This Family’s Favorite Holiday Game Is Resource Control

An excerpt from The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders

For Christmas dinner, Boyd’s mother Brigid had suggested a casual (“very casual”) potluck in the kitchen of the Elledge home. Small and easy, compared to some sort of extended-­family do. “No one will have to spend the week beforehand cleaning for company or the whole holiday cooking,” she’d said; and, put that way, it made more sense than the alternative. For Aubrey’s maternal relatives, with whom she and Boyd had spent the previous Christmas, hosting a holiday was an existentially horrific affair, with so much stressed-­out performative bullshit that went into it. For her first Christmas without her father, this would be a thousand times better. Simple food, a simple gathering, and then they’d simply say goodbye. No carols, no gifts, no bullshit.

Aubrey found the most complicated recipe she could for miso-braised mushrooms and then almost killed herself sourcing king oysters and enoki on Christmas Eve, visiting six different grocery stores on foot. Boyd had volunteered to bring the drinks, ­good whiskey and excellent wine, plus the usual single can of Mahaffey’s Red Field per the family tradition, ­and picked them up from the liquor store next door to his office building.

The morning of, Aubrey woke up early at her apartment and prepped the mushrooms, scoring the elastic flesh of the king oysters and then immersing the lot of them in a marinade of miso, garlic, and sesame oil. Then, as she waited for Boyd to pick her up, she tried on twenty outfits and hated every last one. Under Brigid’s leadership, the approach Boyd’s family took to things like major holidays was in turns irreverent and achingly earnest, and Aubrey had never been able to correctly predict which it would be. If she wore a nice dress handed down from her sister, she’d find Boyd and his parents in cotton jammies, cornily coordinating. If she wore the snowman cardigan she’d bought for her office’s ugly-­sweater party, surely Brigid would be in a fucking evening gown.

In the eleventh hour she settled on a red turtleneck and her nice jeans. She consulted the full-­length mirror for every possible angle to make sure she didn’t look poochy, and fretted. There, where her top met her pants, was that the beginning of, ­? But no, of course not. But was it? She stood frozen for too long, staring, wondering whether it might help to make herself throw up, but ultimately she ran out of time: Boyd texted to say he was pulling up outside.

Downstairs, her happiness at the sight of him in his white Solterra was visceral. She stood at the driver’s side window until he rolled it down. “Hi,” she said, and tried to kiss his mouth, catching instead the strawberry-­blond stubble on his cheek. He’d worn flannel pajama pants and a ribbed henley top.

“You’re not cold?” he said, and unlocked the doors.

In the car, she didn’t mention the ordeal with her clothes, because they had an agreement. The first positive test had been Friday; they’d confirmed with another on Saturday, kicking off a weekend of panic, and then Boyd had said, ­No. Let’s table this for now. Christmas was a Monday, and they would circle back to it later in the week, after they’d each had a chance to think. Separately, Boyd had emphasized. It stung but didn’t surprise her, because Boyd was always that way. Fiercely private when he had something on his mind.

In the meantime, thankfully, there were other things to talk about. “Did you find the mushrooms you needed?” asked Boyd, pulling out from beneath her building’s crumbling portico. “I saw some at the corner store but figured those probably weren’t the right ones.”

“No, yeah, those wouldn’t be, but I did find some,” she said, and held up the bulging tote bag in her lap. “Wish me luck that these will be enough. Did you find the drinks?”

He nodded his head to send her attention to the back seat of the station wagon, where there sat a paper bag, its contents clanking against one another. The necks of two wine bottles crested the top of the bag, and she saw from the labels that they were old standbys: Brigid’s favorite Sancerre and her own favorite Rioja.

“Perfect,” she said thankfully, and just as the word fell from her lips, she remembered that she wouldn’t be able to drink even a sip of it.

“They’re here!” sang Brigid, who stood in the door of her beautiful house with her thin arms outstretched. She wore one of her shapeless silk dresses, her long platinum hair tucked beneath a velvet Santa hat. She gathered Boyd into a hug and pressed her face into the front of his henley.

“Merry merry, Bridge,” said Boyd, stroking the nape of his mother’s neck.

