Audwin had a kind, pleasant face. He wore loose khaki pants and off-brand tennis shoes.
Jimmy said, “And, yes, we met online, God help us. We both had inferential statistics listed on our profile as a top interest.”
“That’s a math thing?” Mikey said.
Jimmy nodded. “This was years ago. We got to chatting online about conjoint analyses, kept in touch over time, and recently just decided it was high time we meet.”
Audwin said, “I finally convinced Jimmy I wasn’t planning to chop him up and have him for supper.”
Jimmy said, “And when Lynn heard, she was so excited she insisted I bring him to the wedding.”
Audwin straightened the little plaid hat on his head. “I did not pack right for a wedding. I could not know. This is why I am wearing these dumb shoes.”
Mikey laughed. “Are you guys staying at the place Lynn recommended tonight?”
Jimmy shook his head. “We’re gonna try and get a few hours’ drive in tonight, make it to Montreal by midday tomorrow. You?”
Mikey nodded. “Got a room at the Budget Inn.”
Audwin led the way into the house.
The sidewalk had been shoveled and salted. Jimmy slowed his pace and threw an arm around Mikey’s shoulders. He said, “I finally had the talk with my parents last month, when I was home. That same evening after you and I had lunch.”
“You came out to them?”
Jimmy nodded. His glossy hair, slicked back from his face, was shiny as black gold.
Mikey said, “It went okay?”
Jimmy nodded again. “It wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve done. But . . .”
Mikey gripped Jimmy’s gloved hand over his shoulder. “Glad for you.”
Jimmy said, “How are things with you? Your dad?”
Mikey said, “He came over for dinner a few weeks ago, first time he’s ever set foot in my house.”
“How was that?”
“Like you said. It wasn’t the easiest thing. But . . .”
Mikey had vacuumed the entire house and locked Friday in his bedroom before his father’s visit. His father arrived ten minutes early, wearing nicer clothing than Mikey had ever seen on him—clean khakis, a blue button-down shirt, brown dress shoes with mismatched laces. He brought with him a green tissue-paper cone full of spray-painted carnations, which Mikey found so strange and touching he nearly wept. When his father handed it to him, he said, “Forgot the liquor stores would be closed today, otherwise I’da brought you that. Didn’t wanna show up empty-handed. This is what the Internet told me to bring in a pinch.”
Mikey had prepared pan-seared scallops with garlic and butter and thyme, a rich bean salad with ham hocks and sweet onion, grilled peach slices and thickened cream. They ate at the kitchen table. Mikey’s father ate every bite and asked for seconds.
At one point, his father poked a scallop with his knife and said, “Don’t know how you know how to put it all together, cook it right. This fancy stuff. Me . . . I got simple tastes.” He paused, then added, “Not that I don’t like what you make. Fancy stuff. I just wouldn’t know where to start.”
Mikey thought back to their cabinets and refrigerator from when he was a kid. Cereal, white bread, cold cuts, apples, Chips Ahoy!
His father continued, softer, as though to himself, “Guess you shouldn’t take it personal when your boy outgrows the things you can offer him.”
Mikey stared at him. “You took it personal?”
His father didn’t answer.
They sipped whiskey after the meal, and Mikey told his father that he was going blind. That he probably had a year, or less, before his vision would be completely gone.
His father was quiet for a bit. Then he said, “I’m not your biological father, you know.”
“I know.” Mikey paused, then said, “I know about Corinne, too.”
“I figured.” His father set down his whiskey. He stared into the glass, the whiskey caramel-colored, melted ice swirling like oil. “Figured you found out somewhere along the line. Figured that’s when things went sorta . . . south between you and me. Didn’t know for sure, though, since you never said nothin’ about it. Anyhow. I did what I thought was best at the time, but even so, I surely wasn’t prepared to raise a kid,” he said. “Never planned on it. A kid, I mean. Didn’t think it was in the cards for me. Anyhow, I know it wasn’t easy for you. Without a mother, I mean.” He paused. “I surely wasn’t prepared,” he said again.
