Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

by Melissa Senate

  Theodore Manfred Possibility #3: “No, sorry.”

  Theodore Manfred Possibility #4: “Yes, that’s me.”

  Drop phone from trembling hand. Shake. Pick up phone and find voice. “Uh, well, this is your long-lost daughter, Eloise, and I was wondering why you left without a backward glance or even a penny of child support.”

  Silence. “Well, let’s see. It was so long ago, and that’s not such an easy question to answer. Nice to hear from you, though.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that last bit. I had no idea if Theo Manfred would be happy to hear from me or not. If he would, wouldn’t he have tracked me down over the years?

  “You know, Eloise, when people do things they feel very uncomfortable about, they tend to rationalize so that they can live with their actions,” my grandmother said. “Your father might have figured he’d come find you when you turned eighteen and try to explain why he left, and maybe that made it easier for him to stay gone. And maybe he kept moving the mark—to when you turned twenty-one, to when he got a job, to when he got over the flu. And suddenly, twenty-seven years went by.”

  “Is that what you think happened?” I asked. “He always meant to come back but just never could-slash-would?”

  She nodded. “There is no doubt in my mind that your father loved you and loved Emmett.”

  “But how do you leave two children you love and never come back?” I asked. “How do you do that?” Tears, big fat wet tears, rolled down my cheeks.

  “I don’t know, honey,” my grandmother said, patting my hand. “But I do know it wasn’t about you or Emmett—or your mother. Your father just couldn’t handle commitment and responsibility.”

  “Like Emmett,” I said without thinking. I had promised my brother not to tell Grams about Charla’s pregnancy.

  She hesitated, but then she nodded. “Like Emmett. But I think this girlfriend of his is special. I think she may be the one to start changing the way Emmett’s mind works, the way he thinks. I sense something special between them.”

  “If Mom couldn’t change the way Theo Manfred’s mind worked, then no one could,” I said. “Mom was so beautiful and smart and kind and amazing.”

  Grams put her arm around my shoulder and squeezed. “You’re absolutely right, sweetie. Which is why I’d bet my bottom dollar that your father never married, never had more children and is to this day very much alone.”

  “I wish I had an appetite for these cookies,” I said. “They smell so good. He liked cookies, I remember that. I don’t remember much, but I do remember him liking cookies. Oreos.”

  My grandmother nodded. “He did like sweets.”

  Tears came again from nowhere, and I wiped them away. “I’m such a crybaby. It’s so embarrassing. Crying over someone I haven’t seen since I was five.”

  “It’s a very emotional issue, Eloise,” Grams said. “You have every right to cry. Every right to feel bad. And every right to find your father and demand your answers, if that’s what you decide to do.”

  “I don’t even know where to look,” I said. “He could be anywhere.”

  “Well, these four states are a start,” she said, scanning the addresses. “Pennsylvania. Yes—he did say he was from Pennsylvania. His parents died when he was young, a car accident, and he was raised by a grandmother.”

  “Did I ever meet his grandmother, my great-grandmother?”

  Grams shook her head. “She’d already passed before you were born.”

  “I’m ready,” I said. “Tell me everything there is.”

  “There isn’t much, Eloise, but I’ll tell you everything I remember.”

  For the next hour, she told me about a tall, good-looking man named Theodore Leo Manfred whom my mother met in a creative-writing class at the New School. He was working on a novel. He temped, he waited tables. He’d save up some money, rent a cabin in the woods in the Catskills or Pennsylvania and write for months at a time. When she became pregnant accidentally, he skedaddled.

  “Did he come home when I was born?” I asked.

  My grandmother hesitated, then shook her head. “You were four months old when he came back. He stayed for a few months, then went back to the cabin to write.”

  “Did his masterpiece at least get published?”

  She shook her head. “He sent it out, but it got rejected. A number of times. He’d get very down about it and leave again.”

  “Why did she have another baby with him?” I shouted. “Why would she bring another baby into this world with a father like that?”

