“It was just a little bit judgy, is all,” Serena said. “Like, ‘Poor, poor Serena. We’re the ones with the real family. You’re the poor little pretend family.’？”
“She didn’t say ‘real family.’ You just now told me she said ‘big family.’？”
Serena didn’t argue, but she let the corners of her mouth turn down.
“We’re the ones with the wide-open family; you’re the poor little narrow family”—that was what Dora had actually been saying, although Serena wasn’t going to argue with James about it.
The trouble with wide-open families was, there was something very narrow about their attitude to not-open families.
The train was slowing now. “Wilmington!” the loudspeaker said. “Watch your step, ladies and gentlemen, and be sure to check around for…” Outside Serena’s window, the sunlit platform glided into view, dotted with passengers looking so pleased and anticipatory that it seemed they believed that boarding this train would be all they had ever hoped for.
Serena was remembering the Christmas present her parents had given James. He had come to their house for dinner the day before he went home for the holidays, and when they sat down at the table a slender, flat, gift-wrapped box had been waiting on his empty plate. Serena had cringed, already embarrassed. Please let this not be something too personal, too…presuming! Even James had looked uncomfortable. “For me?” he’d asked. But when he opened it, Serena had been relieved. Inside was a pair of very bright orange socks. A black band ran around the top of each reading baltimore orioles, with a cartoon Orioles mascot at the center.
“Now that you live in Baltimore,” Serena’s father explained, “we thought you should dress the part. But we didn’t want to get you in trouble with folks in Philly, so we chose a pair that hides the evidence as long as you keep your pants cuffs down.”
“Very considerate,” James had said, and he insisted on putting them on then and there and strutting shoeless around the dining room before they started eating.
He’d had no idea that in fact, neither one of Serena’s parents was a sports fan. They probably couldn’t tell you the name of a single Oriole—or Raven, either, for that matter. The sheer effort they must have expended in thinking up this gift for him just about broke Serena’s heart.
Next to her, James said, “Hey.”
She didn’t answer.
“Hey, Reenie.”
“What.”
“Are we going to start fighting about our relatives now?”
“I’m not fighting.”
The train gave a lurch and began rolling forward again. A man with a briefcase walked down the aisle looking lost. In the seat behind them, the woman with the coaxing voice said, “Sweetheart. Honey Pie. We’re going to bring this up with management on Tuesday. Hear what I’m saying?”
“I can’t believe she’s still on the phone,” Serena murmured to James.
It took him a moment, but then he answered. “I can’t believe it’s a business call,” he murmured back. “Would you have guessed it?”
“Never.”
“You can’t tell me women in business behave the same as men.”
“Now, now, let’s not be sexist,” she said with a laugh.
He reached over for her hand and laced his fingers through hers. “Face it,” he told her, “we’ve both been under a strain. Right? Parents can be such a drag!”
“Tell me about it,” she said.
They rode along in a comfortable silence awhile.
“Did you catch that thing my mom said about my beard?” he asked suddenly. “Talk about judgy.”
“What thing?”
“When she was showing you the photo album. She gets to my high-school days and ‘Here’s James at his graduation,’ she says. ‘Doesn’t he look nice? It was before he grew his beard.’ She cannot let it go about my beard. She hates it.”
“Well, she’s a mother,” Serena told him. “Mothers always hate beards.”
“The first time I came home with it, freshman year in college, my dad offered me twenty bucks to shave it off. ‘You too?’ I asked him. ‘What is this?’ He said, ‘I personally have nothing against a beard, but your mother says she misses seeing your handsome face.’ ‘Fine,’ I told him, ‘let her pore over my old photos, if she wants to see my face.’？”