In-Laws and Out-Laws

By Evan Lloyd

Issue 36 • Fall 2017 • Fiction

2nd Place Fiction
2017 Summer Contest
It’s funny and satirical and makes great use of first-person collective in order to achieve that satiric humor.
– Anne Raeff and Lori Ostlund

We waited for him to bring her home. When we heard the crunching of the tires on the gravel we ran to our positions. One of us peeked behind a curtain, two of us busied ourselves in the kitchen and one of us hid upstairs.

Kristen. We never liked her. We were never sure about her. But we never expected this from her. A betrayal of this magnitude!

We still talk about the first time Rob brought her home to meet us. Christmas. A family time. Our favorite time. One of us grimaced at her straight blonde hair and patted down our mousey frizz, one of us tried to reach out toward her, to welcome her, and was met by a cold steely gaze. One of us gave her a glass of wine. She declined and told us she didn’t drink. We gasped. We are a family of wine drinkers. We drink wine. It is what we’re best at, we told each other. Then Rob said he’d cut back too. Rob! Cut back! He’s only thirty-two! We laughed, he’d always been a joker. The baby of the family. She’ll never make it through Christmas without a bottle of Cab Sav, one of us whispered. We gave her a day without wine. We gave Rob an hour. We were right. He was on the Montepeluciano by sundown. We won him back.

She was awkward the whole week, failing to navigate through the intricate traditions of a Walker family Christmas. She refused to come to midnight mass. Was she Jewish, one of us asked? No. An atheist. We groaned. We weren’t religious per se, but this was Christmas. She didn’t contribute to Rob’s stocking. Our eyes rolled. He hadn’t told her. It’s not your fault, we lied to her. She pushed around the fish pie on her plate on Christmas Eve, insulting our mother. Our eyes widened.

We gossiped in corners and bedrooms hidden away from her. On Christmas morning she was dressed and made up, while we slouched in our pajamas holding out our festive stockings with glee. We thought we would win her over with our generosity by making a stocking for a woman we’d never met. But the sweater wasn’t her size and she already had one of those corkcicles. The pink of the scarf wasn’t in her color wheel. But thank you so much. Our excitement dwindled as we watched her dig through the stocking and find a travel-size, miniature bottle of gin that had been lodged in the toe of the sock. Rejected, the bottle rolled away under the Christmas Tree. We felt like drunk assholes.

Later at lunch she claimed not to like gravy. It’s not gravy, we cried. It’s a red wine reduction! We felt like we weren’t good enough. We were split into teams and we failed with her at charades and felt guilty if we won. We sang carols and she got the words wrong. We weren’t surprised when she said she’d never watched Downton Abbey and we had to turn off the Christmas Special. Then go read a book on your own, one of us whispered to another. We drank ourselves into a stupor and said stupid things to Rob in the kitchen, while picking at leftover turkey. She’s not for you. She’s not one of us. We’re your siblings. Believe us. We behaved badly. We woke up sorry, and fuzzy, and confused.

One of us went for a walk with her. To try and salvage something. For Rob. She called us an army of drunks. An army! She was right. We were an army and we were marching to a different beat, but we could change! We would try harder. We could fold her into the family! One of us said it wouldn’t last. One of us said we’d lost Rob forever. One of us cried and said that if he loved her then he wasn’t a Walker anyway. One of us resurrected the childhood myth he’d been adopted. One of us tripped her. One of us stuck our leg out. It was an accident! One of us took her to the hospital despite it only being a rolled ankle. One of us exaggerated and said it was a broken ankle. One of us told her to tough it out. She did. One of us cried with guilt for sticking our foot out in the first place. She stood in the kitchen, high on pain killers and drank wine and told us to go fuck ourselves. One of us smiled.

We all exhaled when they left. They’ll never make it. What a bitch, one of us said. She’s not the one you want to hunker down in the foxhole with, another nodded wisely. We Walkers are hard to love. One of us berated the rest of us like we were still children. We sulked. We poured another glass of Chablis.

We all sighed with relief when they broke up a few months later. We jumped for joy. We all returned Rob’s forgotten calls. We all met his moans about her. We all shared in his pain. We all told him to get over it. She’s not the one.

We all sighed with frustration when they got back together. We all met up for lunches and drinks in the city and we all agreed she wasn’t so bad. In small doses. We’ll be fine! Just top up my glass, we said.

