At Dad’s seventieth, my little sister laughed in front of everybody and asked if I could even fight. I told her I’d mostly fought up close, with my hands, and she said, “And your little nickname was what, Cupcake?” I sipped my coffee and gave her the real one. Across the deck, Dad’s Marine buddy dropped his bourbon.
The glass broke so loud that the whole party went dead quiet in one second.
Ice skidded across the boards, and the bourbon ran brown into the cracks.
Twenty-some heads swung toward the grill.
Of all the people at that party, Eduardo was the last one you’d expect to drop anything.
His right hand was still curled around a glass that wasn’t there anymore.
He never looked at the mess.
His eyes were on me.
And he had the face of a man watching somebody he’d buried walk back in through the gate.
Right then I’d have paid anything to be four hours south, in my own kitchen, with the door locked.
Mom had phoned ten days before.
“Fran, your father only turns seventy once,” she said. “I’m not asking twice.”
I don’t tell my mother no.
I put together Dad’s apple crumb pie, made the drive with one stop for gas, and swore I would stay for the candles and leave before dark.
That lasted about twenty minutes.
It was a gray Saturday at Dad’s place outside Warsaw, Indiana.
Somebody had a radio going on the porch rail, the smoker had been running since six that morning, and Lynne’s two, Hadley and Grayson, were racing laps around the dock with marshmallow sticks.
Lynne found me before I could set the pie down.
My sister has never been quiet a day in her life.
She sells pontoon boats off a lot by the reservoir, and she talks to everybody like they’re one handshake from signing.
There’s always a can of hard seltzer in her hand, and it never stays full long.
“Well, look who the Pentagon finally let out,” she said from across the lawn.
A couple of aunts laughed because nobody had told them not to.
I kissed Dad’s cheek, handed Mom the pie, and gave my sister nothing.
Lynne can’t stand getting nothing.
Quiet only makes her dig.
All afternoon she kept drifting back to my chair with a new question.
“Still living on the Army’s money?”
“No.”
“Ever get an ACTUAL job?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still sleep with a gun under the pillow?”
“No.”
Every one-word answer made her happier.
When I went inside for a napkin, she told Jaden, loud enough that I’d get it through the screen door, that I used to cry at fireworks.
That one was true.
I was six.
Once she said it straight to Mom, with me sitting right there.
“Twenty-two years, and she came home what, twice a year?”
Mom told her to go find the kids some lemonade.
She didn’t go.
Close to four, a dark gray pickup crept up the gravel drive.
The man who climbed out had to be past seventy, in a white shirt buttoned clear to the collar and boots shined like somebody was coming to inspect them.
His name was Eduardo.
He’d lived across the cove from Dad for eleven years.
Retired Marine.
People who’ve served can pick each other out of a crowd without anybody saying a thing.
It’s how you stand.
It’s which chair you take, the one where you can see the gate.
It’s how your eyes find every way out of a place before you find somewhere to sit.
Eduardo went down the deck shaking every hand.
When he got to mine, he stopped.
Half a second, maybe.
His eyes went narrow.
Like he was hunting for something he’d set down years ago.
Nobody said anything.
Then he moved on to Mom and told her the pork steaks smelled right.
I let myself think that was the end of it.
By the time the cake came out, Lynne had collected her own crowd.
The candles were a seven and a zero, and the zero kept tipping over in the frosting while Dad propped it back up with his thumb.
The seltzer usually made Lynne loud.
That evening it made her mean.
She came straight at my chair with a fresh can.
“Okay, tell the whole party,” she said, waving the can at the deck, “what you actually DID for twenty-two years.”
“Bit of everything.”
She laughed.
“That’s a dodge.”
“Best I’ve got.”
Jaden and a couple of the cousins grinned down into their beers.
Lynne didn’t like sharing the laugh.
“Did you ever see actual combat?”
“Some.”
“Ever shoot anybody?”
“I’ve pulled a trigger.”
“Okay, but fighting.”
She put both fists up like a cartoon boxer.
“You know,” she said, and threw one slow punch at the air between us, “the punching part.”
Any other day I’d have let it go.
Any other day I’d rather be the person in the room nobody bothers to count.