Mikey lifted his whiskey and shook the glass gently to disperse the ice. “What did you see in Corinne’s house that day?” he said. “What made you change your mind about leaving me there?”
His father went very still, his expression dark and slack and faraway, as if he had been slapped but lacked the will to retaliate. Finally, he said, “There are some things that don’t bear repeating.”
Mikey sipped his whiskey. “There was a suitcase you kept in your closet. I found it poking around one day when I was really little. It had a familiar . . . It gave me a funny feeling. And it also didn’t fit right in our house, didn’t look like something you’d ever buy.”
His father lifted his whiskey to his lips and drank from it twice, the second more of a gulp than a sip. Ice cracked between his teeth. He said, “The first night you stayed at my place, I had you sleeping in my bed, and I slept on the couch, but you moved around a lot in your sleep, kept falling out of that big bed. So the next day, I was gonna go out and buy a crib for you on my own, but then I thought you’d probably be most comfortable in whatever you were used to anyway. So I went down to Corinne’s place first thing the next morning to see if she wouldn’t mind lending us your crib until you outgrew it. When I got to her house, Corinne was off in another room, but Sally was there in the main room. I asked if she could she show me where your crib was. She looked at me sorta funny. I said, Where does your little brother sleep? And she pointed at this suitcase, sitting right at the base of the TV in the main room. I thought she must’ve misunderstood the question. I said, Where does he sleep? Like, at night? She pointed back at the suitcase again.” Mikey’s father’s voice was thinner now, broken and indistinct. “So I took it home with me,” he said. “Didn’t know what else to do. Back at my place, you crawled into the thing. Curled up and settled yourself in there. Pulled the top up over your head. Like you’d spent every night, every day, of your little life learning how to . . . disappear.” He paused and rubbed his index finger under his nostrils, which flared
for air.
Mikey felt something soft and dangerous and defenseless opening inside himself, so powerful it shook. What could he say to this man? He began to cry a little bit, and his father passed him a napkin and looked away.
It was quiet for a while. The wind had picked up outside, and it moaned against the house.
Mikey’s dad eventually said, “How’re you plannin’ on gettin’ around when you can’t see?”
“I’ll manage,” Mikey said.
“Still got your bed made up if you need it.”
“What’s that?”
“Once you moved out,” his dad said, “I kept that little twin bed in your room made up in case you ever wanted to come back home.”
Mikey nursed the memory of that evening quietly inside himself as he and Jimmy made their way up the snowy path to the house. Weeks later, the thought of that conversation with his father still actu-
ally moved things inside him. It hurt. It hurt, and it was good to feel.
Inside the house, Lynn and Issa greeted Jimmy and Mikey and Audwin at the door.
“Lynn, you’re radiant!” Jimmy said.
She wore a deep burgundy silk caftan over loose-fitting cream silk pants and ballet flats. Issa wore a black suit with a burgundy silk tie, and he introduced the three of them to his mother, sister, uncle, and several cousins.
Lynn walked them
in to the kitchen and pointed out the many different hors d’oeuvres options and the prosecco in the refrigerator.
Then Lynn pointed out their officiant, an elderly woman in a neat little navy suit, who was drinking coffee and looking at photographs attached to Lynn and Issa’s refrigerator.
“Her name is Lee,” Lynn said. “She’s a former atheist, former nun, former secular Buddhist.”
“So what is she now?”
“She’s the only interfaith officiant in town. She does all the atheists and the gays and the couples who already live together,” Lynn explained.
Back in the main room, Mikey chatted with Lynn’s mother, who asked about Mikey’s father. She introduced him to her own sister, Lynn’s aunt, who was eating cheese cubes off a toothpick. Lynn’s aunt had a little sourpuss face with colorless lips and tiny eyeballs, and she was displaying some uncomfortable cleavage.
“Mikey Callahan, one of Lynn’s best childhood friends,” Lynn’s mother explained.
“Sure,” said Lynn’s aunt, looking Mikey over from head to toe. She reached out to poke his cheek. “Cute!” she said. “Cute, cute, cute.”
