The Whole Picture
by Lael Mohib
“Who wants a nightcap?” Bob faced all of us sitting around the kitchen table, holding a bottle of tequila in one hand and a shot glass in the other. His voice was full of cheer. This was Stacy’s Bob. Frannie called him the Family Patriarch. The other Bob was Margo’s husband. Both of them owned boats and had lots of money and I had a hard time telling them apart that night, both in their tuxedos, except that Margo’s Bob had some work done to his face.
Vic picked her head up off the table and said, “Ugh, I could do without,” in a thick Scottish accent, the same one she’d had the kids in stitches over at the reception dinner. I say ‘kids’ but they’re in their twenties, thirties. Frannie told me Vic would be the Bossy One, but I’d call her the Funny One. Before sliding into her Scottish accent, she’d been going for an Indian one to match the bride’s family’s. Most of them had flown over from Mumbai for the wedding.
And man, was it something worth flying over for. It was something worth just renting a van for and driving down from North Carolina, like I’d done. It was the fanciest thing I’d ever been to. Kath, the groom’s mother, had gone out of her way to buy me an Indian shirt, a tunic-looking thing, for the rehearsal dinner, so I’d fit in. Kath’s the Sweet One, Frannie told me, and I could see that she was.
Linda stood up and indulged Bob, downed a shot, and sat back down authoritatively like she’d just taught us all a lesson. She looked harsh, she was harsh—the Crazy One, Frannie said, and then begged me not to tell Linda she’d called her that.
They were just like Frannie said they would be. Frannie and all of them here at the table in front of me were my siblings, but I’d never met any of them before tonight, not even Frannie who I’d only spoken with a few times on the phone. Just a year ago, I’d been living my simple life as a retired cop in North Carolina, a toe-head adopted by a couple of childless, black-haired Italian immigrants, wondering about his origins. Now here I was, spontaneously invited by my new sister Kath to her son’s Indian wedding to meet the family, nestled in amongst all the other guests in black tie.
By the end of the third day of intense festivities, we were all exhausted from the constant fun. I’m not sure any of them had sobered up from one party to the next. I’d been so anxious to come, so worried about how they would take to me, if I would seem to them what Frannie had told them I was like, whatever that was.
I started missing Frannie, the only one of them that I had never actually met in person, but the one I felt closest to. Maybe it was because she was the first to reach out after Cousin Bev accidentally discovered me last Christmas. Bev had gotten all her siblings those mail-in ancestry tests as gifts, and I’d popped up as a first cousin, a name they’d never heard before. I’d done so many of those things trying to track down my birth family, then it finally worked.
Maybe I missed Frannie because we had a connection. For the past 15 years or so, Frannie had lived far away, somewhere overseas, in the Middle East, with her husband who was from Iraq or maybe Afghanistan, I’m not sure. I’m getting my wars confused. Are you ever moving back home? I asked Frannie on one of our calls. I don’t think so, she said. Sometimes you can understand things better from the outside looking in. I can see the whole picture from over here—I like it this way, she said to me. Frannie told me she only made it home once a year. She missed most of the weddings, funerals, all of the reunions.
Maybe it was because Frannie described herself as the Black Sheep of the family, the Outsider One, and that’s about the same way I felt. It made me think, which one was I? Was I the Secret One, the Long-lost One, the Unwanted One? Could I become the New One, the Special One?
“You’re all a bunch of cowards. Come on!” Linda barked and her little body pounced as she shouted. She was very short, almost child-like, her feet just brushed the ground from the chair she sat in next to me.
Stacy rolled her eyes, stood up and walked to the sink. Stacy, the Matriarch, Frannie called her, the One-Who’s-Got-Her-Shit-Together. Kath followed Stacy and they huddled to talk quietly about something, presumably about one of us sitting behind them.
Linda didn’t seem to notice. She looked at me and said, “Well, Barry, did you have fun?”
“Oh yeah,” I chuckled.
“Welcome to the family!” She cackled and then repeated herself in what was almost a bellow: “Welcome to the fucking family!”
