I hate to say this, but Carol is like an insect. I mean that in a good way.

When I was little, I was crawling around in the dirt. Some bug landed right in front of me, right there on the ground, quivering just slightly. "It's more scared of you than you are of it," my father said.

Carol is like an insect. She probably feels more awkward here in this hotel room than I do.

When I was little, usually it was just a moth, sometimes a big, black beetle. God forbid I'd run into a wasp.

I don't think Carol is a wasp. She looks nice. Thin, with dark skin. Nice body.

She smiles at me whenever she turns toward me. I'm sitting here on the corner of the bed. She comes in, pulls something out of the suitcase behind me and walks to the bathroom or the closet or the chest of drawers or wherever whatever she's got in her hand goes. Then she turns around and heads back to the suitcase. That's when she smiles at me. What else could she do?

Carol isn't my girlfriend. It'd be pretty rude to call my own girlfriend an insect, in a good way or not. She's probably twice my age. Well, actually, looking at her, she might not be that much. Probably around 30. One and two-thirds my age, give or take. Okay, more on the take side.

She's my brother's girlfriend. She's probably a little older than him. There's nothing wrong with that. Tolerance and all.

It must be pretty serious. He brought her here for Christmas. Flew her out here from Chicago. I wonder who paid. Must be pretty damn serious.

"Are you gonna go swimming?"

"What?"

"Are you going to go swimming with your mom and dad?" she says again.

"Oh, I didn't bring my suit."

That's how I ended up here in this hotel room with her. My parents went to look at the hotel pool. My brother, he's parking the car or buying a newspaper or tipping the bellboy or renting a video or battling traffic. Or something.

This is just weird. Just weird.

What am I supposed to say? Sibling's serious relationship. One and two-thirds my age. Alone in a hotel room.

Maybe, if that suitcase turns out to be a bottomless pit full of hair dryers and underwear and shampoo and shavers and things Carol has to put away, I won't have to come up with a whole lot to say. She'll be occupied.

I'm really not that interested in her. I'm interested in getting out of here. If we find out they're engaged, then I'll get interested.

"Had you ever met my parents before this trip?" I say.

"Oh yeah, when I was a graduate student," she said. " I didn't really get to know them, though."

I guess my brother was the one she got to know. He's almost 10 years older than me. Two kids in a family, almost a decade apart. That's two-and-a-half presidential terms. That's a long time.

My father's first marriage, a bunch of decades ago, and my brother is born. But the wife quits her job and goes back to college. Divorce, because my father doesn't "want to pay for her to go pretend she's 20 again. Goddammit." Also, my father had an affair.

Next decade. New marriage. New wife already has a college degree she likes. Out pops me.

I wonder if Carol knows all this. I wonder how much she'll find out by Christmas dinner.

Maybe this would be easier if I just assume they're getting married. Then I can be interested. Then I can feel like I have a right to ask questions. She can be the only one to feel awkward, because, hey, it's my family, I've got a right to know who's getting involved.

"How long ago did you meet my brother?" I say.

"We were in school together. Didn't you hear about it? I thought everybody knew."

All right, that's a fair shot. I did know about it. One of those oh-we-met-in-college stories. He saw her, he followed her, he offered her a candy bar, the rest is history.

"So, do you have a girlfriend?" she said. "If you don't mind my asking. I've heard a lot about you."

Wow, she gets personal, fast.

"No," I say. "I mean, not right now."

"Oh." For some reason she stops taking things out of the suitcase and sits down on the bed.

"I wonder when my parents are getting back," I say.

Asking me if I have a girlfriend! I should be asking her the questions. I'm not the one who followed someone across the country for Christmas with their family. And there she is, sitting five feet from me on the bed, looking at me like I'm some Third World peasant who got caught by someone doing their dissertation.

"So you don't have a girlfriend right now?" she says. She looks at me while I sit silently. "So then, is there one, you know, coming soon?"



"What?"

She smiles. "Your parents seem to think you've, well you know."

"My parents?"

"I talked to them for awhile this morning."

That was probably my mother. Honestly, there's no girl. Well, at least no girl who in the real world could actually become my girlfriend. My mother always thinks there's someone. Maybe there always was for her. Maybe there always was for my brother. Maybe that's how he met Carol. How should I know? He was in college before I was in puberty.

