Jo ignored the wedding guests who’d tried to grab her hand and draw her into the dance. She stood at the edge of the crowd, watching, her eyes on Shelley’s face. When the hora was over, she went to the bar. She’d had two sloe gin fizzes, one more drink than she usually allowed herself, and was working her way through an unprecedented third, when a young man approached. He was tall and lanky, with thick, dark hair, a narrow, fox-like face, and an appealing smile. He pulled out the chair beside her, flipped it around so that he was straddling it, and took a seat, leaning forward, saying, “Hiya, babe.”
“Babe?” Jo’s voice was cool. The boy was undeterred as he nodded his head toward the dance floor, and a group of fellows in tuxedos who stood in a group by the stage.
“My buddies bet me that I couldn’t make you smile.”
Jo noticed his forearms: lean, sinewy, tanned golden-brown, so different from Shelley’s pale skin. His dark hair was thick and shiny, and his eyebrows looked like emphatic dashes drawn above his eyes. She sighed and looked away, but the boy was undeterred. “So how about this?” he asked. He leaned close, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll tell you every joke I know, you’ll laugh, my buddies will pay up, and we’ll split the loot.”
“You said smile.”
“Beg pardon?”
Jo set her glass down on the white tablecloth. Speaking carefully, making sure not to slur, she said, “You told me your buddies bet that you couldn’t make me smile. Not laugh. Smile.”
“Well, look at that. You’re smiling already.”
“I am not.” Jo waved her hand, like she was shooing a fly. “Go away.”
“Before I’ve even introduced myself?” He shook his head in mock sorrow at his own bad manners and held out his hand. “David Braverman, at your service.”
Jo’s tongue was heavy. “I don’t need any services.”
“Then how about a dance?” He squeezed her hand, and Jo was so tired, tired of talking, tired of fighting, that she let Dave Braverman pull her to her feet. He was taller than she was, even in her heels, and it was not unpleasant to be held by someone taller, not unpleasant to feel small in his arms. Dave was an excellent dancer, guiding Jo through a smooth fox-trot as the band played “Runaround Sue.”
She barely spoke, beyond telling him that she’d graduated in June, but Dave talked for both of them. Jo learned that Dave was a senior at the U of M, even though he was a year older than she was. He was the youngest of three, with an older brother and an older sister. His father owned an auto parts store; he had a semester left before he graduated, with an economics degree. She learned the name of Dave’s fraternity, and that his dog was named Bingo, and that he drove a Mustang convertible. Had Jo heard the new Rolling Stones album yet? Jo shook her head. Had she seen Dr. Zhivago, which had premiered that Friday night? She shook her head again.
If Dave noticed her silences, or how she failed to do the girl’s work of keeping the conversational ball aloft, he covered for her, maintaining an easy patter, answering the questions Jo would have asked him if Jo had been a normal girl, and not heartbroken and halfway to drunk.
“You okay?” Dave asked, as they danced close to the happy couple. Jo must have been staring. She hoped that, if Dave had noticed, he’d decide that she was pining for the groom and not the bride. She didn’t say anything. Dave danced her away, toward the other side of the ballroom, and his hands were gentle, his voice solicitous, almost as if they’d struck a bargain and he had agreed to take care of her, to see her safely through the wedding without leaving her side.
“My dad wants me to come work with him,” he said, steering her gracefully past two elderly Finkelbein relatives, a man and a woman each the size of a small bear, clutching each other and shuffling in time to the music. “But it isn’t what I want,” he said, as Leo Finkelbein, pink-faced and light on his feet, cha-cha’d by, and stopped to greet her. “My Jo!” he said, holding her face in both of his hands and giving her smacking kisses on each cheek. “The beeyoudiful bridesmaid! Next time, your turn!”
“Hello, Mr. Finkelbein.” He’d been busy for the past few days, a general preparing for a battle, taking telephone calls, dispatching Davis, his driver, to the airport to pick up visiting guests, reminding the caterer to make sure the champagne was chilled, sending his sons out to get their hair cut.
“Leo, Leo. To you, I’m Leo!” He looked at Jo, his expression turning serious. “I’m sorry you and my Shelley missed your trip.”
