Isaac
I couldn’t really blame my mother for being in her own world. I had been sort of dwelling in my own little world for the past two or three days and everyone seemed content to leave me there. I didn’t mind. Neither did my mother when no one tried to pry her from her world.
I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about what I had seen in the bathroom after Taylor had been in there. I couldn’t get it out of my mind that there was a steak knife--an actual steak knife from our very kitchen--left on the sink of the bathroom by Taylor. I had stood there, staring at it for about five minutes straight, willing it to disappear. Trying to pretend that it had never been there. I even considered leaving it there for someone else to discover. Pretend like I hadn’t even seen it. Let someone else figure out how to deal with it. But there was a very real possibility that one of the little ones would be the next to walk in there and find it and then what? They certainly wouldn’t let the topic go, that was for sure. It seemed pretty obvious to me what the knife had been meant for, but how do you explain something like that to a bunch of kids under age ten? Especially when you can’t even explain it to yourself?
So, after answering the call of nature, I made a quick decision and concealed it in one of my pockets, which was covered by my long shirt. I made my way into the kitchen where the early morning party seemed to have broken up and put it back into the silverware drawer. I felt like I was destroying evidence from some crime, but it felt like something that had to be done.
I wanted to confront Taylor about it. I really did. And I didn’t. There was enough of a rift between us without me making it worse. Besides, he had been acting perfectly normal the whole day it had happened. Except for the short interlude on my way to the bathroom, I almost really could pretend I hadn’t seen anything.
But I couldn’t get it out of my mind that I had.
So far I was the only one who knew and I planned on keeping it that way for a while. I knew it was stupid to keep something like that a secret, but it was either that or put a complete overload on tension in the house. As if there wasn’t enough of that already.
“Ike! Duck!”
Parker’s voice hit my ear and registered just in time for me to react as a piece of tomato went quickly sailing over my head and landed with a rather unpleasant noise on the counter beside the cutting board where I was cutting up a loaf of store-bought French bread (“Nothing but the best for a family of nine plus a couple guests,” Parker had commented earlier after declining to make his own bread).
Loud laughter resounded from my left and I looked over to see Parker barely able to keep himself upright, slapping his knee. Taylor, too, was laughing quite loudly, but a slight blush was on his cheeks. He shot me a slightly apologetic look.
“It was aimed at him,” he said with a shrug, pointing at Parker.
“Careful, Parker. Your knife may be sharper, but mine is longer,” I said, holing up the bread knife I was using.
“Is that a challenge?” he said.
“None of that,” my mother mumbled from where she was mixing ingredients into a rather large pot while simultaneously reading a cookbook. I was surprised that she was trying out a new recipe on a night that we were having guests. Usually we were her guinea pigs and only if we approved would she try anything like that.
I shook my knife at Parker threateningly before turning back to my task.
Parker and Taylor had been like that all evening. I had to admit that I was glad they were getting along so well and that Parker was falling into our rather crowded family routines so easily. At least they weren’t finishing each other’s sentences yet. I was surprisingly afraid that that whole eerie “twin connection” thing was going to kick in sometimes soon and they would start color coordinating their clothes without meaning to or something like that. Then again, it probably would have been useful in finding out what was going on in Taylor’s mind if I could indirectly ask Parker.
At least they weren’t trying to gouge each other’s eyeballs out or anything like that. I could tell Parker could feel the tension in the house and was surprised that he hadn’t run away screaming long ago. I knew that if I could, I would.
And also that that would never happen.
“Mom?” Zac said, entering the kitchen.
“Yes, Zac?” she said.
“How many settings do you want?” he asked.
“Twelve, I think,” she said.
“Twelve?!?” Parker said incredulously. Taylor grinned. He always got a kick out of it when people from smaller families heard our estimated numbers when guests were coming.
“I thought there were only eleven of us,” Zac said, proceeding to name off everyone he knew to be coming to dinner on his fingers and coming up with eleven.
“Annie and Lawrence are bringing a guest with them,” she said. “That makes twelve.”
Oh. A guest. That explained some things.
I saw Parker and Taylor raise their eyebrows at each other.
“What guest?” Taylor asked. “I mean, who is it?”
And Taylor didn’t know. That was interesting.
My mother didn’t answer him. “Tell your father to set out the card table for Jessica, Avery, and Mackenzie. And probably you.”
Zac’s mouth fell open at the suggestion that he was going to have to sit at the little kid’s table, but he quickly supressed whatever retort he had in mind and walked out of the room grumbling to himself.
Parker and Taylor turned back to what they were doing after Zac’s exit and it wasn’t long before I was ducking another flying piece of vegetable as they resumed their attempt at preparing the salad to go with dinner. Their laughter increased in volume every time something struck them as particularly funny. My mother watched them over her shoulders, raising an eyebrow at me when she noticed me watching her watching. I shrugged.
Somehow, the salad got prepared even though a good portion ended up on the floor and on the counter beside where I was working with the bread, attempting to get creative with it in order to distract my train of thought for a while. Luckily, Parker was a polite enough guest to clean up his own mess. As he did so, Taylor tapped on my shoulder and I turned around to be face to face with a large bowl of salad.
