This Is Where I Leave You

brother Paul, and his wife, Alice. They don’t like me very much.”
    “Only because you’re such a douche,” Paul says. It’s the first thing he’s said, I think, since he spoke at the funeral. There’s no way to know what’s pissing him off right now. In my family, we don’t so much air our grievances as wallow in them. Anger and resentment are cumulative.
    “Nice to meet you,” Alice says, her overly sweet tone meant to apologize for Paul, for the rest of us, for being fifteen pounds overweight, for not being as elegant and composed as Tracy. I was like you once, her voice pleads. A size two with perfect hair. Let’s be best friends.
    “And that’s my brother Judd. Actually, he does like me these days, if memory serves.”
    “Hi, Judd.”
    “Hey.”
    “Judd is recently cuckolded.”
    “Thanks for clarifying that, Phil,” I say.
    “Just looking to avoid any awkward faux pas later on,” Phillip says.
    “Tracy’s one of us now.”
    “Get out while you still can!” Alice jokes too loudly. Her agitated smile is a long, crooked fissure across her cheeks, widening painfully before faltering and then disappearing altogether.
    “We’ve been down this road before,” Barry says. “It’s a nonstarter.”
    “And this is my mom,” Phillip says, turning Tracy to face our mother, who is sitting beside Linda, forcing a smile.
    “Hello, Tracy. I hope you won’t judge our behavior too harshly. It’s been a trying day.”
    “Please, Mrs. Foxman. I’m the one who should apologize, for arriving unannounced at such a difficult time.”
    “So why don’t you?” Wendy says.
    “Wendy!” Mom snaps.
    “He called Barry an ass.”
    “I’m sorry,” Phillip says. “It’s been a while. It’s entirely possible, though highly unlikely, that Barry is no longer an ass.”
    “Phillip.” Tracy says his name sternly, with control and conviction, and Phillip clams up like a trained dog.
    “Phillip is nervous,” Tracy says. “This is hard for him. Obviously, he would have preferred to make the introductions under better circumstances, but in addition to being Phillip’s fiancée, I am also his life coach, and we both felt, at this difficult time, that it would help him greatly if I were here.”
    “Define ‘life coach,’ ” my mother says, her tone clipped and loaded.
    “Tracy was my therapist,” Phillip says proudly.
    “You’re his therapist and you’re dating him?” Wendy says.
    “As soon as we realized our feelings for each other, I referred Phillip to another colleague.”
    “Is that even ethical?”
    “It’s something we grappled with,” Tracy says.
    “It just happened,” Phillip says in the same instant. And then little Cole comes down the stairs, naked from the waist down, carrying the old white potty that’s been sitting under the sink in the hall bathroom since Phillip was toilet trained. Cole is in what Wendy refers to as his E.T. stage, wherein he waddles around the house like E.T., exploring and trashing everything within reach, making strange little noises as he goes. He steps over to Barry, who has finally ended his call and sat down at the table, and proffers the potty for his inspection.
    “Look, Daddy,” he says. “T!”
    Barry looks down, uncomprehending. “What does he want?” Like he’s never met his three-year-old son before.
    “T!” Cole yells triumphantly. And indeed, the crap in the potty does seem to be shaped like a crude letter T. Then Cole bends down and heaves the potty up over his head in a high arc that brings it crashing down onto the dining room table, shattering glasses and sending silverware flying. Alice screams, Horry and I dive for cover, and the contents of Cole’s overturned potty land on Paul’s plate like a side dish. Paul jumps back like a grenade has landed, so violently that he somehow takes Alice down with him in a jumble of limbs and chair legs.
    “Jesus Christ, Cole!” Barry screams. “What the hell is wrong with you!”
    “Stop yelling!” Wendy yells.
    Cole looks up at his frazzled, worthless parents and, with no preamble, bursts into a loud, fully realized crying fit. And since neither one of them seem inclined to comfort him, I exercise my uncle privileges and pick him up to blubber into my neck, his tiny kid butt sticky against my forearm. “Good job, little man,” I say, “making in the potty like that.”
    Positive reinforcement and all that. After this trauma, the kid will likely be in diapers until he’s