by Bethny Ebert
Finally Parker looked up from Anna Karenina. “You’re serious?”
“Do you want to get married or not?”
“I don’t think you’re asking properly,” Parker said, pushing his glasses up on his face. He smiled, enjoying the attention.
“Christ,” Nick muttered, but he didn’t really mind it. He’d been preparing for this day his whole life, and they both knew it. He bent down on one knee and clasped his hands together dramatically, like he was praying for mercy. “Parker Beloit, will you please –“
“Yes, okay, fine,” Parker said, exasperated. He laughed for a long time, clutching his stomach, then wiped the tears from his eyes.
Nick stood around awkwardly, hands shoved in the pockets of his dark baggy Levi 501’s. His face burned. He didn’t really know how to act with stuff like this. Showing affection was difficult for him. It took him a long time to work up the guts to propose. Now that he’d done it, he wished he’d displayed a bit more finesse, maybe taken Parker out to dinner, hired a mariachi band or spelled the proposal out on a Scrabble board. It completely lacked style. Now he’d never get the chance to re-do it.
Parker’s face looked confused and bewildered to Nick, which was the same way Nick felt. He thought maybe it was a good sign. They were on the same page.
“Let’s do it.”
Chapter thirty-four
October 2010
“Courthouse?” Austin said. He stared at Nick and Parker. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Nick said.
Parker didn’t say anything. Married? Him? Them? It was all so sudden. His life felt like a giant airplane, flying away with his heart and wishes, leaving his brain alone near baggage claim to muddle over the practicalities.
“Are you really sure?” Austin said.
“Yes,” Nick said.
Parker nodded his head. He wondered when he’d be able to talk again. He felt dizzy.
“What are you going to wear?” Alex asked, curious.
“Clothes,” Nick said.
“Shouldn’t you maybe dress up?” Alex said. “I mean, you can only do this once. You should probably make it look decent.”
Parker found his voice. “I always look decent.” He paused. “But we should probably dress like better than. Um. Better. Better than dress. Ing. Um. Fuck. Oh my god, I can’t talk.” He put his hand on the wall, to steady himself. His knees were about to buckle.
“Rings,” Alex added, helpfully.
“I got those,” Nick said.
“I did too,” Parker said.
“Damn, you guys,” Austin said. “You should have, like, talked to each other about that first.”
“Well, I didn’t think he’d want to spend all that money on jewelry, so I bought some engagement rings just in case,” Parker said. He touched his hair to make sure he was still a tangible person. Suppose he was dead and this was some sort of alternate universe, or a dream of some kind. Might as well milk it until he woke up. “He’s so stingy anyway.”
Nick shook his head. “It’s better to be stingy. Saves the problem of having to talk to debt collectors later on.”
“Yeah yeah, okay,” Parker said. Well, now that they were arguing, he knew he wasn’t dreaming. Stingy bastard. “So whose rings are we using?”
“Well, um, maybe you could wear the one I picked, and I could wear the one you picked,” Nick said. He looked flushed. It seemed to be occurring to both of them that this was an irreversible thing. The gravity of it weighed over their heads like a very large cloud.
“Yeah, but then our rings won’t match,” Parker said. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either,” Nick said.
They all stopped talking, thinking about it.
“Do you think maybe we should wait?” Parker said.
“For what?” Nick asked.
“I dunno. Another time. When our lives aren’t so busy and we have enough time to plan a wedding out.” Parker took a deep breath, to collect his thoughts. “I mean, this is really fast. We don’t have to get married just because it’s legal now for us, do we? We have our whole lives ahead of us.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. He sighed. Technically it wasn’t even a marriage, only a civil union. He wished the political leaders would just let it be marriage. Wisconsin legal process took its sweet time.
“What, are you worried your sister will steal all the attention when she visits? You want everyone to remember you exist?” Parker put a hand on Nick’s shoulder, feeling where it was tense. He touched Nick’s hair.
Nick looked over at him. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Parker said. He put his hand on the small of Nick’s back. “Stop freaking out, man. I’m not going anywhere. I picked you. I like you. We’ve been together for like a million years. I know you have family issues, but so does, like, everybody.”
“Eight years,” Nick said.
“And anyway, we’ll make sure your sister won’t get into any trouble. We can give her a curfew or something, make her paint the side of the house and do our laundry.” He smiled. “Anyway, she won’t have any time to fuck shit up. She’ll be too busy with Mr. Tekken.”
“What,” Nick said.
“Just kidding,” Parker said.
“Stop trying to find dates for my sister,” Nick said. “I want her to stay over less often, not entice her with the attention of my roommates.”
“So I’m not dating her?” Austin asked. He frowned, scratching his head.
“No,” the other three said.
Austin sighed, reaching into his shirt pocket for another cigarette.
“Well, hey, you want to be engaged?” Nick asked.
Parker’s face lit up. He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. “Okay.”
They exchanged rings, and Austin got the beer out. The engagement celebration party took place on the porch with a giant pile of delivery pizzas and a case of beer. They sat out on the porch drinking, and whenever anyone walked past, they yelled out “hey, guess what! We’re getting married!”
From there, they spent months curled up together on the living room sofa, listening to the Pogues and Reel Big Fish and the Queers and the Ramones, trying to figure out tuxedos, sketching out bridesmaid dresses, debating cake recipes, looking over pictures of flower arrangements. It was a total annoying-couple love-fest. Austin and Alex tried not to puke.
After sending many more letters, typewriter-typed and covered in stickers, Grandma Roche and Brooke finally got to Wisconsin in a screechy, perfume-scented blur.
It was the day after Christmas. Grandma stomped the snow off her boots, removed them at the door. She studied the upkeep of the house, touching the pottery as if to judge the amount of dust that lingered on her fingers. She stared at her hands, blinking.
