99 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
99 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil Helvetica;}}
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\f0\fs24 The coffee was going cold.\par
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\par
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Elikapeka had poured it twenty minutes ago and set it on the counter and then been pulled away by a question from the caterer about whether the tiki torches went along the fence line or grouped near the patio, and then by the discovery that someone had miscounted the folding chairs, and then by Susan Carpenter appearing at the back slider with a clipboard and an expression of capable cheerfulness that Elikapeka had come to understand meant *I have solved three problems you don't know about yet.* She liked Susan. Susan had the particular competence of a woman who had raised two children and had learned to make decisions without ceremony.\par
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\par
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She picked up the coffee cup now and drank it cold, standing at the kitchen window, watching the canal.\par
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\par
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The afternoon light came off the water in long flat angles, the kind of light that made the whole backyard look like somewhere else, somewhere slightly idealized, the way places looked in memory before the difficult parts returned. Out on the sailboat\u8212?Jim's boat, the big one, the one that overhung the dock in a way that had bothered her for three years\u8212?she could hear the men. Andy's laugh came across the water first, that particular sound, unhurried, the laugh of a man who was genuinely comfortable. Then Alex Carpenter's voice, lower, and Jim's, and then music began, something with a bass line that moved across the water and came in through the window glass.\par
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\par
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Emma had given them the CDs herself. A playlist. She had presented it with the same organized seriousness she'd brought to the guest list negotiations, which Elikapeka had thought about more than once in the weeks since. The methodological error argument. Cousins as family, guests as a distinct category. Emma had made the case with such carefully assembled calm that Elikapeka had let her finish entirely before explaining that the answer was still no, and had watched her daughter absorb this with the contained dignity of someone who intended to remember it.\par
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\par
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She had given her the extra girls instead. Three more, to balance the cousins. Emma had accepted this with a graciousness that was only slightly performative.\par
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\par
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Thirty-six teenagers were arriving in a half hour.\par
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\par
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Elikapeka drank the coffee and breathed.\par
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\par
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The back slider opened and Susan came in, still holding the clipboard. "Tiki torches are along the fence," she said. "The chair situation is resolved. Jorge found four more in his truck."\par
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\par
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"He had four chairs in his truck."\par
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\par
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"He has a great deal in that truck." Susan looked at the cold coffee cup. "I'll make a fresh pot."\par
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\par
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"You don't have to\u8212?"\par
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\par
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"I'm making one for myself." She moved to the coffee maker with the ease of someone familiar with the kitchen, which she was, having spent several Saturday mornings here after the children's golf rounds, and Elikapeka let her, because the coffee genuinely needed to be made and there was something clarifying about Susan's company, her lack of surplus motion.\par
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\par
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The doorbell rang.\par
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\par
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Elikapeka set the cup down and started toward the front of the house, but Ella was already there\u8212?she'd heard the door, she always heard the door, even when she appeared not to be paying attention to anything domestic. Ella had come in twenty minutes ago in her coverall, Bobby Carpenter behind her in board shorts and a t-shirt, the two of them with the easy unselfconsciousness of people who had been in each other's company so long they'd stopped performing anything for each other. Elikapeka had assigned Ella the greeter role without much expectation that she'd embrace it. Ella had responded by recruiting help, which was, she supposed, its own kind of initiative.\par
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\par
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She heard Michelle's voice in the front hall, and the heavier sound of boys, male voices that had mostly finished changing and not yet settled into what they'd become, and then the particular quality of noise that the Hayes cousins produced simply by being in a space together, which was a noise like something slightly loosely assembled, liable to spill.\par
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\par
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She reached the front hall.\par
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\par
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Michelle had her arms around her, kissing her cheek, saying happy birthday to Emma's mama, and the boys were already moving, already past the introductions, Travis with his hair still damp from wherever they'd come from, Corey a full head taller than the last time she'd seen him at Christmas, and the third one, Derek, Andy's brother Michael's son, who still wore the expression he'd had at age seven of someone who had recently been accused of something and was reserving his defense.\par
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\par
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"Go find your uncle," Elikapeka said. "He's on the boat."\par
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\par
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They were gone. The back slider was still moving when Emma came into the kitchen from the hallway, Mai Lin a step behind, both of them in coveralls, both of them bright with it, the day, the occasion, the thing finally actually happening. Emma's coverall was a pale yellow that worked with her coloring and she had done something with her hair that Elikapeka recognized as effort and approved of. The bikini underneath she had opinions about and had agreed with Andy to set aside, which she had done, mostly.\par
