Blaire's room had that specific silence of places where time has decided to behave differently than it does in the rest of the world, with the desk lamp casting its warm light over the stacked books and the two people occupying the room completely oblivious to anything other than what was happening between them.
Outside in the hallway, the situation was considerably more active.
"Hey," Ted whispered at the lowest volume level he was capable of producing, which was still too loud for the situation. "Do you think they've kissed yet?"
"Ted," John responded in an actual whisper. "Shut up."
"It's a legitimate question."
"It's not, and stop putting your ear to the door."
"You have yours glued to it too."
"I'm listening to see if everything is alright," John said with the dignity of someone who considers there to be an important difference between what he is doing and what he is describing. "You're spying."
"The difference is philosophical," Ted responded.
From the other side of the door came a sound that wasn't distinguishable as any specific thing, but both John and Ted simultaneously processed it with the same information, and they looked at each other with expressions that, in both twins' vocabulary, meant exactly the same thing.
"I owe you twenty dollars," Ted said.
"I already know," John responded.
"When do I give them to you?"
"Ted."
"Is tomorrow okay?"
"Ted, shut up."
"It's just that I need to know if I can use that money this week or if I have to set it aside."
"Set it aside," John said.
"Fine," Ted said, nodding with the seriousness of someone closing a business transaction. "Set it aside."
The two went back to their respective listening positions with the concentration of people who have completely committed to a task and have no intention of abandoning it, regardless of what any other family member might think about it.
"Do you think they're going to talk much more, or have they already moved on to something else?" Ted asked after a moment.
"Ted."
"It's a logistics question."
"It's not."
"I'm trying to calculate how much time we have before they come out."
John considered that for a second. "Enough time," he responded.
"Enough for what?"
"For you to stop asking questions."
Ted nodded as if that were a satisfactory answer and went back to the door.
It was John who first heard the footsteps.
They weren't the specific footsteps of anyone in particular, but simply the sound of someone moving around the ground floor with the naturalness of someone who is in their own home and has no reason to announce their presence, which in normal circumstances wouldn't have mattered at all, but in these specific circumstances meant someone was approaching the stairs.
"Someone's coming," John whispered.
Ted snapped his head back from the door with a speed that would have impressed anyone who knew how lazy he is. "Who?"
"I don't know yet."
The footsteps reached the stairs and started coming up with that specific rhythm they both recognized simultaneously.
"Mom," they both said at the same time at the same volume, which wasn't exactly a whisper.
What followed was a quick negotiation about where to hide that was resolved in approximately four seconds, with John slipping into the hallway bathroom and Ted disappearing inside his own room with a speed that would have been admirable in any other context, while Susan's footsteps came up the stairs with the same calm with which she did everything.
Susan reached the upper hallway and walked toward Blaire's room with the quiet expression of someone who is simply being a good hostess and wants to make sure everything is fine before the night gets too late, and knocked on the door with two soft, decisive raps.
She didn't wait for an answer.
The door opened, and Susan stopped at the threshold with her hand still on the knob, the expression she had when she entered—which was that of a completely calm person—transforming over the course of about half a second into something considerably more difficult to classify.
Blaire was on the bed.
Wyatt was on the bed.
Blaire was on top of Wyatt.
And the two of them were still kissing with the specific concentration of people who have been putting something off for too long and now that they have started, are in no particular hurry to stop.
What happened next was that Wyatt felt something.
It wasn't a sound or a movement, but a presence his brain processed before any other sense, with the same instinct that made him spin on the field when a defender was coming from his blind side, and he opened his eyes.
Susan was looking at them from the door with an expression Wyatt couldn't quite classify in the second and a half it took him to completely process the situation, her hand still on the knob and her gaze moving from him to Blaire and from Blaire back to him with the specific calm of someone taking note of everything she sees before deciding what to do with that information.
He pulled away from Blaire with a movement that attempted to be natural and probably wasn't entirely, while Blaire, who hadn't yet registered the reason for the movement, took another second to turn toward the door and another second more to complete the process of understanding what she was looking at.
The silence that followed lasted exactly long enough to be completely uncomfortable without becoming unbearable before Susan spoke.
"Are you a couple?" she asked in a completely neutral voice that contained neither approval nor disapproval, but simply the question.
Blaire opened her mouth.
"We're getting to know each other," Wyatt said before Blaire could say anything, because something in Blaire's expression indicated to him that what was about to come out of that mouth in the next few seconds was a complete denial, and Wyatt considered that we're getting to know each other was considerably closer to the truth than any alternative Blaire could have produced at that moment.
Blaire looked at him sideways with an expression that in other circumstances would have been a warning and in these circumstances simply remained there, unable to do much.
Susan looked at them both for a second longer before nodding with the same neutral expression as before. "Come down when you're ready," she said. "Matty wants to watch the Celtics game."
And she closed the door.
John, who had heard everything from the hallway bathroom with the door cracked open exactly the necessary two centimeters, processed the information and decided that was the right moment to step out with the naturalness of someone who was simply in the bathroom for completely normal reasons.
Ted came out of his room at the exact same moment with the exact same naturalness, and the two met in the hallway, exchanging a look that needed no words.
Living Room
The Bennett living room ten minutes later had that specific atmosphere of places where something has just happened that everyone knows but nobody has said out loud yet, with Matty in his armchair with the Celtics game on the television, Susan on the sofa with her tea, and John and Ted distributed with that manufactured innocence Wyatt had already learned to identify as the signal that they were actively enjoying the situation.
