Page 28 of The Checklist
“Fine. Another time. Let’s just say your mom really lived her wild oats.”
Dylan gagged, torn between repulsion and her urge to correct Bernice’s expression.
“How did all this come about?” Neale asked, an unusually present look crossing her space-queen visage.
“Today was tough. Trying to set up procedures with Tim.” Dylan ignored Bernice’s scoff at the consultant jargon. “So I went out and ate a hamburger, and I still didn’t feel any better, and then I decided on a pro bono project. A feel-good thing to wash the taste of Technocore out of my mouth.”
“Who doesn’t love a ‘feel-good’ project in the middle of the day?” Bernice used air quotes around the wordsfeel-good, as if her meaning might not have been conveyed by her shit-eating grin.
“Mike Robinson is a pro-BONE-o project,” Neale snorted.
“He probably tastes better than a hamburger too,” Bernice said, her deadpan playing to the extreme of Neale’s laughter.
“Okay, ew. Sex jokes with my mom and sister. Yuck.” She felt herself giggle and swallowed the laugh, irked that a little piece of her mother’s humor had found a way to amuse her. Mike must have been rubbing off on her if she was starting to find Bernice’s jokes funny.
“Dyl, that wasn’t even the best I could do. Mom and I haven’t devolved into jokes about washing your mouth out yet.”
“Give us credit. We didn’t saythat’s what she saidor anything,” her mother cackled.
“I’m not sure you deserve credit for only stooping to the second-lowest rung of raunchy humor.”
Dylan was spared further indignities by the doorbell ringing, followed by Milo’s bellowing from somewhere on the second floor. Stacy didn’t actually wait for anyone to answer the door; instead, she walked in just in time to catch Henry shouting, “Don’t ring the doorbell. It makes the dog bark.”
“Hi, Henry.”
“Hello.” Her father’s voice carried remarkably well over Milo, whose fervor had died down to a half-hearted yowl.
“Hey, Stacy. Don’t pay attention to Henry. He is in a conceptualizing phase. ‘Any small distraction.’” Bernice mimicked her husband, walking into the hallway to give Stacy a frigid hug. “Of course, you don’t need to ring the doorbell.”
Stacy wrinkled her nose at Dylan from over her mother’s shoulder but otherwise said nothing about the Delacroix’s notoriously fickle relationship with their front door. She knew Stacy found her family to be a blend of endearing and strange, an attitude pretty much anyone who set foot in the Delacroix’s home more than once had to adopt.
When they were younger, her friend had asked why her parents didn’t move to somewhere like Fremont, where all the other well-off artist types lived. With a motto likeThe Freedom to Be Peculiaranda giant troll statue under a bridge, Fremont was more the Delacroix’s speed. In the end, Dylan had explained that in Fremont, her parents were two of many peculiar artists. In Green Lake, the Delacroix had the distinct honor of definingpeculiar. A long-standing feud with their neighbors was just poutine on whatever cuisine Bernice had managed to char that evening.
“Ready?” Dylan reached for her coat around Bernice, who looked like she was about to invite Stacy in for another round of racy jokes.
“My toes so need a pedi. Like, I-won’t-even-wear-my-flip-flops-into-the-salon-level bad,” Stacy said, shaking her head in disgust.
“Want me to drive?” Dylan asked, snatching up her keys and hoping it wasn’t obvious she was trying to get them out of the door fast.
“Sure,” Stacy said, waving to Neale, who was drinking the rest of Dylan’s water in the kitchen.
“Are you girls coming back for dinner?” Bernice asked, her tone too innocent for Dylan to be comfortable with the question.
“I don’t think so. Dyl, I was thinking we could try the new Ethiopian place by my house?”
“Sounds great. It does look—”
“Not as good as who you had for lunch,” Bernice interrupted Dylan with another cackle, which Neale echoed from the kitchen.
“Okay, Mom. I love you,” Dylan said, wrenching the door open.
“I don’t get it,” Stacy said, looking bewildered.
“Long story. I’ll explain in the car.”
“Okay. Bye, Delacroix,” Stacy called over her shoulder as Dylan nudged her out the door.
Pressing unlock on her keys, Dylan sighed in exasperation as the car lights flashed. “As soon as she asked about dinner, I knew she wasn’t done with the jokes.”