"Sometimes they don't know what they're talking about," I say.

"Oh," she says. "Yeah."

Great. She probably doesn't believe me. She's probably thinking, oh, what a cute little hormonal teenager who's too embarrassed to talk about girls. She's probably thinking that because I'm blushing.

If I just stare into space, if I just look around this hotel room, maybe she'll stop talking to me so much. Maybe she'll start thinking of something else. This bed has a comforter with a plaid design. Very nice, very hotel-like. Some painting of an English cottage above the bed board. A yellow cushion chair by the window.

"Your parents are really sweet people," she says after a moment.

"Yeah," I say.

God, what else did my parents tell her? Did my father tell her that if I keep working hard I can shave off a few fractions of a second and go to college on a swimming scholarship? Yeah right. I'm a jock. Sure I am.

"Anyway," she says. "Your mother talks about you a lot."

"Oh, great."

"You shouldn't be embarrassed." She leans forward and pats my shoulder. "She's really proud of you."

Great. She's proud of me. Of course she's proud of me. Parents who aren't proud of their kids are probably all child abusers. Besides, I'm her only child. I mean, my father, he's got two kids to choose from, from two different mothers at that. My mother, hey, she's gotta be proud of somebody.

"So how long are you staying, I mean, past Christmas?" I say to Carol.

"I don't know. I don't think we can afford to stay in a hotel for too long," she says. "It's expensive."

"Oh."

"Actually, your parents — they're so sweet — they offered for me to stay with your brother in your house. I mean, that'd be fine with me. But your brother feels kind of awkward I guess. What do you think? You know them better. Do you think he should feel awkward, you know, staying with a woman in his parents' house?"

"Well —"

She shakes her head. "I'm sorry, that's not something you've had to think about yet, I'm sure."

Man. What's the right way to respond to that?

"You know what's strange about this whole thing?"

"What?" I say.

"I mean, here I am out here for Christmas, meeting your parents and everything," she says. "And she's not even his mother. Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, she's your mom, so she is his mother, but you know."

"I can see how —"

"It was probably rude for me to bring it up."

"No, it's okay," I say.

"Oh, yeah, I guess by this point you're pretty used to it. I feel kind of stupid, actually, like when you meet someone in a wheelchair, and the last thing you want to say is, 'How come you can't walk?' But the person knows that's probably the top thing on your mind, and by that point in their life they probably don't really care anyway."

I just look at her. When someone talks that much, what can you say? I don't even know anyone in a wheelchair.

Then she says, "maybe I should just ask you then, I mean if you don't mind, what it's like in your family?"

"Well, I don't —"

"Really, only if you don't mind."

"I don't really know my brother's mother that well." It's true. The most important conversations I've had with her have probably been about when's the best time to call my brother. It's very complicated, you know. God forbid she'd call when my father's home.
"What I mean is how is it with your parents?" she says.

I don't say anything at first. "Well, my father travels a lot, so it's really my mother who I know best. My father goes to visit my brother a lot though."

"Oh."

We just look at each other. She stands up. I guess I couldn't tell her anything she didn't already know. Serves her right for asking.

She starts going into the suitcase again. There must be a lot of things in there. I watch her. What kind of attitude does she have, anyway? She comes here and treats me like I'm applying for a job from her. Makes me answer questions.

"I think I'm gonna go look for my parents," I say.

"I think I'll go with you."

"Oh, okay," I say.

"I've gotta get out of this hotel room," she says.

So now this is just beautiful. The hotel corridors have enough people that we're noticed. A teenager and a nice looking woman walking out of a hotel room — I would be proud except that it's pretty clear to anyone looking that I didn't meet this woman in English class. Her hand swings close to mine. Oh God. It looks like either she's into pedophilia or the only date I can get is with my mom. Thank God no one else gets in the elevator with us.

"The pool's over here," she says when we get to the ground floor.

"What?"

"Over here."

I follow her and she opens the glass doors. Humidity rushes under my clothes and chlorine penetrates my nose. My parents aren't here.

She squints. "Huh. I don't see them."

"Yeah," I say.

