“Thanks, Marcela,” I said. “Shocker, huh?”
I looked at my brother. Having two kids had aged him, but he was still a babe with his surfer blond curls and California tan. I wondered what strangers thought of the two of them when they went out into the wild all Instagram perfect, if they quietly hated them like I worked hard not to.
“I still can’t get my head around it,” she said. “Charlie’s really broken up.” I wasn’t a big fan of talking about my feelings, especially feelings that made me want to puke, so I changed the subject.
“Zander is such a little man now!” I said, checking out my nephew. He was still watching TV but turned to look at the sound of his name. I tried to remember when I’d last seen my nephew. Christmas? No, they’d gone to Marcela’s mom’s house for Christmas. The Christmas before that? I’d once fantasized about being the “fun auntie”; you know, the one who drops in unannounced, arms laden with presents, swearing like a sailor and spewing all sorts of inappropriate stories. But I rarely even showed up for announced visits, and those had become shamefully few and far between. I loved my brother, but he was different around his wife: jumpy, irritable, guarded. I don’t think he was embarrassed by me, but then again, I was in denial about a lot of things, so who knows?
“Honey, come say hi to your aunt Winnie,” Marcela commanded, and the boy reluctantly got up and gave me a hug. Of course I’d been there the day he was born, back when I thought I’d be invited for every birthday and family holiday. But when the invitations never came, I took the hint and sent a card. I dared to imagine he kept them in a shoebox under his bed and looked at them from time to time, but of course I never asked.
“Normally he’d be at baseball practice,” Marcela felt compelled to explain, as if I might judge her for letting a perfectly fit seven-year-old boy watch TV after school. Appearances mattered to her. Obviously. She was a hairdresser.
“OK, ready!” my brother announced as he emerged from the bedroom with a duffel and a suit bag.
“You’re bringing a suit?” I asked. I hadn’t packed the female equivalent and suddenly got nervous.
“Just in case.” He shrugged. I felt a little better when I realized I could always borrow something from Mom; her closet was like the designers-only section at Bloomingdale’s, and she didn’t need any of those clothes where she was going.
“I hope you don’t mind I’m not coming,” Marcela said. “Charlie said she didn’t want a service, and I didn’t see the point of going just to . . . y’know . . .”
“Go and collect our money?” I offered. That was the only point of this trip—someone might as well say it.
“The boys are such a handful these days,” she said, ducking my crude remark.
“Hopefully we won’t be gone more than a few days,” Charlie told his wife.
“We’ll be fine,” she said kindly. And I had no doubt they would be. My sister-in-law was as competent as she was beautiful. And now about to be rich, too. I wasn’t so cynical to think she married my brother just for the money, though I always suspected it was part of his appeal. As for why he married her right out of college, at the tender age of twenty-two, that was an easy one. Dad had just died, and Mom had never been much of a mother figure; with the only parent who ever gave a shit gone, of course he tied his wagon to a woman who would steer it for him. Mom never liked her much—probably because they were too much alike. Of course that didn’t stop her from throwing them a lavish wedding and buying T-bills for their babies. God forbid she be perceived as anything less than a magnanimous matriarch.
There were hugs and kisses all around, and then we were off.
“Marcela looks good,” I said as we backed out of the driveway. “You’re a lucky bastard,” I added, because now was not the time to shit on his marriage. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame Marcela for the chill that settled over our relationship, but Charlie and I had been thick as thieves before he married her. We’d spoken or texted almost daily. Ever since we were kids, Charlie was my first “happy birthday” and I was his. I didn’t blame him for putting his wife and kids first, but it would have been nice to have been a close second.
“We’ve had our struggles,” my brother confessed. “Y’know, financially.”
“Well, all that’s going to change now,” I said. And his response was refreshingly blunt.