"Twenty-eight, not that much older, Mom."
She shook her head again and smiled even wider. "We're both just babies."
This conversation took place at a barbecue restaurant with long paper-covered tables. Farther down the table, Rob's stepsister Maria was having an animated chat with his half-sister Emily about her adventures scuba diving in the kelp forest. Emily was asking her how difficult it was to get certified.
"No," Rob said. "We're kids.
They're
babies."
Rob had meant to ask his mom if she knew a guy his age named Jack, but the weekend was too full and chaotic. The environmental studies commencement ceremony was smack in the middle of the day on Sunday, and took place, naturally, in a former quarry tricked out to resemble an amphitheater. Rob warned his family to wear hats and bring water bottles, because "all that rock reflects the sunlight right into your eyes," but about half of them were still complaining about headaches by the time the interminable ceremony done.
But then it was all over and they were trooping up the long, fortunately shady, path to the shuttle bus that would take them to the remote parking lot where their cars lay waiting in the sun. Rob's mother looped her arm through his.
"Mom, you're skipping," Rob complained. "Stop it."
"Nope. My firstborn is all graduated, I can skip if I want to!"
"There's not enough seatbelts," Rob said at the car.
"Just drive carefully," his mother said. "We'll sort it out after we have lunch."
Rob had organized the whole weekend like this, choosing places where they wouldn't overwhelm the waitstaff and sending everybody menus beforehand so they could pay upfront into a pile his mother could pay the restaurants from. At the last big meal, Maria decided she wanted an order of tempura on top of the sushi she had already ordered, but when she dug into her pockets she found a bit less money than she needed. When six people jumped forward with the difference, it fell to Rob to negotiate who was going to be allowed to fund Maria's appetite.
Afterwards, his mother said, "See, that's why you're going to go very far in your career. People trust you to make decisions about anything."
"Sera, don't keep saying things like that to him, you'll give him a swelled head," Maria said.
"Too late," Emily said. "He already thinks he's God's gift to men."
"I do not," Rob said.
Intermezzo on the beach
There was no special reason for Rob to leave town right after graduation. He was working on snagging a job, if not a career, and access to the University's resources was as helpful as anything. But there were only so many hours a day he could haunt Monster.com or scan the government HR pages, so to be completely honest Rob was spending a lot of time hanging out. That meant, largely, coffee shops and beaches.
Maria and Emily came with Maria's wetsuit. "That was fast," he said to Emily.
"There was an opening in a class two days after your graduation," Emily said. "I figured I better snag it before I lost momentum."
Rob went to the surf shop with them and waited while they signed up for a dive for the next day and Emily rented equipment. Then they went to a restaurant right on the beach and watched seagulls and otters while they ate burgers. Rob felt like a real grown-up with his little sisters whose enthusiasms were still unmarred by the grueling strictures of college. But it was pretty clear that, on subjects pertaining to the ocean, they both thought that he was the less-developed one. He got several lectures about sustainability, life in the kelp forest, and the life cycle of anemones. He took it like a grown-up, smiling indulgently as they condescended to him.
Until his attention was shattered by the sight of Jack huddling at another table with a burly fellow in a flannel shirt. Jack was gracing the guy with a fantastic smile, and Rob couldn't help just
looking.
Jack was that good-looking. Unfortunately, Rob didn't look away again fast enough and Jack noticed him and gave him a scowl like the one at the professor's party. And that spoiled Rob's mood. Whatever could he have done, in the brief semester's time he had barely known Jack, to make him hate him like that?
They were about done, anyway. Rob felt justified in calling for the check and hustling Maria and Emily out the door as fast as he could. They walked along the beach for a while, and then Rob took them out for ice cream. Then the girls wanted to spend some time wandering around downtown, and Rob felt like he ought to put in at least the appearance of chaperoning them, so he went too. Even though they made fun of him for it.
Since Maria and Emily were too young for bars, it was more coffee shops, and also bookstores and a few boutiques that stayed open later.