But I’d been her punch line for seven hours, in front of my father, on his birthday.
And I was tired.
I set my coffee on the arm of the chair.
“Yes.”
Lynne’s mouth hung open a second.
“Seriously?”
“Mostly up close.”
I shrugged.
“You learn to use your hands.”
She grinned so wide I could see her back teeth.
“And knives?”
“Knives were extra.”
The cousins laughed again.
Lynne smacked the deck railing with her open palm.
“Told you.”
Then something in her face went sour.
She jabbed one finger at me, close enough that I could smell the lime on it.
“Twenty-two years, and you can’t tell your own family ONE true thing,” she said.
“Some of us were HERE. Some of us drove Dad to every heart appointment while you were off playing soldier.”
“Lynne, ENOUGH,” Mom said.
Dad was half out of his chair with both hands up.
Lynne didn’t even turn her head.
She leaned down into my face.
“So WHAT WAS YOUR NICKNAME, big hero?”
She let it sit before the punch line.
“Cupcake?”
I kept my eyes on hers.
And I gave it to her the way you’d tell somebody what time it was.
“Banshee.”
I hadn’t finished the second half of it when the glass hit the boards.
Eduardo’s hand was still open in the air in front of him.
He’d gone as gray as the sky over the lake.
For one second he looked thirty years younger, and scared.
His mouth moved.
Nothing came out.
He didn’t even breathe.
Then his voice came out rough and small, and it was meant for me alone.
“Sweet Mother of God,” he said.
“You’re Banshee.”
The glass by his boot
“Yes,” I said. “Francine. Most people call me Fran now.”
He knew the nickname from when we’d both been serving. That much was plain when he said, “Your voice. I couldn’t place your face, but your voice.”
I picked up my mug and put it on the table.
Then I took Eduardo’s elbow and moved him back from the glass.
“Sit down before you step in that.”
He sat in my chair without arguing. His fingers closed around the arm where my coffee had been.
Lynne lowered her can.
“Oh, come on. You actually know her?”
Eduardo rubbed his mouth. He looked at my hands, then back at my face.
“Yes.”
“From where?”
He didn’t answer her.
Dad went inside for a broom. Through the screen, he took my coat off the kitchen chair and hung it beside the back door.
He’d given me that coat for Christmas. He still hung it by the shoulders instead of the loop because he said the loop would pull out. A father could remember something that small while missing the rest of the afternoon.
Mom gathered the children inside, away from the glass. Jaden carried the cake after her.
Lynne stayed planted in front of Eduardo.
“What, was she famous?”
I wanted to tip her seltzer into the flowerpot. The geranium was dead already. It had nothing left to lose.
“Give him a minute,” I said.
“Now we’re not allowed to ask questions?”
Eduardo tried to stand. I held out my hand, and he stayed put.
That made Lynne look from him to me.
Dad came back with the broom.
“Let’s get everybody inside,” he said. “We’ve still got candles to do.”
“Fine,” Lynne said. “Maybe somebody can explain this performance over cake.”
Eduardo reached for my sleeve.
“Can we talk?”
Lynne heard him.
“Not privately,” she said.
Mom’s camera
“No,” I said. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Lynne put her can down hard enough to slop it over the rim.
Mom opened the screen door and called Dad in. The cake was on the dining table now, beside the instant camera she’d bought for the party.
She wanted pictures she could hand people before they left. Her phone contained several thousand photographs and, according to her, hid every one worth printing.
Ten days earlier, during her call, she’d said, “One of you with your father. Just you two. I don’t have a recent one.”
“I’ll look like a hostage.”
“You can manage one smile.”
“I’ll practice in the car.”
She’d laughed, then gone quiet.
“Come early enough that we can actually have you here, Fran.”
So I’d come before lunch. I’d peeled apples the night before instead of buying a pie. I’d even brought a shirt without anything printed on it.
Inside, Mom picked up the camera.
“Lynne knows how this works,” she said. “She showed me.”
Lynne came through the door behind us and took it from her.
“Everybody needs to stop moving things around. I had this organized.”
Dad set down the broom. There was bourbon on one cuff.
“Where do you want me?”
“At the end, with the lake behind you.”
