To Build a Home

35 | Theresa

Before I go any further, I have to go back.

Two years before my brother and his wife died in a car accident on the Pennsylvania turnpike, I was driving a rental car on the same road towards Windber for their baby shower. Noah was still just a boy-or-girl blob on a sonogram and I was in the throes of a new relationship. It was the first time I had been back since I was eighteen years old and to say I was dreading it was an understatement.

There was a fight with Phil on the phone back in New York when I said I wasn't coming. I was standing by the radiator in my apartment, trying to get warm after a long walk in the snow. "What do you mean? You have to come to the shower!" he yelled. "We've planned for you to be here. There are little cakes!"

"Aren't showers women-only? If this is because I'm gay..."

"It's not just women. Darren and I will be there. It's all very gender-neutral until we know the sex of the baby." I could hear him rolling his eyes. "And you're not that gay."

"I'll be there in a month for the birth. Or Christmas. Isn't that enough? It's a long drive." There were some muffled sounds over the phone. "Hello?"

Theresa picked up. "Ryan, I am forty pounds overweight, my hair is falling out, and I'm about to have a house full of backwoods Barbies who will inevitably touch my belly and coo at me in cartoon voices. Your brother is buying a house and I could pop at any second. If I don't see you here tomorrow afternoon enjoying the special fucking cakes I ordered, I will crawl to New York if I have to and kill you myself." Then the phone went dead.

An unknown number sent me a text message. I opened it to find a picture of Theresa, all belly and arms, yelling at my brother in their apartment. Of course Darren was with them. I saved his number in my phone and told him I'd be there the next day. The cakes better be good. He sent me another picture, this time a selfie. He was smiling with pink and blue icing around his lips, holding up a half-eaten cake.

The shower was at Darren's house. Theresa's sister Jeanine did the decorating. She draped the drab furniture with pink and blue everything; streamers, balloons, banners, napkins, fake sonograms, stork cutouts. For every pink princess tiara, there was a blue prince's crown and even more little black question marks hanging everywhere. It looked like unborn royal twins were throwing a murder mystery party. I wished I was a doctor so I could just spoil it for them.

I arrived a little before the party started. The house was already full of people, caterers and Theresa's close family members. I recognized them from the wedding as I looked around from my spot in the foyer and waved. It was loud and people were moving about in a rush. I thought I heard Theresa yelling in the kitchen as I hung my coat. I walked down the hallway towards her voice, but I was intercepted. Darren pulled me into the pantry before I could be seen in the kitchen. He covered my mouth with his hand and held a finger up to his own. When he was confident I wouldn't scream, he let go of me.

"What are you doing?" I whispered. Our faces were about three inches apart in the poorly lit pantry, surrounded by cans of tuna and bottles of diet coke. I had never been so close to him in the twenty years I'd known him.

"It's world war three out there," he said. He titled his head as if to cue the battle.

I heard Theresa's voice, a little muffled through the door. "I told you if I saw one flash of sports on the TV today while we were getting ready that you would be taken out back and hung up by your balls."

Poor Phil tried to rebuttal. "It's Darren's house. I can't exactly tell him to stop watching the game."

Then there was a crash of something being thrown into a wall, probably aimed at Phil's head. Darren and I laughed from inside the pantry. I asked him what was going on and he just shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes. As if to say, this is it, this is how two people share their lives, of course they're throwing things at each other. Our smiles faded and we looked around at the contents of the pantry, thinking about something to say and waiting for the coast to clear. The thing about Darren and me, we had been in each other's lives for almost forever, but we were never alone. Anything we knew about the other was because of someone else. One thing I did know was he probably had some hot chick waiting for a refill somewhere in the house.