Straight No Chaser

Assclown

Laura is slow answering the door. Lionel rings once, twice more. Mary Joe rests a hand on his shoulder, stills him before he dives in for a third.

Aunt Laura is giving up her Sunday afternoon, she tells him with her eyes. Let's be patient. His hand falls, reaches instead for the party invitation in his pocket. GABRIEL IS TURNING EIGHT!!! it screams, in giant Comic Sans. COME ENJOY A DAY OF FOOD, FUN AND MONOPOLY!!!

Naturally he asked her, his mother, first; all his life, most things he's had to learn, she's taught him. But she's terrible at Monopoly, and so it seemed, suddenly, time for one of their sporadic visits to the corporate district, time for one of Aunt Laura's famous strawberry milkshakes. She'll provide the blender and the board (the necessities); Mary Joe will provide the child (the disruption). Like always.

Laura loves Lionel, or so Mary Joe thinks, but it's hard to tell with her. Sometimes she smiles at his second-grade anecdotes, sometimes not. Occasionally she remembers to congratulate him, and his weary parents, for small victories like another perfect spelling test. She never forgets the milkshakes, and she never forgets the birthdays, or to spend a flat three hundred dollars on a gift, each year. Never quite as much as she spends on herself, on her own birthday. It's no wonder she still looks twenty-five, at thirty-four; she splurges on Manolos and tailored suits, pencil skirts that hug her perfect hips and hide the imperfections in her childless build.

Mary Joe loves Lionel, but he has made her fat. Despite all her best efforts, nearly eight years into this parenting trip, she is bulging out at every seam of her faded jeans and sweatshirts. Mark pretends not to notice, or perhaps truly doesn't. They've been together ten years, longer than most couples their age, and he's lost interest in her small physical changes, won't turn his head when she sucks her teeth in front of the mirror. Hasn't since, possibly, three months post-pregnancy, and that was only to tell her Lionel needed a diaper change.

She loves Lionel but wanted a girl, wanted two girls, wanted two blonde girls with sea-blue eyes, wanted two daughters to name Lacey and Victoria, spaced six years apart so no one would ever compare the two, praise Lacey's brains over Vicky's, or vice versa. Instead, there was Lionel, so named despite her protests because Mark had an uncle, or something, a long-deceased uncle by the same name, and anyway they'd agreed that Mark would name the boys. So, Lionel.

She'd gained forty-two pounds with Lionel, and kept twenty of it afterward, while Laura pranced in and out of the diaper-foul townhouse remarking on what a sweet baby he was. She'd stay twenty, maybe thirty minutes at a time, then, hold the baby for five, then check her hair in the mirror and depart for a departmental meeting or something. Never as long as an hour, never long enough to relieve her sister so Mary Joe could shower or fix a decent dinner, never long enough to really notice how the weight wasn't coming off, never long enough to share the vegan recipes that she swore by, then.

The weight did fall off, eventually, but Lionel was a year old by then, and Mary Joe was already well into the throes of the most intense diet she'd ever tried, one that involved frequent huge meals and still-frequenter trips to the bathroom in between.

She still wanted her girls, but accidentally killed two babies that way, by flooding her body with electrolytes and then tossing them out just as quickly. She didn't tell Mark, didn't tell Laura, just tried to console herself with pleasant thoughts of the outfits she'd wear once she hit a decent size, and found a job to help her break her orbit around a Chef Boyardee-encrusted high chair. What would have been three high chairs, but for the grace of God and so forth.

They would have been girls, though, she knows it, and it kills her every time Lionel wants to go out to play flashlight tag, every time they receive a party invitation in royal blue lettering. Little Gabe, refreshingly, has chosen purple.

I would teach you, she told Lionel when he came to her, panicked, sure he'd be the only boy who didn't already know the rules of the decades-old board game. But I know someone who's really great at Monopoly, someone who'll be even more helpful. He complied. He loves his Aunt Laura, loves her milkshakes, loves her slick apartment with its flawless wood floors. And he'll love her even more after this, after she turns him into a winner, like her.

That was the thing, about Mary Joe and Monopoly. Mary Joe couldn't win because she was too nice and too frivolous. Couldn't help but loan money to other players, even when she was clearly and badly losing. Not Laura. Laura was strategic, Laura was direct, Laura never lost to anyone because she never bothered with the small things. On principle, Laura never bought anything cheaper than Atlantic.