knocking us sideways as he throws his arms around Dutch and me. After a second of hesitation, PJ comes up from the other side, crushes his butterball body into our awkward group hug.
We stand there for at least a minute or two, with me sobbing into Dutch’s perfect hair, and Dutch crying against my shoulder, Gerry babbling drunkenly, and PJ squeezing like he’s never going to let go.
Finally, I push away from them, wipe my eyes and nose on the sleeve of the white bridesmaid suit Dutch made me wear.
“Okay,” I say. I take a long, shuddering breath. “You’re right. I’ll stop talking to her.”
“Thank God,” Dutch says, dabbing at her running mascara with the tip of one well-manicured finger. “I thought I was going to have to force Gerry to steal your laptop.”
PJ looks relieved but says nothing.
“That was fun,” Gerry says. “We should do this shit more often.”