  “Don’t judge your mother, Eloise,” Grams scolded gently.

  “Sorry.”

  But suddenly I knew why. There was only my mother, me and my grandmother, that was it. My mother wanted me to have someone else.

  “She had Emmett so I wouldn’t be alone,” I said quietly.

  “She had Emmett because she loved children and wanted another baby very much and was a very good mother,” Grams said. “But yes, part of the reason she had Emmett was so you would have a sibling.”

  “Why does it have to be so complicated?” I asked.

  My grandmother smiled. “As I told you, Eloise, there’s rarely black and white. Everything is complicated.” I put my head down on the table and Grams rubbed my back. “Things tend to happen for a reason, Eloise. Maybe it’s time. Have you told Emmett that you’re thinking of looking for your father?”

  “No,” I said. “And I think he’s going to flip.”

  chapter 10

  I was right.

  When I was sure that I was going to do it, that I was going to find my father, I called Emmett and told him there was something important I wanted to talk to him about.

  “I don’t need lectures from my big sister,” he said. “If this is about Charla and the pregnancy, forget it. It’s my business.”

  “It’s not about Charla.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t want to get into it on the phone,” I told him. “It’s the kind of thing you talk about in person.”

  “What?” he said. “Just tell me.”

  “I’m going to find our father.”

  Silence.

  “Emmett?”

  “You’re going to find that asshole?” he shouted. “Why? What the hell for?”

  “Emmett, I don’t want to talk about this on the phone,” I said again. “Can you meet me for coffee? I’ll come downtown.”

  “Fine,” he muttered. “On the way down, think about what a bad idea it is to go find that loser, and by the time you show up, I’ll be able to convince you not to do it.”

  When I arrived at a diner a few blocks away from Charla’s apartment, Emmett was using his fork to poke at the ice cubes in his water glass.

  “I ordered steak fries with gravy,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “So, did the subway ride give you time to think?” he asked.

  “Yes, it did. And now I’m a hundred and ten percent sure I should go find him.”

  That wasn’t really true. I was really only forty percent sure I should try to find Theo Manfred.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to find that asshole!” he shouted.

  The elderly women in the booth in front of ours turned around and scowled.

  Sorry, I mouthed to the one facing me.

  “Emmett, could you not yell, please?”

  “No, I can’t not yell,” he muttered. “What the hell are you doing? Why are you wasting your time going to look for someone who left you? Who didn’t pay a dime in child support.”

  “Emmett, I told you why. It’s something I need to do.”

  The waitress delivered his fries, and I ordered a cheese omelet.

  His hazel eyes flashed with anger. “Why? Why do you need to do it?”

  “Because it’s unfinished business. I need to deal with it once and for all.”

  Emmett stabbed at a French fry and pointed it at me. “You don’t need to, Eloise. The last thing you need is to find him. He doesn
’t deserve to be found.”

  “This isn’t about him, Emmett. It’s about me. I need some kind of closure. And maybe you do, too.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need, okay?” he snapped.

  “Okay. I need closure.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “From something that happened twenty-seven years ago?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Because it’s still happening.”

  “What kind of psychobabble mumbo jumbo is that? It’s still happening? Bullshit. If you have issues or whatever, it’s not because of Theo Manfred.”

  “I’m going to find him, Emmett. I’m starting with Theodore L. Manfred in Pennsylvania, since that’s where Grams says he’s from. I know it’s hard for you to deal with, but I need to do it for me. Just like you needed to do it when you were sixteen.”

  “I was a stupid teenager then,” he said. “It’s totally different. We’re adults now.”

  Oh, really?

  “Mom’s probably turning over right now,” Emmett muttered.

  I glared at him. “I don’t think so. Were she sitting right here, I think she’d support me.”

  “Well I don’t support you,” he said. He threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, grabbed his jacket and stomped out.

  Yeah, Emmett. What else is new?

