Chapter 1
My mother has seven children, but I was the one who broke her moneymaker. Literally. She was a 22-year old Irish Catholic bride and she had big plans for that moneymaker. Populating Palo Alto with Whelan’s was my mother’s full-time job. Her calling.
So you can imagine how she must have felt to wake up from what should have been a perfectly normal c-section only to find herself with a healthy six-pound baby girl, three pints of a stranger’s O-negative and no uterus.
I swear the woman’s been making me pay ever since.
After my birthtastrophe, my parents adopted five additional children, one for each car dealership my father opened. Dad got his babies. Mom got hers. Don’t get me wrong, I love my brothers and sisters, all of them, and the more the merrier. I see them as my own personal Fitch Barriers – those big plastic water-filled barrels on freeway off-ramps – my siblings are always there to help soften the blow of our mother’s particular brand of crazy.
But I’m still the family pariah.
It doesn’t take a shrink to see that my mother resents me. And I grew up with a shrink, so I would know. My older brother, Adam, had us all figured out long before he started his psych rotation in med school. He started calling me “The Nemesis” when I was about twelve and it’s become the private joke that keeps on giving. Of course if it wasn’t for Adam, I’d be mumbling all this from the comfort of a padded cell.
It doesn’t help that I look exactly like my mother. Same white blonde hair and denim-blue eyes. Same statuesque five-foot-one-inch frame. Same ruddy Irish skin that flushes at the tiniest slight. At least I can take comfort in knowing how well I’m going to age because my mother, at 50, is still turning heads. Like a mini-Marilyn Monroe. Aside from our age, the only real physical difference between us is about ten pounds of ass flesh I haven’t been able to lose since my first year of college a decade ago. Not that I’ve ever actually tried to lose that weight. It’s my only defense against a closet full of Mom’s castoff Juicy Couture.
Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that my mother has cultivated two sets of standards for her children. Those that apply to her eldest daughter, Leah, and those that apply to the rest of her offspring. I’m not sure I want to know what it says about me that I’m still in the game, still trying to win her favor. I have yet to give up on becoming Mommy’s Little High Achiever.
So in spite of the fact that she has three perfectly healthy and capable children still in her employ, living under her roof, eating her food and mooching her wifi, when she called me with a request to help her clean the pool house on my only day off in over a week, I went.
“You’re late.” She didn’t even look up when I slipped through the sliding glass door.
“For what? I wasn’t aware this was an appointment, Mom.” I chucked my bag onto the table by the door.
“But I asked you to come at 8:30, Leah. I’ve been out here cleaning all morning.”
“It’s only nine.” I sighed and reminded myself I couldn’t win. Stop trying. “I’ll stay ‘til we’re done, okay?” I wanted to be out of there by noon at the latest. I had my own apartment to clean, a car to wash and a manicure scheduled for 3:00. Not to mention all the boys were due at my place at 6:00. Both my sisters had already bailed on my weekly Wii Wednesday dinner, but three of my brothers and my boyfriend Brandon would be there tonight.
“Fine, whatever. Why don’t you start on the big bathroom.” I headed down the hall, more than a little relieved to get away from my mother. I threw on my Swedish dance play list, shaking my hips to Abba’s Fernando while picking up all the mildewed beach towels my siblings had left on the bathroom floor. The pool house bathroom had become a universal dumping ground, so I spent the next few minutes picking swim trunks and bikini bottoms up off and hanging them onto the hooks on the wall. The hooks designed specifically for that purpose. The hooks that had our names – all nine of them – written over them. I started a load of towels in the washing machine and spectacularly failed at not getting annoyed that my family was such a bunch of slobs. A bunch of slobs with a poolhouse.
Mom and Dad hadn’t messed around when it came to building a house. Three acres, ten bedrooms, said pool house and a six-car garage had turned us Whelan kids into the loyal, if spoiled rotten, beneficiaries of Jack Whelan’s Japanese automobile empire.
You’d think an upbringing like that would make for a world of everlasting bliss, but you’d also be wrong. Well, mostly. I know everyone must think I’m a spoiled little rich girl, but I swear I’d trade every advantage I grew up with for a single minute in the sunshine of my mother’s approval. Privilege never bought me anything I actually cared about. Mostly it just bought me dirty looks.
After picking up all my siblings’ crap, I sponged down the shower and started on the toilet. Two little brothers still at home and apparently neither of them could hit the water. I held my breath and doubled up on the bleach, oblivious to the fact that my mother had perched herself in the doorway to critique my performance.