Emily and Maria spent an unreasonably long time cooing over a coffee table book about giant molas. The huge fish didn't get any less absurd looking in the gorgeous, richly colored photographs. Emily gave Rob the full story on their lifespan, their habits, and their spectacular non-endangeredness. "Aren't you going to tell me about their sex life too?" Rob asked.
"Ew, I do not want to hear the word sex from your lips, Rob," Maria said.
Rob felt eyes on him, and looked up to see Jack,
sans
lumberjack, giving him a blank-faced onceover.
Well, screw him and his scowls and his blank faces. Rob smiled sweetly and said, "Hey, Jack. How's it going?"
Jack bit his lip, which Rob had to admit was cute but worrisome if it meant that Rob's presence was unsettling him, and said, "Okay. You?"
"
Awesome
," Rob said. "Showing my girls around town tonight."
Emily kicked him and gave him a light playful slap. "Do
not
call us your girls," she said. Turning to Jack, she said, "My name is Emily, and this is my sister Maria. Rob is our lame big brother. What's your name?"
Rob thought this was a great time to just let Emily do whatever she was going to do, and watch to see if anything was revealed.
Jack gave Emily and Maria the smile he withheld from Rob, and allowed them to draw him in to a conversation about their dive the next day. Jack even asked Maria if Rob was going. "No, he's just too much of a wimp to dive," she said, and Rob knew he was supposed to object and even to list off a couple of ways he was
not
a wimp—they had done this ritual before—but he didn't bother, instead just smirking as he followed along. Jack registered a slight surprise, but nothing more, and the conversation was soon over.
On the way back to Rob's place, Emily said, "So you've got the hots for him, right? Does he like you back?"
"I think
the hots
is a bit strongly stated, but no, Jack doesn't like me at all," Rob said. "It might even be the opposite."
"Too bad," Maria said. "You guys would be cute together. You almost look alike."
"I don't
think
so," Rob drawled.
"What do you think, Emily?" Maria asked.
"Not so much alike, but like—coordinated. Like when you have clothes that don't match in color and material, but they just look good together."
"First time I ever heard of a potential boyfriend described as a fashion accessory," Rob said. "Not that there appears to be any potential there."
Maria gasped. "You've lost your ridiculously overblown self-confidence, old man. Never thought I'd see the day."
"I don't think my self-confidence is overblown. I know I'm a competent and likeable guy. I don't think I'm the hottest thing ever."
Emily nodded. "Likeable. But maybe you don't think you're loveable? Maybe that's why you don't have a boyfriend?"
"Maybe I'm more concerned about getting a job than getting a boyfriend just now," Rob said.
A maternal message
Rob got a job. It wasn't in his field, and it wouldn't advance his career, but it would pay his rent, buy food, and make a small dent in his loan. He didn't mind cooking pancakes and omelets all morning. It left him with the afternoons to trawl the job sites and post very carefully-calibrated comments on blogs and forums focused on environmental science. So he wasn't too worried. It had only been a month since graduation, anyway. Emily and Maria came for another dive too.
He was just getting home from work one afternoon when his phone emitted the special cricket chirp he had assigned to texts from his mother. It was short:
Call me when you get a chance.
He had a chance right then, so he did, as soon as he kicked off his shoes and got himself a glass of water and a bowl of peanuts. "So hey, Mom, what's up?" He gave equal odds it was a disaster relating to his youngest half-brother or a promotion for his third step-father, possibly requiring a relocation for his mother and the last two kids at home.
"Did I remember to tell you about Constance's wedding next month last month?"
"What? Who? When? That didn't make sense, Mom."
"Last month, when I was up for your graduation, did I remember to tell you about the wedding next month for my best friend Constance whose house you spent every other day at until you were at least eleven?"
"Don't remember anything about a wedding and I am pretty sure I don't remember Constance either. Can't picture her anyway."
"Check your email, I sent you a copy of the invitation and a picture of her from back in the day. I think you're like four in the picture."
Sighing, Rob opened his email and clicked on the attachments. The wedding was a big deal, apparently—the invitation was in an elaborate flowing font and contained the words "At Last!" in dark purple, as well as a map to—
"A campground in the Eastern Sierras?" Rob asked.
