#30 The Marshes

As a doctor, would you write me a reference letter for medical school?

Yes, I would write a reference letter.

Yeah, what would it say in it?

It wouldn't necessarily be favorable, Jonathan.

I'm sure a little bit favorable.

Here.

Let me get you started, Okay, to whom it may concern, go ahead, you take it over, Go ahead.

John Yeah, you would be a terrible doctor, the worst ever. You don't listen, and you just keep going on and on. You'd be doing all the talking.

Yeah, but a doctor has to ask questions to find out the symptoms.

Yeah, but you wouldn't actually listen to the answer because you don't listen. You would be arguing with patients talking about yourself if you'd be thinking about something else, like whoa.

Alex just liked one of my tweets from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight today's episode The Marshes. I first met Steve marsh at my brother in law's wedding. In conversation that night, Steve was given to making soulful observations punctuated by the word man. Steve is a big guy, shaggy haired, and comfortable in his own skin. He's a little like the dude, no matter where he is or what the occasion, he gives off the impression of wearing

How's father had gone.

Man, it's great, it's really great. Before getting into it, I catch up. He's just gotten engaged, and because he's Steve, their proposal he made was an elaborate production, involving a ring baked into a cake and an entire restaurant of people cheering. His fiancee crying makes regular guys like me look real bad.

I know, man, her brothers are pissed at me too. They're like, great, job, dude.

With the pleasantries out of the way, we get to the unpleasantry. His mom's secret. Steve says he first learned of it in two thousand and eight on the fourth of July.

I was riding my bike and my phone was going off like NonStop, and I thought it was like a girl or a drug dealer. It was like late, you know, it's like two in the morning. So finally I pulled my bike over and I saw I was my sister. My sister had called like fifteen or sixteen times, you know.

Steve's sister, Megan Marsh, was up at the family sprawling trailer lot in rural Minnesota, a place they marshland on summer holiday weekends, it's tradition for the entire Marsh clan to head to Marshland to drink, hang out and just be the Marshes. Seeing all the calls from Megan, Steve worried there was trouble up at Marshland.

As I called, and I was like, what's going on? And she was hysterical, you know, like if you knew that we had And I was like, wait.

Hold on, I'm trying to get all this out, and I'm crying and hysterical.

This is Steve's sister.

Megan.

Between violent sobs, she explained to Steve what had happened up at Marshland. Steve's parents had gone to bed, but Megan continued to hang out with a handful of people around the bonfire.

There's highly five seven of us sitting around the fire and we start talking about Weedi Bords.

So to keep up her end of the conver Megan tells the group an anecdote about her mom, how a Ouiji board had accurately predicted the main facts of her mom's life. It had prophesied her future husband's initials p M for Pete Marsh, as well as the amount of kids or mom would have three.

And my aunt is sitting, you know, all three feet away from me, and my aunt said, well, she had four kids. And initially I'm confused. You know, I've been drinking a little bit, so it's slowly coming into my brain. What's happening. I looked down at my fingers and Cony, Stephen, me, Kevin, what what are you talking about? And then I look up around the fire. Everybody stopped. Everybody's silent, and they're all staring at me.

So standing in this park talking to my sister on the fourth of July, she told me that my parents had another child, that we had another sibling that they gave up for adoption years before they married.

The Marsh kids were full grown adults when they learned of their full sibling, a little girl one hundred percent Marsh that their mom had named Lisha. When Steve's parents, Geene and Pete, started dating, it was just a fling, and when Jeane became pregnant, they decided to put the baby up for adoption. The unusual thing, though, is that

In my family is like shockingly open, so that the fact that they sat on this secret it was wild.

It's now been years since the truth came out, and the Marshes want to do something with that truth. But Steve says, procrastination is a family trait, and in this case, decades of his mother's shame has turned that procrastination into total inertia. But Lisha is never far from any of their thoughts. Megan wonders what it would be like to finally have a sister, and Steve's younger brother, Kevin, wonders if Lesha's a redhead like him. Kevin scans every room

My dad is a retired truck driver and kind of a tough guy, and every Monday night we shoot shotguns together in the summertime.

In the car on the way to go shooting, Steve asked his dad how often he thought about Lisha, and.

He said every day. And we drive it's like a half hour drive on the freeway, and about halfway there, I no, shit, man, this is like a short story thing. It's almost too corny. But there was two ducks, like two adult ducks and three little baby ducks crossing the freeway and my dad dipped like deep into the shoulder of the freeway and then recover the car and like we waited a while, and he's like, did you see

But as much as the Marshes think about Lisha, when it comes to actually trying to find her, they're all waiting on Steve's mom.