He obeyed. She moved a chair, straightened his collar, then reached across him to adjust the zero again.
My sister had organized every family gathering since Mom’s knees started bothering her. She picked the time and told people what to bring. Somewhere along the way, she started telling them what other people meant.
Fran wouldn’t want a fuss.
Fran wouldn’t enjoy that.
Fran liked keeping to herself.
I’d let those sentences stand. They saved me some phone calls. There was my contribution to the mess, and it wore sensible shoes.
Eduardo stayed by the doorway.
“Fran,” he said. “I need to say something.”
“Not right now.”
He nodded immediately.
Lynne lifted the camera, then lowered it.
“Well, that’s convenient.”
Mom put a hand on her arm.
“Enough.”
“You keep saying that to me. She’s the one making everybody uncomfortable.”
Dad looked at the cake instead of either daughter.
I took the chair beside him.
Lynne moved it back.
“That’s where I need to stand.”
The chair beside Dad
I pulled the chair forward again.
“You can take the picture from there.”
“I know how to take a picture, Fran.”
“Then take one.”
Dad touched my wrist under the table.
“Let’s not.”
There it was. Two words, delivered to the person who might listen.
I turned my hand over and held his. His skin felt like mine would someday. I hated that the thought arrived then, while I was trying to be angry.
“I’m not asking for much,” I said.
Lynne put the camera on the sideboard.
“Oh, you’re asking now?”
“Say you were out of line. Then we can do the candles.”
Her laugh came out without company this time.
“For teasing my sister?”
“For what you said on the deck.”
“What part wasn’t true? You did leave. I did stay. I did drive him.”
Dad shifted in his chair.
“I can drive myself most places.”
“You know what I mean, Dad.”
She was still talking to me, but her eyes went around the room. Aunts stood near the kitchen opening. Jaden leaned against the sideboard with his beer below his waist.
Nobody was grinning now. Nobody was stopping her, either.
“I’ve never said you didn’t help him,” I said.
“You don’t say anything. That’s the whole problem. We get these little answers, and then suddenly there’s a nickname and everybody’s supposed to be impressed.”
“I didn’t ask anybody to be impressed.”
“Well, he’s certainly doing his part.”
She pointed at Eduardo.
He took one step forward.
I shook my head.
His boot stopped beside the rug.
Lynne spread her hands.
“See? What is that? Do you two rehearse?”
“No,” Eduardo said.
“Then explain.”
“She said no.”
I wanted to thank him. I also wanted him to stop looking as though he might be sick in Mom’s umbrella stand.
Mom picked up the cake knife, put it down, then picked it up again.
“Can we please have a birthday?”
“Yes,” I said. “As soon as Lynne takes back what she said.”
Lynne folded her arms.
“I’m sorry you can’t take a joke.”
I pushed back from the table.
Dad caught my sleeve.
“Don’t get up.”
For half a second, I thought he’d chosen me. Not over Lynne. Just chosen to keep me in the chair I’d driven four hours to sit in.
Then he nodded toward the kitchen.
“Your mother needs the pie cut.”
Mom’s mouth opened.
“Benjamin, I can—”
“Please, Fran,” Dad said. “Help me out.”
I went because he’d said please.
Behind me, Lynne picked up the camera.
The seven and the zero
In the kitchen, I put Dad’s pie on the counter and took the knife from Mom.
The crumb topping broke under the blade. I’d packed it too tightly. I’d spent the evening before worrying about that topping.
A woman could use up a perfectly good Friday worrying about the wrong disaster.
Mom stood beside me.
“Just give her a few minutes.”
“She’s had all day.”
“She’s had too much to drink.”
“She knew the words before she opened the can.”
Mom pressed her lips together. From the dining room came the scrape of Dad’s chair.
“Move closer, everybody,” Lynne said.
I put down the knife.
Mom caught my elbow.
“Let me talk to her after the candles.”
“I came for the candles.”
“I know.”
She said it so quickly that I stayed where I was. I still believed she meant she’d bring me back in.
Then Lynne started singing.
The others joined her.
I stood with both hands on the counter while my father turned seventy in the next room.
Mom pulled away from me and went to the doorway.
