22
McElwees Family Tree
ORIGINS: Irish? Presumably Irish. Sounds Irelandish.
DISTINGUISHING TRAITS: Bright blue eyes, freckled arms, skinny (with one exception), booming cackle of a laugh.
PATRIARCH: Jim McElwees (the exception).
MATRIARCH: Mia Jeanine McElwees.
DAUGHTERS: Livvie Carroll (thirty-four), Mindee (thirty-one), Marion (twenty-six), Malcolm (twenty), Madison (sixteen)
INCOMING SON-IN-LAW: Robert “Bobby” Posnanski.
GRANDCHILDREN: Gale and Cactus (note: everyone understandably prefers to call them “the twins.” I mean, good God).
“Your father is an insane person,” Norris bemoaned to Maddie as he rolled his apron into a bundle and discarded it over an old stack of laminated kids’ menus under the counter. Key lime season was, in fact, as brutal as advertised. Even with a giant family wedding looming days away, Big Jim still found a second pocket of energy to double down on the pie promotion.
“Energy, people! The limes are delicious this year, the graham cracker crust is hand mixed. Let’s make some magic and then make sure there’s one on every table of not only the dining room, but also the greater Austin area.”
The Bone Yard currently was in its postlunch haze anyway, so it was all hands on deck in managing the output of key lime, cream, and graham cracker that had become their lives. Because he always reimbursed the gas, Big Jim considered these delivery runs to be a quirk of the job; sort of like making fresh coffee whenever the pot was empty. Julio swore Jim was so obsessed he once saw him take a bite out of an actual lime, which sounded ridiculous at first, but Norris was beginning to find it increasingly believable.
“You come from insane stock. Test your kids for the recessive insanity gene.”
“You don’t get to play innocent now,” Maddie said as she grabbed the first stack of pie boxes from the delivery counter, a ring of keys around her finger. “You were adequately warned.”
Norris snatched the second half, along with the printout of the delivery schedule, and followed her out to the parking lot. The past few weeks had, as promised, been a key lime nightmare for all Bone Yard employees. Forty to sixty pies were produced every day and Austin’s demand was only rising. Norris had already gotten an outrageous number of paper cuts while folding sheets of lime-green cardboard into boxes, and just that morning Judith had leaned into Norris by the microwave, taken a whiff of his head, and asked if he accidentally used lemon-scented floor cleaner as shampoo.
To make matters worse, the delivery situation was still in flux, and in the late afternoons, it often came down to whoever was available to make the local rounds. The fact that he didn’t have a driver’s license meant that he was consistently the one charged with the car-to-door portion of the delivery; the only benefits were the occasional at-the-door tips he got. Julio and Cheryl were both “sick” to study for their University of Texas finals. The backup delivery team more often than not consisted of Norris and Maddie these days. In fact, between closing the restaurant on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday evenings and this key lime situation Norris was spending as much time in Maddie’s car as Liam’s. They’d been having more practices than ever as they prepared for their very first game. Norris had been skeptical at first, but Liam had found them a local league that seemed legit, with an actual website that did not appear to have been crafted by a lonely murderer in his basement as a ploy to bring his victims into the light.
“You really need to get a driver’s license,” Maddie noted as they pulled into a residential area of East Austin filled with small one-floor homes and front yards littered with toys, bikes, and plastic cars. Norris grabbed the box and went up to deliver the order. Two minutes later, he was back.
“Godammit!”
Norris slammed the door to Maddie’s car and settled into the passenger seat with a scowl on his face.
“Prank order?” Maddie preemptively guessed.
“Prank order. I even heard giggling behind the door.” He checked the scribbled name on the dashboard’s delivery log. “M. Ockhurts? Max Ockhurts, maybe? I can’t even make it out. . . .”
“Mike,” Maddie decoded with a groan. “Mike Ockhurts. My cock hurts. C’mon, Dad: How did he not catch this one?”
Stunts like these weren’t altogether unprecedented at the Bone Yard. Big Jim’s dream of One Pie in Every Home for the Greater Austin Area meant that he was likely to fall for these sorts of things. Anyone who expressed a passing interest in advertising his pies got a stack of express-shipped flyers at their door the same afternoon, detailed descriptions of ingredient sourcing over the phone, and he had even entertained the idea of mailing freeze-dried pie slice samples around town before his wife and daughters put an end to that costly plan. His optimism when it came to his key lime pursuit was charming enough to Norris but also one of the few things that drove Maddie—who was otherwise made of Teflon when it came to dealing with her father’s antics—up the absolute wall.
