The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg Page A

really good dinner,
     with some nice people. It’s not a big deal.”
    “If it’s not a big deal, then why do I have to go?” she said.
    Daniel sat next to her on the couch, and, in a shocking display of spine, put his
     face next to hers and said, “What is this really about?”
     
    * * *
    Robin weaved through Daniel’s parents’ home warily, attached to his fingertips. It
     was his home, too, she supposed; he had grown up there, after all. Even though he
     had gone to college, lived in San Francisco for five years, six months in New York
     on a freelance project, Austin, San Francisco, and then finally in Chicago, where
     he lived happily, quietly, contentedly (why was he so content? what was his secret?),
     in the apartment beneath hers. Of all those places, all those different apartments,
     all those different homes , this was the place he talked about the most fondly, the most easily, so when he
     said, “I’m going home for the weekend,” she knew exactly where he meant.
    Everyone else felt right at home there, too. There were bodies stretched everywhere,
     on couches, on chairs, small children splayed on the floor with coloring books and
     boxes of crayons. (This last part Robin approved of as a teacher, none of those bleeping-blooping
     toys that were destroying America and contributing to noise pollution. She loved her
     iPhone as much as the next thirty-year-old with a small disposable income, but for
     children she felt strongly that imagination should still be enough, and it never was
     anymore.) She met Daniel’s two brothers and one sister, a few nieces and nephews,
     six cousins of various ages, two sets of aunts and uncles, his lone living grandfather,
     two former next-door neighbors who had moved to Florida but came back a few times
     a year, who were like family , his mother, his father, and a great-aunt Faye and her friend Naomi, who both sat
     the entire night in a small alcove in the kitchen barking orders at Daniel’s mother.
    “You better check the brisket,” Faye was saying as Daniel and Robin walked into the
     kitchen. Daniel’s mother, a bustling, tender-eyed woman Robin’s mother’s age, sighed
     not quite imperceptibly, then unscrewed a bottle of Manischewitz and placed it next
     to several other open bottles. She had everything under control, even if Faye didn’t
     think so; foil-covered dishes of food were organized neatly on countertops.
    “Why don’t you check the brisket if you know so much?” said Naomi.
    “All right, I’ll check the brisket,” said Faye.
    “It’s fine,” said Daniel’s mother.
    “You don’t know anything about anything,” said Faye. She shuffled across the kitchen
     to the oven, opened it, and peered inside. “It needs a little more time,” she concluded.
    “I know it needs a little more time,” said Daniel’s mother. “I know when I’m supposed
     to take it out of the oven.”
    “I’m starving,” Faye said to Naomi. “Are you starving?”
    “Starving,” said Naomi.
    “You could have started sooner,” said Faye. Robin noticed she had the hint of an Eastern
     European accent. She sat back down, then spotted Daniel and Robin. “Daniel, come here
     and give me a kiss. This one, too.” She pointed at Robin. “Come here.” Daniel hugged
     his great-aunt, and then Robin leaned in and hugged her also. She was a tiny collection
     of bones, almost childlike in her frame, and she smelled strongly of Chanel No. 5.
     She wore diamonds in her ears and around her neck and on several of her fingers, and
     her hair glittered white. “Look at this,” she said. She patted Robin on the face,
     her hands gentle. “Look what Daniel found.”
     
    * * *
    “Well, if you really want to know,” Robin said, flustered, miserable. There were issues
     being forced all over the place lately, and it had been his fault, he knew it. He
     was pushing the two of them forward, as a couple, an entity. He had decided she was
     the one for him. He had never