“You need to use the pumice or we’ll never get rid of the hard water stains.”
“I will,” I answered, more startled by her sudden appearance than her gift for micro-management. Inside I wondered again why the hell this was my job. On my day off.
“Finish that up and come help me change the sheets on the spare bed.” She swirled her manicured finger in a motion that said chop chop Cinderella.
Before I could formulate a sufficiently bitchy comeback, my cell phone did it for me, zapping my ass and honking like an old car horn. I pulled it from my back pocket and checked the screen.
“Is that Brandon?” Mom asked, stopping to wink at me like some meddling Jewish Bubbe. But Brandon could really only be counted on to text me when he was running late. I shook my head at her.
“It’s Ian.” My youngest brother. Age nine and more piss than vinegar.
Math test was a joke (Lincoln), I read.
“He’s not supposed to have that phone at school, Leah. I don’t know why you insisted on giving it to him for Christmas.” She stopped messing with the bed pillows and stood stock straight in front of me, her disdain whitening her spray-on tan.
“It’s recess, Mom. He’s fine. He just wanted to brag about acing that math test.” I started to write him back, but my ancient thumbs were no match for his nine-year old speed.
“Ask him if he remembered to show his work.” She looked over my shoulder as I continued typing.
Woot! Mom wants to know if you showed your work (Madison). I tapped send.
“Madison?” she asked, hands on her Barbie-doll hips. “Is that some sort of secret code you’ve made up to talk about me behind my back?”
“No, Mom.” I blinked up at the ceiling until the sting of her words passed and I could respond like an adult. “Ian loves you. I would never let him talk about you behind your back. You should know that by now.” My mother and I didn’t get along, but I wasn’t the bad apple rotting the rest of the barrel. I would never do anything to jeopardize their relationship. It was too important to me that they got along. “Ian and I are just playing a text game. Alphabet word association? We’re doing presidents.”
Another text message came in from Ian. Why? Teach knows I can do it in my head. (Nixon).
“See, Mom.” I showed her the screen of my phone. She darted me a look that said she was still suspicious and went back to fluffing pillows.
Okay, cool. I typed. See you tonight. (Obama)
I helped mom make the bed until my phone honked again.
I laughed when I read it. Luigi’s going DOWN! (Polk) Apparently we were playing Mario Kart tonight. Wii Wednesday always brought out Ian’s competitive streak. Actually, pretty much everything brought out his competitive streak. But at least that was better than his pyromaniacal streak. No wonder he was my favorite brother.
“We might as well change the spare bed too,” Mom said as she finished re-positioning all the throw pillows I had just straightened myself.
“Aren’t they all spare beds? It’s not like anyone ever sleeps out here.” So why are we changing the sheets?
“Didn’t I tell you? Colin is coming for the summer.” She spun on her heels and took off toward the other bedroom.
As if she hadn’t just dropped a bomb on my own personal Hiroshima.
I sucked in a scared breath and chased after her, stopping just outside the bedroom to collect myself and slow down my heart rate.
“Colin?” I tried to make my voice sound casual as I came through the door. “As in Colin Quinn?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Apparently he’s got some big project in Milpitas. He’s coming next week.” I made my way to the other side of the bed and hid my shaking hands by pretending to tuck the top sheet under the mattress.
Colin had been our exchange student from Ireland during the year when Adam was a Senior at Palo Alto High and I was a Freshman. When I graduated three years later, I spent the summer in Europe. With Colin. I hadn’t heard from him since.
“Wait. Colin has a job?”
“Of course he does. He’s the same age as Adam. He’s an engineer or something now. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Impossible to imagine. Not that I hadn’t been imagining Colin Quinn for the past decade. Vividly imagining him. Usually without his clothes. But always without a job.
I knew the family had kept in touch with him. Like any other far flung member of the Whelan clan, he telephoned on Christmas day. And I always somehow managed to silently slip the phone to one of my brothers. I figured Colin could’ve contacted me if he actually wanted to. I had given him my e-mail address. And my cell number. I’m in the phone book. Not to mention that googling my name lands you on a Mercury News page with a big shiny picture of me smiling in front of Whelan Toyota. The family dealership has had the same number since creation, the same number it was when Colin lived with us. If he wanted to reach me, he’d had plenty of opportunities. Knowing he hadn’t even tried made his decade of silence scream all that much louder.