Page 68 of The Spirit of Love
I look at my sister and then put my own ear close to the window, like a freak.
Through the glass, I hear Jude saying, “My dad’s side of the family lives in Brazil.”
“Did you know he was half-Brazilian?” Edie asks, and I shake my head.
Because someone’s got to say it, I do: “Let’s hope it’s from the waist down.”
I peek through the blinds to glimpse Jude talking to Todd. They seem to have gotten the grill going at least. Smoke plumes around them as they stand, drinking beers, avoiding eye contact, and taking turns poking at the meat.
“Because we’re sisters,” I tell Edie, “I can say weird shit to you and only you, so take this with a grain of salt, but…I feel like I brought over a boyfriend I didn’t know I had.”
Edie, now dressed in a clean sweatshirt and jeans, peeks through the blinds next to me.
“No,” she says. “I already like him way better than any boyfriend you’ve ever had.”
“You barely know him.”
“But I know you, and you seem happy. You seem comfortable.”
“That has nothing to do with him,” I say, but I’m surprised to realize that Iamhappy. I am comfortable. I still want my shot at directing, but the anger I felt all last week has dissipated. I’m in a good mood, and I’m not mad at the fact that Jude is staying for dinner. I had fun with him last night, and I was feeling a little let down that we sat so far away from each other in the van and couldn’t talk on the ride back.
“So what’s the deal with you two?” Edie says, leading me out of the bedroom and toward the kitchen, where she opens a bottle of wine.
“Nothing!” I say, combing my fingers through Jarvis’s new blond ringlets. “We’re colleagues.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know if it was last night, or if it happened more gradually during the course of the week, but it’s now undeniable: We’re friends.”
Edie looks like I just doused her birthday candles with a bucket of sewer water. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She shakes her head, sips her wine, and stares at the men outside. “You need to take that up a peg because he looks like he gives excellent head.”
“Edie!” I peek around the doorway to see if one of her older children might be near enough to be traumatized, but they’re both on the couch, making a Walter Matthau sandwich.
“It’s the beard,” Edie says. “Kind of a fantasy of mine. That, and a man who can talk dirty in Portuguese? Get out of here with that.”
“It does sound rather hot,” I say, reluctantly looking at Jude and unable now not to imagine such a bedroom scene. I shake my head and cast the thought out the window.
“Signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours,” Edie says. “Help me bring the cheese and crackers outside before the men spontaneously combust from having to speak to someone they don’t already know.”
The lead-up to dinner is a whirlwind. Frank and Teddy spill three glasses of water and break two dishes while helping set the table. Walter Matthau gets terrified by the neighbor’s outdoor cat and cowers at my feet. Todd lights half the burgers on firewhile Edie tries and fails to put on a Spotify playlist that doesn’t devolve into StoryBots.
When we’re finally seated, just before sunset, when the sky is pink and dotted with silvery clouds, and Edie and Todd are consumed with serving and assisting the boys, who are now eighty percent ketchup and all want their food cut up in different shapes at different temperatures on different plates, I lean into Jude.
“This is probably a lot.” I point at his plate, which looks like it was badly glued back together after a recent smashing. “Sorry.”
“It’s terrific,” he says sincerely. “Everything is.” He points at Walter Matthau, who has his chin resting on Teddy’s lap and is occasionally gifted with charred bites of bison burger. “I think maybe, all this time, he’s just been lonely.”
“Maybe,” I say. We both know we’re talking about more than just the dog. My eyes linger on Jude’s beard, and I can’t get Edie’s words out of my head. I feel a little breathless when he says:
“And now, tonight, he isn’t lonely anymore. He’s really happy to be here.”
After dinner, while Edie and Todd take the kids upstairs to get ready for bed, Jude gets up to clear the plates. “Anyone want to do dishes with me?”
“I do,” I say, following him into the kitchen.
