Walking into the front door of her childhood home, she felt like she’d been gone for hours, not months. The house smelled just like it did all the years she lived there, and the bubbling steam of her mother’s cooking added to the familiar aroma. Her cat came and rubbed against her leg.

“You want these in your room?” her father said, referring to the two duffel bags she had brought with her from her apartment.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” said Michelle, rubbing under Tiger’s chin. “Is Mom in the kitchen?”

Her father had already left to haul her bags upstairs, leaving her to wander through the house on her own. Everything was the same, from the lilac walls of the kitchen to the hole she burned in the living room carpet when she was eleven. Michelle found the same to be very comforting.

“Michelle!” her mother’s voice cried. She turned around and saw her, ruddy-faced, looking only slightly older than the picture Michelle had of her in her mind.

“Hi, Ma,” she answered, the beginnings of annoyance creeping already. “What’s for dinner?”

“Mom! God.” Home two minutes. Two minutes!

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I just want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. You know a lot of that food in the city isn’t healthy. I know companies look for girls who take care of themselves, that’s all.” She wiped a plump hand on her apron, leaving a streak of red tomato remains. Michelle’s mother had a round, pink face and a rounder, pinker body, and despite its corpulence it still managed to show lines and wrinkles, the cornerstones of age. This was what Michelle had to look forward to. Thanks for the genes, Mom.

“I missed you so much, honey,” her mother said as she scuttled toward her and gave her a fleshy, enveloping hug.

“Yeah, I missed you guys, too,” Michelle said, hugging back, smelling the scent of flowery perfume that cried mother in her brain.

“It was so nice of your boss to give you such a long break. We’ll really have some time to spend together.”

“Yeah. She’s really nice.”

“And you know Jake will be home in a few days. He’s only getting a week off, but he’s lucky even to get that. I tell him, graphic design is all well and fine, but you’ve got to have a nine-to-five. Hopefully he’ll have some stability soon. I’d hate to think of him at thirty and not married.”

“He’s only twenty-five.” Michelle looked around for Tiger. He was just here….

“Well, I married your father when I was your age. Even younger. We were just out of college. I worry about him – your brother – he’s never had a steady girlfriend. It’s not good for someone like him to be alone. He’s an artist – like you – you need someone to balance you. To be rational when you’re impulsive. Not you, honey, just you artists in general. It’s not right, at his age, never having had a steady girlfriend.”

“I’ve never had a steady girlfr—boyfriend, either.” After a long train ride followed by a long car ride, Michelle’s patience was not nearly padded enough for the assault of her mother’s verbosity. “Ma, I’m tired, I think I’m gonna lay down upstairs for a while.”

“Oh, okay, honey,” her mother called after her, “just don’t forget this and this and that and this thing here and I like to hear myself talk and no one cares what I say and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.” Michelle was gone before she could hear any more.

It was about five-thirty. Michelle was spread out on her bed, face up, enjoying the languid flow of having no responsibilities. She put on a CD she had listened to when she was four feet tall and someone had to take care of her. No one could fire her from being a daughter at eight years old.

When the phone rang, a habit left over from high school caused her to reach for it quickly before anyone else in the house could answer.

“Hello,” she said reflexively.

“Is that T.D.?” The gravelly voice of her brother.

Her pillow-creased face plumped into a smile. “Hi Big B.”

“I didn’t know you’d be home so soon,” he said.

“I just got home like two seconds ago.”

“It must be our psychic connection.”

“Must be.”

“How’s your life?”

“Eh, it sucks. When are you coming home?”

“That’s what I called about. When does mom want me?”

“I don’t know. I want you now.”

Jake laughed. “Well, I can’t come now. I only get a week off.”

“Uggh,” Michelle groaned. “You have to get here soon. I’ll go crazy here by myself.”

“Hard to go home again once you’ve lived on your own, isn’t it?”

“I lived on my own in college.”

“Yeah, but not really. Now you’re supporting yourself. You’re really on your own. Financially independent.”

She felt a flashing pang of unease, as if something stabbed her in an instant and disappeared. “Yeah.”

“Well, can I talk to Mom? Or you could just ask her to call me.”

“I’ll tell her. I’m just hanging out right now. I need to relax.”

“Hey, T.D., I’ve got to go.” She hated the words. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Sure thing, Big B. Love you.”

“I love you, too.”

She lay there for ten minutes, then at six sharp she heard her mother calling her for dinner. The image of her mother over the stove sent a shiver up her back, and she remembered for an instant Richard’s apartment (More hollandaise?) before she shook her head and shoved the image away and sat down to eat, her mother following with serving bowls. Her father sat, gruff and imposing, hunched over his meal on her right. On her left, her mother spoke about the trifles of her day, her week, her month, and asked questions Michelle answered with one word. Missing from the dining room table scene was her brother at the seat across from hers. It wasn’t until she saw her mother ladling out her homemade marinara that she realized how hungry she was.