“And of course this was a cash order,” she moaned. “God, why is that even still an option? . . . Credit cards only! Even food trucks are going paperless these days! To deliver to someone’s home without insurance is just bonkers. You’re asking to be prank called.”
Norris nearly jumped back when she then reached into his lap midrant. “What are you doing?!”
“Using every part of the buffalo, Canada. This has been in the car all afternoon,” she said, moving the box to her own lap and pulling out two wrapped sets of plastic utensils from her glove compartment. “If it’s not eaten soon, it’ll go bad. Also, I’m starving.”
“You want to eat this here?”
“Why not?”
The question came with an unwrapped fork dangling toward him, and Norris actually had no valid counterargument. Not to mention that he was feeling a little peckish himself. Dealing with key lime nonsense at every shift still didn’t negate the primary characteristic that the damn things were freaking delicious. Mouthwatering, really.
Norris sighed as he took the fork. They spent the next hour parked in front of the house of what was sure to be an increasingly panicked phone prankster as they fell into an easy rhythm of reaching into the key lime box. Norris liked talking to Maddie. His mouth occasionally took over, but he never got that look from her, like he’d accidentally stumbled onto a spell that turned the ground into quicksand; or the entire world. Maybe that was why so many people liked her; she gave them room to fumble.
“And how are things with Aarti?”
“Good!” Norris exclaimed, and realized that he meant it. Ever since their date at the pool, he and Aarti had been spending more time together, and he was starting to feel more relaxed around her. He’d even eased off on the overly clever texting Maddie had called him out on. “Regular texting. Second base, if you want to bring baseball into the equation. Things are really, really good.” He knocked on the wooden panel as punctuation.
“Oh,” Maddie said, looking more confused than Norris would have liked at the assertion that he wasn’t blowing things with Aarti.
“You sound surprised?” Norris said. But Maddie’s face remained pensive.
“No. That’s great, Canada. Really.” She smiled, though it almost looked wistful. “I knew you had it in you.”
For her part, Maddie caught him up on the various goings-on of the squad, which Norris was content to just nod along to. When it was his turn, Norris talked about his own family; his nominal cousins who lived in Haitian pockets all over the map, who he didn’t really keep in touch with, and all the disgusting memes that he still received from his hockey team back home.
“Is it weird to still be hearing from them, but not be part of the team anymore?”
Norris shrugged.
“A little, but it’s okay,” he admitted. “I have a new team now, which helps. And I can definitely live without all the gross stuff guys feel the compulsive need to share.
“Like, imagine getting this at two in the morning!” he said, bringing his phone close to Maddie’s face to show her the last one he’d received from an old teammate, Antoine.
“Pig creatures!” She gagged once she understood what exactly she was looking at. “Jesus, we’re really late. We should head back.”
She was right. Norris looked back to the house where the porch light was now turned on and two adult silhouettes were definitely staring at them from the living room window.
“Yeah, we should go before I’m arrested for loitering while black. And key lime intoxicated.” He nodded. “By the way, don’t think I don’t see through your obvious ulterior motives for coming with me on these deliveries.”
Maddie froze. “Is that right?”
“Yup,” Norris said confidently. “You can’t fool me. Big McElwees wedding ahead. A million family members in town: Do I even have to ask how the McElwees household is coping?”
Maddie moaned and then groaned, maybe both at the same time. “It’s a nightmare, Canada.”
Norris laughed. He was pretty sure that every surface of the Bone Yard was currently covered in beaded lights, ready to be unleashed for the event.
Maddie went on to explain the household insanity as they drove on through the orange-lit streets of Austin. The main thing about the McElweeses was that there were a lot of them. A bucketload, as it turned out; spread out all over Texas and beyond. Norris’s first thought upon seeing the framed photo of the whole clan in the Bone Yard’s back room, all dressed in purple-and-gold turtlenecks for the whimsical portrait had been that he was looking at the very blond cast of a wacky sitcom. The Tackies on ABC Family.
Maddie herself was youngest of five despite the fact that she steered the ship like a true matriarch-in-training. Mindee and Malcolm would sometimes stop by the restaurant to say hi to their dad. Norris secretly thought it was probably to ask for money.
Beyond that, Norris was only roughly acquainted with the older, non-Maddie McElwees children. Marion (named for their grandmother, according to Maddie) was the one getting married. She was nice enough, in her midtwenties, and still lived in town with her fiancé, which meant that Norris got to see her in person every few weeks at least. She was tall, a former varsity tennis player of Anderson High herself, and now worked in law but wasn’t a lawyer. Livvie was the eldest, definitely in her early thirties and mother to the twins. She had an efficient hairdo and lived in Houston with her wife and their three kids. Big Jim had sent them a stack of seven pies when key lime season had started.
