The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson

Author:Maddie Dawson [Dawson, Maddie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-59235-4
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

ONE DAY the phone rings, and it’s Cindy Bartholomew, Whit’s mother. She seems surprised to find me on the other end of the phone, so I have to explain about the sudden bleeding. She is suitably chagrined. We met at the wedding at our house, of course, and at the time I remember thinking she seemed charming and funny. She exclaimed that New England was just the most beautiful place ever, and she loved our house, our friends, the whole bit. We insisted that she and her husband stay in our guest room, and if after a few days I found her tendency to talk baby talk to her husband just the tiniest bit irritating, I enjoyed them overall. They told funny stories, especially when they’d been drinking. She and Clement are always jetting all over the country, monitoring their various investments, and whenever they’re in New York, they try to come and check on Sophie and the progress of their grandchild. They’d like to come for a little visit. Would that be possible?

“Of course,” I say. “We’d love to see you.” Sophie, meanwhile, is shaking her head and diving under the covers even as I’m arranging the time.

“They’re family,” I tell her when I hang up. “Why don’t you want to see them? And don’t they, in fact, own this apartment you’re living in?”

“Yes. God. They own everything. I feel like when they’re here, they’re making sure I haven’t done some terrible thing to destroy the place. I always just want to get out of here.”

“It’ll be okay. It won’t do us any harm to be nice to them. We can set up a party platter in the bedroom.”

“Ugh. I suppose.”

The Bartholomews arrive on a Sunday afternoon, and the four of us settle awkwardly in the bedroom, which is where Sophie and I have done all our entertaining. But this time it’s unbearable. I immediately see what Sophie means: Clement, who is about twenty years older than Cindy, is a restless type, always looking as though he’s just about to go to a meeting at which he expects to be told that he’s been elected the king of the universe and that things on the home planet have gone terribly wrong. He paces around the apartment, huffing and sighing, opening cabinets, and tapping at the bricks on the fireplace. Cindy is obviously used to this kind of behavior; her well-made-up eyes follow him, and she keeps calling him Grandpa and telling him to go and do all the “Grandpa” things he needs to do, although I can’t imagine what they are.

Finally he comes back into the bedroom doorway, where he looms like André the Giant, and makes a pronouncement. “Okay, I’m ready now to take three beautiful women to lunch.”

Oh, but we can’t. It is explained to him again. We can’t leave the house. Sophie, in fact, can’t leave her bed. To my surprise, Sophie stands up and declares that it won’t hurt if we just go out for a little bit of lunch.

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