For some reason, though, she hasn't seen enough. She just stands there, looking over this little pool, as if she's a model waiting for the clumsy photographer. I'd say it's about three times the size of a hot tub.

"So why didn't you bring a suit?" Carol says.

"I just knew I wouldn't want to swim here."

"I thought swimming was your thing," she says.

"I live around here. I can go to the park to swim whenever I want."

I don't think she's listening to me. "I wish I knew where your brother was," she says, but she sounds like she's talking to herself, which is fine, because that means I don't have to respond. "You know what?" she says suddenly, like an announcement, "I think I'm going to go swimming."

"Okay," I say. "I'll wait here."

This is my first moment alone. I go sit in one of the reclining chairs by the side of the pool. It's just me and this old lady with loose skin hanging off her arms, here in this little humid room.

What the hell are my parents doing? I take my shoes and socks off and go dangle my ankles into the water. The old lady with the skin stays away from me.

"I think I know where they are."

I turn around. Carol is walking toward the pool, in a navy suit with a towel around her waist.

"I know where they are," she says. As if all in one motion, somehow electrified by this earth-shattering piece of knowledge, she leaves her towel on the side of the pool and jumps into the water. "I know what they did," she says, standing in front of me with water up past her belly button. "Your parents said they might take your brother out for a late lunch."

"Oh."

"I guess it's one of those things, you know. He's bringing a girl home for Christmas, they gotta go give him, you know, the 'best wishes talk' from the folks."

"Yeah. You're probably right."

"Actually, if there's one thing that bugs me about him, it's that he goes off and does these things and doesn't tell me. But, you know, oh well."

I take my feet out of the water and walk back to my chair. Carol starts doing laps, as if the pool has enough room for that. One stroke up, one stroke down.

My brother's getting himself some best wishes, and my parents, who said they were going to be swimming, are giving them to him. At least when Carol said she was going to change to go swimming, she actually changed to go swimming. Not only that, she came back and went swimming.

Carol is basically just wading now — that's all you really can do in that pool. Her head's tilted back toward the ceiling, her eyes are closed, and her arms are swirling out to her sides keeping her afloat. She looks like a Christ-figure getting a Swedish massage.

"Carol, I think I'm going to go up to the front desk —"

She opens her eyes and looks and me. "What?"

I walk to the edge of the pool. "I'm going to go see if there's a message at the front desk. From my parents or my brother."

She pulls herself to the side of the pool so the top half of her body is out of the water. She peers up at me. I feel sweat under my arms, but that's probably from the humidity.

"Have they, I mean —"

"What?" I say. This is a very awkward situation, a very awkward angle, with her in a bathing suit. I don't want to look like I'm staring down —.

"They haven't, you know ..."

"What?"

"Well, this may sound rude, but usually, you know, anyone else would have said ..." Her voice trails off.

"Yes?" I say.

"Do you know that your brother and I are —"

"What?"

"That we're engaged?"

"You're engaged?"

"We're engaged."

"You're engaged?" I say again.

"Yes. We're engaged."

"Uh huh."

"No one told you?"

"No."

She climbs out of the pool and I step back a foot. I feel like my stomach muscles are going to give out and I'll just flip over at the waist and land in the water.

She touches my shoulder. "I'm sure they were going to tell you. I mean, it's been less than a day since we decided. Look at it that way."

"Yeah."

She takes a breath. "Listen, I'm gonna go up and change back into regular clothes. Okay?" She pats my shoulder again.

I nod. I watch her bend down and put the towel around her waist again, glance back at me, and walk out the glass doors.

I stand there for a moment, until I notice that old lady with the hanging skin is looking at me. I turn around and sit down on the chair.

It's hard to get my socks and shoes back on. My hands aren't very steady.

I walk out of the pool and to the elevators. I walk slowly. I knock on the door to Carol and my brother's room. I knock twice.

She's probably in the shower, I figure, and I lean against the wall on the other side of the hallway.

It's been a few minutes and I knock again, but it doesn't do any good. I'm sure she's in the shower. Of course she is — she just went swimming. I lean against the wall again, and slide down to the floor, my shirt slipping along the beige paint. Sitting on the floor, on this soft carpet, looking at the door to that hotel room, I think I can almost hear the shower — just a little running water somewhere behind the wall.