“Oh,” said Jo, feeling her cheeks heat up. “Well. Things happen.” She waved her hand at the ballroom’s glitter and grandeur. “Shelley had to get ready for all of this!”
Leo shook his head, his expression chagrined. “My Shelley. She could have anything. I wanted to give her the world.”
Jo was aware that Dave was standing by her side, watching and hearing everything. “I guess this is what she wanted.”
“Denny’s a good boy,” said Leo, brightening. He patted his small, plump hands together. “So a honeymoon, for now! And later, maybe, before the grandkids come . . .” He pronounced the word grendkits. “Your adventure. You and my Shelley, off to see the pyramids, and the whatdoyoucallems, the ashvams . . .”
“Ashrams.” Jo’s throat felt chokey.
Leo stood on his tiptoes, in his shiny formal shoes, kissed Jo’s cheek again and danced off in search of his wife. Dave collected Jo’s hands.
“Adventure, huh?”
“That’s right,” said Jo.
Dave spun her away from him and reeled her back, easing her into a showy dip before pulling her upright. The band began to play “I’ll Be There,” and Dave snapped in time to the music. His hair had been tamed with some kind of pomade that smelled faintly sweet when Jo let her head rest on his shoulder. “So tell me the truth. Are you a magician?” he asked. One hand was on the small of her back. His touch felt calming, almost as if she were a baby he was trying to soothe to sleep.
“No. Why?”
“Because every time I look at you, everyone else disappears.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “That’s awful.”
He shrugged, smiled, and said, “If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together.”
“That’s worse.”
Dave made his face go comically sad before rubbing the lapel of his tuxedo between two fingers. “Know what this is?” Jo shook her head.
“Boyfriend material.”
“Oh, God,” Jo groaned, as she felt her lips quirk upward. Dave raised his hands in triumph.
“You smiled!”
Jo nodded wearily, as she remembered Denny and Shelley’s triumphant arm-lift, how happy they’d looked as they’d come down the aisle, and the truth of the day came crashing back down on her. Shelley was gone forever; and Jo was alone, broke, and back in Detroit, in her mother’s house, in her old bedroom. “Go on,” she said, stepping away from him, intending to return to the table, and her drink. “Go collect your winnings.”
“Oh, but this song’s my favorite!” The band was playing “The Twist.” Dave put his hands on his hips and began a sinuous wiggle, one that would have been sexy if his expression hadn’t been so comical. “C’mon let’s twist again, like we did last summer,” the singer crooned from the bandstand, as the three colored girls in pastel dresses behind him ooh’ed and aah’ed the harmonies. Jo looked at Dave, who was graceful and handsome and light on his feet, and wondered, briefly, if he was like her; if he was no more interested in girls than she was in boys. There were, she had read, arrangements like that, marriages where a man and woman would keep up appearances, leading an outwardly normal life, even having children, while pursuing other interests on the side. Was Dave that way?
Jo decided that he wasn’t. When he took her by the waist his hands were possessive, and when he looked at her, his gaze was frank and appreciative. It felt good. So did Shelley’s shocked, frozen expression when Shelley noticed Jo dancing with Dave, and it gave Jo a mean little thrill. Your fault, Jo tho
ught, settling her arm a little more securely around Dave’s waist. You could have chosen me.
“Hey, you’re good,” Dave said, releasing his hold on her, dancing a few steps away, coming in close to twist, round and round and up and down. “We’re good together. We should go out. Want to give me your number? We’ll go into Detroit. We’ll hit a jazz club, get a steak dinner.”
“Maybe,” Jo said. She let him lead her back to the table, let him hold out her chair, let him get her a drink from the bar: club soda, instead of the sloe gin fizz she’d been planning on. She listened as he dissected the band’s song choices, remarking that they didn’t seem to have learned anything after 1963, wondering if the Finkelbeins had expressly asked them to skip any kind of protest music. “Then again, I’ve got nothing against Phil Ochs, but it’s not like you can really dance to his stuff.” Dave had gossip about Shelley’s sorority sisters, and Denny’s fraternity brothers, and amusing observations about the wedding guests. “Look,” he said, pointing at a little boy in short pants who was going from table to table, gulping down the dregs of abandoned cocktails, “it’s me fifteen years ago!” He winked. “Or, you know, five weeks ago.” He kept her glass full, and told her which of Shelley’s aunts had caught her husband sleeping with the cleaning lady and which of Leo Finkelbein’s associates were allegedly members of the Mafia. It turned out that Dave had grown up in Southfield with Shelley—“we’re not quite as loaded as the Finkelbeins, but my dad’s done okay.”