“Wait, Fran’s—”
The song was nearly finished. Dad’s face was visible between shoulders. He looked toward the kitchen.
He could see me.
He blew out both candles.
The camera clicked.
Everybody cheered. The little photograph came out, and Lynne took it by the edge.
I picked up the knife again. Put it down again.
There wasn’t a sensible thing to do with my hands.
Mom came back.
“We can light them again.”
“No.”
“It’ll only take a second.”
“No, Mom.”
A second set of candles would have been for the photograph. I’d already had the real thing, from behind a bowl of forks.
Dad appeared in the doorway.
“Your sister got everybody going,” he said.
“You looked right at me.”
“I thought you were coming.”
I almost helped him. I almost said the pie needed cutting, or that it didn’t matter, or that seventy was only a number.
Those were all available. I’d used them before.
“You could’ve waited,” I said.
He looked down at the knife.
“I should have.”
Lynne came in carrying the photograph.
“Look how good this came out.”
She held it toward Dad. Her face was beside his, cheek nearly touching his temple. Behind them were Mom and the cousins.
Dad didn’t take it.
“Fran wasn’t in it,” he said.
“She was cutting pie.”
“You started without her.”
Lynne looked at me.
“Did you seriously complain about a picture?”
I leaned back against the counter. If I moved, I was going to leave, and if I left then, I couldn’t pretend I’d come home for my father.
“I asked you to take back what you said.”
“And I apologized.”
“No,” Mom said.
Lynne turned.
Mom’s fingers were wrapped around the dish towel.
“You didn’t.”
For a moment, my sister looked younger. Then she looked straight at Dad.
“Are we really doing this on your birthday?”
He rubbed both palms over his face.
“Everybody needs to calm down.”
Lynne pointed at me.
“Tell her. She’s been sitting there staring at me like she’s deciding what to do.”
Dad looked at my hands.
I took them off the counter and held them at my sides.
Lynne set the photograph face down beside my pie.
My coat on the hook
Dad stepped into the kitchen and pulled the door partway closed.
That hurt worse than the candles.
Lynne’s accusations had an audience. Whatever Dad wanted from me apparently required privacy.
“Nobody thinks you’re going to do anything,” he said.
“You just looked at my hands.”
“I looked where she pointed.”
He sounded annoyed with himself. I couldn’t use that for much.
Mom reached past him and pushed the door open again.
Eduardo was in the dining room. Jaden stood beside him. Both could hear us now.
Lynne followed Dad into the kitchen.
“I didn’t say she’d hit me.”
“You said you didn’t know what she’d do,” Mom said.
“Because I don’t. She gives me nothing all afternoon, then scares Eduardo half to death, and now everyone’s acting like I’m the problem.”
Eduardo put his hand on the doorframe.
“You are mistaken about—”
“Please,” I said.
He stopped.
I couldn’t stand another man describing me for my family, even if this one planned to be kind.
Lynne looked satisfied.
“There. Again.”
Dad turned toward me.
“Could you just tell your sister you didn’t mean to frighten her?”
I stared at him.
He kept going. That was the part I remember best. He had time to stop.
“Then we can put this behind us.”
“Did I frighten you, Lynne?”
She looked at Dad.
“I’m not doing an interrogation.”
“Did I threaten you?”
“You don’t have to use words.”
Jaden moved into the doorway.
“She didn’t even get out of her chair.”
Lynne pointed at him.
“You were laughing too.”
He looked down at his beer.
“Yeah.”
There went the last person who might have said it plainly without being pushed.
I took my coat off the hook.
Mom put both hands over her mouth.
“Fran, don’t.”
“She wants me gone.”
“No, I don’t,” Lynne said. “I want you to stop acting better than us.”
I slid one arm into the coat. The lining bunched at my wrist, and I had to pull my arm out and try again.
All that training. Defeated by a sleeve in my mother’s kitchen.
Dad reached for the other side of the coat.
“Stay. Please.”
“Then tell her I didn’t threaten her.”
He looked at Lynne.
She stood beside the pie with her arms folded and waited him out.
“Can we all just apologize?” he said.
I pulled the coat from his hand.