Lynn’s mother said to Mikey, “Is this your first time in Jim Thorpe?”
Mikey nodded.
She said, “Now, listen, in the next town over, it’s not a long drive and it is so worth it . . . The Mason Jar Museum. You cannot miss this while you’re in the area. The tour? Ahhhh!” She shook her fists emphatically. “Telling you, they know everything there is to know about the Mason jar. It just blows my mind that Lynn never wanted to try and get work there.”
Mikey smiled.
Lynn and Issa’s home was decorated beautifully with twinkling white lights along all the walls, dozens and dozens of mismatched white and burgundy candles, flames bright, quivering in synchrony as people passed through the rooms. A gleaming piano. Two entire walls of books, waist-high stacks of sheet music. They had fashioned a beautiful arbor of fresh and fragrant evergreen branches wrapped around split wooden planks that still had their bark. Long burgundy ribbons held the evergreen in place.
Sam and Justine arrived. Justine was petite and bright-cheeked. She wore her long curly blond hair in a half-ponytail, and her wide smile gleamed with silver braces. Sam wore the same brown suit he had worn to Sally’s service, badly wrinkled from the long drive.
“So nice to meet you,” Mikey said.
Mikey and Sam embraced.
Justine said, “How about this snow?”
Mikey said, “Did you run into much on the way?”
“Mountains in Virginia,” Sam said. “Stuck behind a plow for an hour.” He nodded out into the open room. “That Lynn’s mom?”
Mikey nodded. “She’s going to recommend that you make time for the Mason Jar Museum in the next town over. You just wait.”
Sam laughed. “Sounds like a thrill.”
Mikey turned to Justine. “Remind me where you’re from originally?”
“Minnesota. Just outside Saint Paul.”
“So you grew up in this kind of snow. You ever miss it?”
Justine nodded. “I keep trying to twist Sam’s arm, get us back north a ways. See now, I like Buffalo, too, where y’all are from. I wouldn’t mind living there either.”
“So what’s keeping you down south?”
“He’s got good work,” Justine said. “We like our church. Maybe someday, though . . .”
Mikey turned to Sam. “Alice is moving back to the area, ya know.”
“Is she?”
Mikey nodded. “I’ll be seeing a lot more of her.”
Sam said, “Lucky you!” and wiggled his eyebrows. Then he laughed. “Alice is great. I just don’t know that I’d want her for a next-door neighbor.” He nodded down the hallway, toward the front door. “Speak of the devil.”
Alice was kneeling to untie her work boots at the front door. She wore black pants and a loose-fitting dark green sweater over her broad shoulders. There was snow in her hair.
“She looks upset,” Mikey observed when he saw Alice’s face, but Sam did not hear him because he was already walking Justine up the hall for introductions.
Mikey went to the kitchen and ate a crostino with prosciutto and fennel slaw. He waited until Alice had said hello to Sam and Jimmy, been introduced to Justine and Audwin, then been greeted by Lynn and Issa before he approached her. He offered a hug, and Alice was stiff. She accepted the hug but did not reciprocate.
Mikey said, “What’s up?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Alice said.
Mikey leaned closer to her. “Alice, are you okay?”
She offered a tight-lipped “Mm-hm,” and her black eyes darted across the room. “I’ll tell you after the ceremony.” She nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “I don’t imagine there’s any booze at this party?”
“There’s prosecco in the fridge,” Mikey said. “You want a glass?”
“How about five?” Alice said. “By the way, I lost ten pounds, thanks for noticing.” She pulled a toothpick from her pocket and began to suck on it voraciously. “I’m trying this new fad diet. Read about it online. It’s called eat less food.”
“Oh . . .” Mikey said, leaning in to examine the side of her face. “Oh, I’m afraid you’re not going to like this.”
“What?” Alice said.
“You’re not going to like this one bit.”
Mikey gripped a three-quarters-of-an-inch-long black hair from just beneath Alice’s jawbone and pulled it out. It curled in his fingertips. He held it up for her to examine.