“Voila!” he said proudly.
“Let me guess...Parker’s idea,” I said, seeing that I was not the only one trying to get creative with the food. The salad had cucumber eyes a couple croutons for a nose, a green pepper for a mouth and tomatoes for hair.
“Okay, you two are beginning to scare me,” Zac said, seeing what Taylor was showing me.
“The tomatoes for hair was a nice touch,” I commented.
“It looks a bit like Ronald McDonald on acid,” Zac commented.
“It’s not my best work,” Parker said, joining the group, putting his hands on his hips as he eyed his creation with uncertainty. “But, you know, it’s my first collaboration.”
“I can’t imagine the things you do with cafeteria food,” Zac said.
“No, no you can’t,” Parker replied without condescension, a huge grin on his face.
Taylor took it to set it on the table just as the sounds of someone’s car pulling up in the driveway could be heard.
“They’re he-ere,” Zac said. Then, sarcastically, “Oh joy.”
Parker raised an eyebrow at the sarcasm, but quickly followed Zac into the front of the house as the front door squeaked open. I cringed at the sound, wondering how long it had been since my father had oiled the thing.
I quickly finished with the bread, narrowly avoiding cutting myself with the large bread knife I had threatened Parker with earlier. I wasn’t overly eager to greet Annie, but I was eager to see who this supposed guest was. Especially if Taylor didn’t even know who it was.
I paused to set the bread on the table before entering the front hallways where everyone seemed to be crowded, not including my mother, who was still in the kitchen trying to figure out the recipe for whatever it was she was making.
As I walked in, my father was greeting an older man whom I presumed to be Annie and Lawrence’s guest. His hair was neatly combed and the suit he was wearing looked recently ironed. If he wasn’t greeting my father the way he was, with a huge friendly grin and firm shake of the hand, I would’ve thought he was a lawyer of some type.
“Walker! It’s so good to see you again!” he was saying as I stepped into the front hallway, standing behind a very confused Zac.
“Mr. Whitney,” my father said back, sounding confused himself. “Wow. It’s been years!”
He actually sounded happy when he said it.
“Please, we’re all adults now. Emerson,” the older man said.
My father smiled.
“Oh, Dad, these are some of Walker’s children,” Annie began, pointing to each of us as she said our names. “Isaac...Zac...Parker...and this one’s Taylor.”
“Well, Parker’s not really ours,” my father said quickly just as the man took each of our hands and shook them as firmly as he had shaken his. “He’s just visiting.”
The older man smiled at Walker. A smile that said he didn’t need to explain something he already knew.
But what he said was, “You might have fooled me,” and chuckled softly.
“Everyone, this is my father, Emerson Whitney.”
Her father?
“Hi,” we all eventually chorused. I cringed. We sounded rehearsed.
My father led all of us into the living room where chairs were pulled up so that we could all sit comfortably. At first, no one seemed willing to start the conversation, but Mr. Whitney quickly took care of that.
“I can’t get over it! The last time I saw you all, you were all just little things!” he said, indicating me, Taylor, and Zac with a sweep of his hand. “Now you’re all so grown up!”
With as many aunts and uncles scattered across the many lands as we have, it wasn’t something we weren’t used to hearing. But it seemed strange to be hearing it from Annie Lawrence’s father.
“Oh?” I said, not able to help myself.
“Yes,” he said. “Isaac, you were not even started in school yet. Taylor was still in diapers. And I don’t think Zac was more than a month or two old!”
Zac blushed a little bit and smiled at the older man. Taylor was looking at his hands, though, having gone into himself a little bit. It was clear that he had figured out the same thing I had: this man was his grandfather. There seemed to be something else, too.
Parker smiled politely, accepting that he was not really a part of this conversation. Mr. Whitney smiled back at him, a bit sadly.
“So what brings you here, Emerson?” my father asked. Before Annie’s father could answer, something seemed to pop into his head, “Oh! I should probably tell Diana you’re here. She’ll be happy to see you again!”
Annie’s father smiled politely as my father walked out of the room to retrieve my mother, his question hanging. What was Annie’s father’s doing here? Somehow his presence seemed to translate to me Annie’s preparation to tell Parker finally. Like Mr. Whitney was there for moral support or something like that.
“So you’re a band,” he started up the conversation again, with the same gesture with his hand. “A popular one, as Annie tells me.”
We all shrugged modestly.
“What kind of music do you play?” he asked.
“Pop stuff with a little bit of rock, I guess,” I said.
He nodded. “I prefer classical, myself,” he said with an apologetic shrug. He seemed like the type of person to prefer classical. “Quite frankly, I’ve never heard of your band before. Maybe you could play something later on?”
We all glanced at each other.
“Sure...We’ll see,” Zac answered for us, shrugging.
A few minutes later, my father led my mother out into the living room where she enthusiastically greeted Mr. Whitney. She hugged him, he gave her a fatherly kiss on the cheek. The conversation became an endless droning of rising gas and coffee prices. I stopped listening.
Without the bread or flying salad to distract me, my thoughts led me back to the knife and left me there for the rest of the night.