I think my dad for as much of an alpha tough guy. I think my mom runs his shit, you know. Yeah. Yeah, So it's kind of up to her, and I think she is scared about what maybe she'll find out, like if Licia has hard feelings about this, or if Alicia's life didn't go as well as it could have, or how Lesha will feel to meet her family that's intact and went on to have three more kids, like and wouldn't that be weird?

Sure, the family's intact, and as Steve explains, the Marsh kids are all close and doing well now. Megan has a career as a nurse, Steve writes, and Kevin repairs home appliances. But growing up there were a lot of drugs and a lot of trouble. Kevin had a serious meth problem, and Steve and Megan drank too much. Steve almost flunked out of high school, and Kevin and Megan

And I'm just like Leisha, who was raised in a totally separate environment. I just wonder what she's like. You know, our house was so loud when growing up, and uh like, I always thought my family's kind of weird. Like they drink windsor seven up, like it's gonna be vanishing from the face of the earth.

So what what is windsor seven up?

That's a that's the Marsh family drink man.

I pardon my ignorance.

Seven and seven man, it could be seagrams too. Canadian whiskey and lemon lime soda.

But finding out whether Lesha is like a Marsh steeped in windsor and chaos isn't so simple.

So the hospital no longer exists.

The hospital where your mom had her.

Right and it was a close Catholic adoption, like my parents never met the couple that adopted Lesha.

Steve has no information about where Lisha ended up. He had a friend with connections run the name Lesha Marsh through an FBI database but found nothing. It's almost certain Lisha's name isn't even Lisha anymore. Because it was a closed adoption, the only way to reach her is through the adoption agency. Steve's mom has to write Lisha a letter asking to make contact, but whenever she's trying to write in the past, her sense of shame gets the better of her, Like.

She wants to do it, she said she would do it, Like what do I do you know? Like how do we make this happen?

And this is why Steve has come to me. He needs a spur to action, someone who isn't a Marsh to make sure the letter gets written.

We could use some help. It's almost like when you want to like go to the gym or something, just like have somebody else who's going with you, like some kind of account of ability. Because when we talk about it as a family, and we do whenever we get together, like my parents are all game for it, but then it just doesn't happen, and it hasn't happened.

Do you need to really kind of show up with a pad of paper and a pen and you know, place it on the table in front.

Of her, right, like, let's do this now.

And so, in a bid to do this now, I tell Steve to phone his mom and tell her to clear her schedule because his wedding friend Jonathan is boarding a plane to Minnesota and heading straight to their house to make sure she writes that letter.

I just think we need a little help, you know.

Yeah, Wow, what you need is your mother to get off her aff.

So who is this guy?

Just tell me again.

After the break, if this guy pays a visit to the marshes Hi in Minneapolis. I picked Steve up in my airport rental and we head to his parents' house for some letter writing. He's nervous, which is not helped by my economy sized car. Do you have a you have an up room. How tall a man are you?

Six?

Steve struggles to shoehorn his body into the passenger seat. Do you want to set the back seat?

You could?

I'm sorry, I'm so good. Although Steve says it's all good thanks to my Minnesotan to American translator, app, I know that he's in fact, deeply resentful.

You're gonna have to direct me because I don't know where your parents live, But wouldn't.

It be weird if they did. We arrive at Steve's parents place. It's a one story rambler, cluttered and cozy.

Hi, I'm Jean.

We settle in around the kitchen table. Pete makes his way through his daily two pots of coffee, and Jeane quietly stares down at a blank piece of paper to help spur her letter writing. I asked how she and Pete first met, and Jeane becomes animated, telling me about a party at which Pete stumbled in late with a group of friends.

They were all drunk. I can't remember if he kissed me on the knee and bit me in the ankle, or vice versa.

That's like what the serpent did in the biblical story.

So and I should have never eaten that apple.

Soon after, Jeane moved into a new apartment building, where, in a delightful sitcom twist, Pete was living right down the hall. That Thanksgiving, Pete stopped by Jean's place, drank her entire bottle of Windsor, then drunkenly proceeded to show the dinner guests as gun.

Guns are no big thing for me, because I got them laying all.

Over the place.

To illustrate, Pete reaches on top of the kitchen cupboard and pulls down a forty five automatic. He places it on the table next to the pie that Steve brought. How many guns do you have hitten around the house.

