Just One of the Guys

Chapter Two

I ALWAYS KNEW I’d move back to Eaton Falls. It was my destiny. The O’Neills go back six generations here, and I want my future children to emulate my own wholesome childhood—fishing on Lake George, hiking the many mountain trails of the Adirondacks, canoeing, kayaking, skiing, skating; breathing pure, clean air; knowing the people at the post office and the town hall; and of course, being near the family.

Granted, I’d imagined that the day I moved back, it would be because my adoring husband and I were ready to settle down and raise those four kids. Instead, though, I moved on my own. I’d been working at the Star Ledger, living in glamorous Newark, when fate intervened. The Eaton Falls Gazette, my hometown paper, was looking for an editor—soft news and features. I’d done my time at a big-city paper and was ready for something else. Everything fell into place at once—I took the job, moved back in with Mom, and two weeks later, made an offer on a tiny and adorable house. Because the mortgage was a little steep, I took on my youngest brother as a tenant, slapped on a few coats of paint and moved in.

That was six weeks ago. It’s all been a little rushed, but it’s really come together.

Today is a soft, beautiful Saturday morning in April, possibly the most perfect day ever made. The sky is pale blue, fog swirls off the mighty Hudson River, and the trees are topped with only the palest green blur of buds. I don’t see a soul as I run down Bank Street, my sneakers slapping the pavement. At the end of the lane is a large shed made of corrugated metal. I stop, sucking in a breath of the clean, damp air, simply, utterly, deeply happy to be back in my hometown.

I rent this shed from Old Man McCluskey. It’s a far cry from the boathouses I’ve used in the past, but it will do. I twist the combination on the lock and open the door. There she is, Rosebud, my magnificent wooden King rowing shell. “Good morning, sunshine,” I say, my voice echoing off the metal walls. Grabbing my oars, I take them out to the dock, set them down carefully, then go back in the shed, take Rosebud down from her canvas harness and carry her outside. She may be thirty feet long, but she’s light as a feather—well, a thirty-five-pound feather. I slip her into the water, set the oars and then, holding her steady against the dock, I climb in, tie my laces and off we go.

I began rowing when my brother Lucky joined the crew in college and needed someone to impress. I was that person…what are little sisters for, after all? Lucky let me try out his scull, and we instantly discovered I was born to row. When I went to Binghamton University, I was on the exclusive four with three other brawny, proud girls. While in New Jersey, I belonged to the Passaic River Rowing Club, but now, back home, I row alone, and I think I’ve discovered the true, Zen-like serenity of the sport. Last week, I saw a V of geese returning, like me, to the Adirondacks from their southern sojourn, flying so low I could see their black feet tucked against their downy bellies. Thursday, it was an otter, and yesterday, I saw a giant blur of brown that may have been a moose. In the fall, our famous glowing foliage will light up the hillsides like yellow and golden flame. Bleeping glorious.

The narrow shell slices through the river, the only sound the gentle lapping of the water against the hull. I check over my shoulder and pull harder, feather and square, feather and square, gradually increasing the load of the water against my oars, cutting them into the river at precise angles, my body contracting and expanding with each stroke. Little whirlpools mark my progress up the river, and the dripping oars leaving a map of where I’ve been. Feather and square, feather and square.

It’s a good cure for the hangover I woke up with after my night with the Scorpion Bowls, and a good prevention for the headache I’m sure to get at Mom’s later today. Family dinner, attendance mandatory. That means Mom and Dad, my four brothers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, better known as Matt, Mark, Lucky and Jack, and their spouses and progeny.

Jack is my oldest brother, married to Sarah and the proud father of four kids—Claire, Olivia, Sophie and Graham. Lucky and Tara are in hot pursuit with three—Christopher, Annie and baby Jenny. Sarah and Tara are better known as “the Starahs.” Mark, the third O’Neill boy, is in the middle of a bitter divorce from my oldest friend, Elaina. They have a son, Dylan. Then comes Matt, single, childless and currently my housemate, and finally me, the baby of the family.

