Elephants at the Circus

We finish dinner and I break out the brownies.

And then I break out the Elephant in the Room.

J. was alive - not alive and well mind you- but alive, technically speaking, the last time I'd seen either of them.

And when he'd died, Moira had gone against the rules of J.'s family and reached out to me. Said I'd been important to them. I ought to know.

The poor dear thing.  How brave.  Turns out Abby and Moira had had quite a lot of practice being brave.

We work backwards...starting with how the family has been toward them.

Abby doesn't refer to them as family. She goes to the obligatory baby showers and bridal showers and holiday meals as prescribed.  She dutifully makes dinner table conversation and then finds a reason to leave early. Test in the morning!  Project to work on! Meeting my study group!

Moira was always a big fan of the cousin scene and overnights at Endorra's.  Once she flew the coop for full time life with Sandy, she's never looked back.

The summer had been horrible. It began with J.'s heart attack.  (I am sure Sheila was pissed that he'd gone and done that when the year was supposed to be devoted to Em and Chuck and every fascinating detail of her pregnancy.  I am sure every episode of bloating, gas, hemorrhoids, clumsiness, over-active bladder, edema, and every other gestational woe was discussed in great detail at every chance.) And the weeks that followed were as horrible as you'd expect.

But more so, I think, for Abby.  J.'s condition was immediately deemed too serious for the local hospital around the corner from Endorra's house. He was transferred to a tertiary care facility in the city.  The Big Bad City!

Sheila had been an atrocious bitch.  She, who had spent 98% of her waking life driving her kids to school, several different schools, even college, would not take responsibility for getting her mother to the city to see J.

She insisted that Abby, the college student, leave the city, meander out to the suburbs, pack Endorra's considerable ass into her car, drive her to the city, pay to park, allow her sufficient time to visit, and then schlepp her caboose back out to the burbs, and then drive all the way into the city again to study and carry on a normal college life.

What a douchebag.

And somehow, getting Moira there had to be highly orchestrated and strategically planned because Sandy was not allowed on the premises of the hospital under terroristic threat.

Even as J. stared death in the face with those bloodshot eyes of his, his mother and sister made the whole show about themselves.

But we were just beginning to dig in. We'd barely broken the surface of the depths they'd stoop to.