Claire LaZebnik - Knitting Under the Influence

“If you're not going to make him sit through dinner, you could at least teach him to excuse himself,” Sari said to her mother.

“Charlie knows he's excused. We don't stand on formalities here.” Her mother extended her empty wineglass into the air in front of her. Her husband leaned forward and refilled it. They didn't look at each other. Eloise took a sip of wine and turned to Lucy. “Did you see the expression on his face when I said grace? It was-what's the word? Gerald, what's the word?”

“The word for what?”

“You know. When someone feels God's grace on them.”

He shrugged. “I don't know. Happy?”

“No, not happy,” she said. “It begins with a b.”

“Balmy?” Sari suggested.

“Beatific!” Her mother captured the word with delight. “That's the word. Beatific. Charlie looked positively beatific.” She hitched her chair closer to Lucy. “They say people like Charlie are closer to God than the rest of us,” she said in a low, confiding voice. “And I believe it. He sees things we don't.” She paused, and Lucy made a polite little “Huh” kind of noise.

Sari's mother took that as encouragement. She took several sips of wine and then continued, gesturing with the glass. “When I see someone-a stranger-with a child who you can tell right away is special -not like the other kids-I go right on up to her, no matter where we are, even in the supermarket, and I say, ‘We're the lucky ones. We're blessed. God sends us these special children because He trusts us to take good care of them for Him.’” She put down her glass and touched Lucy's arm lightly with her damp fingertips. “I can't tell you how many women have hugged me after I’ve said that. Just burst into tears and hugged me. It's a wonderful thing to make a connection like that. I fly home after one of those encounters. I literally fly home.”

“How nice,” Lucy said. “Really. That's really nice. Do you-”

“We really are the lucky ones, you know,” Eloise said. “Those of us with special children. God chooses us because He knows we're exceptionally strong.”

“You're just all God's little teacher's pets, aren't you?” Sari said. “You get to clap erasers and raise the autistic kids. Hey, maybe if you're really good, he'll give you some boils on your ass.”

“More wine?” her father said and took the opportunity to refill his glass as well as hers. He peered at the bottle. “Better open another. This one's almost gone.” He got up and walked heavily out of the room.

“God has a plan for Charlie,” Sari's mother told Lucy, pinning her in place with that hand on her arm. “He has a plan for every child. People like that Ellen woman think that they're making a difference with their mumbo-jumbo, but the path any child takes is already determined by God. He decides what will be.”

“Que será, será,” Lucy said with a wild and desperate gaiety.

“What we do at the clinic works,” Sari said. “I could show you studies-”

Her mother finally acknowledged her, but only by making a phhhtt noise and waving her hand dismissively. “Studies. Oh, please. You can't tell from those. Take any child and look at him again a few years later. Who's to say what he would have been as opposed to what he is? Only the Supreme Being. Not us. Certainly not some scientist collecting data.” She spat out the last word as if it were repulsive to her.

“You've got it all backward,” Sari said. “Science is the one thing that does tell us anything. It shows us that when kids are worked with the right way, they improve.”

“No,” Eloise said. “You can fuss and bother and drive the children crazy with all your therapy jibber-jabber, but in the end, it's all up to Him.”

“I wish to hell he'd open up a clinic then,” Sari said. “We have a waiting list at ours. The least he could do is take up some of the slack.”

“More wine?” said her father, appearing in the doorway with a freshly opened bottle.

Kathleen's mind wandered on the drive over to her sisters’ house, and she found herself thinking not about the people and the meal she had just left, but about cooking with Sam Kaplan that morning. He had taken it all so seriously that of course she had to rebel and fool around every way possible. He wouldn't let her off the hook, not even when she dropped an egg on the floor and it broke into a huge mess-just insisted that she clean it up, and then forced her to crack the other eggs correctly, his hand guiding hers, his arm against hers, his body close behind hers.

If he had been any other guy between the age of fifteen and sixty, Kathleen would have suspected him of using the cooking as an excuse to get physically close to her. But Sam seemed genuinely determined to teach her to cook and his expression was one of grim determination rather than flirtation. And yet…

She left the thought dangling. She didn't know why.

She had arrived at her sisters’. She rolled down her window and punched in the security code for the gate. The man who installed it had suggested they program in a new number every six months. They had never changed it from his original example. It was 1111 and would, Kathleen suspected, remain 1111 until someone else lived there.

Her mother was already opening the front door by the time Kathleen had parked her car and walked up the steps. “Where have you been?” Her mother threw her arms around her. “You're late.”

“Sorry,” Kathleen said. It felt good to be hugged by her mother, even if their height differences made it a little silly. Caro hadn't hugged Kevin, had just given him and Kathleen equally distant air kisses. “Kevin's father-”

Her mother was already pulling her toward the dining room. “We started without you. We're almost done.”

“Good. I already ate. I told you we'd go to Kevin's first.”

“Where is Kevin?” Her mother looked back over Kathleen's shoulder as if he might appear.

“He got tied up at his folks’, so I came without him.”

“Well, the good news is that that leaves us with an even number.”

“Why is that good?”

“It just is,” her mother said and steered her into the dining room. “Kathleen's here, everybody!”

Eyes turned toward her, and Kathleen's heart sank as she realized that in addition to the expected and welcome faces of her sisters and their publicist, Junie Peterson, and her boyfriend, Peter Munoz (whom the twins had dubbed Munchie-Kathleen had never known why), were the unexpected and unwelcome ones of Lloyd Winters and his pal Jordan Fisher.

Close upon that realization was a worse one: even as he bestowed upon her a cold smile that suggested nothing had been forgotten or forgiven, Jordan was lazily stroking the slender bare arm of her sister Christa, and he was doing it with the flagrancy of someone who has staked a claim.

They were already finishing up their turkey and sides, so, as soon as Kathleen had greeted everyone, she proposed that she and Kelly clear the table while the others wait for dessert in the living room. “We'll take care of cleaning up,” she said to her mother. “You relax and enjoy yourself.”

Her mother seemed to like the idea. She had cooked the meal herself, and it was one of only three meals she cooked a year. There was the Thanksgiving turkey, a ham on Christmas, and leg of lamb for Easter. The rest of the time, she and the girls ordered in or just ate some yogurt. She wasn't a natural or comfortable cook, so by the time any of those holiday meals were actually eaten, she was exhausted.

She led the others from the dining room into the living room, arm in arm with Junie. Peter-a nice guy who deserved better-was being subjected to a hard sell about Lloyd's current get-rich-quick scheme (something about access to water rights and how L.A. was really a desert, you know). Behind them all strolled Jordan Fisher and Christa. He had slung his arm around her narrow shoulders and he shot the other two girls a look of triumph as they left the room.