There's one over on the fireplace downstairs.

The party, the bottle of windsor the gun. These are all parts of the marsh family origin story that Steve knows well. But the part of the story that Steve has never heard is house parents went from a casual fling to a decade's long marriage.

I'm pregnant. I went home and told my mother, and she flipped out on me. I remember leaving and I was down the basement with my mother in the laundry room. I just remember running up the stairs and crying and getting in the car and driving back to my apartment because I was trash in her mind.

Jeane came from a strict Catholic family. When she got pregnant, her mother told her she could only visit home after dark, carrying a coat in front of her stomach. At one point during the pregnancy, Jean slipped on the ice and had to go to the hospital for hemorrhaging.

And my mother came into the hospital and said, you can't even have a baby, right. I mean, she was so disappointed in me. I don't think she ever forgave me for that. That's the one thing I said to her before she died, is I am sorry for disappointing you.

Lisia was born premature, so the doctors kept her at the hospital for a week. This meant Jean ended up spending a week with her newborn daughter.

I remember holding her and crying and telling her, you know that I hoped she'd have a good life, and said I'm sorry that I couldn't keep her.

After that week, Jean signed away her parental rights.

I didn't think I could raise a child by myself. But she never said what he never said hey, let's get married and raise this baby or and I never said it either, but his mother, Alice, just took me in as this. You know, I felt like I was part of the family. So I felt this family loved that I wasn't getting from my own family.

You know.

Pete's mom told Jean how much the whole family liked her, how they hoped she would be the one, and that painful time brought Geene and Pete closer. They ended up really falling in love, and eventually they did get married, and all this time, Lesha, responsible for them growing into love together, having three more kids, being a family for going on fifty years, was out there somewhere living a different life with a different family.

And I don't know that, Dad, and we've never sat down like this and talked about it. It's just kind of something that happened forty eight years ago.

For forty eight years, Gene is quietly marked Alesha's birthday by repeating the same silent prayer. I hope she's having a good life. And it's that hope that ironically made Jeane think twice about ever searching for Lesia. She told herself that if Flicia was happy, she didn't need to disrupt that happiness by introducing her to the Marshes. And they're chaos.

Our family was so loud and so you know, drug use and you know, not going to school, and it seems like there was always so much going on. Did I really want to bring somebody else into that? It was problems that I was bringing her into more problems.

It was hectic.

Yeah, it was more than hectic. See, and I'd go do my avon door to door and somebody would say, would you like to come in for a minute, And I'd sit down, And I always said it was like I was sitting down in their beige. You know, they had this peaceful house, neet, nothing out of place, and then I'd walk in here and it'd be like jangled.

So while Steve's motivation for seeking out Lesha is pretty simple. He has a sister and he wants to meet her, for Jean, it's more complicated. Her greatest hope is that Lesha is happy and well, that she did the right thing in giving her up. But if Lisha is good, didn't fall into drugs, did do well in school, and had a good life in the Beige, then trouble wasn't something genetic, a fate that runs through the marsh blood. It was the Jean's thinking something in the parenting, her parenting.

I just want I want the kids more or less, to be prepared that she may not want anything.

To do with us.

I'm open to meeting her. I'm open to just pictures, open to having her tell me I'm a piece of shit. That's fine. I'm willing to do whatever she wants because I feel the ball is in her court. Worst case scenario would be if sh had passed away and I never.

Tried.

Did you want to have pie?

Now?

Oh?

Should I get the ice cream?

You want?

Ice cream?

Steve serves the mixed berry pie that he brought and turns us to the matter at hand.

So do you want to try the writing the letter?

Yeah?

We should do it now.

So yes, because your mother is a procrastinator. Oh, I am too, but you probably got it from me.

If Lisha's the procassionaire too, that's the only way we'll know.

Jeane finds it easier to talk than to write, so Steve offers to type the letter as Jane speaks it aloud. Then you can copy it down by hand. Jean stares down at the table, trying to get started.

I don't know what to say. I feel bad because we stayed together, right, and I feel like it's been forty eight years now, Why you're coming around now, is what she'll be thinking.

Oh, just say I, how are you?

I remember your name, I remember your birthday. I remember holding you and telling you that I wanted you to have a good life. Lisha, I'm stumbling for words, wondering how to, probably because it's been so many years, but wondering how to, I mean, how to explain the fact that I haven't tried to contact you all this.

I don't think we need to get that heavy mer mom, give me a call. But also you do want to. You want to acknowledge why this was meaningful to you. You know, you're like, it's tough.