Trevor may also be there, the unofficial O’Neill, practically adopted by my parents when he was a teenager and a frequent guest at family events. Good old Trevor. I pull harder, faster, streaking up the Hudson in a gliding rhythm. My muscles ache with a satisfying burn, sweat darkens my T-shirt, and all I can hear is the slip of the oars into the water and my own hard breath.

An hour later, I finish my row feeling substantially less polluted than when I started. I lift Rosebud into her sling, pat her fondly and jog home. Yes, I’m a jock. All that exercise lets me enjoy every junk food on earth, so if for only that reason, it’s worth it. I run up the front porch stairs, open the beautiful oak door and brace myself against the wall. “Mommy’s home!”

And here she comes, my baby, one hundred and twenty pounds of loose muscle, drooping jowls and pure canine love. Buttercup. “Aaaahhroooorooorooo!” she bays, her giant paws scrabbling for grip on the hardwood floors. I wince as she gathers her sloppy limbs and leaps, crashing against me.

“Hello, Buttercup! Who’s a pretty girl, huh? Did you miss me? You did? I missed you, too, beautiful girl!” I pet her vigorously, and she collapses in a grateful heap, snuffling with joy.

Being Buttercup’s owner, I feel that maternal obligation to lie to her about her physical appearance. Buttercup is not a pretty dog. As soon as I had my house secured last month, I went to the pound. One look and I had to have her, because it was clear no one else would. Part bloodhound, part Great Dane and part bull mastiff, her coat is red, her ears are long, her tail like razor wire. Bony head, awkward body, massive paws, drooping jowls, doleful yellow eyes…Well, she won’t be winning any doggy beauty pageants, but I love her, even if her only tricks thus far are sleeping, drooling and eating.

“Okay, dumpling,” I say after Buttercup has lashed me with her tail and slobbered a cup or so of saliva on my sleeve. She wags once more and falls almost instantly asleep. I step over her large body and head for the kitchen, weak with hunger.

As I rip open a package of cinnamon/brown sugar Pop-Tarts, I lean my head fondly against the kitchen cabinet. I love my new house, the first that I’ve owned. Sure, it has its problems—capricious furnace, tiny hot water tank, unusable master bathroom, but it’s pretty much my dream house. A Craftsman bungalow (Eaton Falls is full of them, and I’ve always coveted their petite charm), the house has sturdy stone columns on the porch, funky lead-paned windows and patterned hardwood floors. I have the bigger bedroom upstairs, Matt has the smaller one off the kitchen. Once we worked out the “toilet seat goes down” rule, my brother Matt and I have gotten along quite well.

“Hey, Chas.” Said brother emerges from the bathroom in his ratty blue-plaid bathrobe and a cloud of steam.

“Hey, pal. Want a Pop-Tart?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“Did you just take a shower?” I ask.

“Yup. All yours.”

“And of course, being the one considerate brother I own, you left me some hot water,” I say with great hope.

“Oops. I did kind of space out in there. Sorry.”

“Selfish, spoiled baby.” I sigh with martyrish suffering.

“Don’t talk about yourself that way.” He grins and pours us each a cup of coffee.

“Thanks. Hey, when are you guys going to start the upstairs bathroom?” I ask, taking a grateful sip. “No offense, but I’m really looking forward to a tub of my own.”

“Right,” Matt answers. “Hm. Not sure.”

Like most firefighters, Matt has a side job, since the city fathers don’t see fit to pay its heroes a livable wage. (This is a tirade I was raised on.) Matt, along with Lucky and a few other guys, do renovations, and so of course I hired them to redo my bathroom. Someday, it will be gorgeous—Jacuzzi tub, new tile floor, a pedestal sink, pretty shelves and all sorts of neat containers to hold my girly stuff. Unfortunately, other jobs from nonrelatives have taken precedence.

“Maybe you can get started before my death,” I say around a bite of Pop-Tart.