This was without accounting for all the cousins and off-the-stump branches of the McElwees garden that were coming into town for the wedding. There was apparently even a family newsletter. The family discount was working a double shift at the restaurant as more and more “______ McElwees” (Joe, Lynn, John) dropped their last name when the check came, expecting the number to magically turn to zero.
“More cousins keep arriving every day too!” Maddie said, guiding the car into a convenience store parking lot, Maddie’s offhand “Let’s get slushies” the only explanation. Maybe the sudden, random craving was a stress thing, but Norris wasn’t complaining. “It’s not a giant house like Meredith’s! I keep tripping over sleeping bags in the morning, and Dad actually got whiteboards up to keep track of bathroom rotations. It’s like a summer camp nightmare that won’t end. Why is booking a hotel room a family slight, anyway? We love you, glad you’re in town, have some cake on the wedding day, but, like, please poop elsewhere for the preceding week!”
“That’s definitely a Haitian thing too,” Norris mused. The bored-looking clerk barely looked up from his phone as Norris and Maddie entered the otherwise empty store; fewer than five minutes later they were back in the car, slushies acquired.
“My mom gives up her bed whenever my aunt Rose visits us,” he continued, no longer tired. “It’s just this unspoken thing that has to happen. My mom hates it. She grumbles every time she visits. Meanwhile, she’s buying new sheets, new pillows, even leaving a little mint on there too. Last time, she kept placing hotel flyers on the kitchen table, but Aunt Rose just wouldn’t take the hint. Like, why would she? Her sister literally breaks out the silverware for her when she visits! So it’s two whole weeks of Mom going insane, overcompensating by turning the bed every other day, and Aunt Rose leaves thinking she can’t wait until the next time she visits.”
“Jeez, I can’t wait to get to college, to at least have my dorm room as a buffer.” She sighed wistfully.
“That’s as far as you’re going, then?” Norris inquired after a long, loud slurp. “The University of Texas?”
Maddie raised a listless arm from the steering wheel, giant slushie straw still in her mouth, and made a half fist extending her forefinger and pinky outward, somewhere between rock and roll and devil worshipping. Hook ’em Horns; the universal sign of solidarity for the University of Texas football team. The gesture was almost second nature to her—as it was to anyone who spent more than a few weeks in Austin. In the past four months, Norris had seen it from elderly little ladies in plastic visors and drunken businessmen in wrinkled business suits.
“And what’s wrong with UT, you snob? Doesn’t your mom teach there?”
“Nothing, it’s a great school,” Norris fumbled. “I—just—you’re going to be here forever? Down the street? That’s it?”
She shrugged, not seeming particularly offended, thank God.
“That’s a whole lot. All my friends are here. My family. I want to see the world, sure, but that’s what vacations are for. I don’t think I would consider anywhere else home,” Maddie said, as if pondering the question for herself. “Don’t think I could, to be honest.”
“But how do you know?” Norris pressed. He honestly would trade a pair of NHL playoff tickets for a fraction of Madison McElwees’s self-assurance and confidence in how life was going to turn out. Most days, Norris could barely picture life past his next meal. His longest-term goal thus far had been the trip to Whistler.
“I just do,” Maddie added as they pulled toward his building. “We’re here.”
How many rides had she given him for her to know the way to his place by heart? Norris was beginning to feel like a freeloader. She looked at him for a moment as they pulled up to his building.
“Right. Thanks for the ri—” Norris began, unbuckling his belt.
“Wait! Er, I have something for you,” she said, pulling a white envelope with a pearly lace ribbon around its flap from her purse. Norris knew what these envelopes were. The last time he had seen it, it was stacked with 184 identical replicas in a cardboard box on Big Jim’s desk.
“A wedding invitation?”
“Yeah, I was thinking you might want to come. Y’know, if you want. You’re a member of the Bone Yard family, Canada.”
Norris smiled at the piece of ornate card stock. It was a very nice invitation. Norris had actually never been to a wedding before.
“And I know you’re not a church guy, so you can totally skip that and just show up to the Bone Yard after for the reception. It’s basically going to be a very well-dressed picnic.”
Norris nodded gratefully; Liam had already scheduled practice that Saturday, but he should have enough time to shower and change before the reception.
Something about the invitation coming free of any stipulations, quid pro quo, or additional shift to cover felt important to Norris. A guest of the family.
“Thanks, Maddie,” he simply said, preferring to avoid unnecessary mushiness that might embarrass both of them.