•••

And now I'm back home, waiting for someone to look at me. My parents are happy. Carol and my brother look like such a great couple, and my parents know everything is going to be fine.

My parents know everything. They can be optimists, they can be pessimists, they can be right, they can be wrong, but that's not the point. They just always know that they know. They're so sure.

Some people are sure, some people are confident that they can tackle anything, that they can change anyone, that they can spin the world around their pinky. But my parents know more than those people. They know everything — everything that's going to happen, everything that has happened, everything that's possible, and everything that's not. They know so much that they're helpless. And that's a luxury, because it makes it easier to eat the same cereal every morning, to know when to pay by credit card and when to pay by debit card, and to know what section of the newspaper to turn to without reading the headlines.

My parents are sure about me. They have been for a long time.

"I'm sorry we left you at the hotel," my mother says. "We knew you'd be fine."

And of course I was fine. What can happen to you at a AAA-certified hotel? And of course I shouldn't have been surprised.

My father looked at Carol. "When you're working on your second teenage son," he says, as she smiles, "you kind of know you can let them go off on their own."

"He's always liked to go off on his own," says my mother. "I used to lose him in shopping malls. He'd just wander off. He could be anywhere. I can't tell you!" She slapped the table with her palm.

"You always found him though," says my brother.

"More like he'd come find me. I could never find him. It got to the point all I could do was go on with my shopping. He'd always come back. I always knew he would." She looks at me. "Do you remember that?"

I try to smile and I nod. I'm like a religion. I'm something they can have faith in. I always come back. You don't doubt God, and you never have to doubt that I'll come back.

This is a beautiful scene. Outside there's a row of homes with multi-colored Christmas lights and a thin glaze of snow on the lawns. We've got Christmas decorations, single candles in the windows, and plastic green leaves with red bows all over the house. Later, I'm sure, we'll decorate the fire resistant Christmas tree.

A year ago, I remember, I came home from a swim meet and my parents were decorating the tree. I found my father and I told him. I told him I lost the race, I told him I wasn't a winner, I told him the other boy's finger found the wall before mine. He looked up at me, he took a breath, and he said I shouldn't look so down. "You've been working so hard," he said. "I know you can't win them all." And he looked away.

"Hey," my mother says, "we should start a fire."

Carol stands up. "That would be wonderful. You know I've never had a Christmas in a house with a fireplace."

"Sit, sit." My mother waves at Carol with her left hand. "Let the men go take care of the wood."

Carol sits, and I stand up.

"Stay, stay. You've barely gotten to know Carol."

I sit and watch my father and my brother leave to put their coats on. My eyes meet Carol's. She blinks and looks at me again. My father and brother leave through the garage door.

My mother looks back at me. "Did you tell Carol about your record?"

"My record?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm?" I try to crinkle my nose.

"You know what record I'm talking about." She turns to Carol. "Just last week he set the county record in, what's that race that you swim all the time?"

I pretend not to hear. "What?" I glance at Carol. I look down.

Carol, studying me, not letting her eyes leave mine, suddenly smiles. "He told me all about it at the hotel," she says.

My head snaps up. I stare at Carol. She smiles slightly at me. She's wearing a long smooth charcoal grey skirt, and this tight black shirt, so black it looks sexy without showing any shape.

"Oh, well it was all over the papers," my mother says. "You know, the more I think about it, I think we should go out to dinner."

I look at her.

"Oh?" Carol answers.

"I can't bear to think about cooking, with everything I have to make for tomorrow night."

"Sure."

"Do you think seafood would be okay?"

"Oh, sure," Carol says. "That's one thing I miss living back in the Midwest. No fresh seafood."

"Really? I thought they could fly it out there now."

Carol shakes her head. "It's really not the same."

Every so often Carol glances at me. She slips in a smile, just a slight twitch of her lips, just something only I can see, before I can get my eyes away. I'm not talking about anything seductive here. I'm talking about the kind of smile that says, "I think you need attention." The way some people make conversation with their dogs.

My father and my brother slam the iron garage door behind them, ignoring my mother's scolding to take their shoes off as they muddy the linoleum with dirty snow. Thick, icy logs pour out of their arms onto the bricks in front of the fireplace.