God, three years after you were born, your father and I were married or got back together, while we got back together right after. Oh god, see now it all seems so stupid.

But like you can't change the past, and you needed to live through this in order to have respective on it. Yeah, so three years after you're born, your father and I were married.

And now have two sons and a daughter. Who are open to make a contact or it does open.

So I think all of us would like to meet you if when you're ready. I don't think maybe it needs to be any more than that. That's good.

And then just put our names and.

We all watch as Gene copies the letter over by hand.

He did good.

Gee, thank you.

Steve and I head back to the rental for a while. We just sit there. I think that they're going to get those forms off.

It's going to happen this week, for sure.

You really think so?

Yeah, I think so.

It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen in the next month or the one after that. Partly because Steve hasn't been spurring his mom. Since we all sat down in Jean's kitchen, Steve has developed second thoughts about contacting Lisha.

I'm just nervous that she's like angry about the way things turned out, and I'm nervous, so, like, what kind of impact y'all have with my mom. I've had some conversations with friends It's like, what are you doing this for? I don't know, like there's real potential for sadness.

Two more months pass and I'm having trouble being a spur to Steve's spurring. Hey Steve, it's Jonathan speaking, just calling to check in. I can't get a hold of anyone, mister and missus marsh This is the man who came over to your home some time ago. Another two months go by and still no movement, and so I decide that maybe it's better to just leave them be. Maybe the Marshes would rather just forget the whole thing and go back to being the same Marshes they always were.

Hello Jeene, Yes, high Jonathan.

And then, after a half a year of foot dragging, I unexpectedly get word that Gene has mailed the letter and the application. From there, a social worker was assigned to the case. Her job to find Lisha and ask if she's open to receiving Jane's letter. And not long after that, the social worker gave Jane an update.

She got a call from Alesia and she said she was very open to seeing my letters.

Okay, that's coffee, Yeah, I have a coffee, mom.

I brought Canoley's and.

Back at the Marshes to catch up. Oncelicia said she was open to seeing Jeane's letter, the social worker mailed it onto her, but after that Jean heard nothing for months. Then one afternoon at work, Jean got an email from the social worker, the subject, having read the letter you've been waiting for. Attached was a scanned copy of a letter from Lesia.

Dear Jean and Pete, thank you for your patience while I formulate my first response to your letter. My name is Natalie and I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis.

Lesha is now Natalie, and it turns out she grew up just twenty miles from where the marshal left. Her adoptive parents are even graduates of the same high school as Jeanne. Growing up, Natalie always knew she was adopted, and she loved the parents who raised her. Natalie is now married with two kids.

The best advice I've received since I opened your letter was to take it slow. And then she sent a picture when she was a little girl.

Do you see a resemblance.

Oh, she's definitely a marsh Man.

Yeah, Dear Natalie. Pete and I were so happy to receive your letter and picture. It was truly an answer to my prayers. Let me know if you have any questions, I will try to answer them to the best of my ability.

And so a correspondence begins.

You're Gene and Pete. Dear Natalie, who did I get my auburn hair from? Heete was a redhead? Can I thank for my uni brow? When I was young? Grandfather had very bushy eyebrows, so he's probably the call for love love Jeane and Pete.

Natalie is taking it s low. She's cautious and Gene is following her lead, but sometimes it can get overwhelming.

Dear Natalie, we want to wish you the happiest of birthdays on the seventeenth. I've wished it every year since you were born, and I'm so happy I can finally tell you. I hope someday we can meet, but until then, no, You've been loved Pete and Jean.

Natalie's responses are gracious.

Dear Gene and Pete. My kids constantly asked me about the day they were born. We moms think about those moments always. Someday you will have to tell me about our day.

But there are a lot of some days no specific plans. Even after months of correspondence, Jean and Natalie are still going through Stacy, the social worker. They don't exchange phone numbers they don't even know each other's email addresses.

It's tendative. Yeah, I mean I've had a relationship with these three kids for forty years, you know, and I haven't had that with her. And sometimes that's sad, you know that we don't have that. But I think we'll get there.

You want to get there?

Yeah, I would like to get there.

Jane finds herself staring at Natalie's picture while she's at work, idly thinking about what the little girl in the photos childhood was like, and then comes the guilt and not having been able to give her what she needed. And all the while Natalie is so close, why.

Don't you call her up and say come out or no?

Because she doesn't want that.

Then we all don't live to be able one hundred years old?