“Yeah, well, that’s gonna be tight,” Matt deadpans. From the other room, Buttercup, who has been sleeping soundly, scrabbles from her prone position as if she’s just scented a missing child. Matt braces himself against the wall. “Hi, Buttercup.”

“Aaaahhroooorooorooo!” she bays, rejoicing at the sound of Matt’s voice as if she’d been parted from him by war and not her own nap. Tail whipping dangerously with love, she lumbers over to him—jowls quivering, hindquarters swaying—crashes into his pelvis, then collapses with a groan at his feet, heaving herself on her back, softball-sized paws waving in the air.

“My God, you’re a whore,” Matt tells her, obligingly rubbing her expansive tummy with his foot.

“Takes one to know one,” I comment, bending down to unlace my sneakers.

“Speaking of whores, how was your night?” Matt asks. “You went to Emo’s, right?”

I sigh, then look at his face. He’s trying not to laugh. “You already know, you bastard. Who told you? Trevor?”

“Santo called. Said you have a new girlfriend.” Matt straightens up, laughing. “So are you batting for the other side now, Chas?”

“Bite me, Mattie.” I grab my Pop-Tarts and head for the stairs. “Listen, I’m gonna finish painting my wainscoting. What time is dinner at Mom’s?”

Matt grimaces. “Two.”

“Where do you want to go first?”

“The Dugout?” he suggests. Yes, Mom is cooking dinner. That’s the point.

“Sounds great.”

A few hours later, Matt and I hop in my car, Buttercup draped over the backseat, snoring loudly. Leaving her in the car, we drop into the Dugout for buffalo wings and fried calamari, amiably watching Sports Center as we eat, then pay our tab and head for the family home.

“Where have you been?” Mom barks as we come through the door. The roar of the family gathering hits me like a truck.

“Gutterbup!” Dylan shrieks, running toward my dog, who collapses on the floor, rolling over so the toddler can scratch her stomach. From the other room, Elaina gives me a wave. I distantly hear my brother Mark speaking sharply to someone from the basement. Uh-oh. Elaina and Mark in the same house…not pretty.

“Hi, Mom,” I say, bending to kiss her cheek. “Nice of you to invite Elaina.”

“It’s about time those two got back together,” she announces, yanking the ties of her apron a little tighter.

“And are they falling over each other in love?” I ask.

“Not exactly,” she acknowledges. “She hasn’t forgiven him yet.”

“He did cheat on her, Mom.”

“Do we have to discuss this now?”

“No, we do not. Is everyone else here?” I ask.

“Yes, we’ve been waiting for you two, the roast is almost ready, now shoo! Get out of the kitchen! Take that carcass you call a dog with you. Go!”

“Auntie! Auntie! Play Bucking Bronco with me! Please? Please? Pleasepleaseplease?” my nine-year-old niece Claire begs.

“No! Wild Wild Wolves! You promised, Auntie!” Annie, seven, yanks my hand.

“Okay, okay, wolves and Broncos, coming up. Let me move Buttercup, okay?” Buttercup does not agree to get up, just blinks at me reproachfully. I slide my arms around her belly and heave her to her feet, but, jellylike, she refuses to stand. I’m forced to grab her collar and drag her into the living room, where she lies next to the door, happily allowing Dylan to look in her massive ears.

Dad’s sitting in his chair, pretending to be asleep. Sophie and Olivia giggle wildly as he snores. “Wake up, Grampa!” Sophie orders. “It’s dinnertime!” Dad snuffles and snores some more, then lurches upright.

“I’m starving!” he bellows. “But not for dinner. For…for…” He looks at his granddaughters, who wait with breathless joy. “For children!” He growls and lunges at them, pretending to devour limbs and heads and bellies as the girls scream and pull away, then fling themselves back for more.

“Hey, everyone,” I say.

“Wolves, Auntie!”

“Yup, in a minute, kids. Hi, Lucky,” I say. “Hi, Tara.” I kiss my sister-in-law’s cheek. “How’s it going? Where’s Jack?”

“He and Trevor are in the cellar with Chris. Playing Nintendo, I think. Mark’s down there, too, avoiding his wife,” Lucky says.