“So why hasn’t some lucky lady snatched you up?” Jo asked as the flambéed grapefruits were served. It could have been flirting, except her tone was conversational. She was not giving Dave shy glances from underneath her lashes, not dropping any coy reference to her own lonely nights.
“Haven’t met Mrs. Right yet,” Dave said easily, as he removed a segment of grapefruit and popped it into his mouth. “It so happens that I am in the market for a partner in crime.” The band began to play again, “My Girl” by the Temptations, and Dave helped Jo to her feet. “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day,” he sang, in a pleasant tenor. He moved in a circle around Jo as they danced, always keeping the beat, before spinning around and doing the steps backward, waggling his tuxedo-clad behind at her. “So what do you think?” he asked over his shoulder. “See anything you like?”
Jo found that she was smiling. “You’re terrible,” she said. But she couldn’t deny that they fit well together. People were noticing them on the dance floor, two tall, graceful, dark-haired people, a male and female of a matched set. It would be so easy, Jo thought, as Dave pulled her against him and sang in her ear, as he walked her back to the table for the salad and the chopped liver and the prime ribs of beef, for the Viennese sweet table and the wedding cake. To not be the one making plans, to not be the one attempting to propel an unwilling partner forward, to not have to push through a hostile world. If she married a man, she could let him plan, let him push, let him maneuver; and the world they inhabited would welcome them. They would always have a place. It would be easy, and Jo was so tired. She closed her eyes, leaning into Dave, letting him take her weight. She felt half-drunk and weary, her heart aching and her limbs heavy with grief.
“You ready?” Dave asked her.
“Ready for what?”
Instead of answering, Dave put his hands on her shoulders and walked her toward the bandstand, into the crowd of girls that had gathered in front of Shelley. At the orchestra’s flourish, Shelley raised her arms, and the girls around her squealed and she heard Dave cheer as Shelley Finkelbein Ziskin’s bouquet arced through the air, over the heads of the eager bridesmaids, bounced off Jo’s chest and fell into her reflexively outstretched hands.
* * *
Six weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, Jo surrendered her virginity—such as it was—in a motel room in Detroit. Dave had taken her dancing at the Teutonia Club in Windsor, and he’d bought her the steak dinner that he’d promised at the London Chop House, a clubby, underground restaurant, all dark wood and leather booths with a telephone booth in the corner, caricatures of famous businessmen and politicians on the walls, and a pianist playing softly as they ate. By the time her spoon cracked the crust of the crème brulée he’d ordered for dessert, Jo’s head felt like it was full of bubbles, and she was laughing at the story Dave was telling her, about a camping trip he’d taken with his fraternity brothers.
“So first, Roger says, ‘There’s no plumbing,’ which I figure, okay, we’ll use an outhouse. Then it turns out there’s absolutely no plumbing, as in, no running water. And no electricity, and no insulation. But a beautiful view of the lake, Roger keeps saying. By the time we get there, it’s pitch-black—so much for the view—and we’ve got one flashlight, and we’re stumbling through the dark, when we hear gunshots. Turns out, it’s bear season, which Roger also neglected to mention. So we start running . . .”
Jo smiled, half listening, enjoying the feeling of Dave holding her hand. All night, whenever they were walking, Dave had kept his hand on the small of her back, not pushing her, exactly, but supporting her, steering her, from her house to his car, from his car to the restaurant, where he tossed the keys to the valet, from the restaurant back into the car and from there to the lobby of a motel on Woodward Avenue, where they registered as Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and a humorless clerk slid a key with a heavy plastic tag across the counter. The room smelled of air freshener and, faintly, of mold. There was a dresser, a coin-operated black-and-white television set. The bedspread on the queen-sized bed had a synthetic sheen that reminded Jo of the love seat in the hotel lobby where she’d sat, waiting for Bethie. Jo wondered how many naked bodies had lain on that bed, how many heads had rested on the pillows. She felt Dave’s lips on her throat and his hands on her zipper, her bra hooks, and, finally, her breasts, and she told herself to stop thinking. She pretended they were dancing, and she let Dave take the lead, undressing her, easing her down onto the bed, spreading her legs and working himself inside of her. It hurt, but not terribly. Jo stroked the smooth skin of Dave’s back, his broad, muscled shoulders, the unfamiliar hair on his chest, and shut her eyes, trying to think of nothing or, at the very least, trying not to think of Shelley, until it was over and Dave lay beside her, propped up on one elbow, looking pleased with himself.
