Fluidity

Chapter 2-2

I slept terribly during my first night home. I tossed and turned for hours and managed to get only a few hours of sleep.

After my Sunday morning run along the lakefront, my mother invited me to join her and Dennis for breakfast and I accepted even though I really didn’t want to go.

We went to a pancake house in Wilmette and he met us there. Dennis was a man of average height, short gray hair, blue eyes, and a small pot belly. He looked like so many typical suburban fathers I saw growing up. I wasn’t sure exactly how old he was, but I figured he must have been close in age to my mother, who was sixty-four. He and my mother made a cute couple and I was glad she’d found someone to be with after so many years of being alone.

Dennis and I shook hands, and I congratulated him on the wedding. He thanked me and we made small talk before the hostess announced our table was ready.

During breakfast, Dennis announced that his son, Alex, would be flying in from California in a few weeks. Although I didn’t know much about Dennis, I knew even less about his children. Now, I silently cursed myself for not paying more attention when my mother had told me about her man and his family.

Dennis was clearly proud of his son and talked (to me, I guess, since I assumed my mother already knew everything) about Alex’s accomplishments. Valedictorian of his high school class, undergraduate degree from Stanford, a great position with some big-named accounting firm that was allowing him to transfer from their L.A. office to Chicago so he could work on his MBA at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business through their evening program. I hated the guy already. I hoped he wouldn’t turn out to be a total douche, but I suspected he would. Hopefully, our meetings would be few and far between. I didn’t imagine we’d be hanging out together once he came to town. Why would we?

“Alex is my only child,” Dennis told me. “He’s only twenty-six. He came to me and Jan really late in the game. We didn’t think we’d have children and, suddenly, Jan was pregnant. She and I were in our early forties when he was born.” Jan, I did know, was Dennis’s first wife, who’d died about six or seven years ago after a long battle with ovarian cancer.

So Alex was another miracle baby, although his birth was more of a miracle than my own. My parents, at least, had Leah to enjoy for seven years before I came on the scene, while Dennis and his first wife were childless throughout the majority of their marriage.

“He’s been living in California since college,” Dennis continued, “but I’m glad he’s coming back here for a while. It’ll be nice to have him around.”

“Is he going to be living with you?” I asked, wondering if my stepbrother and I would both be living with our parents. At least we’d have something in common then.

“No. The company he works for arranged corporate housing for him downtown.”

Of course they did, I was tempted to say, but didn’t. Why wouldn’t the Stanford grad be given a furnished apartment downtown by his corporate overlord? At my job, we were grateful to get leftover donuts and bagels from management after a meeting. Yes, I hated my stepbrother already and I hadn’t even met him.

* * * *

After a run early Monday morning, I showered, dressed, and drove downtown to work rather than taking the L. Traffic on Lake Shore Drive was terrible and parking cost me a fortune. I needed to get my driver’s license changed to my mother’s address so I could get my car registered as a citizen of Evanston, but the thought of going to the DMV made my head hurt.

Plus, I dreaded the thought of leaving my Audi parked on the street five days a week while I was at work. What if someone hit it and drove off or broke out a window or, even worse, stole it?

Still, I knew I couldn’t keep driving into the city and paying to park each day. My goal was to try and save money, not spend it like a drunken sailor. I wondered if my mother would be willing to switch off with me during the week so I could park in the garage. Maybe she could spend more time at Dennis’s house and I could have access to the garage without having to ask permission.