Brigid’s husband, Jon, appeared behind her: well-­fitted gray suit, red-­and-­green ascot, silver bells jingling at his jacket cuffs. “Children!” He swerved around the embracing mother and son and folded Aubrey into his arms. “Bright, ­beautiful, ­beloved, children.” Between each word he planted a moist kiss on Aubrey’s forehead.

These fucking weirdos. And yet, how warmed she was by the welcome. She reached for Boyd’s hand but missed it and instead let herself be guided into the house by his parents.

“Drinks,” announced Boyd, hefting his paper bag. Aubrey clutched her mushrooms and followed him to the kitchen.

Here among the unholy mess of opened food packages and savory cooking smells they found Boyd’s sister, Neve, a serene-­looking and apparently sober version of Neve. She was rummaging in the refrigerator when they entered but emerged with a handful of seedless purplish-black grapes. “Hi, guys! Good God, taste these,” she chirped, offering them the grapes from her hand. She looked good, wearing black sweats with expensive stitching, her rust-­colored hair tamed into a thick, high ponytail.

Boyd took a grape and chewed it as he slid the Red Field into the crisper, the Sancerre into the Vinotemp. The Rioja and whiskey he placed on the countertop. “She makes an appearance at two family holidays in a row! Glad you made it, Nevvie. Guess Psycho Thanksgiving really is behind us.”

“That was last year, this is this year. It’s all fine.” Neve wrapped an arm around Aubrey’s shoulders and held a grape to her face. “Have. I’m serious. They’re so good.”

Aubrey let Boyd’s sister slip the grape into her mouth. It was sweet but not remarkably so. On second thought, was it possible Neve was rolling?

“All right, beautiful children,” said Brigid, appearing in the kitchen doorway. “If you aren’t actively cooking, ­out. Go play Settlers of Catan with Jon in the living room. I’ve sworn it off and he’s in withdrawal. Are these the mushrooms?” She pointed to the Tupperware container in Aubrey’s hands.

“Yes! They’re completely prepped, I just need to flash-­fry them. It’ll only take a couple minutes at the very end and then I can serve them with everything else.”

“So nothing to do right now? Then off with you, ­Catan!” Brigid made a gentle swatting motion with her hand and then installed herself in front of a countertop to toss the contents of an enormous wooden salad bowl.

Aubrey gazed wistfully at the fragrant pile of kale and endives and radicchio and sliced radishes, which were far more appealing than the idea of board game hell. But she followed Boyd and Neve into the adjacent sitting room, where Jon sat unpacking the contents of the Settlers of Catan box, arranging the board meticulously on the teak coffee table and sprinkling the tiny wooden game pieces all around. “The rules, everyone remembers the rules, yes?”

Aubrey didn’t. “Maybe I can just be on Boyd’s team?” She tucked herself beside him on one of the diminutive leather benches that stood around the table.

“Oh, come on.” Boyd shifted subtly and guided her with a firm hand to a bench of her own, then handed her the frayed instruction sheet. “We played a few weeks ago.” Had they? Maybe with some of his K Street friends.

Neve peered over Aubrey’s shoulder at the instructions and sucked her teeth. “I fucking hate this game,” she complained. “But fine.” She whipped her head to the left and locked her gaze on her brother, baring her small eyeteeth. “If I have to, then you’re going down.”

Jon reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and produced a pair of drugstore reading glasses, which he settled onto the bridge of his nose. “Forgive me, my patient progeny, but actually I’ve forgotten how to play,” he said, taking the instructions from Aubrey’s hand.

Aubrey started sluggish and then improved as the rules came back to her, easily outplaying bewildered Jon and erratic Neve, and suddenly she was winning.

God, how exhausting it was. But it was Boyd’s favorite game, and so. They persevered through several false starts and practice turns, until finally an actual game was underway, with Boyd predictably in the lead. The object was expansion; you situated your resource-producing settlements and grew them as rapidly as possible, claiming land, avoiding the gray meeple that represented a persistent robber. Boyd was quick and intuitive with his plays, silently planning his strategy and then moving immediately each time his turn rolled around. Aubrey started sluggish and then improved as the rules came back to her, easily outplaying bewildered Jon and erratic Neve, and suddenly she was winning.

“What the heck,” said Boyd during one of Aubrey’s turns. “No. A die roll that goes off the table doesn’t fucking count.”