My first penis, Jo thought, considering the organ in question as it lay, limp and slick and sated, plastered to Dave’s left thigh. There’d been a poem she’d read in college that began My last duchess hangs upon the wall My first penis sticks against Dave’s thigh, she thought, and she’d had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Erect, it had been more impressive, a novel juxtaposition of hard and soft, with its glove of silky skin that slid against the stiff, veined flesh underneath. Dave had groaned when she’d touched it, had settled his hand over hers and showed her how to grip firmly at the base, how to tug the skin up toward the tip. He’d put on a condom, and she’d lost sight of her new friend for a while. When he’d withdrawn it was already beginning to wilt within its rubber sheath. Now it lay before her, dormant, soft, curved in the shape of a C.
“You were a virgin,” Dave said, and Jo rolled over quickly, afraid that she’d been caught staring, and of what her expression might be telling him. He popped two cigarettes into his mouth, lit them both, and handed her one.
“Are you surprised?”
“A little, I guess. All the demonstrating you did, all those marches, I wouldn’t have taken you for old-fashioned.”
“Exactly what do you think happens at a picket?” Jo asked. The physical exertion and the champagne they’d had with dinner left her feeling relaxed and expansive, the way she’d felt after a tennis match, or after her basketball coach had made them run laps for miles. She also felt hopeful. She was, she recognized, not passionately attached to Dave the way she’d been to Shelley. She hadn’t given him her heart, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have feelings for him. She enjoyed his company, and his touch, even if she could admit that the sex was just okay. If being with
Shelley had been like a front-row seat at the best concert in the world, sleeping with Dave was like hearing music played on a phonograph in another room, the notes muffled by the walls. The pleasure was still there, it was just distant, more faint. But it wasn’t as if she found him repulsive, or his touch unendurable. She liked Dave. She liked his wit, his loose-limbed grace, his easy conversation, his beaky nose and emphatic eyebrows, his thick, dark hair and his honey-colored skin. Most of all, she liked his confidence, the way he’d assumed responsibility for both of them; the way she’d been able to just nod and smile and go along with his plans: for dinner. For dancing. For finally having sex with a man. Maybe, even, for the rest of her life.
Dave put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. “I bet you had a million fellas sniffing around in Ann Arbor.”
“Not a million,” Jo said. Not fellas, either, she thought.
“So just one? Someone special?”
Against her will, Jo thought of Shelley. She remembered Shelley in her arms in the swimming pool, Shelley’s long, dark hair fanned out in the water, the curve of her dark lashes against her pale, freckled cheek. The saucy tilt of Shelley’s breasts, the bossy jut of her chin. Shelley in her wedding dress, her eyes hot and her expression wounded as she watched Jo dancing with Dave.
“Not really,” she said, and prayed that her voice sounded casual, even as she wondered what rumors Dave might have heard. He was, she had learned, a consummate gossip, a man who prided himself on knowing everything there was to know about everyone who mattered. She was thinking of one night in particular, a Halloween party at the Tri-Delt house. Shelley had dressed like a cat, with furry triangular ears glued to a headband and the tip of her nose blackened with eyeliner. In the darkness of the basement, with the music so loud it was almost a physical thing around them, Jo had come within inches of easing Shelley into a corner and kissing her, right out in the open; kissing her until she purred, arching her back and pressing her breasts into Jo’s chest. She’d contented herself with smoothing Shelley’s hair under the guise of straightening her cat ears. In bed with Dave, Jo said very softly, “Not boys.” Her body went stiff, prickling with goose bumps as Dave didn’t answer, and she realized what she’d admitted. Then she thought, Maybe he knew already, and It’s better if he knows. If we’re going to be together, I don’t want to start out with lies.
Mrs. Everything Page 24