"You should have seen us out there!" says my father.

"Like real wilderness men," my brother says.

"We actually took out the axe and chopped this stuff ourselves."

"Would you mind if we go out for dinner?" my mother says.

"What? What about the fire?"

"I don't want to cook."

My father and my brother look at each other.

"We're going to the seafood place."

"The seafood place?"

"Yes."

"We'll never get in."

Carol stands up. "Why don't we drive over there and get a table, and you can get that wood defrosted and meet us there?"

"Fine."

"Good."

She walks past me, pulls my arm, and gives my brother a kiss on his cheek. The three of us leave for the car.

• • •

I'm in the backseat of the car. The dashboard is lighting up and beeping because my mother is always slow to put on her seat belt. We're waiting for my mother to take off the emergency brake and go. Carol is staring straight ahead, sitting shotgun.

"Oh, dammit!" says my mother.

"What?" Carol says.

"I have coupons for this place. I left them inside. The Entertainment Book."

I stare out the window.

"I'll get them," Carol says.

"No, you won't know where they are." My mother opens her door and runs back to the house. The keys are still in the ignition, the dashboard is still flashing and beeping, and the headlights are still on. Up and down this white-glazed street, there's a car in every driveway and a driveway in front of every house. Beside every driveway there's a tree and on every tree white, red, green, and blue lights flash and glow. Except for the Jewish houses. They had menorahs, earlier in the month.

Carol turns around and looks at me. "This will all be over eventually," she says.

"Huh?"

"You won't have to deal with your parents trying to impress me forever."
"Oh." I try to laugh.

She smiles at me, resting her chin on the headrest. "Maybe after a couple of years there'll be some healthy in-law tension building up."

I smile. I look at her. In the darkness, penetrated by reflecting headlights, only her face stands out above her black shirt.

"I'll tell you what," she says. "Do you like seafood?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever had lobster?"

"A couple times."

"Order some lobster tails."

"My parents will never let me. They're like $18."

"Order them. Order a whole lobster. They're not going to be cheapskates as long as I'm here."

Carol turns around. My mother returns to the car. My father and brother squeeze into the backseat next to me.

"That wood is so wet," my father says. "It's soaked through and frozen. We're never going to get it lit."

My brother puts his hand on Carol's shoulder. Carol puts her hand on his. Everyone looks straight ahead as my mother backs out of the driveway.

•••

As my mother and father laugh with Carol and my brother about wedding cakes, apartment hunting, and meeting your one true love, I eat a lobster, delicately sauteed in a light garlic butter sauce. Just the right amount of parsley. It came with a house salad, a potato, and a plastic bib I tucked into my collar as I watched my mother crinkle her forehead. I wished I'd ordered the raspberry vinaigrette for the salad. Not that honey mustard isn't good.

As I crack open the belly of the lobster, my mother glances at me and opens her mouth. Carol quickly mentions a concern about gown styles, and my mother looks away.
They talk about wedding dates. They ask me if I know when school vacations are. I look around the restaurant. I tell the waiter I don't want any more coffee. I look for other people at other tables, I look for other people who are talking. I look to see how they look at each other.

I can say Carol and my brother look happy together, sitting across from my parents. Her arm is around his shoulders, and his fingers rest gently on her leg. They look at each other a lot.

Tomorrow we'll welcome Christmas, in a couple days my brother and Carol will leave, and at some unannounced date in the future I will be an usher at a wedding.

My parents pay for the meal by credit card, and I think they've forgotten about the lobster. We get up to walk out of the restaurant. My brother pats my back, and Carol gives me a peck on my cheek. Then she holds her face near me for a moment, so I feel her exhale on my neck. "Keep your parents happy until our wedding," she whispers. Then she pulls away, and looks into my eyes. "Promise?"

I nod, just a little.

We walk into the snow, over the wheel tracks and slush, toward the cars. While Carol is still close enough to hear, my father asks me if I have any swim meets this week.

I say no, no meets right after Christmas.

He says, "Oh well, I guess you won't be breaking any more records for awhile."

"I guess not," I say. "But maybe in January."