I would’ve driven home in the dark. I would’ve spent four hours composing things I should have said and arrived too tired to sleep. By Sunday, my departure would have become another story Lynne told about me.
I opened the back door.
Eduardo moved toward me.
“Fran. One thing.”
“Not the nickname.”
“No.”
His hand shook against the doorframe. It had been shaking since the glass broke.
I knew that hand now. Older, but I knew it.
I kept the door open.
“What are you afraid I’ll say?”
He looked past me at Dad.
“How you found me.”
Eduardo’s hands
I closed the door.
“You don’t owe anybody that.”
“I owe you an answer.”
“You gave me one.”
He shook his head.
“She’s telling them I was frightened of you.”
Lynne made a small sound behind Dad.
Eduardo looked at her.
“I wasn’t.”
I set my coat on the kitchen chair. Nobody reached for it.
“Only your part,” I said.
He nodded.
Dad moved aside, and Eduardo came into the kitchen. The cousins at the dining table could see him through the doorway. He didn’t ask for it to be closed.
“A truck rolled,” he said. “I was pinned underneath. Francine got down beside me.”
He put one hand on the counter.
“I couldn’t see her properly. Mostly her sleeve. She kept hold of my hand while they worked.”
Lynne’s arms came apart.
“So you saved—”
“Let him finish,” I said.
Eduardo looked at the floor.
“I was crying. Asking the same question over and over. Whether they could get me out. I asked her not to let the others hear.”
Dad pulled out the kitchen chair.
Eduardo didn’t sit.
“She told me I didn’t have to be quiet. Then somebody tried moving the truck before everyone was clear. She yelled so hard they stopped.”
His fingers pressed against the counter.
“One of the men called her Banshee afterward. I remembered it. I remembered her voice.”
There was no great combat story coming. No list of people I’d hurt. Just a man under a truck and a woman with a loud mouth.
I could provide references for the loud mouth. Most of them were related to me.
Eduardo looked at Lynne.
“When she said the name, I was back there. And I thought she might tell your father how I behaved.”
Dad took his friend’s arm.
“For God’s sake, Eduardo.”
“I know,” Eduardo said.
He looked at me.
“I should’ve thanked you before I asked for anything.”
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“I do. Thank you.”
I nodded. That was all I could manage.
Mom was crying into the dish towel.
Lynne reached toward my coat.
“Well, if you’d just told us that—”
I picked it up before she could.
“Put the camera down,” I said.
She was still holding it.
“Everybody heard you on the deck. Everybody gets to hear this.”
The kitchen doorway
Lynne set the camera on the counter.
“Fine. What do you want me to say? I didn’t know any of that. Nobody knew. You can’t blame people for not knowing something you refuse to tell them.”
“What did you know?” I said.
She stared at me.
“You knew I was your sister.”
“Oh, don’t do that. Don’t make it sound like I came here planning to hurt you. I was having a laugh. Everybody was having a laugh.”
Jaden put his beer in the sink.
“I laughed,” he said. “I shouldn’t have.”
Lynne turned toward him.
“You said the knife thing was funny.”
“It was funny when she said it. You weren’t.”
He looked at me.
“I’m sorry, Fran.”
“Thank you.”
Lynne pulled out a chair, then pushed it back without sitting.
“So now I’m standing here by myself.”
Nobody answered.
She looked at Mom.
“You could’ve pulled me aside. You always do this. You let it go until I’m the bad guy in front of everybody.”
“I told you to stop,” Mom said.
“You told me to get lemonade. That’s not the same thing.”
Mom lowered the towel.
“Then I’ll say it plainly now. You were cruel to your sister in my house.”
“Dad’s house too.”
Dad straightened.
“Our house.”
Lynne turned to him so quickly that I could almost feel her relief.
“Dad, you know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
He came to stand beside me. I didn’t move closer to him. He had work to do before he got that.
He looked through the doorway at the family.
“I sent Fran in here to cut the pie. She wasn’t avoiding the picture.”
Lynne opened her mouth.
Dad held up his hand.
“I could see her when I blew out the candles. I did it anyway.”
His hand dropped.
“Then I asked her to apologize so the rest of us could have a nice evening.”
Mom wiped her face.
“I kept asking her to wait.”
