Going to the Chapel

by Janet Tronstad

  Cassie and I are almost to her door when her across-the-hall neighbor, Mrs. Snyder, opens her own door and whispers at Cassie. Mrs. Snyder moved to the building shortly after Cassie did.

  “There was someone at your place,” she says in a low voice, with a nervous look down the long hallway. “A man. About ten minutes ago. Knocking on your door.”

  Cassie frowns and looks at me. “Do you suppose Doug took a cab over here?”

  I frown also. “I don’t think he would be finished with his commitment stuff at the Bowl yet.”

  I really don’t know what goes on when someone walks forward at one of those rallies, but, given the number of people who did that tonight, it would take twenty minutes just to get everyone organized.

  “Are you sure he knocked on my door?” Cassie asks Mrs. Snyder. “Maybe it was Max’s door next to me.”

  The older woman shakes her head. “It wasn’t Max’s. I could see pretty well through my peephole and he was knocking at your door. He was a mountain of a man.”

  Cassie looks down the hall even though it is obvious no one is in the hall except the three of us. “It must have been someone who got the numbers wrong. I’m sure by now he’s found the place he wanted.”

  “I suppose so,” Mrs. Snyder says as she starts to close her door. “I just worry about the two of you living alone like you do with no man to take care of you.”

  “I have a shovel,” Cassie says.

  “That little shovel of yours wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Mrs. Snyder says. “It’s half plastic. But don’t worry. I’m a light sleeper and I keep my eye to the peephole if someone comes around.”

  “I appreciate that,” Cassie says.

  I am grateful, too, so I smile at Mrs. Snyder. Some people might not like a neighbor scrutinizing everyone who knocks at their door, but I feel safer knowing Mrs. Snyder does just that. At least she would be able to give the police a description if someone broke into Cassie’s place.

  I didn’t ever worry about anyone breaking into Aunt Inga’s house when I was in Blythe. I miss that sense of security. When I decided to move to Hollywood, everyone in Blythe told me to be careful. And Hollywood does have a reputation for strangeness. But, I’m learning it also has people like Alice Green, who I met tonight, and Mrs. Snyder, who always looks out for us.

  Cassie opens her door and turns the light on. She has some of her bags of potting soil on a piece of plastic on the floor so I assume tonight has been a plant night for her. The yellow light from the overhead bulb gives a warm look to the room. The heater has been on and it is cozy inside.

  Cassie doesn’t have a lot of furniture yet, but she is adding something every week and I see a new magazine stand sitting beside her sofa. She got the sofa at a used furniture shop and it is well-worn, but it does have a foldout bed and I have slept on that as well as on the air mattress that Cassie has. I haven’t decided which one is more comfortable yet, but it feels luxurious to have the choice of two places to sleep. Cassie, herself, has a twin bed in the small bedroom.

  I put my notebook down on the table and remember the notes I took tonight. I turn to Cassie. “Could you take something over to the coffee shop tomorrow when you go to work? I told Doug I’d leave his notes there with his name on them.”

  Cassie has walked over to her kitchenette, but she turns. “Don’t you want to talk to him? Returning the notes would make a good reason to call.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” I say as I tear out the pages for Doug and fold them over. “I don’t really know what to say. I’m not sure congratulations are appropriate. Or sympathy. It’s all just a little awkward, you know?”

  I dig in my purse for a pen and then sit at the table so I can write Doug’s name on his notes.

  Cassie has walked over to the stove and nods as she lifts the teakettle off the burner. She turns the water on and starts to fill the kettle.

  “Cocoa?” I ask as I set Doug’s notes on the counter beside the door.

  Cassie and I have a long tradition of ending difficult days with cups of cocoa topped with handfuls of miniature marshmallows. We’ve had some of our best sad times with cocoa.

  “I stopped and got macaroons today, too,” Cassie says as she nods toward the top of the refrigerator. Sure enough, there is a pink bakery box with a black sticker on it that means it comes from our favorite Jewish delicatessen. They make the best macaroons, moist and chewy. Perfect cocoa food.

  I am reaching up into the cupboard to get a couple of small plates to go with the mugs when there is a knock at our door.

