Page 104 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

I feel a bit of my guilt lift from my chest. Those feelings I clung to—that living life to the fullest was objective and identifiable—don’t fit so neatly beneath my ribs anymore. My mom turns on the couch cushion and faces me straight on when she tells me, with the steadiness and certainty reserved only for moms, “You don’t need to prove you deserve your life to me or anyone. You deserve it, because everyone does. When they die or get sick or have to get a mastectomy, it’s not because they deserve it. It’s not fair, and it’s random. There’s nothing we can do other than live how we want to live.”

I don’t realize I’m crying until I rub my eyes with my hand, and they come away wet. “I hate hiking,” I blurt. “I want to like it, but there are so many bugs.” My voice is so pathetically weepy, my mom can’t help but laugh at me.

“I know, honey.” She pushes the top of my hair back and kisses my head like she did when I was little, and I feel protected in the same way I did back then. “I want to watch Meet Me in St. Louis,” she says, grabbing the remote.

“I love that one.”

“I know you do.”

I snuggle against my mom as the black-and-white image of the familiar St. Louis house transforms into that dreamy 1940s Technicolor, and we watch Judy Garland—in all her glory—croon about the boy next door.

—

Emma waddles across the travertine tile floor in her red velvet maternity dress, conspicuously holding her belly. Her wife, Theresa, trails behind, balancing a Pyrex of her mother’s cuccidati cookies, greeting the house with a cheery “Merry Christmas.”

Emma grunts.

I grab the Italian fig cookies from my sister-in-law’s hands and set them on the counter, freeing Theresa to help her wife flop into a chair at the kitchen table.

“How’s life, Em?” My hands move from the table to my neck to my arm with transparent awkwardness.

Her nostrils flare. “Mom told you I’m pregnant.”

I suck in a breath. “She told me you wouldn’t be telling me you’re pregnant. So, yes? No? It’s unclear.”

Emma snatches a carrot from the veggie platter. It cracks in half between her teeth. “That woman could never keep a secret.”

“I think your belly is the tip-off,” I say, pointing to Emma’s bump. Theresa’s laugh sprays cracker into her hand.

Emma lifts her sandy blond waves off her neck to reveal droplets of perspiration. “Alison, you don’t tell a pregnant person they look pregnant. Don’t you know anything?”

“You’re my first pregnant peer. I don’t know the rules.”

“You’re supposed to say you’d never know I was pregnant if I hadn’t told you and that I’m glowing even though it’s clearly sweat.”

I refill the bowl of green and red M&M’s I ate for breakfast and tuck the bulk bag back in the cabinet. “So…lie?”

“Don’t listen to her, babe,” Theresa says, flipping her long, dark hair. “You look like a pregnant celebrity who’s so tiny she can still shoot her movie. So long as she’s carrying an oversized bag or a houseplant at all times.”

Emma leans across the table to flick my shoulder. “You’re both the worst.”

I wince and swat her hand away. “Why single me out?”

“Because you’re the worst person in this house. And the closest. And a bad influence on Tree,” she tacks on.

“I’m not even the worst Mullally daughter in this house.”

I love Emma for her boldness, but no one’s mistaking her for the sweet one. The running joke in the family is that 30 percent of her sentences start with “You know what I don’t like about…”

“I’ll leave you two to duke it out.” Theresa kisses her wife’s temple before escaping to watch TV with my dad.

“So how’s the pregnancy going?” I ask.

“Good. I had morning sickness for like eighteen weeks—second trimester is easy, my ass—but now that I’m at twenty-one weeks, the Linda Blair memories are starting to fade.”

I pluck a stalk of celery from the tray. “Why didn’t you want me to know?”

She scoops a handful of M&M’s into her mouth. “It’s not just you. I haven’t told Tree’s family.”

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