Dad looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
I wanted to be seven years old for about ten seconds. I wanted him to pick me up and carry me out of that kitchen, away from the whole business.
Instead, I made him answer.
“If Eduardo hadn’t known me?”
Dad’s face folded.
“I should’ve stopped it before he ever got here.”
Lynne leaned both palms on the counter.
“I drove you to those appointments.”
“You did,” Dad said.
“I missed work.”
“You did.”
“And she gets to walk in with a pie and suddenly I’m nothing?”
“Nobody said that,” I said.
“You don’t have to.”
She was crying now. She wiped her face with the heel of her hand and kept talking.
“You all depend on me. You call me when something needs doing. I arrange everything. I make sure people show up. Then she comes home and everybody has to tiptoe.”
Mom took one step toward her.
“We asked you to stop insulting her.”
Lynne looked at me.
“Well, congratulations. You got everybody on your side.”
I picked up the camera and handed it to Mom.
“Will you take the picture you asked me to come for?”
Mom held it against her chest.
“Yes.”
Lynne reached for it.
“You’ll waste the film. Let me.”
Mom moved it out of reach.
“No.”
Dad pulled his chair beside mine.
Lynne stood between us and the dining room.
“You’re really going to take pictures while I’m standing here crying?”
Dad rose again.
“Lynne, you’re done for tonight.”
The room went quiet enough to hear the camera strap tap Mom’s wrist.
My sister stared at him.
“You’re throwing me out of your birthday?”
“Jaden can drive you and the children home.”
Jaden nodded. He’d stopped drinking well before the cake.
Lynne looked at Mom, then me.
“Tell him that’s ridiculous.”
I stayed beside Dad’s chair.
She picked up the photograph she’d left face down.
Dad held out his hand.
“Leave that here.”
Her fingers tightened on its edges.
Then she put it in his palm.
The photograph in my pocket
Lynne went into the dining room to get her bag. Mom followed to help gather the children’s things.
Dad stood beside me with the first photograph in his hand.
“I don’t want another birthday like this,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
He looked at the picture, then set it on the counter without hiding it.
“Can I put my arm around you?”
That did it.
I could hold still through a finger in my face. Apparently I couldn’t survive a seventy-year-old man asking before he hugged me.
I nodded, and he pulled me against him.
My forehead landed on his shoulder. He smelled of the smoker. I got tears on the shirt he’d probably argued with Mom about ironing.
“You’re my girl,” he said.
I held on to the back of his shirt.
“Then act like it.”
“I will.”
Mom came back with the camera. She waited until I let go.
“Do you want a minute?”
“No. Take it.”
Dad kept his arm around me. I looked directly at the lens, with my face exactly as it was.
The camera clicked.
Mom took the photograph as it came out. This time she held it herself.
Eduardo stood in the doorway beside Jaden.
“That one’s hers,” Dad said.
“I know,” Mom said.
We waited while the picture appeared. Dad’s eyes were wet. My shirt was crooked at the collar. Neither of us looked remotely like a hostage.
Mom handed it to me.
“I’ll call you myself next time,” she said. “About dates. About coming over.”
“Good.”
“And you can call us. You don’t have to check whether Lynne has something arranged.”
Dad squeezed my shoulder.
“You never needed her permission.”
I looked at him.
“I needed you to say that in front of her.”
He faced the dining room.
“Did you hear me, Lynne?”
She stood by the front door with her bag.
“Everybody heard you, Dad.”
“Good,” he said.
Outside, Jaden helped the children into the car. Eduardo walked me as far as the steps, shook my hand, then went back inside.
I tucked the photograph into my coat pocket, flat against my chest.
Lynne waited beside the passenger door.
“So that’s it? You get your picture and leave me looking like this?”
I stopped beside her.
She pulled her sleeve over her hand and wiped under one eye.
“You could’ve said something to help me.”
“You had seven hours.”
I walked past her with my father’s photograph in my pocket.
If this one stayed with you, send it to someone who’s always been expected to take the joke.
For more family gatherings that turn into public tests of loyalty, read “My Son Put My Chair Behind The Serving Table” and “My Father Sent My Suitcase Back Toward the Doors”.
