Save the Date

“What do you think?” my mom asked as she picked up the paper, unfolded it, and turned to the comic section. “Should we do this?” She looked at each of us in turn, and I nodded.

My mom held it, and the seven of us crowded around her. I knew we could have taken turns, or passed it around, but nobody did. Without having to talk about it, I could tell that we all wanted to experience this moment together.

My dad was on one side, next to Mike. J.J. was next to him, with Danny on his other side, and I was in between Danny and Linnie, with Rodney holding down the other end and my mom in the center. I looked around at all of them for a moment. I wasn’t sure when we would be here like this again—all of us, together, in the same house. But maybe to be here with them, in this moment, was enough.

“Ready?” my mom asked. We all nodded. And then she took a breath and opened the comics to the place that Grant Central Station had always occupied, the top left-hand corner. She held the paper open so we could all see.

And then we leaned forward to read it, together.

SEPTEMBER

* * *

CHAPTER 30

Or, Once Upon a Time in Connecticut

* * *

ARE YOU SURE YOU HAVE everything?” my dad asked for what had to be the millionth time. “You didn’t forget anything?”

“I’m sure,” I said, but even so, I glanced into the back of the car just to double-check, though all I could see were suitcases and boxes. It was absolutely packed to the gills—which made sense, since the car was packed with all the stuff that not one but two people would need for a year at college.

“I don’t like the idea of you driving halfway across the country all by yourself,” my mother said, shaking her head, and Mike straightened up from where he’d been arranging boxes in the backseat.

“Hey,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “What about me?”

I looked over at Mike and smiled. We were standing in the driveway of my dad’s new town house. He’d found it at the very beginning of May and was totally moved in by the first week in June, the weekend before the new owners took over.

It had been really hard saying good-bye to our house—seeing all the furniture vanish from the rooms, the pictures from the walls. But we’d all been there to clear it out together, which had helped a lot. Even Danny had come back from California, as opposed to just sending someone to do it for him, like J.J. and Rodney had been betting he would. But it had been all of us saying good-bye to the house, sitting on the floor of the empty family room, eating pizza off paper plates, since we no longer had furniture or dishes. Linnie and Rodney had even brought Waffles with them. They’d adopted him after the GMA interview—they both felt guilty that our interview had damaged his chances of anyone else taking him. And though they’d tried to change his name, he steadfastly refused to answer to anything other than Waffles.

My dad’s place was much smaller than our house had been, but there were still enough bedrooms for all of us to be there together, if you counted the pullout couch he’d gotten for the basement. He’d already gotten started on his new garden and had shown me the plans for it. I didn’t mind being there, not the way I’d thought I would. It didn’t feel like home—at all—but there was a piece of me that figured maybe it shouldn’t. We were all still figuring out what this new family arrangement of ours looked like, so maybe nothing would feel like home until we got used to the fact that things had changed, that they were different now.

“He has a point, El,” my dad said, smiling at my mom. “She’s not actually going to be driving alone. Our capable youngest son will be with her.”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” my mom said, shaking her head at him.

“And I drove myself last year,” Mike said, sounding exasperated—but not actually exasperated, more like he was enjoying being fake exasperated around my mom.

“But you’re a much better driver than Charlie,” my mom said to him in a fake whisper.

“Hey!” I said, and my mom and Mike both laughed. I still wasn’t quite used to it—Mike and my mom, getting along. They weren’t back to where they’d been before, but the incremental progress they’d been making nonetheless felt major.

I dropped my purse onto the driver’s seat and straightened up. It was a gorgeous morning—the sun shining down onto the driveway, the sound of birdsong in the trees, the leaves not even beginning to think about turning yet. “You sure you don’t miss this?” I asked my mom as I gestured around. “I mean, trees . . . birds . . . nature?”

“I have nature,” my mom said, shaking her head at me. “In case you’ve forgotten, I live near a gigantic park. And we have all three of those things.”

I caught my dad’s eye, and he shook his head. Doesn’t count, he mouthed to me, and I smiled.

My mom, to our collective surprise, had moved to New York City and had gotten an apartment that absolutely did not have enough bedrooms for all of us. But Danny was already looking into hotels and apartment-sharing sites so that when we were all in town again, we could stay there, in the city, together. She hadn’t let herself enjoy retirement very long—when I was staying with her the week before, she’d told me one morning, at what was quickly becoming my favorite diner on the Upper West Side, that she was playing around with a new comic strip, about a woman starting over after a divorce. But she’d promised me—and then all of us—that the protagonist of her new strip would be fictional. And that she would have no children.

My things that weren’t coming with me to college had been split between my parents’ places—but due to her lack of space, more of it had ended up at my dad’s, and that’s why Mike and I were both leaving from here. Well, that and the fact that we could park a car here, and it was the car we’d be sharing at school.

I’d decided, after everything, to go to Northwestern, where I would get to study journalism in one of the best schools in the country. It was a three-hour plane ride from the East Coast, which seemed like the right amount of time and distance. And with my parents in two different places and my siblings all over the country, I liked the idea of being closer to at least one brother. And since it was the brother I actually knew the least, I figured we could use some time to fix that. Siobhan was thrilled, since we’d only be four hours away from each other. She’d already mapped out the route from Ann Arbor to Evanston and was planning a road trip to come to me in just a few weeks.

Mike and I didn’t have to be on campus until next week, so we were using the drive to Chicago to go on what J.J. had dubbed the Sibling Tour. We weren’t taking the direct path there—tonight we were heading up to visit Linnie and Rodney (and Waffles) in Boston, and then we were meeting J.J. in Pittsburgh. We were going to a Pirates game, and just this morning, he’d e-mailed to tell me that he’d paid off the scoreboard programmer so that at the game, it would read GOOD LUCK AT COLLEGE, CHARLIE. Then, a few minutes later, he wrote me again and told me to delete all our correspondence about this so he could disavow any knowledge of it when people started asking questions.

And then Danny was going to meet us in Chicago, which Mike and I were both relieved about, since we didn’t have time to drive to California and then back again. Danny seemed basically the same—he was dating someone new, and he assured us all that she was great. But things had shifted between us, subtly, over the summer. I would call him out on things, more often than not, when I disagreed with him or what he was doing. And to my surprise, he handled it well, even occasionally taking my advice. It felt as though we were more like equals now and, in a weird way, getting to know each other for the first time.

But I hadn’t seen him in a month and was looking forward to seeing him in Chicago, as the best way to cap off the sibling tour. I was a little bit sad that we were doing it this way, as opposed to all of us being in the same house, together. But this was what life looked like now, and maybe that was okay.

I did miss us—I missed all seven (eight with Rodney) of us in the same house, with all our systems and traditions and jokes firmly in place. But I was trying to accept that this was just a new thing. Just like Linnie and Rodney had formed their own family, we were all learning what this new version of us would look like. And I knew it was going to be hard—especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But I had a feeling—at least, I hoped—that we would find our way through it. It wouldn’t be Grant Central Station anymore, with four panels and reassuring humor, things always working out for the best in a tidy way. But maybe that was actually a good thing.