  Cassie, who is opening a packet of cocoa mix, stops in midtear. She looks at me. Neither one of us knows anyone who would be dropping by for a visit, especially not at this time on a Tuesday night.

  We don’t say anything in the hopes that whoever is knocking will go away if we don’t answer. It doesn’t work. The first knock is followed by a second knock. The second knock has a little bit of a desperate sound to it.

  It’s good to know Mrs. Snyder is probably still up and looking out her peephole about now. Cassie’s peephole is so high that neither one of us can see out of it unless we pull a stool over to stand on. If we do that, we’ll make so much noise that the knocker will know we’re here. When the peepholes were put in the doors, a tall basketball player lived in this unit. Cassie asked the landlord for a new peephole, but he said if she wanted a different one, she’d have to put one in herself.

  “Who’s there?” Cassie finally says, while stepping over to pick up the shovel she has leaning against the counter. Mrs. Snyder is right, the shovel is mostly plastic. It would be like defending yourself with a toy broom.

  “Is that you, Cassie?” a man’s voice answers on the other side. The man is obviously trying to keep his voice low so it is hard to hear him. I wonder if he has a mask over his face.

  “Don’t answer. He could have gotten your name from your mail,” I whisper to Cassie when she looks as if she’s going to step forward and open the door. The mailboxes are at the front of the building and they are locked, but you never know who can pick a lock these days.

  “Julie, let me in,” the man’s voice isn’t so soft anymore. “I can hear you two in there talking.”

  The man’s voice is sounding very familiar to both of us.

  Cassie goes to the door and opens it. “Jerry?”

  There stands my cousin Jerry, looking rumpled and red-eyed. With his dark hair a little longer than usual and his smile a little more forced than I remember, he is over six feet tall and more muscular than I remember. I guess I will always picture him as a gangly boy, but it is obvious that he has developed muscles that were not as evident in his tuxedo as they are now in the brown T-shirt he’s wearing. He must have started going to a gym recently. No wonder Mrs. Snyder said he was a mountain of a man.

  “I thought Aunt Inga said you ran away from home.” I cross my arms so he knows I mean business. “You have everyone worried.”

  “I didn’t run away. I left a note saying I was leaving for a few days,” Jerry says as he stands in the hallway with a duffel bag over one shoulder. “I don’t know why people in our family can’t just leave well enough alone.”

  Those thoughts sound too close to my own for comfort. What kind of a world would it be if Jerry and I agreed?

  “But you’ve never left before,” I say just to give myself a minute or two to get used to seeing Jerry in a new light. “I’m sure your mother is worried.”

  Jerry and his four brothers are the sons of my aunt Gladys. None of the boys live in her house anymore, but they all have small apartments around Blythe. Jerry has lived in a small apartment behind the garage where he works ever since he moved out of Aunt Gladys’s house five or six years ago. Jerry is in the middle of the brother lineup, with two brothers older and two younger.

  Jerry sighs. “I don’t know what the big deal is. So I want to spend a few days someplace other than Blythe. People are entitled to see the world a little.”

  “I can understand that
, but what are you doing here?” I can’t help but ask. It hasn’t escaped my notice that Jerry hasn’t looked me in the eye once since Cassie opened the door. I have a feeling something more is going on here than that Jerry has decided to broaden his travel horizons. He hasn’t insulted me once while he’s been standing there and that isn’t like Jerry.

  “I don’t know anybody else who doesn’t live in Blythe,” Jerry says with a shrug that moves the duffel bag and the brown T-shirt beneath it. “Okay? I’m desperate.”

  “Everyone thought you ran off to be with the wedding planner,” I say.

  Bingo. Jerry’s face flushes and he looks me in the eye for the first time. “People need to mind their own business. She seemed very nice when I fixed her car that day it was stalled in Aunt Ruth’s driveway.”

  “Did you do something to her car so you could meet her?” I ask.

  “Of course not.” Jerry is indignant. “I could have just gone inside Aunt Ruth’s place for a glass of water if I was that desperate to meet Mona. Besides, I’d never mess with her car.” Jerry’s eyes look a little glazed. “Man, you should see that car. It’s a 1966 Thunderbird convertible in a light baby blue—completely restored right down to the hubcaps. Mona had a little problem with the starter, but I charged up the battery for her and that got her going. That’s all.”