  I was now the not-so-proud owner of a pair of yellow leather platform wedding shoes with a tiny tuft of yellow feathers on the ankle strap. After laughing at them for a full minute in Foot Couture on West Broadway (when the Wowers were too busy kissing up to Astrid’s awful taste), Jane oohed and aahed with the appropriate reverence for every click of Devlin’s camera. My diary entry had to focus on how shopping for my wedding shoes differed from shopping for regular shoes. Ooh, pick me—I know! It differs because I normally don’t buy yellow shoes!

  Jane had hoped that a store that sold yellow platform shoes with feathers might also sell flag-inspired shoes, but no dice. When Astrid dismissed us, we hit a few likely stores, then gave up and decided to head uptown for our monthly candle-lighting ritual at St. Monica’s.

  We each lit a candle for our mothers. Jane picked up another candle to light for her father. “Why don’t you light one for your father too?” she suggested.

  “He’s not dead,” I reminded her.

  “But he’s gone,” she said.

  “But he’s not dead.”

  “But he’s gone,” she repeated.

  “He doesn’t deserve a candle,” I muttered, and walked over to the row of pews we always sat in, the very last.

  Emmett was right about him not deserving.

  “Eloise, the candle can be for the loss too,” Jane whispered.

  “Why does he deserve a candle?” I whispered back. “That would mean I care. That I think about him. That I give a flying shit.”

  “Sweetie, you’re going to look for him tomorrow. I think you care.”

  I shook my head. “I’m going to look for him for answers. To put my past to rest. Not because I care about him.”

  “Okay, that’s fair,” she said. “But you’re allowed to light the candle for you. For five-year-old Eloise whose fifth birthday really sucked. For six-year-old Eloise, seven-year-old Eloise, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen—”

  “Are you going to count all the way to thirty-two?” I asked her.

  She nodded, and I smiled.

  She squeezed my hand, then hung her head and stared at her feet, which meant she was thinking of her own father, of the last time she saw him. One day he’d been ballroom-dance-twirling her up Fifth Avenue to the Central Park Zoo, and the next day he was gone, senselessly, suddenly, suckily gone. She pulled a picture of her parents out of her purse and held it against her heart without looking at it.

  I couldn’t remember my father without pictures. I couldn’t just conjure him up in my mind. When I did think of him, he would appear in my mind as he did in the few photos I had of him. A new wave haircut, a white button-down shirt. Jeans. Big black boots. That was him. He rarely smiled in the pictures.

  There were some memories. Of candy stores. Of playgrounds. Of throwing me up in the air and catching me.

  If he lived with us, I didn’t remember anything, really.

  “That’s called repression,” a shrink had once told me in college. I’d sought out a counselor in the crisis center when my breakup with my then-boyfriend, Michael, started affecting my ability to go to classes (I stopped for two weeks), or to eat or to come out from under the covers.

  “It’s not about the guy,” the counselor had said. “I mean, it is, outwardly. But what it’s triggering is your abandonment issue. Your father left you.”

  “I’m upset because the love of my life just dumped me,” I yelled back.

  “Wasn’t your father once the love of your life?” the counselor countered.

  Oh, please. Gut-boiling angry, I called him a quack and stormed out of his office.

  I don’t know if my father was the love of my life when I was five. I don’t remember.

  Apparently, that was called repression.

  At the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, the phone rang.

  Hi, Eloise, it’s me, Noah. I’ve decided to stop being a traveling man. I’m staying home for good. You’ll never have to see another at-the-ready bag again.

  But it was Emmett. “Don’t leave without me,” he said. “I’ll be there in a half hour.” Click.

  Well, well.

  I sat up in bed and grabbed Noah’s pillow and held it to my chest and breathed in the soapy scent of him. This weekend he was Hot Newsing in Colorado with Call Me Ash. A UFO had been spotted by several residents of a small town—the mayor included.