"It apparently has romantic significance for them. It's a long story. The guy's Rab's biological father, it turns out, and he—"
"Rab?" There was something familiar about it, but that was a strange name.
"Oh, you wouldn't remember, he doesn't go by that name anymore. Let me think. Was it Peter? He changed his name to something mundane but obvious. Anyway, you were best friends for the longest time. Remember that kid you were always with when you were little? His mom is Constance. Anyway, this guy showed up a few years ago and said he remembered Constance from high school and he always admired her and regretted that she never talked him again after he acted like a jerk at a party and he didn't realize until much later what a jerk he really was. She was pretty suspicious because most of the boys she messed around with in high school were assholes then and assholes now so—"
"Mom. Is there a short version?"
"Yeah, long story short, Constance had her kid's DNA done for genetic disorders since she didn't know anything about the dad, and Charles had had his done for laughs, and one day after they were already dating, he brings a printout of this email he'd gotten from the database people and says
looks like I'm the dad of your kid.
And Constance says—"
"Ew."
"No, not really, she says,
not unless the kid says so
. So that was about three years ago and it's been one long negotiation since then. Finally Constance says to Peter or whatever Rab calls himself now, 'You know what? You're a grown-up now and it doesn't matter to you who I marry.' But the kid's like, 'Mom, that's what I've been telling you for years.' So they're getting married next month."
"And of course they have to go camping for this. Mom, you're not crazy about camping."
"There are cabins and I've already reserved one for us."
"George is going too?"
"Yes, all the brothers and sisters and you."
"Mom, I have a job and that's the middle of the tourist season and I don't think they'll give me the weekend off."
"Then quit, Rob, you can get a job like that easier than spitting, and if you don't get a new one the minute you get back I'll pay your rent until you do. This is a big deal, in case the purple letters didn't clue you in."
"But why is it my deal? I don't even know these people."
Now it was Sera's turn to sigh. "You did know these people; they were seminal influences in your earliest childhood. Rab was the first peer of yours to think the sun shone out of your butt, thus setting the pattern for the years to come."
Reiterations and near revelations
Rob never did look at the downloaded photo at that time. He was distracted by a rumbling stomach, and then a call from a friend who wanted to set up a time to go hiking. They had to spend nearly half an hour juggling schedules till they found a block of time sufficiently long for the project and when they and two other friends would be free. So it was several days before he accidentally bumped into the photo, still sitting open in its very own tab next to his webmail.
It was not a remarkable picture. Just a snapshot showing two young women and their two young sons. It was obvious which one was Serafina. But nothing else was obvious. His mother said that one of the boys in the picture was him, but Rob was not sure which one. Both of the boys looked remarkably like little boys, and neither of them looked remarkably like (or unlike) the adult Rob. They were medium-sized, though one was a bit bigger, they were both medium-colored, though one was a bit darker, one had a Christopher Robin bowl cut and the other had a mop that might have been curly. Rob decided he was the mop one, because his hair was still a bit kind of wavy, though it was much less unruly now.
But the person his mother had directed him to look at was the other young woman in the picture. She was almost exactly what he pictured when his mother talked about her, so maybe he did remember her on some level. She looked vivacious, overdressed for an afternoon in the park, and lightly resting her hands on both the boys, her side closely touching Serafina's. But the wide smile was tempered by sad eyes.
How very, very young both of the mothers were, Rob thought, looking back at them with his great present maturity. They had to have been younger than he was now, and they had kindergarteners already.
The next time his mother called was the day of the hike and he was filthy and exhausted because one of his friends had insisted on going off the trail to follow a shortcut he swore he'd gotten from his GPS. Rob was pretty sure he had picked up poison oak and a few bug bites along the way and he was certainly bleeding from a branch whipping. All he wanted was to take a nice hot shower and check himself for ticks. Then, he wasn't sure, but a cold beer and a hot burrito would not be amiss. But he answered the phone anyway.