“I haven’t danced like that in, I don’t know how long, maybe my entire life,” I said. I didn’t know how she was still sitting upright on the chair, how any of them still were.
“And you said you didn’t dance,” Bob said.
“I said I didn’t drink either!” I said.
“How's that working out for ya?” Bob laughed.
The first night, the photographer lined all of us siblings up for a photo and Kath pulled me into the line-up by the arm, insisting, but I felt so out of place. Bob teased me and said, get a good look at everyone now, while they’re all standing still next to each other, easier to remember everyone that way.
“I still just can’t believe I’m here, sitting, hanging out with y'all,” I said, and half-turned to Kath who was coming back toward the table with Stacy holding glasses of water. “Kath, I gotta thank you again for inviting me. What an amazing wedding—wow.”
“I’m just so happy you were able to come.” She placed her palm on my shoulder. “Here, drink some water.”
“Where’s Margo?” Stacy asked, as if she’d suddenly become aware of the absence of another sister. Margo and Stacy—they do everything together, Frannie told me, Stacy’s always taking care of her. Margo, the Party One, Frannie said.
“She stayed back at the Gator Hole with Tommy,” Vic said. “I’m ordering a cheese pizza, but tell me now if anyone wants one, cause I’m not sharing.”
“Ya’ll went to the Gator Hole?” Stacy turned to her husband: “Bob!”
That’s where we ended up, after all those rich surroundings, the guys in our tuxes and the ladies in their long, sequined gowns—some dumpy watering hole for college kids with fake IDs and small-time drug dealers. The cop in me shuddered, but I would have gone anywhere just to be with them.
“It was the only place open. The kids needed a drink,” Bob shrugged.
“The kids. Where are the kids?” Stacy asked, of no one in particular.
There was a commotion at the door and Vic rushed down the stairs thinking it was her pizza but came trudging back up a second later with Margo, my brother Tommy and Stacy’s kids laughing and cursing behind them.
“They’re laughing at my hair,” Margo announced, looking disgruntled. The two kids, her niece and nephew—my niece and nephew, too, who I’d only met a few days ago—were snickering.
“It’s just that, it’s so curly and it’s like, what is going on with this?” Stacy’s daughter held up a rat tail of a long mess of red curls that were trailing down Margo’s back. “I mean, you look like Shirley Temple, grown up.”
“Go ahead and laugh. I don’t know what the lady was thinking. She usually does a good job. But oh well.” Margo held her head high, sucked in her stomach, and bosom erupted from the black sequins cinched around her chest.
“I thought you looked beautiful tonight, sis!” I said boldly. “And you too, Kath—a beautiful mother of the groom.” Kath smiled at me sweetly.
“Thank you, Barry, at least someone appreciates me,” Margo said, and then added, “I’m going to take this thing off. I feel like I’m in a sausage casing. And I gotta check on Bob, he was totally pissed.” Margo walked cautiously up the stairs, holding onto the banister, in search of her own Bob. She’d spent half the reception backed up to the open bar, her elbows propped up on it, flanked by two of her ex-husbands who she kept engaged in delightful company, judging by the way they laughed and took turns swinging her around the dance floor.
Stacy’s kids went up to bed and I was glad about that. When there were too many of them, I felt like I’d never be able to get a handle on all of them, never be able to learn them all, never be able to fit in. It made me anxious. Just the 8 siblings were enough, well, 7, without Frannie here, actually 6, since one of my two new brothers, Roderick, had, oddly, gone for a late-night walk on the beach.
Margo came back downstairs in pink silky pajamas, stuck her head in the fridge and said, “Did ya’ll drink my champagne?” She looked at us accusingly.
“It’s 4 in the morning, Mar, we should all be going to bed. Don’t open another bottle,” Stacy shooed a hand at her. Margo seated herself next to Stacy’s Bob, the half-empty bottle of tequila perched on the table in front of him like it was his ward. His eyes closed every few seconds, his arms crossed on his chest, legs open. Margo nudged him, motioned for him to pour her a shot.