  I didn’t know how to pack, how long we’d be away, what to put in my purse. I only knew I was going to Pennsylvania, to the address I’d found on the Internet.

  I decided to bring nothing but the directions. That way, I wouldn’t have expectations of staying overnight—or not.

  What did you wear to meet your father for the first time in twenty-seven years? Should I flatten my hair as befitted the Modern Bride or poof it up as befitted my usual self?

  I settled on a black turtleneck, a denim knee-length skirt, my most comfortable low-heeled black knee-high boots and a little makeup. I let my hair do whatever it did when I stepped out of the shower. I looked like me.

  A half hour later, Emmett and Charla were at my front door, carrying overnight bags. Clearly they had expectations. Or were just prepared for anything.

  Emmett looked tired; Charla looked excited.

  For someone who wasn’t committed, Emmett sure brought Charla everywhere—and everywhere important.

  Emmett dropped his bag and ran a hand through his hair. “I want to come with you so that when we find him, I can punch him out and go back home and get on with my fucking life.”

  Charla patted his shoulder. “I convinced Emmett that he has some residual anger where his father is concerned,” she whispered, as though Emmett couldn’t hear her.

  “I’m not angry,” he said.

  “But you want to beat up our father?” I said.

  He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Would you stop calling him ‘our father’? He’s not ‘our father.’ He’s our biological father.”

  No, Emmett, you’re not angry.

  chapter 11

  Emmett was staring out the back-seat window of our rented beige Chevy, grim-faced as usual. Charla was singing “This Land Is Your Land.” And I was biting the inside of my lip and counting trees. I’d gotten up to five hundred million. Having been a city kid all my life, I’d never seen so many trees in a row. For the past twenty minutes, there had been nothing but trees. Highway and trees and the occasional green sign indicating where the heck we were. Weigh Station. Next exit 14 miles. Speed Limit: 55 (and sometimes 65).

  We’d been driving for an hour and a half and were still in New Jersey. I had no idea New Jersey was so pretty. Given all the jokes about “which exit” and smokestacks and
Jersey Girls, whodathunk there were acres and acres of untouched land, snowy white and unpolluted by eight million people and eight million taxi cabs. I saw more cows and horses in the half hour than I’d seen in my entire life.

  We were on our way to Boonsonville, Pennsylvania, population 4, 600, which, according to Yahoo Maps, was in Bucks County. My grandmother thought Bucks County, with its historic towns and artsy, charming, woodsy atmosphere, fit with what she remembered of Theodore Leo Manfred, Writer. According to Facts About Boonsonville, if you lived in town, either the historical district or downtown, you could get along without a car if you were the type who could. From what my grandmother told me and the little my mother mentioned over the years, Theo Manfred was the type who would get along without a car.

  We didn’t exactly have a plan about what we were going to do when we got there. We had a name that matched, a state that matched and an address. That was where we were headed.

  “Are we just gonna knock on the door and see if a man resembling us opens it?” Emmett asked.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “You’ve really planned this out,” he said.

  I ignored him.

  “I’ve been to Pennsylvania before,” Charla chirped. “When I was a kid, we went on a school field trip to see the Liberty Bell. And I’ve also been to Hershey Park. It’s like a chocolate wonderland. God, I miss chocolate!”

  Emmett reached into his pocket and handed her a Snickers bar.

  She beamed but wagged her finger at it. “Chocolate contains caffeine. The baby can’t have any.”

  Emmett paled and took back the candy bar.

  I tried to imagine how Emmett felt about the baby, but I couldn’t. I had no idea how he felt about Charla. Four years? And he’d never even mentioned her? How was that possible? If I hadn’t gotten a glimpse of her myself last year in my doorway, I wouldn’t have known she even existed.

  “I have no idea how I’m going to get along without coffee,” Charla said. “I can’t have coffee, chocolate, farmed salmon, tuna, swordfish—”

  Emmett looked at her quizzically. “Fish has caffeine?” he asked.