“Ex-wife,” Tara murmurs.

“Not yet,” Lucky corrects.

“I’m right here, so if you’re gonna talk about me, could you at least keep it quiet?” Elaina says, doing her inimitable Latina head wiggle. “Hey, Chas, what’s new?” Before I can answer, she picks up Dylan and sniffs his bottom. “Hold that thought,” she says, hastening off down the hall, her black curls bouncing.

“Are you ready to play Broncos, Auntie?” Claire begs.

“Chastity,” Tara says. “Listen, before it gets crazy in here, I wanted to ask you a favor. It’s our anniversary at the end of the month, and we were wondering…we hoped, actually…”

“We prayed, Chas,” says Lucky, putting an arm around his wife. “We prayed on our knees that you would find it in your heart to watch the kids for us. Friday till Sunday, last weekend of April.”

I pause, bending down to pick up Graham, Jack’s youngest, who is one and a half and gnawing on my bootlace. “Are you out of your minds?” I ask Lucky and Tara. “Come on! You want me—me!—to babysit your little monsters? For an entire weekend?” They have the grace to look ashamed. “Do you remember what happened last time? The rope burns on my ankles?” Tara grimaces. “Christopher eating raw pumpkin and throwing up behind the couch? Annie peeing on my bed?”

“I remember that!” Annie exclaims joyfully. “I peed on Auntie!”

Lucky hangs his head. “Forget it,” he mumbles. “Sorry.”

“Oh, lighten up.” I grin. “Of course I’ll do it.”

“Told you,” Lucky murmurs to his wife. I nuzzle Graham’s soft, chubby cheek, then imitate a bird to make him smile.

“You’re a saint.” Tara sighs happily. “Name your price.”

I feel a flush creep up my neck. “Well…”

Their eyebrows rise expectantly. The flush prickles hotter, but I can’t afford not to ask. “I’m interested in…you know.”

“Becoming a lesbian?” Lucky guesses with a knowing wink.

I punch him in the ribs, gratified to see him wince. “Aren’t you supposed to be kissing up to me right now, Lucky?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Lucky amends. “What can we do for you, Chas?”

I heave a sigh and roll my eyes but force myself to continue. “I’d like to meet a decent guy,” I mutter. “So if you know anyone…”

“Sure!” Tara chirps. “Slim pickings so far in Eaton Falls?”

“Well,” I say, staring at Graham’s creamy skin and translucent pink stick-out ears. “It’s not that I don’t meet single men. It’s just that they tend to be…freaks. No one I’d want to father my children. You know how it is.” Actually, she doesn’t know. She’s thirty-one, married for eight years with three gorgeous kids. “Anyway. I can use all the help I can get.”

“It takes a village,” Lucky murmurs with false compassion. I narrow my eyes at him, but I need him. All the literature on dating (yes, I’ve read it) says to tell everyone you know that you’re seeking a mate. However mortifying and demeaning that might be.

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” she says. Lucky nods. From the bedroom down the hall, Jenny cries out, and they both head down to check on their youngest. Graham squirms to be let down and toddles after them.

I find that my hand is over my abdomen, as if checking for my own baby. Not there, of course. At this moment, it’s hard to imagine what it would be like for my stomach, which is as lean and hard as plywood, to swell with a baby. For the pink-cheeked, drowsy-eyed baby to be my little boy or girl.

“Auntie, look!” Olivia says.

I put my hand on her glorious red curls (she takes after her mom and not the black-Irish O’Neills). “What is it, Poopyhead?”

“I have a loose tooth!” she announces, opening her mouth. Before I can protest, before I can even get a sound out, her chubby finger shoves a front tooth way, way back to reveal a gaping, crimson crater. A string of blood trickles down, threading through the other teeth. My stomach drops to my knees and all the breath seems to leave my lungs.

“Thee?” Livvy asks, still revealing the pit. A little bloodtinged spittle lands on my hand. “Thee it? It’th tho looth!”