“Good God,” she said, and batted it out of his hands.
Mikey opened a bottle of prosecco and filled a flute for each of them, and one for Lynn’s aunt, who suddenly appeared at his side.
Alice looked directly at the woman’s cleavage and sang, “All righty, then.”
Mikey asked Alice if she was staying in town that night.
She rotated the toothpick over her lips and nodded. “Budget Inn Lynn recommended. You?”
Mikey nodded. “Same place. Sounds like everybody else is taking off tonight—Jimmy heading north, Sam back south, has to work a half-day tomorrow. Lynn and Issa have a five a.m. flight out of Philly, honeymooning in Scotland.”
Alice said, “I guess it’s just you and me for the night then, pal. We can eat Bugles and watch Law & Order and play doctor.”
Lynn’s aunt, who had been listening to the conversation, stared at Alice.
From the main room, Mikey could hear Lynn’s voice as she assembled the group.
They made their way back to that room, and Alice and Mikey stood next to Jimmy, Audwin, Sam, and Justine.
Lynn and Issa were up at the arbor, and people were gathering before them. Lynn was counting heads.
“Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two,” she said. “That’s everybody.”
The crowd grew quiet as Lynn and Issa stepped beneath the arbor. They held hands. Lynn introduced Lee as their officiant. The petite, gray-haired woman did not hold notes or a microphone as she took center stage.
“Lynn’s only request was that I keep it brief,” Lee said.
“Love,” Lee announced, “is not a mystery. It is not poetry, it is not pure, it is not sacred. Nothing humans do is.”
The room, already quiet, was now completely silent.
“Love,” Lee continued, “is simply the time you spend loving. There are no other rules. That’s it.”
Alice was still sucking noisily on her toothpick. She rolled it to the side of her lips and whispered down the row to Sam and Justine, the only married couple among them, “Is that true?”
Justine was nodding in agreement. “I think so. Hon, don’t you think?”
Sam said, “It helps if you like the same TV shows, too.”
Alice whispered, “Also, I imagine, y
ou hope they don’t end up having some weird fetish. Toe-sucking. Or bread-crushing.”
Mikey made a face at her. “The hell?”
Jimmy giggled.
Alice’s whisper grew louder. “It’s a real thing! Guys pay women in high heels to crush loaves of bread in front of them. I swear!”
Mikey said, “Sh.”
Lee led Lynn and Issa through their vows, then they exchanged their wedding bands, placing them not on each other’s fingers but on long chains over each other’s necks. When Lee pronounced them husband and wife, a cheer rose up from the small group, and one of Issa’s cousins, who was seated at the piano, began to play Thelonious Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear.”
Issa took Lynn by the waist and kissed her, and they slow-danced while the others cheered and then joined the dance. Sam held Justine’s head against his chest and kissed it.
Alice took Mikey by the elbow and led him to the kitchen, where she grabbed a crostino with smoked salmon and capers, then walked him to the front door, where she knelt to put her boots back on.
“Follow me,” she whispered forcefully, her mouth still full of crostino, breath smelling of fish. “We gotta talk outside, just in case I spring a leak.”
Mikey said, “Excuse me?”
“In case I cry,” she said.
“You don’t cry,” Mikey said.
“Exactly.”
Mikey put his own shoes back on and followed Alice outside. A bit of fresh snow had accumulated in the last hour. Already, at only five o’clock, the sun was gone. The sky was navy to the east and rose-colored to the west, with stars beginning to wink overhead. They stood on the porch. Alice sighed heavily and stared out over the snowy landscape. A blackbird strutted across the telephone line before them. She reached into her pocket, withdrew a little tab of Nicorette from a foil packet, and crunched into it.
Mikey glanced at Alice’s face, and he knew immediately. “Finn,” he said.
Alice nodded. “Yesterday,” she said, in a voice so thick with pain.
Mikey embraced her. His neck on hers, he felt her swallow hard many times in a row.
The Gunners Page 20