“Who says?” Neve frowned at her brother and linked an arm through Aubrey’s in a random show of solidarity.

Jon consulted the instructions. “I don’t see where, ­that’s not in the, ”

“Oh, Jon, come on. It’s not in the rules,” said Neve. “He’s making it up.”

“Guys. This is important,” said Boyd. “I need her to not get that lumber.”

“I’ll roll again,” said Aubrey over Neve’s protest. For the second time, a five. She took the lumber she was due.

“Motherfu, ­” Boyd squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Fine. Lumber, you got it. Anybody, drinks?” He stood and shoved his hands in his deep flannel pockets.

Rioja, Aubrey was about to say, and then stopped herself. She caught Boyd’s eye and shook her head subtly. Jon requested one of his fancy wines; Neve, a vodka and La Croix.

Boyd disappeared into the kitchen as Jon and Neve went back to contemplating their next moves, and Aubrey sat back in her chair, inventorying. She had a minor headache that had begun with the morning’s outfit frenzy, most probably because she’d skipped her usual coffee. And maybe her nerve endings felt too alert, like exposed live wires. But she felt normal otherwise, no nausea, none of the unexplainable fatigue or soreness that Bellamy had complained about through two first trimesters.

It was too early for all that, anyway. The tests she’d taken had been the ones that promised the earliest results possible; her period wasn’t even due for another day. Her body might not have entirely gotten the message yet.

Boyd, diligent researcher that he was, had looked into the relevant information on timing. It was the twenty-­first century, at least for the moment, and they lived on the border of a blue district and a blue state. Whatever they decided to do, he’d told her, they had at least a couple of weeks to figure it out, though of course clarity sooner would be great. Decide what to do and then full steam ahead. That was how he’d put it.

But Aubrey was thirty-­two. Two years older than Bellamy had been when she’d become a mother. People grew up, they got married, they had children and put on family dinners, serving salads assembled from homegrown greens. Or they did it in a different order, if they were less beholden to the old conventions. Aubrey’s father had been dead nearly a year, the hot coals of his judgments cooling in her mind.

There was this other part, too. Neve sat with her head ducked over the game board, her smooth, vibrant hair hanging dangerously close to a few of Aubrey’s settlements, and jabbered to her father about her stupid strategy that wasn’t going to work. Neve had never held anything beyond a few fucked-­up temp jobs, yet she could afford things like Kérastase conditioner and $450 sweatsuits from brands Aubrey had never heard of. She would never want for anything, which of course meant neither would Boyd, nor would any child of his.

Boyd reappeared in the doorway bearing a vintage tray loaded with drinks, Catan-­related annoyance still written all over his face. He handed a full wineglass to Jon, a tinted highball to Neve, and a glass of water to Aubrey, then plopped back onto his seat with his little glass of whiskey.

“Oh, it’s Christmas,” said Jon, gesturing with disapproval toward Aubrey’s water. “Have anything. Have some of this.” He held out his own glass of red wine. Its silky scent tugged at Aubrey.

But no. “I have to work tomorrow,” she said, which was indeed true. On the day after a holiday, the ACK halls would be relatively empty, haunted only by the partners with the most dismal work-­life balances, who wouldn’t bother her. So she’d chosen to preserve her vacation days.

“My turn,” said Boyd, and rolled the dice. An eleven, allowing him to gather up lumber and grain and ore, which he promptly used to build a city. The move didn’t quite steal Aubrey’s lead but did threaten it; his fortunes had turned, and the next roll would make all the difference.

Aubrey held up her palm, offering him a high five, but instead he pumped his fist into the air and took a long drink from his glass.

“Cutthroat,” murmured Jon.

“I don’t know, Jon,” said Neve, “but I really feel like you and I still have a chance.”

“You do,” said Boyd, his voice husky in the way it always became after a drink. “Of course you do, you always do.”

Aubrey rolled a seven, the magic number. She considered where to place the little gray meeple that was the robber, that resource-siphoning thief of joy. Whether to handicap Neve further or seal Jon’s last-­place fate, or whether to stave off Boyd for what would likely be the last round of turns.

“I dare you,” said Boyd, watching the robber dangle from Aubrey’s hand.

