How to Look Happy by Stacey Wiedower Page A

myself, thinking her words are as good a reason as any to quit whining. My career might be in shambles and my love life a hot mess, but at least I have the best friends and family in the entire world.
    I can’t tell anyone this, of course, but Eleanor is my favorite sister-in-law. She’s my age, thirty-one, and we have loads in common. She worked as a high school art teacher before leaving to become a stay-at-home mom when the twins were born. The non-working life didn’t suit her, so now she’s working from home, writing a crafting blog that actually has some advertisers and designing handmade greeting cards that she sells from an Etsy shop.
    Like me, Eleanor grew up with all brothers, and also like me, two of her favorite things in the world are shopping and going to concerts. We used to do one or the other together every month or so, but since the twins came along it’s harder and harder to get our schedules to sync.
    I’m not sure which of us is more jealous of the other.
    “Look at your flat stomach,” she says, eyeing my midsection with an envious glint in her eye as we walk side by side up the front walk. Guess that answers that question. “I don’t think I’m ever going to lose these last ten pounds.” She drops her free hand to her stomach and rubs it self-consciously, though I can’t see the extra weight.
    “You’d never know it,” I say. I’ve reassured her of this before, but I can only imagine how it will feel one day to have my body stretch and change and no longer belong only to me. I’m sure I’ll be thinking or saying the same thing one day. At least, I hope so.
    Eleanor hops up the front steps ahead of me and reaches for the door handle, and the noise of my brother’s household precedes the opening of the front door. As soon as I’m two steps in, my niece Charlotte has already wrapped herself around my leg. “Come see my new Elsa dress, Aunt Jen,” she says in her trilling, sweet, four-year-old soprano voice.
    “I thought it was the birthday boy’s turn to get all the presents,” I joke, tugging on one of her light brown ringlets. As if my brother and Christine could deny her anything. Not only is Charlotte the only girl in the brood, she’s also the kindest child I’ve ever met—the type of kid who shares without being asked, offers you her ice cream cone when you look like you’ve had a bad day, or cries when somebody steps on a spider.
    I immediately feel bad for saying this because of the tortured look on her face.
    “Mommy bought it for me days ago,” she says. “Because it was on clea-wance at Target.”
    She pronounces it “Tar-zjay,” the way her mom does, which makes me, Eleanor, and Chris, who’s just walked into the foyer to greet us, all dissolve into giggles.
    “Christine’s mini-me or what?” Chris says as he leans in for a hug. “I am in trouble with a capital T.” He looks so happy as he says this that it makes me squeeze him extra hard for a second. He leans back and looks at me with his brow furrowed.
    “You okay, sis?” he asks after a long moment, and I think, And it begins.
     
    *  *  *
     
    “Are you looking for other jobs?” Christine asks, leaning toward me to be heard over the din of shrieking, laughing, and wailing children that have overtaken her suburban backyard. Even though Jake’s only two, they’ve hired a giant inflatable bounce house that the birthday boy and his toddler-age day care friends are too scared to go into. Instead it’s overrun with big kids, including Max, Jake’s eight-year-old big brother, and my own brother and his thirty-something friends. As I watch, my dad yells out, “Do y’all have liability insurance on that thing?”
    I snicker and then turn reluctantly to Christine. “No. Why? Do you think I should?”
    I’ve just told the story of Candace’s sabotage—starting with the moment she took over my client meeting and ending with Friday afternoon’s childish display of passive-aggressiveness—to both