Family And Other Catastrophes. Alexandra Borowitz
a lot of stuff to my anxiety but not this. Everyone agrees with me except for you.” Emily longed for the days when “I thought you were so much older” was a compliment. It was great when she was nine and trying to look grown-up, useful when she was eighteen and trying to buy alcohol, mildly annoying by the time she hit twenty-three and devastating now that she was twenty-eight. Worst of all, nobody else seemed to relate. Even people she thought looked terrible for their age loved to regale her with their arsenals of stories of how they were mistaken for fetuses when trying to see R-rated movies.
David shook his head. “It’s really not you. People are just terrible at guessing ages. The other day at LifeSpin, one of the new trainers asked me if I was there with a parent because you need to be eighteen to have a membership.”
“See? This is exactly what I mean. Everyone else gets guessed as younger. That never happens to me. I was actually offered a free Jazzercise class.”
“If you’re referring to JazzSweat, that’s not for older people. It’s actually super intense. They give you free cashew powder if you get through all six classes without passing out.”
“Sure. Fine. But that flight attendant definitely thought I looked old.”
“No, she didn’t. Even if she thought you were thirty-two, that’s, like, no different from twenty-eight. You’re freaking out over something so tiny. Even for you.”
“Okay. Full disclosure, I asked her that because I actually was offended by her use of the word ma’am but the good news is, she thinks I’m crazy, so now we don’t need to worry about her bugging us while I give you a hand job.”
“You’re actually going to do that?”
“After the safety demonstration.”
Emily
AT SOME POINT during her Benadryl-induced stupor, Emily had gotten chilly, stolen David’s heather gray sweatpants from his carry-on, and put them on underneath her dress. By the time they landed at JFK around seven in the morning, she was too tired, and still too cold, to remove them.
“I thought you said you needed to look good every day this week or it would be embarrassing,” David teased.
“Not now. I’m freezing. Why do they make planes that cold? And then they offer air-conditioning on top of that? When it’s negative a hundred degrees outside, why not offer adjustable heat dials instead of AC? I know why—because they’re sadists.”
“Let’s just get to your mom’s house. We’ll feel a lot better when we see Lauren, my biggest fan.”
“Are you still upset about that? I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s actually not a bad thing. I can finally stop pretending to like her.”
“So you didn’t like her before?”
“I didn’t really interact with her long enough to form an opinion. I saw her—what, once, that time in Brooklyn? We had lunch in that Americana dim sum place with the grilled cheese gyoza.”
Emily turned to David. “Be honest. Is there anyone else in my family you don’t like? I may even agree with you.”
“Same question to you.”
“I like your family.”
“Okay, same answer.”
“Except you don’t actually like them. Your family is a million times nicer than mine.”
“Yeah, my family seems great, but trust me when I say they can be annoying too. What about my brother?”
“Oh, well, I mostly meant your father.”
“He’s not perfect either, believe me.”
“Emily!”
She turned and saw a young woman with long curly brown hair, a wide friendly smile and a Muppet-like bouncy walk. Emily couldn’t place her at first but squinted and got a better look as she approached. Finally she recognized the ten-year-old frayed cross-body bag with the faux tribal stitching. It was Stephanie Morris, an old friend from high school—so old, in fact, that Emily hadn’t seen her since her sophomore year in college when she was home for spring break. They had gotten coffee in Chelsea, but had very little to discuss other than Stephanie’s love of silent movies and hatred of designer fashion. The two of them once had a lot in common—they were both artistic, extroverted and energetic—but since Vassar, Stephanie had changed dramatically. Of course, Emily hadn’t spent enough time with her to know this firsthand, but she assumed as much from Stephanie’s social media posts. If Stephanie wasn’t posting about the dangers of vaccinations, she was posting about how meditation could cure cancer or how the only good decision a young person could make is to quit her job and live in Bolivia for a year without doing any research first. After Stephanie got her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she went backpacking in Europe and presumably had sex with a flock of rich hippies named Travis or Jared in hostel beds for a year and a half. She had neglected to find another job since returning to the United States. It had been six years. Of course, such important life-changing experiences were a lot easier when your parents paid your rent and subsidized your shrooms habit.
“Emily, is that seriously you?” she squealed. “How are you? You didn’t tell me you were back!”
Emily never told Stephanie when she was back home—because, naturally, they barely knew each other anymore—but every time Stephanie got any whiff of Emily’s return to New York on social media, she eagerly asked her if she wanted to meet up for coffee in Brooklyn. She never stopped to consider that Emily’s parents lived in Westchester.
“Oh, I’ve just been so busy with the wedding stuff.”
“When’s the big day?” she asked, her electric-green-lined eyes widening. She had gotten a nose piercing. That was new.
“Oh, just...in a week,” Emily croaked.
“A week? Oh, so, like, it’s a small ceremony with just you and your parents?”
“Um...not really. We have a few other people coming.”
Emily watched it slowly dawn on Stephanie that she wasn’t invited to the wedding. Eight years ago when they met up in Chelsea, Stephanie had promised Emily that she would give a kick-ass speech at her wedding. It seemed intrusive and weird even then, especially since Emily was single at the time. She racked her brain for all the consoling things she could say to Stephanie—for example, that her parents were limiting her to inviting five friends. Of course, the real reason she invited so few friends was that she didn’t have many friends. Her mother had actually urged her to invite more and said that she feared that she was self-sabotaging by “pushing people away” because it was implausible for a woman her age to have only two close female friends. Surely, her mother assumed, Emily had other friends she was intentionally alienating.
“I didn’t realize you wanted to come,” she said to Stephanie. “Also, we don’t have a raw vegan option for dinner. You’re still raw vegan, right?”
“Yeah, but it could still work out! Especially since I’m currently fasting, except for alcohol, so you wouldn’t even need to provide a dinner for me. I’d even bring my own craft whiskey. Can I still come anyway?”
Emily desperately wanted to turn to David and share incredulous looks, but she knew that doing that would plunge them both into fits of laughter. It would be just like the time they were riding the 47 bus downtown in San Francisco and a middle-aged man wearing nothing but a clown wig and leather harness got on, his soft, leathery penis flopping around like a very large skin tag. Everyone pretended not to notice, because that was the go-to San Francisco reaction to a lunatic. Emily, however, had made the mistake of mischievously glancing at David. He began to laugh, and so did she, and before long the naked clown was serenading both of them with