Was that playfulness in his tone, after he’d been so strange throughout the entire game? With hope in her heart and a little flourish of the wrist, she set the robber on Boyd’s highest-­yielding brick hex. As she did so, she remembered that he was right, they had played this stupid fucking game before, only a couple of weeks earlier, with a result similar to this one, a late upset in her favor. It had tickled Boyd to watch her win that way, still mildly confused about the rules but managing lucky rolls and decent plays. I guess I win, she had said then, and he’d leapt over the board, over their laughing friends, and smothered her face with exaggerated kisses. “Sorry,” she said now, sweetly.

Boyd lowered his face into his hands and exhaled gutturally. Aubrey stroked his elbow; he jerked it away.

“Sorest of sore losers,” said Neve. “So embarrassing, this one.”

Boyd raised his face; it was damp and colorful, crimson splotches staining his neck and cheeks. “Fuck it. Give.” Aubrey dropped the dice into his hand, and he whipped them across the table. Not the retaliatory seven he hoped for but a three that effectively lost him the game.

Jon and Boyd and Neve wanted a rematch, but Aubrey knew better. As Boyd swept a hand across the array of hexes, gathering up the multicolored cities and settlements and roads, she got to her feet, mumbling about mushrooms, and went to the kitchen.

Delibes’s “Flower Duet” drifted languidly from invisible speakers flanking the Swedish range cooker, which was now a site of chaos: overcrowded pans, brown spills. Brigid stood at the stove with her hands lifted in a gesture of helplessness, mismatched oven mitts. When Aubrey entered, she whirled. “Thank God an expert is here,” she said. “I just stink at this. Grab something, would you please?”

Aubrey squeezed in beside Brigid and turned off the heat on the mashed potatoes, which were already burning at the edges. She wasn’t a particularly passionate cook, but just about anyone in the world could have outdone Brigid, as she’d learned soon after meeting Boyd. The simplest things had impressed him: well-­seasoned baked chicken, turkey burgers, anything involving rice. Brigid maintained her birdlike physique through culinary asceticism. She could make a perfect salad, but that was the end of her repertoire.

But she was a loving mother, and so here on the stove were attempts at her children’s favorite foods. “Okay, good,” said Brigid, gesturing to the mashed potatoes, a favorite of Boyd’s. “That has butter in it already; you only need to put it into . . . that empty dish right there. The vegan stuff for Neve is over here; I’ll handle it. Once you move those potatoes, you can start on your mushrooms, ­you said they wouldn’t take long?”

Aubrey began scooping. “Nope. The potatoes look so good!”

A lie, the potatoes had all but glued themselves to the sides of the Le Creuset, but Brigid’s thankful smile was a balm after that round of Catan. “You’re sweet. Also, just water? Please have wine; we’ve already got three bottles open and we can open others, if you want. White, orange, red?”

Aubrey’s stomach twisted. “Maybe in a few minutes,” she said. She set the dish of mashed potatoes aside and found a clean pan. “Okay, mushrooms.”

Brigid shucked her mitts and took a drink from her own wineglass, then raised it toward Aubrey’s face, tipping it by a taunting fifteen degrees. “Try! Sancerre. I’m set on converting you.”

“I, ­” Aubrey scraped her memory for the excuse she’d given Jon. “I’m working a full day tomorrow, I have to, ”

“Oh, since when does that mean no wine?” But Brigid lowered her glass and returned to her side of the range. “Okay, Neve’s nut loaf is done, I think. Though, ­between us, ­how can you even tell?” She grimaced, then lifted the charred brick from the oven and set it on a trivet.

A confidence, if a tiny one. The warmth in Aubrey’s core spread to her limbs. When they’d first gotten serious, Boyd had said she should feel no pressure to ingratiate herself with his parents; he’d been, actually, a little befuddled that she would think she needed to. Brigid doesn’t care about that stuff, he’d said, watching Aubrey toil over a thank-­you note after her first birthday gift from his mother. But everything in her upbringing told her otherwise. Bellamy had had her hair freshly relaxed and pin-­curled before her first time meeting the people who would become her in-­laws, after all.

“You’re sure about the wine,” Brigid pressed.