“No, man, it’s still night, we got time,” Tommy said cooly. And then, as if he were concerned the silence would end the night, he said, “Did ya’ll see the way Roderick went up to Barry, like they were shooting a goddamn movie scene?” He looked at me, “Hey, what’d you think of Rod, seriously?”
Tommy wasn’t exaggerating. Roderick had thrown his wide-stretched arms around me and yelled, Barry, my long-lost brother, I always knew you were out there! I loved it, it made me feel great, I’m not gonna lie. But it also confirmed what Frannie had told me about Rod—he’s the Weird One.
“He’s a character, all right,” I chuckled.
“Forget Rod. Did ya’ll see the way Eugenia handled the whole situation?” Vic said. “I mean, someone give that woman a goddamn award.”
“Which woman—your mom or their mom?” Bob laughed a wheezy laugh, like he just couldn’t get enough of this.
“I mean their mom—Eugenia—of course! She even went up to Barry and spoke to him and was polite to him,” Vic said, indignantly. “My mom doesn’t mind Barry—why would she? She came into the picture after that whole thing with Willa. But Eugenia—she put up with so much crap from Dad—including my own mother! I mean, for God’s sake, let’s not forget my mom was the nanny, too, after Willa left.”
“You know nothing, Vic, you weren't even born. You wanna know what it was like? I’ll tell you what it was like,” Linda leaned in loudly.
Then they started talking around me, almost like I wasn’t there, almost like I myself wasn’t the ‘whole situation’, arguing about our father and the way he was and which of his ex-wives had it harder and which of his children’s former nannies he’d screwed more often or loved more intensely.
“Well, now, it was a different time back then and Daddy wasn’t perfect, he made mistakes, but we loved him and we sure do miss him,” Kath said soothingly.
“You know what I say, Barry? The more the merrier!” Margo lifted her empty shot glass toward me and smiled.
“Dad never would have survived the Me-Too movement—hashtag—if he were alive today. He’d be locked up with Harvey Weinstein,” Vic went on. She was one of the younger siblings, from the second batch of offspring, same as Frannie. Then the doorbell rang. “My pizza!”
"Whoa whoa whoa,” said Tommy. “I just still can’t believe your mom is Willa. I mean, she was our fucking nanny! She wiped my ass for like 5 years.” He looked right at me, and his gaze kind of hovered as he went to light a cigarette. I tried not to engage him, felt we were backing into another awkward conversation like the one we’d had at the reception where he’d asked me what I did for a living and I said I’m a retired cop and he said shit, for real? I’ve been running from the cops most of my damn life!
“Tommy, you can’t smoke in here. I just had the whole place remodeled,” Stacy scolded him. Then Stacy nudged Tommy, like she was telling him ‘not to go there’. But he must have thought she was encouraging him cause he went right on, “That woman, she raised us. Man, Willa was the best. You know, man, she was your mom.” Vic reappeared with a pizza box, sat down and started to eat it noisily and I thought I’d try to let that distract from the moment, but I felt no, I had to answer.
“I never met my mom, actually, Tommy... Yea, I was put up for adoption and she died before I got a chance to meet her.” I tried to say it as matter-of-factly as possible, so I wouldn’t ruin the good-natured mood around the table, but they all went quiet, like they didn’t know how to handle something that they couldn’t joke about.
“Ya’ll don’t even know what it was like before Willa. Me and Rod and Kath—we didn’t have no nanny. You know who the nanny was? You’re looking at her!” Linda laughed but her humor didn’t take, and she sort of retreated into her own mumbly rant about the hardships of being the oldest.
Then Kath said: “Barry, you know we’re all so sorry about that.” She patted my arm. “But you’re here now and we’re all together finally.”
I said, just to fill the void more than anything: “I miss Frannie tonight. I wish she could have been here. I really can’t wait to meet her.”
Everyone hmm’ed and nodded in agreement at more or less the same time, except for Tommy who jerked his head up and pointed at Vic, and said, “Whadya mean? Frannie’s sitting right there.”
“Hello!? It’s me—Victoria?!” Vic yelled at him through a mouthful of pizza.
