'Sure,' I said. 'Okeydokey.' And I left. I might be a little slow sometimes, but I'm not totally stupid. I know a genuinely scary dude when I see one. And Bart was a genuinely scary dude.
My cell phone rang as I was pulling out of the lot.
'Stephanie? It's your mother.'
As if I wouldn't recognize her voice.
'We're having a nice chicken for dinner tonight.'
My unmarried sister was nine months pregnant, living with my parents, and had turned into the hormone queen. I'd have to endure Valerie's mood swings to get to the chicken dinner. Valerie's boyfriend, Albert Kloughn, would most likely be there, too. Kloughn was also Valerie's boss and the father of her unborn baby. Kloughn was a struggling lawyer, and he was practically living at the house, trying to get Valerie to marry him. Not to mention Valerie's two little girls by a previous marriage who were nice kids, but added to the bedlam potential.
'Mashed potatoes with gravy,' my mother said, sensing my hesitation, sweetening the offer.
'Gee, I sort of have things to do,' I said.
'Pineapple upside-down cake for dessert,' my mother said, pulling out the big gun. 'Extra whipped cream.' And she knew she had me. I'd never in my life turned down pineapple upside-down cake.
I looked at my watch. 'I'm about twenty minutes away. I'll be a couple minutes late. Start without me.'
Everyone was at the table when I arrived.
My sister, Valerie, was pushed back about a foot and a half to accommodate her beach ball belly. A couple weeks ago she'd started using the belly like a shelf, balancing her plate on it, tucking her napkin into the neck of her shirt, catching spilled food on her huge swollen breasts. She'd gained seventy pounds with the baby and she was all big boobs and double chins and ham hock arms. Unheard of for Valerie, who previous to her divorce had been the perfect daughter, resembling the serene and slim Virgin Mary in every way, with the possible exception of virginity and hair style. The hair was Meg Ryan.
Albert Kloughn was at her side, his face round and pink, his scalp gleaming under his thinning sandy hair. He was watching Valerie with unabashed awe and affection. Kloughn wasn't a subtle guy. He hadn't any idea how to hide an emotion. Probably he wasn't great in a courtroom, but he was always fun at the dinner table. And he was surprisingly endearing in an oddball way.
Valerie's two girls from her first and only marriage, Angie and Mary Alice, were on the edges of their seats, hoping for a fun disaster… like Grandma Mazur setting the tablecloth on fire or Albert Kloughn spilling hot coffee into his lap.
Grandma Mazur was happily sipping her second glass of wine. My mom was at the head of the table, all business, daring anyone to find fault with the chicken. And my dad shoveled food into his mouth and acknowledged me with a grunt.
'I read in the paper where aliens from a different galaxy are buying up all the good real estate in Albany,' Grandma said.
'They'll get hit hard with taxes,' Kloughn told her. 'They'd be better to buy real estate in Florida or Texas.'
My father never raised his head, but his eyes slid first to Kloughn and then to my grandmother. He muttered something that was too low to carry. I suspected it was in the area of good grief.
My father is retired from the post office and now he drives a cab part-time. When my grandmother came to live with my parents, my mother stopped storing the rat poison in the garage. Not that my father would actually take to poisoning my grandmother, but why tempt fate? Better to store the rat poison at cousin Betty's house.
'If I was an alien I'd rather live in Florida anyway,' Grandma said. 'Florida has Disney World. What's Albany got?'
Valerie looked like she was ready to drop the baby on the dining room floor. 'Get me a gun,' Valerie said. 'If I don't go into labor soon I'm going to shoot myself. And pass the gravy. Pass it now.'
My mother jumped to her feet and handed the gravy boat to Valerie. 'Sometimes the contractions are hardly noticeable in the beginning,' my mother said. 'Do you think you could be having hardly noticeable contractions?'
Valerie's attention was fully focused on the gravy. She poured gravy on everything… vegetables, applesauce, chicken, dressing, and a heap of rolls. 'I love gravy,' she said, spooning the overflow into her mouth, eating the gravy like soup. 'I dream about gravy.'
'It's a little high in saturated fats,' Kloughn said.
Valerie glanced sideways at Kloughn. 'You're not going to lecture me on my diet, are you?'
Kloughn sat up straight in his seat, his eyes wide and birdlike. 'Me? No, honest, I wouldn't do anything like that. I like fat women. Just the other day I was thinking how fat women were soft. Nothing I like better than big, soft, squishy pillows of fat.'
He was nodding his balding head, trying hard, running down dark roads of panic.
'Look at me. I'm nice and fat, too. I'm like the Doughboy. Go ahead, poke my stomach. I'm just like the Doughboy,' Kloughn said.
'Omigod,' my sister wailed. 'You think I'm fat.' She went into open-mouthed sobbing and the plate slid from her stomach and crashed onto the floor.
Kloughn bent to retrieve the plate and farted. 'That wasn't me,' he said.
'Maybe it was me,' Grandma said. 'Sometimes they sneak out. Did I fart?' she asked everyone.
My eyes inadvertently went to the kitchen door.
'Don't even think about it,' my mother said. 'We're all in this together. Anyone sneaks out the back way, they