“Maybe when I have my hands free,” offered Aubrey. She drizzled sesame oil into the pan and fiddled with the burner temperature. Then she searched the storm on the countertops, carefully moving things aside until she found her Tupperware container. She opened it, and it sent forth a delectable aroma, fresh garlic and ginger and the powerful earthiness of the mushrooms themselves, which remembered their provenance even after they’d been lightly battered and pressed in panko.

Brigid rested her chin on Aubrey’s shoulder to watch her separate the mushrooms with a fork. “Incredible. Boyd always says what a good cook you are, and I see it.”

“I’m really not,” said Aubrey. She considered for a moment, then decided, ­a confidence for a confidence, ­and forged ahead: “And even if I were, he doesn’t care about that at all. He’s not into, like, Women belong in the kitchen, or anything. He’s more into egalitarianism. Sometimes I feel like I’m failing some kind of feminist test by cooking for him at all, if that makes sense.”

Somtimes I feel like I’m failing some kind of feminist test by cooking for him at all.

It was quiet for a moment, long enough for Aubrey to regret the disclosure. Then Brigid said, “Well, he comes by that honestly. Jon and I tried to put egalitarianism at the center of everything we taught them. When Jon first started at the university, we sat at that table”, ­she pointed to the little dining nook at the corner of the kitchen, ­“and, with the kids sitting right next to us, we wrote out a little internal contract. During such time as Spouse 1 is employed by­ blah-­blah, Spouse 2 will accept primary responsibility for preparing and serving all family meals except on alternate Sundays. We did the same thing years earlier when Boyd was on the way. I had to waddle around, enormous and sweating, and so Jon had to navigate the shops and buy the bassinets and all that. My friends’ male partners always pretended not to be able to manage any of those tasks, but of course they could have.” She paused, snapped her fingers, and unsheathed a baguette, then laid it on the vacant rack inside the oven. “And then, of course, I showed the kids the contracts when they were old enough. I wanted them to understand that our division of labor had nothing to do with my being a woman or Jon’s being a man; it was just that he was doing that, and so, ­temporarily!, ­I would do this. And of course, fifteen years later, I’m no better at doing this! Oh, well. Do you think that oil’s ready?”

It was. Aubrey dropped in the first batch, an even mixture of chopped king oysters and whole enoki. She braced herself for the smoky, sibilant crackle; but no, she was using nice oil in a nice pan over a nice stove. The mushrooms sizzled quietly and evenly, turning golden after a minute or two. Brigid handed her a gigantic slotted spoon, which she used to transfer that batch to a plate.

“And actually,” said Brigid, as Aubrey started on the next batch, “speaking of women transcending traditional expectations, I think that’s one of the things Boyd values so much about you, do you know?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s always telling us how smart you are. About your legal work, and that class you teach. Teaching isn’t easy! It’s so much more than just knowing the material.”

“Definitely! Yeah, it is.” What a nice surprise this was! Boyd had never had much to say about her test-­prep classes other than to question whether the money was worth giving up multiple nights per week talking herself hoarse. He’d never shown any interest in the substance or mechanics of SAT prep; had never asked her, for example, how she went about helping the most stubborn learners, on whom her standard techniques and analogies didn’t work. She could imagine sharing such small details with Brigid or talking pedagogy with Jon over some future family dinner.

“It’s so clear what an impressive young woman you are. So bright and also so eloquent. Jon and I talk all the time about how well-spoken you are.”

She let herself be briefly annoyed by that, well-­spoken, and then pushed it out of her mind because what was the point.

Brigid stood close, her bird shoulder just a millimeter from Aubrey’s pan-­stirring arm. “So I hope you won’t mind if I offer a little advice.”

Of course. This wasn’t a surprise. This was the closest Brigid had ever seemed to an auntlike figure; and in Aubrey’s world, aunts, like fathers, couldn’t stop themselves from giving unsolicited advice. She braced herself to hear that she should apply her eloquent brightness to law school. She tightened her core and said, “Hit me.”

“You and Boyd are just the sweetest couple. Jon and I couldn’t be more thrilled about it. I think a few years from now, you’ll find that Boyd is the ideal egalitarian partner. He grew up with that example.”

Aubrey waited to hear where this was headed. She lifted the second batch of mushrooms to its resting place and began another.