  I’m beginning to think maybe Jerry is smitten with the car and not with Mona.

  “Someone takes really good care of that car because of the shine on it,” Jerry says. “All the chrome is buffed out. You can tell when someone is really into their car—and I thought a good-looking woman like that and her mechanic, well, who knows what could happen.”

  “Jerry, she’s a criminal,” I say as my heart softens toward him a little. Jerry teased me all the time when we were kids, but he does sound a little pathetic now. Imagine weaving fantasies about a criminal. Even I haven’t done that.

  “But she needs a new part. Parts for those old cars aren’t easy to find. And they’re expensive. When I told her what the problem was with her car, she told me she couldn’t afford to buy a new starter—so I offered to have one of my buddies look in the junkyard to see if he could find one for free. He got it to me yesterday,” Jerry says.

  Then he looks at me as if he’s making an important point. “Now, how do you figure a woman who can’t afford a hundred-dollar part for her car is a criminal?”

  “Please, the facts speak for themselves,” I say. “Besides, she can probably afford the part now that she has Aunt Ruth’s nineteen thousand dollars.”

  Jerry doesn’t respond to me and we all just stand there.

  “And she probably had a hundred dollars before,” I add. “She just didn’t figure there was any reason to spend it when some guy would probably come by and get a starter for her for free.”

  There’s some more silence.

  Finally, Jerry clears this throat. “Look, I just need a place to stay for a few days while I figure things out. I can’t go back to Blythe right now and I’m hoping I can stay here. I can’t pay much, but I’ll pay what I can and I’ll do chores.”

  Cassie looks at me and I nod my okay. I guess family ties do mean something. Still, I’m going to keep my eye on him.

  “I could use some help with my plants,” Cassie says as she gestures for Jerry to come inside. “If I had someone to help me lift, I could bring some of the bigger plants home.”

  “I have my pickup truck out back in your parking lot,” Jerry says. “I was here and left for a bit and then came back so I parked it.”

  “In one of the spaces marked Visitor?” Cassie asks.

  Jerry nods.

  “That’s good then,” Cassie says as she steps around Jerry and walks across the hall to Mrs. Synder’s door.

  Before Cassie even gets a chance to knock, Mrs. Snyder answers the door with a towel around her head and her robe on.

  “It’s all right. He’s Julie’s cousin,” Cassie says.

  “Good,” Mrs. Snyder says as she squints up at Jerry. “You need a man around.”

  “He’s not staying for long,” I step out in the hall and say just so Mrs. Snyder doesn’t give up her peephole defense. “Just a few days.”

  “A week,” Jerry agrees. “Ten days max.”

  I wait for Mrs. Snyder to close her door and then I look Jerry square in the eyes. “You’re just trying to avoid all the wedding stuff, aren’t you?”

  I should have known. “Aunt Inga said your brothers are making origami flowers for the reception tables and you’re just goofing off.”

  “I was out looking for orange candles,” Jerry says defensively. “Do you know how hard they are to find?”

  “I see them all over in party stores,” Cassie says as she walks back into her apartment.

  “We don’t have any party stores in Blythe,” Jerry says as he follows Cassie into the apartment.

  “Well, you’re in Hollywood now. All people do here is party. I’ll call around tomorrow and find you some orange taper candles,” I offer as I also walk back inside the apartment and then close the door.

  “You won’t regret letting me stay,” Jerry says as he steps over and puts his duffel bag down close to the window.

  That’s all he knows. I’m already starting to regret it.

  Then Jerry continues, “Besides, I noticed your door squeaks. I can fix that.”

  Well, maybe he will be useful.

  “Can you put in a new peephole, too?” Cassie asks hopefully as she turns the dead bolt on the door and then looks over at Jerry. “The landlord said I could add one if I wanted. One that’s more my height.”

  “It’d be my pleasure,” Jerry says as he walks back to where Cassie is standing and smiles down at her in this come-hither way he must have picked up from the movies. “We need to keep you safe.”

