“But I want other things more. Like hotter lasagna. Let’s just agree to sit here quietly. If we sit here quietly, maybe we can get through the rest of the night without talking to anyone,” he said.
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t argue—when Finn pulled the only card he had. When Finn reached over and took my hand.
“You lifted the lasagna?”
We turned to find our mother in the doorway, her arms crossed, looking pissed. Not just at Finn, but at me too. She looked pissed at me for not doing it, whatever she had come here to do.
“Oh, jeez,” Finn said.
“That’s right. Oh, jeez. Your father is looking for both of you. He wants to get started with the good-bye toast. He wants to introduce Jacob. And then he wants everyone to go home.”
Finn stood, but she stood in front of him.
“He’s your brother. Move on. However you can.”
He nodded. “I am,” he said. “I’m moving to New York.”
“That’s not moving on. That’s moving away.”
She started moving toward the doorway, done with the conversation. But Finn wasn’t.
“Couldn’t we say the same thing to you?” he said.
My mother put her hands up. “You can say whatever you want to me later. And maybe you should. Right now, I suggest you go outside before I lose my mind.”
Then my mother hustled us both out of the kitchen, and back to the party, where our father was waiting to give the last harvest toast.
None of us stopping to do it. To take the lasagna from the stove.
Synchronization
My father held an unlabeled wine bottle in his hands. “Look at this crowd out here tonight,” he said. “People in Sebastopol will go anywhere for some free wine, won’t you?”
Everyone applauded, my father moving to the center of the stage, a small podium to speak behind.
The entire party was semicircled around him. My family stood together behind him but we weren’t together. My mother stood by me, Finn next to him, trying not to look at Margaret, Bobby off to the side. The twins held on to their parents’ legs. Exhausted. Exhausted from the party and maybe from taking care of their parents.
Henry stood on the edge of the tent, his eyes focused on my mother.
Ben was near him, Michelle and Maddie a few steps behind. He met my eyes and tried to give me a smile. I looked away.
Then I saw Jacob, Lee standing by his side. He was looking at my father, my father, who was staring at this party of two hundred people, my father, who was the reason so many of them were standing there. And tonight, because he could, my father put on his baseball cap, Cork Dork embroidered on the lid.
They laughed. My father turned the cap around, backward, and then he picked up the bottle of wine. “Jen is going to cork this, but I bet you guys are expecting a speech from me first.”
“We are!” Gary called out.
“You ain’t getting one,” he said. “I have nothing to say to any of you.”
Then he turned to my mother again.
“Except you.”
He motioned for her to join him by the podium, which she did.
My father turned the microphone off. Then he whispered to my mother what she most needed to hear.
“What the hell are you saying, Dan?” Louise said. “Speak the fuck up, people.”