Page 31 of Four Weddings to Fall in Love
“Do you need any help in here?”I ask my mother.
“Ah, you know I’m not cooking most of the food myself.Leo should be here with it any minute.Go outside.”She shoos me out the back.
“Happy birthday, Dad,” I say to my father when I step outside.
He’s sitting with Uncle Gilbert and Auntie Gladys at the main table on the patio; Evan and Jon are talking to Aaron and Rory in another corner.Isobel and Daisy are introducing Nolan to the turtle-shaped sandbox, a relic from my childhood that my father dragged out of the basement.Mirabel has been allowed to miss this event for a good reason: she’s on her honeymoon.Carl is here but I don’t see Yvonne, though maybe she’s in the house.There are also a few family friends and one of my dad’s friends from work.
It’ll be a somewhat exhausting afternoon of socializing, and I saw everyone just two weeks ago, as Gladys so helpfully reminded us.And as I look out at my family, I think of what Kim told me the morning after Mirabel’s wedding, about the reason she doesn’t do relationships.
I’d wanted to protest and say that my family really isn’t so bad and of course I would stand up for her if she were my girlfriend, but it was clear she didn’t want to hear it.
I sort of got her point.If my mother weren’t married to my father, I’m positive she’d have nothing to do with Auntie Gladys.Plus, my mom’s relationship with her mother-in-law was a little strained—as was her relationship with her father-in-law.But I can’t imagine my mom not marrying my dad because of them.
“What are you sulking about?”Jon tries to shove a bottle of beer into my hand, but I shake my head.
“I’m notsulking,” I say.
“Could have fooled me.”
I look for an escape and happen on Daisy and Nolan, who’s flinging sand with a little shovel.I crouch down on the grass next to the sandbox.
“Ready for the big day?”I ask Daisy.
“As ready as I can be,” she says.
Nolan looks up from his shoveling and grins.“Max!”
His expression warms my heart.I do like being his favorite.
“You enjoying the sandbox?”I ask.
He nods.
“It used to be mine,” I say, “when I was little like you.”
Nolan frowns.“Do you want it back?”
“No, you can keep it.”
He gives me a hug.“You can have this.”He hands me a plastic mold of an alligator, then climbs out of the sandbox with another animal—I think it’s a camel?He walks over to Gladys.“Po Po, it’s for you.”
“Thank you,” she coos.“What is it?”
“A droma… A dromedary!”
“You see?”Gladys says to whoever is listening.“He’s so smart.”
One thing I will say for my aunt: she’s not at all bothered by the fact that Nolan isn’t, biologically, related to her.Daisy was pregnant with Nolan with she and Isobel got back together, and so Gladys has known him since birth.
When Isobel came out—many years ago now—Gladys wouldn’t have considered disowning her lesbian teenage daughter, but she was a little disappointed.She also kept obsessing over what Isobel’s potential children, who could have two mothers, would call their grandmas, since the words for maternal and paternal grandmother are different in Chinese andobviously, they couldn’t both be “maternal grandma.”But Nolan only has one grandmother in his life; Daisy isn’t on speaking terms with her mother, and Nolan’s biological father and his family aren’t in the picture.
I look at the plastic alligator in my hand, feeling less special than I did a moment ago, and after chastising myself for that silly thought, I go back inside, slipping off my shoes by the back door.Leo and my mother are putting the food onto serving dishes, so I help them.When it’s the three of us, not much needs to be said.
But it’s not long before my mom speaks.“I hear you got drunk at Mirabel’s wedding?”
Who told her that?
“I misjudged my tolerance,” I say.“That’s all.”
