Free A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein

it?”
    “Hah,” Alec muttered again.
    “You know, if it matters at all, not only do I not remember mentioning Neal Stern in such admiring tones, but if I did, it wasn’t because I wanted you to act more Nealish,” I said. We were already almost at the Sterns’ house. The day was sunny; we could have walked. “I’m just as surprised at that kind of ridiculous achievement as you are. I was mentioning it only as a sort of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Not as an object lesson.”
    “Yeah, well, for your information, Neal Stern has always been a total asshole.”
    “Hmmm …,” Elaine murmured. “Is that true? An asshole? But don’t outrageously smart people often have rather poor social skills?”
    “That’s a stereotype,” Alec said.
    “Or maybe he’s just a little inept?”
    “Mom, he’s an asshole. Not to break your heart or anything.”
    “Pete, is that true?” Elaine was incapable of thinking the worst of people, especially kids. She looked over at me, and I shrugged.
    I knew that Joe, too, often thought his oldest son was something of an asshole, although he rarely let on. But throughout the kid’s childhood, I’d seen Joe offer him some fatherly trifle — a game of catch, a bowl of salami and eggs, a trip to Great Adventure with me and Alec and a few other neighbors — only to watch him get rebuffed without so much as an apology. “Dad, I don’t have
time
for that” — redheaded Neal typing vigorously on his expensive laptop, and Joe retreating in wonder and sadness.
    “You know who’s going to be there, actually,” said Elaine as we found a parking spot a block away from the Sterns’ already-crowded street. “Laura. She’s home from California. She moved back into the house last week. Iris set her up in the basement. I think she’s planning on staying for a while.”
    “You’re kidding.” I hadn’t seen Laura Stern in at least a decade, if not longer. Joe and Iris kept us apprised of her peregrinations, but rarely in great detail. “I thought she was raising high-end goats or something.”
    “She was,” Elaine said. “But then she decided enough was enough and she wanted to come home.”
    “High-end
goats?”
said the incredulous boy who wanted to spend four years backpacking from Belgrade to Barcelona. “Who
are
these people?”
    “Iris’s sister has some kind of farm in Sonoma,” Elaine said. “She was making goat cheese for restaurants. You can buy the stuff at Zabar’s.”
    “Goat cheese,” Alec said dismissively as we walked up the Stern’s cobbled path. “Kills a baby and goes off to Sonoma to make
goat cheese.”
    “Alec.”
    “Smashes in the skull of a—”
    “That’s enough,” Elaine said sharply. Alec sighed heavily but kept his mouth shut.
    The party was already in full swing and the Sterns’ house was crowded with the spicy holiday odors of perfume, eggnog, French toast, and a wood fire. Someone’s children chased someone else’s children up and down the staircase. I heard Vince Dirks, my office mate, chortling in the living room. Bill Rothman found me as we tossed our coats in the guest bedroom. He placed a heavy hand across my shoulder.
    “I’m a wreck.”
    “You drank too much last night, Bill. I tried to stop you.”
    “Three bottles of Dominus. Three bottles! You can’t waste that. What could I do?”
    “You have a point.”
    “Janene’s still passed out at home. The kids think it’s hysterical. They’ve never seen their mother with a hangover before.”
    “She’ll be okay?”
    “I left some aspirin and Pepto by her bed.”
    “That’s nice of you.”
    “The least I could do.”
    “Happy New Year, Bill.”
    “Happy New Year, Pete.” And then he hugged me, because he was a pediatrician and that kind of guy.
    Downstairs, I wove my way through the New Year’s revelers and traded auld lang synes with my familiars. You live in a suburban town for twenty-three years, you can’t help knowing every local. Through the French doors