Brigid continued. “But he isn’t ready to fulfill that promise just yet. Do you know, actually, that Jon is almost eight years older than me? I don’t mean to negate everything else I’ve just said, but there is one inescapable fact about men, which is that time works differently for them. I’m sure a smart woman like you can follow exactly what I’m saying.”

“I, ”

“All I mean to say is that, ­well, I think you ought to make your plans with the understanding that my sweet son is nowhere near ready to shop for bassinets on his own, and I take it you’re juggling quite a lot yourself. You will need support. And so I suggest that you, ­because it can only be you, of course, ­decide what to do, and then”, ­Brigid turned her small hand rigid and knifed it forward, a locomotive hurtling down a track, ­“full steam ahead.”

Cement settled into Aubrey’s stomach, her hands and feet. The third batch of mushrooms burbled and then hissed, but the spatula hung motionless at her side.

Brigid placed a hand on her shoulder. “Of course,” she said, “you have a dedicated ally in me. I don’t imagine you’ll run into any issues, but on the off chance, I still have a few good friends who haven’t retired, and one of them is a gynecologist named Tess Werner-­Simson, who . . .”

Aubrey forcibly powered down her ears as Brigid prattled about her long friendship with the good Dr. Werner-­Simson, who worked as the medical director for the Planned Parenthood location in Northeast DC. She heard only Brigid’s music, and barely. Of all things, opera, cloying and saccharine. Aubrey kept her head down and stirred her mushrooms, finding that this third batch had cooked too quickly in the left-­behind grit from the first two. When it was time to take them out, she plopped them onto a paper towel, blew on them, hard, and then shoved them a few at a time into her mouth. They were far too crispy, but otherwise perfect, meaty and savory, with just enough salt and the rich minerality of the earth.

After she’d swallowed, she reached into an open cabinet and pulled down a fresh stemless wineglass, which Brigid, still gabbling without cease about Dr. Werner-­Simson’s incredible career, filled nearly to the top with Sancerre.

Neve burst into the kitchen, cheeks flushed. “Fuck that game,” she said.

Then Boyd, hands in the pockets of his pajama pants: “Guess who didn’t win the rematch.”

Finally, Jon, beelining for his wife. “Put me out of my misery, Bridge,” he said, wrapping his hulking frame desolately around her elfin one. “The kids started flogging me on the first roll and didn’t let up. Tell me there are dishes to set out or something.”

“Dinner won’t be much longer. Just a few minutes. Aubrey, do you want to, ”

The appearance of the other Elledges had sucked the air from the room. “Sorry,” said Aubrey. “Realizing I should call my family sometime today, and now is probably best? Before we sit down to eat?” Without waiting for an answer, she squeezed past her hosts, past the framed childhood photos of hale freckled Boyd and impish flame-haired Neve that lined the hallway, and back into the vacated sitting room. They’d left the finished game spread out across the coffee table, and Aubrey could only imagine it would be left to Brigid to clean it up.

Her sister answered her FaceTime on the first ring. “Hang on,” Bellamy said over the tumult of background noise, and after some fumbling she had turned the camera horizontal. Nearly a dozen faces crowded into the picture, her sister’s out of focus in a corner and her small niece’s in the forefront, grinning and giggling. Around them, two of Aubrey’s three aunts and an assortment of cousins and in-­laws had gathered to say hello. Everyone was fancied up, full makeup, even the babies spit-­shined, her niece’s hair sumptuously greased.

“Hey, girl,” said Aubrey’s Aunt Lee. “Who got you that turtleneck? Did I get you that? You look cute! What’s in that glass?”

It had not occurred to her that she would miss them. Actually, miss wasn’t quite accurate, because of course her rational mind knew she would have spent twice as long readying herself for that gathering as she had for this one; and that after that, they would have poked at her for many miserable hours, assessing her outfit, interrogating her about work, guessing at things she’d hoped to keep secret. But she was happy to see them on the screen, happy to roll her eyes as they all talked over each other, telling her about the food she was missing.

And when Boyd entered the sitting room and sat quietly beside her, slipping an affectionate hand around her waist to announce that dinner was served, she understood that she should not rush off the phone just because he’d said so, not make it as easy for him as she so often did in so many ways. And in fact she did manage to keep him waiting for thirty full seconds before his tugs grew so insistent that she had to end the call.

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