Is dam time?

That's true?

You're you are getting run out of time pretty soon.

Well for Pete, it's pretty straight ahead. For Jane, it's more complicated. Jane wants Natalie to enter her life, but at the same time she worries about what Natalie will make of that life. How will Jeane be able to have Natalie over to her home. In Jeane's mind, the place is always so untidy, the grouting in the bathroom unfinished, the tiles in the entryway in need of repair. So while Jeane's wait for Natalie is filled with hope, it's

Hi, how are you?

Doggie?

And today's the day I arrived At Steve's house as he gets ready to meet Natalie for dinner, his fiance Maggie, and his brother Kevin are there too, Nice.

To see you. I'm Jona, Kevin, how are you good.

Steve has lent Kevin a pair of jeans because Kevin was wearing shorts and feared they might not be appropriate for meeting your sister for the first time. Steve is still getting dressed.

This is my only pair of clean pants at the moment. I don't want my new sister to smell me, you know what I mean. That'd be awful, right, So I want to appear to be clean.

Since the Marshes are worried about making a good impression, they've barred me and my microphone from the dinner. This in spite of my important work documenting and interloping. Instead of saying all of you rotten folks, I tell Steve that it's all good. Hey, I'm getting pretty good at this Minnesota talk.

I think we should leave in five or ten minutes, okay, and we should not spoke we earlier.

I took zen.

I'm fine.

Turn out radio off.

Steve has made a reservation at a pizza restaurant. On the drive there, he worries, but as usual, it isn't for himself.

I worry about my mom.

The worry has always been twofold. Firstly, what if Natalie's life hasn't turned out well and it's all Jane's fault for having given her up. But based on Gene and Natalie's correspondence, Natalie has a nice husband, sweet kids, and a career that keeps her busy flying to far off places like Mexico City and Singapore. So now, with that first worry allayed, the second worry rears its head. What if Natalie is not only not in bad shape, but in great shape, all due to Jane's lack of parenting.

A person with the same genetic make up as your three kids. Who did I get all these things? So yeah, there's I think there's some pain there, man, Like there's some pain with my mom, like that she failed us or something, or that we failed her. Oh shit, it's six eighteen? Are we gonna make it?

Yeah? Whatday?

Isn't it supposed to be six forty five that you guys are reading thirty six thirty? Oh but your folks will be there, are they?

Our family is free disclosed towards.

Kanelead all the time.

A few blocks from the restaurant, Steve drops me off at the side of the road. He says, they'll let me know how it goes. Okay, by you guys have fun. Later I'll learn that Pete, Jean, and Megan were uncharacteristically on time and are there to greet Natalie and her husband. When they arrive, Geena hugs Now and introduces her to Megan. Natalie and Megan stare at each other. They look so similar. I wish I could wear my hair like that, Natalie says,

When we came home that night, Pete was opening the door and I just put my hand on his shoulder. And I said, you know, God looked out for her all these years, and so we've been blessed. We truly have. It was joyous. All the kids are so comfortable. Everybody was asking questions. There was a lot of laughter. There was a lot of you know, joking.

And talking, and it was very emotional. And there's still a lot of thought process there that's gonna maybe be with me all my life. But I know that she had a good life and she's got a wonderful life now. I couldn't have asked for anything more. I really couldn't have.

You felt like you wanted Natalie to have a good life, but that was complicated because you felt like it might reflect on your parenting in some way. So I'm wondering, how do you feel about that now?

You still have guilt, But I think I just realized that no matter what I did or didn't do, they've all grown up to be wonderful human beings.

And we can move on.

All the things Jean had worried about, that Natalie might resent her, that the family might be too much for her. In the end didn't matter. That night at the restaurant, things were simple. They were all just happy to be together, but there's still one thing. For months, Steve's priority has been his mom's feelings, the effect all of this is having on her. All the while, though a feeling of

Well, I really wish I would have told her is thank you man, thank you for you you existing, like your miracle of coming into the world and the way it happened, like brought my parents back together.

But then, how do you thank someone a stranger forgiving your family life, for giving you life?

Hey, how are you good?

In my role as loyal spur, I've invited Stephen Natalie to my office so Steve can at least give it a try. It's the first time Steve and Natalie have gotten to talk one on one since this all began.

I never thought I never thought someone would search for me.

This is Natalie.

Wow, He's never he never even considered that.

Steve explains that during the search, the marsh is worried that they might not live up to Natalie's expectations.

You know you're you're such an accomplished person.

