Page 50 of Cut Off
“You used to char hot dogs in the driveway with a Bic lighter,” Tom says, surveying the grill. “Now look at this.What is this?”
“It’s a grill, Dad.”
“It’s a starship. Move over, son.”
Tom takes command, and Jonah, to his credit, hands his father the tongs and goes to find Eli. I follow Claire into the kitchen because Claire has produced six Tupperwares from somewhere and is unloading them onto the counter with the muscle memory of a woman who’s fed every hockey team in the greater Dickens metro area.
“Macaroni salad,” she says. “Coleslaw, the good kind, not the white kind. Three-bean. Brownies, two pans, one with nuts and one without because we don’t know yet about the nut situation. Cornbread. Sweet tea. I brought a watermelon, but it’s in the car because I forgot it.”
“Claire.”
“I’ll get it in a minute.”
“Claire.”
She turns, and her face is doing the Claire Wobble.
I cross the kitchen and put my arms around her, because that’s the rule with Claire—when her face wobbles, you hug. She holds on for a long second. She smells like vanilla and the same drugstore lotion she’s used for as long as I’ve known her.
“What if he doesn’t like us?” she whispers.
“He’s going to love you. Everyone loves you. I love you, and I’m infamously picky.”
She laughs into my shoulder. “Sydney warned us. She said don’t expect anything. She said he might not even talk to us today, and that’s okay, and we just have to keep showing up.”
“Sydney is correct, as usual.”
“Sydney got it from her father.”
“Sydney got it from you.”
She squeezes me tighter before letting go.
Eli emerges from his room with Jonah like he’s being walked to the gallows.
He’s clutching the Flash action figure in one hand and the hem of his T-shirt in the other, and the second he sees Tom and Claire, he locates me and parks himself behind my left elbow.
“Eli,” Claire says, and to her enormous credit, she does not lunge, does not coo, does not pinch a cheek. She crouches down a little, which is itself a feat for a woman with two surgical knees, and she just sort of beams at him from a respectful distance. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a really long time.”
He doesn’t answer. He shifts another inch behind me.
“We brought you some stuff,” Tom calls from the grill, easy, like he’s talking about the weather. “Some Trout gear. Some books. A really dreadful puzzle your grandma picked out that has like ten thousand pieces and is all one color.”
Claire huffs. “It’s a sunset.”
“It’s a mess.”
Eli lets out a little snort, a laugh trying to escape.
“Hey, Eli.” I twist to look at him. “You want to show Tom your throw? You’ve got a good arm. He used to coach. Bet he could give you tips.”
Eli shakes his head against my hip.
Tom’s face flickers a wince, just a shadow at the corner of his mouth, but I catch it, and my chest goes tight. He recovers fast.
“Maybe later,” he says, easy as anything. “I’ve got to get these so they don’t moo.”
The barbecue itself is good. Tom tells three of his terrible jokes and Claire laughs at all three, even though she’s heard them for thirty-plus years, and Jonah keeps refillingEli’s lemonade. I keep up enough chatter for the entire table because chatter is my job, my calling, my one true skill.