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\par
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"They're here?" Emma said.\par
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\par
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"Outside. Your father's on the boat, I sent them out."\par
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\par
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Emma went to the window. Mai Lin drifted to the counter and picked up a grape from the fruit tray Susan had arranged and ate it with the unceremonious comfort of a girl who had been in this kitchen enough times to be furniture, which was accurate.\par
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\par
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Outside, the cousins had found the Nerf football.\par
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\par
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She didn't know where it had come from. They had not put it out deliberately. It had materialized, the way things materialized when you introduced enough boys into a space with a pool\u8212?objects appeared, projectiles were launched, someone was going to be in the water before the first guest arrived.\par
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\par
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Corey threw a spiral the length of the pool. Derek caught it and immediately fell backward into the water.\par
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\par
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"Oh my god," Emma said, not entirely without affection.\par
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\par
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"Your father's watching," Elikapeka said. She could see Andy on the deck of the sailboat, beer in hand, already laughing.\par
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\par
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The music got louder. She could hear Andy shout something at the boys, the cousins shouting back, the easy call-and-response of the Hayes male frequency which she had been decoding for twenty years and still sometimes missed a word.\par
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\par
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Susan appeared beside her at the window with two fresh cups of coffee. Elikapeka accepted hers and they stood together watching Derek surface, still holding the football, raising it above his head like he'd recovered something.\par
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\par
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"Bobby's good with the door," Susan said quietly.\par
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\par
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"Mm."\par
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\par
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"He's good at\u8212?" Susan paused, searching for the precise version. "He knows how to make people feel they're expected."\par
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\par
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Elikapeka thought about that. It was true. She'd watched him in the front hall, just briefly, the slight forward attention he gave to whoever came in, not performative, just present. It was a quality you didn't teach. "Ella does not have that quality," she said.\par
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\par
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Susan smiled into her coffee. "No."\par
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\par
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Travis had gotten the football now and was standing at the edge of the pool and Corey was in the water and Travis threw it directly at his face from four feet away and Corey caught it and pulled Travis in by the wrist in a single fluid movement and there was a crash of water and Emma made a sound at the window.\par
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\par
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"They're going to break something," Emma said.\par
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\par
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"Probably," Elikapeka said.\par
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\par
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"Mom\u8212?"\par
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\par
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"Go, mija. Go outside. Your party is starting."\par
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\par
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Emma looked at her with the particular look she had, the one that held several things at once: the residue of negotiations, the awareness of concessions made and not made, the birthday, the day, the afternoon light. Then she crossed the kitchen and went out the back slider and Mai Lin followed her, and Elikapeka heard Emma's voice shift the moment the door opened, warmer, louder, already calling out to the cousins, already entering the afternoon on her own terms.\par
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\par
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The music moved across the water.\par
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\par
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Michelle wandered into the kitchen looking for a glass and Elikapeka found her one and poured her the last of the old coffee, which she took without complaint. Outside, Andy had stepped off the boat onto the dock and was crossing the yard toward the pool, beer still in hand, and he had the look he got when things were going well, that particular ease, the long unhurried movement of a man who felt himself to be in the right place.\par
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\par
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Thirty-six kids.\par
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\par
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She could already hear the first car pulling into the driveway.\par
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\par
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Susan put down her clipboard.\par
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\par
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"Ready?" Susan said.\par
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\par
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Elikapeka took a breath, looked at the plumeria on the windowsill, its single open flower going gold in the afternoon light, and set down the cup.\par
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\par
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"Yes," she said.
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} |