“Don’t…I…honey…” My vision is graying, my hands clammy and cold. I take a staggering step back, bumping into my father, who steadies me.

“Livvy! You know Auntie doesn’t like blood! Show Uncle Mark instead.”

I blink, then shake my head in disgust. “Thanks, Dad.” I sigh.

“My poor little weenie,” he says, patting my shoulder.

The familiar mixture of irritation and self-disgust rolls over me. In a family of alpha-male hero types, not only am I the only girl (and single, and childless), I am also the only wuss. Just in case I didn’t feel different enough. Despite my strapping stature, my ability to run marathons and hike the Appalachian Trail, there’s a chink in my armor, and its name is blood. And gore. The twins, Blood and Gore. I am the only O’Neill who missed the “I’ll save you” gene.

As members of the Eaton Falls Fire Department, Dad, Mark and Matt (and Trevor, for that matter) have saved dozens, possibly hundreds, of lives in one way or another, whether it’s carrying someone out of a burning building or doing CPR or pulling them out of the river or just installing a free smoke detector. Lucky is a member of the New York State Police bomb squad. Jack is a helicopter paramedic, now with a private company in Albany. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for a dramatic rescue during his tour in Afghanistan, for crying out loud.

Even my mother, who is five foot two and weighs one hundred and eight pounds, gave birth to five children, none of us under nine pounds, without a drop of painkiller of any kind.

But somehow, I have the embarrassing tendency to faint at the sight of blood. When Elaina invited me to witness Dylan’s birth, I nearly peed myself. Once, at the bris of a friend’s son in New Jersey, I hyperventilated and staggered into the hors d’oeuvres table, ruining two hundred dollars’ worth of deviled eggs, smoked salmon and matzo balls. When we had to dissect a frog in high school, I passed out, hit my head on the lab counter, came to, saw my blood and fainted again.

But I’m taking steps on that front. Though I won’t tell my family about this until it’s over, I recently enrolled in a course to become an EMT. An emergency medical technician. Me. Surely, I like to imagine, buried beneath my layers of weenie-ness and a massive case of the heebie-jeebies, there lurk the genetics that let my brothers enjoy their adrenalinesoaked lives. Plus, maybe there’ll be a cute guy in the class.

“Who wants to play Wild Wild Wolves?” I ask my nieces.

“I do!” shriek Claire, Anne, Livvy and Sophie.

“Who wants to be the hurt bunny?”

“Me! Me!”

I get down on the floor and begin snarling. “Grr! Oh, man, it’s been a hard winter, and I’m so, so hungry! Oh, look! A poor wounded bunny rabbit!” The girls scream with joy and try to crawl away, dragging their legs behind them. I pounce, drag and chew, their screams of joy piercing the air.

“So how’s everything else with my little girl?” my father asks as I gnaw on his grandchildren. His black hair, heavily laced with silver, is mussed. “Did you start work yet?”

“Just the meet and greet. Grr! Gotcha! Delicious! And you’re the only man on earth who refers to me as little,” I answer. “I’m starting Monday, actually.”

“Can’t wait to see your byline.” He winks.

“Hey, Chastity.” I turn to see Trevor leaning in the doorway, smiling, and my knees tingle shamefully.

“How are you, Trev?” I ask briskly.

“Great. How are you?” He smiles in conspiratorial knowledge—ah, yes, the Scorpion Bowls—and my stomach tugs in embarrassment.

“So what’s new at the firehouse these days, guys?” I ask both my dad and Trevor, while still chewing on Claire’s chubby little foot.

“Oh, the usual,” Dad answers. “Fifty pounds of shit—”

“In a five-pound bag,” Trevor finishes amiably.

“Porkchop,” Dad says, “what’s this about you wanting a boyfriend?”

My jaw clenches, but I’m saved by my niece, who crashes into my father’s knees. “Grampa, can you eat us again?” Sophie begs. “Can you pretend to be asleep, and then we’ll play with your hair and then you can open your eyes and say you’re hungry for children and pretend to eat us? Please? Please?”