Family And Other Catastrophes

“Anyway,” she continued, “since we’re all together this week, I’ve decided that we should do a special family exercise. I think it will help us repair what has gone wrong.”

“What is it, Mom?” Emily asked. She feared some kind of competitive team-building exercise, like the trip to Six Flags that ClearDrop organized, where everyone had to go on rides together in a group of thirty, and nobody could separate. But no, Marla was too cultured for something like that. Emily still recalled the disdain in her mother’s voice when she found out that her friend Naomi’s daughter got married at Disneyland with some guy dressed as the genie from Aladdin officiating.

“Well,” Marla said, her voice cracking theatrically, “I sometimes feel that I have failed you as a mother, considering how none of you are particularly close. Lauren, when you were born, I was hoping you would become a best friend for Jason, and Emily...”

“I know I was an accident, Mom.”

“Well, I did tell your father that the antibiotics I was taking might interfere with my birth control, but when he gets in the mood...anyway. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that we need to bring this family together before the wedding. If we’ve fought this much only a few hours in, just imagine how this week will be. This might be the last time we all see each other before I die.”

“Are you sick, Mom?” Emily asked. Her throat tensed up.

“I could be,” said Marla. “Many cancers are asymptomatic. But in terms of actual diagnoses, no. Nothing that I know of.”

Lauren groaned. “Mom, you can’t just say something like that to Emily.”

“I apologize, Emily,” Marla said. “But death is a reality, and I will die someday. And I don’t want that to happen before we have all come to terms with our problems.”

“So what’s the plan?” Jason asked, frowning at his empty beer bottle.

Marla took a deep breath. “Family therapy.”

Lauren looked incredulous. “Dad actually agreed to this?”

“Dad won’t be involved. Just me. This is about you kids, not him.”

“Then why would you be there?” Lauren asked.

“Because I’m going to be the therapist,” Marla said triumphantly, as if revealing a stunning M. Night Shyamalan twist.

“You can’t be the therapist for your own children,” said Emily. “That’s unethical.”

“Ethics are important up to a point, but it’s also important not to be too rigid about them,” she said. That, at least, was true. Marla bravely resisted societal pressure to be ethical. “Frankly, Emily, when you call me unethical I think you’re projecting. What you really fear is that your own moral flaws will be uncovered. Don’t be afraid of that. This is for personal growth.”

“And if I don’t want to go to this?”

“Then I will cancel your wedding.”

“What?”

“I’m serious.”

Emily had a feeling she wasn’t serious—after all, too many deposits had already been put down, the guests were all set to arrive, it would be a massive embarrassment—but why argue? If she didn’t say yes to the therapy, she would have to deal with constant unpleasantness for the next six days. And perhaps it would be a good outlet to tell Jason and Lauren about all the times they had wronged her. She enjoyed complaining about other people, and if she could do it in an environment where nobody was allowed to yell at her for it, that would be even better.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” she finally said.

She turned to Lauren and Jason, who both reluctantly nodded. At first she wondered why they didn’t put up more of a fight, and then she remembered that her parents paid for Lauren’s rent and Jason’s divorce lawyer.

NIGHT 1 (#u3379e128-2a0d-5f84-ab4c-368a35ffd9fd)

Emily

“WHAT KIND OF bars even exist in Westchester?” David’s feet dangled from the tiny bed in Emily’s childhood bedroom. Emily was curling her hair with a thick pink-handled curling iron. She wore a formfitting white dress and a gold key pendant necklace that he had given her for her birthday the previous year.

“Some place called Celebz. Jason says he’s been there before.” She finished the last step of her makeup routine—extra-thickening mascara—and put the mascara tube back into her makeup bag, full of the department-store splurges she had made specifically for her wedding week. She felt a twinge of shame when she saw the $50 Tom Ford lipstick in peach-pink, but she genuinely felt it was the only shade that didn’t make her look haggard.

“You don’t need to get all dressed up. It’s just a bar. This is going to be the Zoogli barbecue all over again. Watching you run off screaming with barbecue sauce on your white skirt was pretty hilarious for me, but you were upset for days.”

“That’s because it was a Club Monaco skirt that I bought at a sample sale and I never would have been able to afford it otherwise, smart-ass. My reaction was completely justified. Also, the Zoogli barbecue was in California, where everyone dresses like eighteen-year-old coders. New York is different. No hoodies and sneakers at clubs.” She hoped he didn’t take this as a critique of his usual night-out uniform of a white T-shirt and jeans. She thought it made him look like a Calvin Klein model, but her girlfriend Jennifer told her he had the same fashion acumen as Homer Simpson.

“Yeah, but Westchester? I don’t want to trash your home county or anything, but all the bars I’ve seen so far look like pizza parlors.”

“There have to be a few places that are heating up. It’s Saturday. Jason will know a good place.”

* * *

“Ready for the party countdown?” Jason was behind the wheel. “The British GPS bitch says we’ve got five more minutes.” Emily sat in the back seat with Lauren and Matt, while David rode shotgun. Lauren had done her version of dolling up: bright blue eyeliner, red lipstick, a Ramones T-shirt that showed off her arm tattoos, too-long bootcut jeans that were frayed at the cuffs, and red Converse sneakers with doodles on them. “Ariel drew on my shoes,” she boasted when she caught Emily looking. “That’s just how little of a fuck I give about clothes.”

“Are you sure this place is good?” Emily asked Jason.

“Pretty decent.”

“Am I overdressed?”

“Nah. Well, maybe a little. But at least you didn’t think it was sexy to dress like the guys from Superbad like Lauren.”

“I didn’t wear this to be sexy,” Lauren said. “I wear what I fucking want. Just because I’m not as desperate for male approval as Emily—”

“Hey, I didn’t even say anything!”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m just used to getting judged. The hardest person to be in this world is a woman who dares to veer the tiniest bit outside Western standards of femininity.”

“What about a disabled albino hermaphrodite in Rwanda?” Jason said.

“Actually, it’s called intersex. And I’m not here to play the oppression Olympics.”

“Well, no, unless you’re the one winning. Hear ye, hear ye, the white woman in her thirties, whose parents pay her rent, is oppressed! May as well be straight out of a refugee camp.”

“The only reason I even need Mom’s money is because our patriarchal society devalues a gender studies degree. For women, receiving money from parents is actually a form of indentured servitude. If I were a man, society would be handing me money just for showing up, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t have to. You’re saying this from the lofty, privileged perspective of a white cis man.”

“What’s cis?” Jason seemed legitimately confused this time.

“It’s what you are. But it’s not my job to educate you, so Google that shit.”

“How is it spelled, like sissy? How can I Google it if I don’t know how to spell it?”

“Forget it. You have no interest in learning anyway. And like I said, it’s not my job.”