“Oh yea, shit. I don’t know what just happened. I just—,” He mumbled. “It’s just y’all look so much alike. Fuck.”
No one asked him if he was ok. I’d seen people high on all kinds of things during my cop days and I could tell he was not ok. Frannie said it would be like that, that Tommy still couldn’t get a handle on the drugs but he was high-functioning enough now that no one even bothered to ask. Not like before, when he’d spent a few years in rehab. Be patient with Tommy, Frannie told me, he’ll take it the hardest. He’s the Lost One. Me and Tommy, we aren't even a year apart.
Tommy seemed embarrassed, recovered quickly and said, “I mean, how is Frannie anyway? She still married to that guy, Mohammad, or whatever his name is?”
“His name’s Habib,” Vic corrected him swiftly, lifting another slice from the greasy cardboard.
He changed the topic, “Did ya’ll know Barry used to be a fucking cop?”
“Yeah, everyone knows that, Tommy,” said Vic.
“I was a cop, yea, but I was one of the good cops,” I said. “I always say there are three types of cops—the bullies, the guys who got bullied, and the guys who hated the bullies. So, I was the third kind. I hate a bully.”
“Daddy was just like that. He hated a bully,” Margo sighed. “You know, Barry, you’re a lot like him.”
My sisters nodded deeply, as if they too felt inside of them the love that Margo’s words were wrapped in, as if they all missed our father a great deal. I knew that sigh—one that daughters have for their fathers, a sigh that forgives mistakes and bestows unconditional love at the same time it resents injustices and absence. I saw Stacy wipe a tear from her eye. Vic chewed slowly, reflectively. Our father—he was the Forgiven One.
Maybe I was a little bit too much like him. I hoped my daughter Emily would never lose that sigh for me, and even though I’d never met my father, and he had never known that I existed, in that moment, I felt something like that sigh for him. He had, after all, given me all these people, my people, people who looked like me and hurt like me.
The front door opened unexpectedly, and we heard someone padding up the stairs.
Bob opened his eyes suddenly, startled, and said, “Who the hell is that?”
We waited for the intruder to reveal himself, and then a wind-swept Roderick appeared, his bare feet covered in sand, his black tuxedo pants rolled up to his scrawny, hairy, white knees, his loafers in one hand, and his tux jacket in the other.
“Shit, Rod. Where the fuck were you?” Tommy said, the unlit cigarette still between his fingers.
“I went for a walk. It’s beautiful out there tonight,” Roderick said and started to wash his feet in the kitchen sink. Stacy rolled her eyes.
“Let’s take a picture,” I said. “We’ll have a before shot and an after shot. We’re all here together now, except for Frannie.” Everyone thought it was a great idea, even Linda, though she grumbled about it for a few seconds, fussing that there were too many of us to fit in the goddamn frame.
“Is Frannie ever gonna come back home?” Kath mused to no one in particular as we huddled around the kitchen table. “I sure wish she would.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied authoritatively, proud to have knowledge on at least one family subject.
Bob stood up warily and Vic handed him her phone. “Watch your thumb, Bob. You’re swaying,” she said.
“Well, who knows— this might not be the whole picture. There could be more of you out there, you know,” Bob chuckled to himself gravely as he clicked repeatedly on the phone’s camera button. “Maybe this one’s only good till next year.”
Lael A. Mohib’s writing explores intercultural identity, belonging and loss in a globalized and often contradictory world. Lael earned a BA in communications from Mary Baldwin College and an MA in journalism & international relations from Boston University. Lael’s work has been published in Narrative Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy, among others. She has completed a novel, We Belong to the Living, the story of an Afghan-American woman discovering both herself and her father’s homeland during the most violent years of the 2001-2021 war, and a short story collection, Bilagaana. She is currently working on a contemporary Southern Gothic novel, entitled Hunting Country. She is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (2024), the Key West Literary Seminar Writers’ Workshop Program (2025 and 2026), and a recipient of an Author and Poet Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing (2025). She has three children and lives in Florida.