  Just as I’m thinking “Oh, pl-eee-aa-se,” I see Cassie’s face get all pink and I have the shock of my life. You know, I think Cassie might like my cousin Jerry. As in like like. Of course, if she did, she would have said something years ago, wouldn’t she?

  I know the answer to my question before it even pops into my mind. No, Cassie would not have told me if she liked Jerry. After listening to me talk about him, she would have sworn he was my mortal enemy. Cassie would have felt disloyal to say she liked him, even in a generic-friend sort of a way. She would never have admitted to being attracted to him.

  But how could I not have noticed? Cassie and I have been best friends since we were five years old. I should have known she liked my cousin without her saying anything. Of course, maybe she’s only started to like him recently. She just saw him at Elaine’s party. Maybe she developed a sudden liking for him then. It might even be a passing interest in him. She might have noticed that he’s gotten more muscles lately and decided he wasn’t so bad after all.

  I’m not sure how I feel about this Cassie and Jerry possibility. I try to be happy for Cassie, but then I think about it being Jerry. He used to tease us unmercifully when we were young. Cassie and I couldn’t have a pretend wedding without Jerry showing up and wanting to throw rice at someone.

  Now that I think about it, though, maybe the fact that he showed up when Cassie and I wanted to play wedding meant something even back then. I hope not. I would feel that I’d been so blind for so many years.

  I put my air mattress in the bedroom with Cassie and Jerry decides to take the Hide-A-Bed after offering to sleep on the floor several times if we think flipping out the Hide-A-Bed is too much trouble. I can see he’s trying to be a considerate guest. He even helps us make our cocoa. He doesn’t even complain about it being woman’s work or anything.

  For the first time in my life I’m wondering if Jerry has turned out to be a regular human being. After all, if Cassie likes Jerry, he must have some finer points. I can even see how a woman who is not related might think Jerry is a little cute now that he has that muscle thing going.

  Oh, dear. I don’t know when my life became so flip-flopped.
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  “It’ll be nice having Jerry here,” I say as I settle into my air mattress bed on the floor of the bedroom. Jerry is out in the living room where he can’t hear me. Cassie is sitting on the side of her bed putting some lotion on her hands. She always puts this special honey lotion on her hands before she goes to sleep. It’s funny that I know something like that about her and I didn’t know she had a crush on my cousin.

  Cassie looks at me. “If he gives you any trouble, he’ll have to leave.”

  “He won’t,” I say. And if he does, it’s time I learned to be a little more tolerant anyway.

  “It’ll be nice to have someone around to lift things,” Cassie adds as she puts her hand on the lamp switch and turns it off.

  “Uh-huh,” I agree.

  I hear Cassie sigh as she pulls her covers up to her neck.

  “Good night,” she says.

  “Good night,” I reply. “And sweet dreams.”

  I go to sleep trying to remember the last time I liked a guy, I mean really liked him. I had that twinge of attraction toward Doug before the rally started tonight, but that might have just been the spotlight on his hair and my sympathy about that suitcase he carried around as a kid. Besides, now that he’s, you know, committed to God, I don’t think we would have any hope of a future even if we had something going on. If Doug becomes all holy, I’m not sure he’d be allowed to have a girlfriend anyway so it’s just as well my attraction was only a passing twinge. Ah, well, there will be someone else, someday. I hope. Before I die.

  Chapter Seven

  I wake up to the sound of Cassie giggling in the kitchen. It’s a Wednesday. Nobody giggles in the kitchen on a Wednesday morning. Besides, it’s half-dark out. I lift my wrist so I can see the illuminated hands on my watch. Its six-thirty, which is half an hour earlier than Cassie and I usually get up.

  That’s when I remember Jerry. I groan and put my pillow over my head. Jerry’s here, out on the Hide-A-Bed, just past the bedroom door. Actually, it sounds as though he’s walking around instead of still being in the Hide-A-Bed. I wish I was hearing the sounds of a phone conversation that would tell me Jerry was calling home, but he is laughing, too. It’s not likely he’d be doing that if he was talking to any of the aunts at this time of the morning.