It was three days before Christmas when Michelle stood at the door to welcome Jake, just like years before when he would come home from college for the holidays. He hugged her and picked her up, her feet dangling near his shins and her face turning pink with blood and smiling, and after some obligatory settling-in (hi, Mom, hi Dad), they retreated to the basement and their parents’ pool table, where it had become recent tradition for them to have heart-to-hearts over imported beers and numbered balls.

Jake talked about work as he took intermittent shots at the solids on the table and languorous drinks from his bottle. He was thinking of moving again. Chicago just wasn’t working out the way he’d hoped. He’d heard nice things about Boston.

Michelle didn’t tell him about her lost job, but she did tell him about Richard – at least a selectively omitting, sibling-appropriate version.

“Jesus, T.D., you have shitty luck with guys.” He smiled and took another sip of his third beer, which he held carelessly between his first and middle finger. She noticed his dark facial hair was starting to cast a shadow over the lower half of his face. He had neglected to shave again.

Michelle swallowed the rest of her second beer and went to the mini-fridge to get another. “Yeah, I know,” she said, trying to laugh along with him. “We both know you’re my real soul mate.”

He let out that guttural laugh of his like the bark of a medium-sized dog as he took his shot and sank the five ball. “I guess so,” he concurred with a headshake. “I mean, the girl I’m dating now, I dunno, she’s all right.” He shot again, missed, and knocked back the end of his beer. Michelle choked on hers.

“I didn’t know you were dating someone.” She refocused and assessed the table, looking for a stripe ready to be sunk. She found one – a difficult but not impossible shot – and aimed. “Is it serious?”

“No, not really,” he said from the other side of the room. Michelle sank her shot and re-aimed. Number eleven rested dangerously close to the black eight ball in front of the side pocket. “Like I said, she’s… all right. She’s smart and cute and all, just you know. I don’t know if she gets me.” He sighed and cleared his throat. “But you know, the sex is fucking incredible.”

Michelle shot and sank the eight ball.

Jake raised an eyebrow. “You lose, T.D.”

“God, Jake, I don’t need to hear about that!”

The young man smiled mischievously, lines forming beneath his eyes. “I thought we were best friends. At least I’m sparing you the details.” It was the same teasing smile she saw when they were kids and he dropped spiders down her t-shirt. “I could tell you how she puts one foot between my legs and drapes her other leg over my shoulder so when she reaches down to touch my—”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!” Michelle covered her ears and bent over. She was half joking, but only half.

Jake ambled to the mini-fridge and opened another beer. “Wanna play again?

Over dessert that night (a low-fat fruit trifle) Mrs. Browne asked Jake if he had a girl in his life.

“Well, not exactly,” he said.

“He does,” Michelle erupted.

“It’s nothing serious,” Jake said immediately, instantly. “Just someone I’m seeing.”

“That’s wonderful, Jake!” cooed their mother, eyebrows raised so high her forehead became a stack of wrinkles. “It’s about time you found someone to settle down with.”

“We’re just dating.”

“Of course you are. Once your father and I were ‘just dating.’” She placed a hand on her husband and he grunted. “What’s her name?”

“Rachel O’Shea.”

“An Irish girl?”

“Yeah, I think she’s part,” Jake said. His eyes focused on his plate.

“Rachel sounds Jewish, though.”

“She may be part Jewish, or it could just be a name.”

“Well, I guess her name won’t be O’Shea for long. Rachel Browne – that sounds very nice. Very traditional.”

“Mom, no one’s thinking about that now.”

“Oh, of course. And I know young girls nowadays don’t always take the last names of their husbands. When I was your age—”

“Stop!” Michelle shouted, dropping her fork on her plate. The noise it made was less arresting than the shrillness in her voice, and three pairs of eyes stared at her from every angle. “He’s not getting married!”

Their mother sighed and spooned a dripping bite of trifle into her opened mouth. Her verbal rampage had been curbed. Jake shot Michelle a furtive look. “Thanks,” he whispered.

They all made it through Christmas, and Michelle survived each of her relatives asking how her dancing was going. Aided by holiday champagne, she told them she already had a job lined up for the spring. Lying was so strikingly easy.

She eventually told Jake she had been fired. He held her and told her he believed in her and that he knew she’d find her way eventually. He always knew exactly what she wanted to hear.
She almost cried when he left. This goodbye was different from all their previous goodbyes. For the first time, she wondered when she’d see him again.

Two days later, Michelle went back to the city. As her father drove her to the train station, she slouched into the passenger side seat listlessly counting the headlights on the highway. She knew she had to make it on her own somehow.

Filed under: Jake, Michelle, Michelle's family by Jade