We gritted our teeth on a family vacation and played volleyball (her favorite sport) despite just wanting to laze in the sun with a book. We invited her to our weddings (begrudgingly) and our children’s christenings (Well, why? She’s an atheist?) and anniversaries and Thanksgivings and two more Christmases.

Then there was Gram Gram’s diamond. Rob asked for it. Our mother pursed her lips. What about us? we cried. Don’t we get it? Aren’t we your daughters? Rob is the youngest, not the eldest. Judy is. Shouldn’t she get first dibs? What about Tim? He’s been with Vanessa for five years. Doesn’t he get it? We love Vanessa. She’s one of us. She gets us. We said we would rather die than see Rob’s bitch with Gram Gram’s ring. But Rob got it anyway. The Golden Child. The baby. We threatened him. If you do this you are done. We’ll never forgive you. You’ll be dead to us. You’ll be the death of your mother. It is her god-damn ring and she doesn’t like her so she doesn’t want her to have it. He flung the ring into the carpet. He went to Jared.

We went to the wedding. One of us wore a hat. One of us wore black. It’s slimming! One of us brought Rob’s first girlfriend as a date on a dare. One of us cried. One of us said she did look beautiful. One of us had two slices of cake. Okay three. One of us gave a laughable but heartfelt speech. We all got absurdly drunk. We all sweatily danced to the Electric Slide. Out of time.We all hugged her at the end of the night and said things we didn’t mean like Welcome to the family!

We were surprised when she got pregnant so quickly. Three times! We folded her children into ours. What a Walker face! She’s got Gram Gram’s eyes. He’s got Grandpa’s butt chin. We grew to temper her, distracted by our new additions. We grew to love her because of her children. Rob returned to us. All was forgiven. We laughed and drank and cheered our way through birthday parties with cake and ice cream, and Thanksgivings and Christmases and Fourth of Julys at the new beach house and we forgot all about her. We didn’t notice her in the family photos in matching outfits, she just blended in—a floating white polo neck sweater in a sea of denim legs.

We called her. We texted her. We shared recipes with her. She’s not so bad. We laughed about that first Christmas. What a hoot. Aren’t we terrible? She came to midnight mass. She made the fish pie. She never lost the baby weight. She became a godmother to our youngest’s youngest and before long we were one. She bought the Montepeluciano. We loved her. We looked forward to seeing her. We were a family. We were Walkers.

Until. She. Fucked. Her. Kid’s. Tennis. Coach—Chad. Who is called Chad in this day and age?

Rob caught them in the act. Quite a backhand she has, apparently.

We hated her. We rejected her. We cried for her. We were betrayed by her. We felt bruised and battered and upset and lost and confused and we decided we would never forgive her. Ever. Never. Never ever!

She filed for divorce. She wanted full custody. We begged her not to. We’ll take you back! We wept for Rob. We never liked her. You’ll be better off, we all said. You are better than her, always were. You’ll move on.

He did—we didn’t.

We threatened her. One of us keyed her car, a nice straight line. One of us crank called her and breathed deeply. You’re a Walker for life, we scrawled in pink paint across her door. We got sued. We hired a detective. We hired a lawyer. We imagined hiring a hitman and then we imagined cancelling the hitman. We paid her kids to break Tennis Coach’s wrist. It was an accident. We got sued, again. We lost the new beach house. We listened to Rob shout. We settled down. We missed her. We drank wine. We only saw Rob’s kids every other Christmas. We watched Rob turn his life around. We watched Rob lose twenty pounds. We drank even more wine. We moved on to bourbon.

We waited for him to bring his new girlfriend home. When we heard the crunching of the tires on the gravel we ran to our positions. One of us peeked behind a curtain, two of us busied ourselves in the kitchen and one of us hid upstairs.

She got out of the car, double-fisting whiskey bottles and we thought, she’ll never be as good as Kristen.

Evan Lloyd

Evan was born near Oxford, England. After traveling the world at age twenty-five, he settled in Washington, D.C. He has worked as a teacher in the U.S and the U.K for fifteen years and currently teaches World Literature at Thurgood Marshall Academy. He has a degrees from Lancaster University, Warwick University and recently received a Master of Writing from Johns Hopkins. Evan is currently finishing up his first novel, The Lunchroom, as well as a collection of short stories. He lives in Columbia Heights with his husband, Josh and their Beagle-Labrador mix, Jasper.