Chapter 8

By the time he was twelve, the family had become accustomed to being the family that remained.

Four years had passed since his father died. Four years was a large portion of a boy's life, long enough for something once unimaginable to become ordinary without ever becoming unimportant. His mother, his brother, his sister, and he had developed routines of their own. Meals happened when meals happened. School years ended and began again. Clothes were outgrown. Friends changed. Birthdays came around with their stubborn regularity.

His father's absence had become part of the architecture of the house. It was no longer something he noticed every morning, though there were still moments when a memory arrived unexpectedly—a voice he could almost hear, a place where his father had once sat, some ordinary event that seemed to require a person who was no longer there.

But life had steadied.

The boy had learned something he could not have understood on the night his mother opened his bedroom door: even after the world changes completely, people eventually begin making plans again.

His mother had.

She told the children she was going to marry a man they already knew, a physician whose wife had died after a long illness. Focus Man could no longer remember exactly how the announcement was made or where they were when she made it. He remembered accepting it without much resistance.

He was happy for her.

At least he thought he was, and years later he saw no reason to question the boy's sincerity. His mother had been alone for four years. He understood enough to know that she deserved companionship and happiness and whatever new life might now be available to her.

Understanding that, however, was considerably easier than imagining what came next.

The man his mother was marrying had six children.

Six.

Three boys and three girls, ranging from nearly grown to still quite young. Somewhere among them was a girl almost exactly Focus Man's age, which seemed especially peculiar. He already had a brother and a sister. Soon he would have six more people who, according to the language adults used, would also become his brothers and sisters.

He tried occasionally to arrange them in his mind.

Who was oldest? Which boy was which? Who still lived at home? Where was everybody going to sleep?

The questions were practical because practical questions were easier.

The wedding arrived before he had answered many of them.

He remembered surprisingly little about the ceremony itself. This seemed odd to him later because weddings were supposed to be memorable occasions. Photographers took pictures precisely because everyone apparently expected to remember them. There must have been flowers. There must have been music. His mother must have worn something he had seen many times afterward in photographs.

None of that remained with much clarity.

What he remembered was the champagne.

Someone handed him a small glass at the reception.

"Just a little."

He accepted it with the seriousness appropriate to an adult privilege temporarily extended to a twelve-year-old.

Champagne had acquired considerable prestige in his imagination. Adults raised glasses of it at important occasions. They smiled while drinking it. Bottles were opened ceremoniously. Sometimes the cork flew across the room, which suggested that even opening the stuff was more interesting than opening ordinary beverages.

He took a sip.

This was disappointing.

It was dry and slightly bitter and bore no obvious relationship to the pleasure adults appeared to derive from it. He had tasted soft drinks that were vastly superior and available without weddings.

Still, it was champagne.

He drank some more.

A little later he noticed that his face felt warm.

The room had acquired a pleasant brightness that he was reasonably certain had not been there before. The adults seemed unusually cheerful. He felt cheerful himself, although he was attending his mother's wedding, had acquired six new siblings, and still wasn't entirely certain where he would be sleeping when all of this was over.

He did not yet possess the vocabulary for what he was experiencing.

Years later he did.

His first buzz.

Of everything that happened at his mother's wedding, this was what his twelve-year-old brain had apparently considered worthy of permanent storage.

Around him, the reception continued.

Adults talked and laughed and congratulated his mother and her new husband. Cake was cut. Glasses were refilled. People from two families circulated through the same room, already speaking as though something had been accomplished by the ceremony that Focus Man suspected might take considerably longer.

He watched the other children.

Some he knew better than others. The older ones possessed lives and concerns that seemed far removed from his own. The younger ones were simply children. The girl his age was different. They occupied approximately the same territory in this newly assembled family, although neither had chosen the arrangement.

By the end of the day, adults would have a word for their relationship.

Stepsister.

The word was easy.

The relationship would have to be discovered.

This was one of the peculiarities of adult decisions that Focus Man was beginning to encounter. Adults could change a child's circumstances with remarkable speed. A ceremony could make a man his stepfather. It could make six people his siblings. Names and legal relationships could change between breakfast and dinner.

The feelings were slower.

He did not dislike these people. He wasn't afraid of them. But neither did he suddenly experience them as brothers and sisters because somebody had completed a ceremony at the front of a room.

They were people he would now live with.

That was enough to understand for one day.

His mother seemed happy.

He remembered that.

Not the exact expression on her face or something particular she said, but the fact of her happiness. After the years since his father's death, perhaps even a twelve-year-old could recognize that something had returned to her.

That mattered to him.

It was possible, he was beginning to discover, to feel several things at once without any of them canceling the others. He could be glad for his mother and uncertain for himself. He could like his new stepfather and still have no idea what it meant to have a new father figure in the house. He could welcome the other children without yet thinking of them as family.

And he could apparently drink champagne while considering all of it.

The reception began winding down. Adults gathered coats and purses. Goodbyes took longer than expected. There were discussions about who was riding with whom and where various children needed to be. The practical machinery of combining two families had already begun.

Focus Man stood among them and tried to follow the arrangements.

That was when the magnitude of six new siblings became less theoretical.

There would be another house.

Bedrooms.

Bathrooms.

Breakfasts.

Schedules.

Possessions.

Rules he did not know.

Habits belonging to people who had already spent years becoming a family without him.

And his own family would arrive carrying habits of its own.

Nobody handed children instructions for this.

They simply went home together.

Looking back many years later, Focus Man was reluctant to turn the wedding into more than it had been. He had come to distrust the temptation to identify every important day as a fork in the road simply because he now knew where the road went. The boy standing at the reception had not felt himself crossing some great psychological boundary.

Mostly he was watching.

Trying to remember names.

Wondering what came next.

And feeling slightly warmer than usual.

The larger change would happen afterward, in the accumulated ordinary days when nine children and two adults began the considerably more difficult work of becoming something resembling a family. There would be adjustments and alliances, irritation and affection, privacy lost and new relationships gained. Some parts would come easily. Others would not.

Those belonged to the new house.

The wedding was only the doorway.

By evening, the ceremony was over. His mother was married. The relationships had been named. Whatever life they had known during those four years together had quietly ended, though no one had needed to say so.

Focus Man left the reception with the others.

He was twelve years old.

His mother was happy.

He had six new brothers and sisters.

And champagne, he had learned, tasted considerably worse than advertised.