Blaire sat on the sofa next to Susan with the expression of someone who has made the decision that the best strategy tonight is not to give anyone anything more than what is strictly necessary, and Wyatt chose the empty space next to John because it was the option that produced the fewest immediate questions.
Matty said nothing during the first two minutes, watching the game with his usual concentration, which Wyatt recognized not as disinterest but as the time he needed to formulate what he wanted to say in the exact way he wanted to say it.
"So," Matty said without taking his eyes off the television. "You're getting to know each other?"
"Yes," Blaire said.
"And what exactly does that mean?"
"What it means," Blaire responded with the patience of someone who has spent a lifetime having this type of conversation with this specific person.
"In my day," Matty said, "when a boy came to see you from another state, it wasn't because you were getting to know each other."
"Well, in your day things were different."
"Some things don't change."
"Many things change," Blaire said. "In fact, most things change constantly, and resisting that change is a philosophically untenable stance."
"Don't come at me with philosophy, Blaire."
"It's not philosophy, it's common sense."
"Common sense," Matty said, pointing at the television for no apparent reason, "says that when a boy comes from another state at Christmas without warning, it's not to get to know each other."
"We young people in 2013 function differently than young people functioned in your day, Matty, and that's neither better nor worse, it's simply different."
"Different?" Matty repeated with the tone of someone who is going to need it explained exactly what that means.
"Different," Blaire confirmed. "People get to know each other in different ways now. Relations don't have to follow the linear scheme of formal introduction followed by formal courtship followed by..."
"Formal courtship?" Matty interrupted. "Who said anything about formal courtship? I only said that in my day, if a boy crossed half the country to see you, it was because you meant something to him, and it doesn't seem to me that that has changed all that much."
Blaire opened her mouth and closed it again because Matty had just said something completely reasonable using exactly the wrong tone, and that left her without the argument she had prepared.
"I came from Texas, actually," Wyatt said before he could decide if he wanted to say it.
Matty looked at him. "Texas?"
"I was at my parents' house for the holidays," Wyatt explained. "The direct flight left from Houston."
Matty processed that and then pointed at Wyatt with a gesture Wyatt couldn't entirely interpret. "This one at least is honest," he said, addressing Blaire.
"Wyatt, you don't have to say anything," Blaire said.
"It doesn't bother me, sir," Wyatt responded.
"See?" Matty said. "Sir, he calls me."
"Matty," Susan said from the sofa.
"I'm just saying he has manners," Matty responded. "Unlike certain previous college classmates I won't name."
"Good, don't name them," Blaire said.
"I won't name them, but I remember them."
"Nobody asked you to remember them."
"Memory doesn't work that way, Blaire."
Ted, who had followed the whole exchange with the attention of someone watching an especially interesting game, leaned slightly toward John. "This is better than the Celtics," he murmured.
"Much better," John confirmed at the same volume.
"Will you two shut up?" Blaire said without turning around.
"We're watching the game," Ted responded, pointing at the television with total innocence.
"You're not watching the game."
"We're watching both things," John said. "We're multitasking."
Matty, who had kept looking at Wyatt throughout the conversation with that evaluation of his that still hadn't produced a definitive verdict, went back to the television for a moment before saying, in the tone of someone closing a topic—though in reality he wasn't closing it but simply changing tactics—"Do you play football well?"
Wyatt looked at him. "I try to, sir."
"Hmm," Matty responded.
And with that, he went back to the Celtics game with the same concentration as before, leaving Wyatt sitting on the Bennett sofa with Blaire three meters away and the entire family around him.
Wyatt looked at the television for a moment without really seeing what was happening on the screen, while mentally processing his last two hours there, which had included a dinner with double-meaning questions, a conversation in Blaire's room he hadn't anticipated happening exactly like that, and an appearance by Susan he definitely hadn't anticipated happening in any way, which now had him on the family sofa of a family that wasn't his own, watching the Celtics with a man who was still evaluating him and two twins who had clearly bet money on what had occurred upstairs.
It was a situation Wyatt hadn't calculated when he took the plane in Houston that morning.
What was true was that the specific chaos of the living room, with Matty in his armchair, Susan with her tea, John and Ted with their constant energy, and Blaire with her oversized flannel and her Doc Martens and that expression of hers that still hadn't finished processing what had happened upstairs, had something Wyatt didn't know how to name exactly, but that didn't feel uncomfortable to him the way he might have expected it to be.
Ted passed him a soda without anyone having asked him to.
"Thanks," Wyatt said.
"You're welcome," Ted responded with the same naturalness with which he did everything, and then added in a voice low enough so only Wyatt could hear him: "Welcome to the family."
Blaire, who was three meters away and apparently had the hearing of a bat: "Ted," she said without looking up from her phone.
"What," Ted responded with total innocence.
Susan offered cookies to Wyatt with a smile he had begun to understand as the expression of someone who has made a decision about a person and has no intention of revising it, regardless of what anyone else in the room might think about it.
"Thank you, ma'am," Wyatt said.
"Susan," she simply corrected him before turning back to her tea, while on the screen the Celtics lost a point and Matty said something about the defense that nobody responded to, because everyone in the living room knew perfectly well that he wasn't looking for an answer but simply processing out loud the situation in front of him—which at this moment was the game, though Wyatt had a reasonably well-founded suspicion that it wasn't the only thing he was processing tonight.
Author thought
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