Well, gosh, my LinkedIn profile is really doing its job of a pr major.

I mean, honestly, like you seem like such a funny, like even keel person. You know, like like you have a wicked sense of humor. It's just it's cool. It's cool, Like you're funny. You know, you're wearing you have an iPhone watch and you're killing it.

You know what I mean?

That was a gift. Everything's a gift my husband, that's all. No, but don't put me on a pedestal. I don't deserve it.

Natalie's uncomfortable with her life being held up as a success story. She tries to explain that her house had its own share of chaos. Her brother faced some of the same challenges with drugs and other troubles that the Marsh kids faced. It feels like what she's trying to say is blood parenting. I don't know why things turned out the way they have. But Steve is undeterred in his effort to offer Natalie credit, and so tentatively he gets to the thing he's been trying to say for a while.

Now, I mean, I feel like it's weird to thank somebody who didn't elect to be adopted. But like, maybe my parents would have never gotten back together if it wasn't for you. You brought them together. Like I think it was kind of a fling kind of situation and we turned into a like a forty five year marriage. You know, I don't know the exact stats, but.

Natalie can see that Steve's struggling. But she's struggling to if Steve is trying to say thanks for my life, how does she simply say you're welcome. So instead, Natalie offers thanks of her own in the way of a story about Steve's mom.

In her mom when my mom was around, she and I were really really close. She wanted to think, you know what, you know, I wish I could think her. She kept saying, I just wish I could thank her, right, And when she passed away in two thousand and four, she couldn't. Yeah, so the first thing I wanted to do was do the thinking. That decision set the trajectory of my life. I'm so I'm so lucky to be where I'm at.

In the end, Steve and Natalie are both great for the same thing, the family that they ended up with.

Everyone always asked well, have you ever thought of reaching out? I always had the answer. I'm like, no, I'm good. I have a great family.

You know.

Once I open that door, I can never close it. When I received the letter, I can honestly say I didn't have this figured out, and I thought about what my path would be if I'm on a crossroad of do I pursue this or do I let it go.

As Natalie speaks, you can see a thought flash across Steve's face. All this time, he's been trying to thank Natalie for something she didn't even decide, rather than for the thing that she did decide.

When you put it like that way, when you put it like that, like you did have a choice here whether to even talk to us, you know, like like you could have been like, no, you risk you open the door, like and and so yeah, I guess Natalie, I do thank you for that, man. Like the way that you've been with my mom has been super cool. Man. And I I think you for that. Oh well, I like she'd kind of deserves like, uh, I think like cool stuff in life, you know, and like you've been

Ah.

It's been two and a half years since the search for Natalie began, and in that time, Natalie's interaction with the Marshes have been based around occasions Jean's birthday, Steve's wedding, But today they're all just hanging out. Steve and his new wife, Maggie wanted to have everyone over for a backyard barbecue, even me. On our way to the yard, Steve gives me a quick tour of the house, his shelves loaded with books, his plans. Uh is that indigenous to this area?

Oh?

Natalie shows up with her husband and two kids. Pete, the tough guy who thought about Natalie every day for almost fifty years, is there to greet them.

Well, how you guys been?

Oh?

Good over here? I gotta have a hog absolutely oh.

Shortly after, Kevin shows up with a bottle of vodka and a big bag of Frisbees.

Who hasn't played Frisbee?

Hey?

And then Megan, who heads straight for Natalie. But there's one person who's running late.

Should I call your mom and see what she is, sir?

As it turns out, Jane is still stuck at the grocery store buying some last minute stuff for the party. Classic Steve says the Marshes are unorganized, chronically late, and maybe that's true. Or maybe Jeane is pacing the aisles, procrastinating, nervous about what Natalie might make of how the Marshes live with their ayahuasca plants and vodka Frisbees. But in the end, Jeane doesn't wait years, weeks, days, or hours. She's only late by fifteen minutes. Maybe Jane wasn't procrastinating

Oh my God, now.

That the fernitures rip turned to its goodwill home, now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage, God take this moment.

To do so.

If we imagine, if we too.

Felt from the things.

At accident lead.

This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Khalila Holt and me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Ba Parker and Stevie Lane. The show is edited by Jorge just Special thanks to Emily Condon, Lulu Miller Hans butto Domiano Marquetti, Alex Bloomberg, and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on

Don't be tweeting us after that, Agata saying where's the episode because that's it, that we'd had the last one and there's not going to be anymore. It's the last one of the season is next week.

Yeah, what she said