I needed to change the subject quickly for fear my father's already tenuous good mood would get worse, so I asked him if the gardener was done preparing the lawn for the wedding.
"Yeah, he's done," my father said, disinterested. "I told him to take one of those linden trees as his payment."
"What?" my mother asked.
"Those linden trees. We've got two of them and they're normally found in Germany. Very rare."
"Melvin," my mother said, "how is he supposed to take one of our trees?"
"Simple," my father said. "All he has to do is cut it down and load it into a truck. It's not a big deal."
Greg's face lit up. He took major delight in all of my father's business maneuvers. He is of the thought that my father is wildly insane and operates on a completely different plane of existence.
"Why would the gardener want one of our trees?" Greg asked innocently.
"Those trees are very valuable, Greg. They're worth about fifteen hundred dollars. Who wouldn't want one is my question."
"Right," Greg said, "but is our gardener in the tree-selling business? A tree's not something you just take out into the marketplace and sell."
"Not sure," my father said and then went back to his newspaper.
"Well, when is he going to cut down the tree?" my mother asked.
"I don't know, he's gotta get some guys and rent a truck," he said.
"Well, not before the wedding, I hope," she said.
"Maybe if we're lucky he'll saw it down right in the middle of the wedding," Greg said.
"Nah, he wouldn't do that," my dad replied, as if my brother were serious.
"I wonder if there'll be a bidding war on eBay," Greg said.
"If he wants to sell it on eBay, let him sell it on eBay, what do I care? All I know is this guy's making out like a bandit!" my father said.
I went to my room, changed, and came downstairs to find my sister and her fiance. They had been visiting some friends who were in town for the wedding.
"Look at that figure," my father said, upon seeing me in a bathing suit. "Hot stuff tonight!"
Then he nudged my sister and said, "Look at that hourglass figure. She's a heartbreaker, this one."
Sloane reacted with disgust, as she always did. "That's your daughter, Dad. You're not supposed to be complimenting her figure."
I disagreed. I like compliments and don't care who they come from. Besides, my dad was always singing our praises to the point of embarrassment, only to turn around the next minute and say something like, "Some women don't get married until they're in their forties."
"Dad's got a crush on you, and I think it's disgusting," Sloane said.
"I love all my daughters equally," he announced. "Each one is more beautiful than the next!"
"Yeah? Where am I in that lineup?" Sloane asked.
"At the beginning," I told her.
My dad turned to me. "You got a lot of chutzpah, love. Men aren't always going to respond to that. You're one of those girls who could do it all by yourself. Make a fortune, have a couple kids… build a house."
"Who is she supposed to have kids with, Dad?" Sloane asked.
"Whomever! That's what women are doing these days. She's one hell of a smart-ass, that sister of yours," he said to Sloane, then looked at me. "But you got a good head on your shoulders and a lot of men find that intimidating. That's why you tend to hang out with such basket cases like your friend Nathan there."
"Sloane, did you hear the news?" Greg asked.
"Yes," I chimed in, ignoring my father. "You don't have to pay the caterer tomorrow, you can just give her one of our trees. They're very rare."
The door swung open and Nathan walked back inside, dripping sweat from his run.
"This place is beautiful, God, Melvin, just beautiful," he said to my father. Then he spotted Sloane. "You must be Sloaney Baloney! Yippee!" he shrieked and ran over to embrace her.
My future brother-in-law slid out the back door as soon as he saw that a hug might be headed his way. My father lowered his paper an inch below his eyes, watching Nathan like a detective on a stakeout.
"Sylvia," Nathan said to my mother, "I'd love a smoothie."
"Hey, asshole," I whispered, "this isn't Jamba Juice."
" Chelsea, I heard that," my mother said. "I'd love to make a smoothie for Nathan."
"Well, then, you better make one for Whitefoot too," my father said and muttered something under his breath.
After taking a forty-minute shower, then dumping his running clothes on top of our laundry machine and asking my mother not to wash his shorts and shirt together, Nathan picked up our phone and went into the bedroom where all the little kids sleep.
I quickly slipped outside to the deck to avoid further discussion with my father. Half an hour later, when I came back inside, Nathan was having a loud argument with his bookie/lover, which my father was listening to through my sister's baby monitor that he held inches away from his ear. My father got up, grabbed me by my elbow, and dragged me into the kitchen.
"Do you know what a sbnorrer is?" he asked me.
"Dad, what is your problem?" I said.
"It's Yiddish for mooch. That faygeleb friend of yours is the classic definition of a mooch, and I don't like it one bit. When is he gonna get off the goddamn phone? We've got a wedding to arrange for that Mormon sister of yours and there's no goddamm cell-phone reception. What kind of misbigas is this?" Misbigas is another Yiddish word, for bullshit. "Do you know he has a bookie? Where did this guy grow up, in the woods?"
"Let go of my elbow, Dad."
"I don't like it one bit. Now tell me the truth, is he delirious?" my father asked in all seriousness. That was my father's way of asking if Nathan was on drugs.
The truth of the matter was that Nathan did all kinds of drugs, but I couldn't imagine he would've gotten on a plane to my sister's wedding with an eight ball smuggled inside his rectum. And as far as I knew, he hadn't been doing anything but drinking prior to the wedding. Nathan's MO is to go on binges for weeks at a time but then clean up his act for a couple of months. When he is on a binge, Nathan has a habit of staying up all night, coked to the gills, and then calling me or one of our other friends at seven in the morning, where he will bring up subjects like why in the game of Monopoly, Baltic Avenue is cheaper than Ventnor, when really it is in a better location. There are also long gaps of silence-if you don't count the times when he's grinding his teeth, or the sound of his vertical blinds hitting each other as he stands by the window, looking for the cops. I always want to hang up but get scared he might swallow his tongue.
"Dad!" I protested innocently. "Nathan is not on drugs. Stop being like this. Be nice to him!" When my father doesn't like someone, you don't have to have esp to figure it out. He has the subtlety of a sling blade; all it takes is one moment of direct eye contact. And while it might once have been fun to watch him get riled up, I had long surpassed the golden years of experiencing sheer and utter elation in disappointing my father. At around twenty-four I realized I was just chasing that initial high you get the first time you tell your father at the age of sixteen that you're pregnant and thinking about keeping it.
"Just keep him away from your mother and keep him away from Whitefoot," my father ordered. Greg entered the kitchen just as my father said this.
"Yes, Chelsea, I think that's a good idea. Unless, of course, Whitefoot brought condoms," Greg said. My father hates my brother's sense of humor even more than he hates mine. He looked at us both with disgust and headed for some bushes. "Oh look, Dad's going to relieve himself. That's charming," Greg said as we looked over and saw my father unzip his fly.
After Nathan got off the phone, I suggested we go to the beach. He said he'd rather sit on the deck and enjoy the view.
More of my family soon started funneling in, and I hoped that at least would take some of the attention off of Nathan. Luckily, my sister Sloane took a shine to him. He was giving her a ridiculous amount of compliments and Sloane was eating it up. If he wasn't complimenting her on her "piercing blue eyes," it was the way all her toes were the same length. This opened the door for her to ask him one question after another about being a member of GLAAD.