Brooke ran into the living room in her sparkly red combat boots, dragging the outside in with her, dirt and snow and slush. Parker was struck by the change in her appearance. She had two piercings in her nose and a bunch in her ears, big stretched gauges, rows of hoop earrings in her ear cartilage. Tragus, industrial, helix. She’d even cut her hair in a choppy short boy style. She squealed and ran into a hug with him and Nick. Surprised, Nick hugged her back. She exclaimed over their rings, and over them – they looked so grown-up, what the hell happened?
“Where the hell is dinner?” Grandma Roche said, not one for sentimentality.
Alex cooked up grilled organic peanut-butter-and-banana-and-honey sandwiches, his favorite. They all sat at the dinner table, chewing through the salty burnt taste and the peanut butter texture. One of the nice things about Alex, when he wasn’t being a pest, he liked to keep the peace. Organic peanut butter stuck to the roof of everybody’s mouth, forcing them to talk only when necessary.
It took Grandma Roche a while to stop asking who everybody was. Her eyesight was so bad that she couldn’t recognize people, except by their voices. She hadn’t seen Nick in over a decade. He was like a whole new person to her. Gradually, she to
ok to calling everybody “hey, you”, or “hey, asshole” when she felt like being rude, which was often.
Brooke slept on the couch and met up with Elizabeth Ericksen for an awkward conversation over hoagies. They were only staying for a week, she promised.
Then they missed their flight.
One week turned into two weeks. Nick was glad to have a job. It was nice to get away from home.
. Brooke wore on his nerves, like sisters do.
One night, after cheeseburgers and garlic mashed potatoes, when everyone settled in to watch television, she motioned to Nick to speak with her privately in the kitchen. He hated to miss the evening news, but the look on her face said something was up.
He walked over to her. “What?” he asked, once they were out of earshot.
She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“Leaving you like that,” she said. She looked out the window, then back at Nick. She was starting to get a cold, he could tell. Sniffling a few boogers back, she wiped at her face. “I had some stuff I had to deal with.”
“I know, dude,” Nick said. “You were pregnant. You told me already.”
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you did.”
She blinked rapidly, with a worried expression on her face. “When did I tell you that?”
“When you first got here. You were kind of drunk,” he said. He scratched an itch on his chin, then looked at his hand. The ring still surprised him when he noticed it.
“Oh,” she said. “Right.” She paused, then looked at her fingernails, dark green nail polish. “Are you mad?”
“Of course not,” Nick said. He narrowed his eyes. There was some melted cheese on the counter. Always something. He grabbed a sponge, adding dish detergent. “I’d probably run away too, if it were me. I was mad for a long time, dude. You scared the shit out of me. But I got over it.”
“I thought you hated me,” she said.
“Nah, I can’t,” Nick said. He scrubbed at the melted cheese, not looking her in the face. “Wish I could, but I can’t.”
“I suppose that’s as close to a kind word as I’ll ever get from you,” she said.
He laughed. “Don’t push your luck.”
She shoved him, then, and he fell over. He was such a lightweight. Never could handle his wine.
“Hey, guys,” Austin called from the couch, “no hate crimes over there. I haven’t gotten my Criminal Justice degree yet.”
“Oh, are you pre-law?” Brooke asked, looking over at him with raised eyebrows.
“No,” Austin said. He slouched in his seat. “I mean, yes. Kind of. I guess.”
“He just goes to the library on his days off work to read college textbooks,” Alex said, mouthful of tofu burger. “He likes LSAT study guide books the best though. Isn’t that funny? I think he’s got a crush on one of the librarians.”
“Does nobody read for fun anymore?” Austin asked, blushing.
“All the time,” Parker said.
“I think they just like making fun of you,” Brooke said. She smiled at him.
“Maybe you should read self-help books,” Alex said. He took a sip of his organic fruit-vegetable juice. “I hear they help a person develop a sense of humor.”
“Your face is a sense of humor,” Austin said.
“What?” Alex said. “That’s the worst insult I’ve ever heard.”
“You’re the worst insult I’ve ever heard.”
They glared at each other.
A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling. It landed between the two of them.
“What was that?” Nick asked.
“Pirates,” Alex said, to be funny. Just then, a gnarled old man wandered into the living room from upstairs. He wore a ratty old shirt, torn and faded. His teeth were a decaying mess. He had one glass eye. The other eye was merely a socket, a black hole in his weathered old face.
Parker stared at the eye socket, wondering what it led to. Who was this mysteriously creepy man?
“And who might you be?” the old man said to all of them, in a gravelly high-pitched accent. “Why might you be taking up space on me ship?”
“Your ship?” Nick asked. “Your ship? This is my house.”
“Then ye be the landlard?” the man said.
Nick furrowed his brow. “Well, no, but the real landlord is… hm.” He paused. “Where is she?”
“She who?” the man asked. He rubbed his hands together. “There be women on this ship?”
“It’s not a ship,” Brooke said.
The old man pointed a rusty sword at Brooke. It was a real sword, serrated, mean-looking. “Shut up, cabin boy, or I’ll make ye walk the plank!”
Brooke closed her mouth.
“Nick’s not the landlord,” Parker said. He bravely stepped in front of Nick, facing the old man. “I’m the landlord.”
Nick sighed, shaking his head. He stepped in front of Parker. “No, I’m the landlord.”
“Neither of you assholes are the landlord!” yelled Grandma Roche from upstairs. Austin had installed a PA system for her, so she wouldn’t have to worry about anything, but she was prone to abusing the privilege. “I’m the landlord!” She stomped out from the guest room, where she’d been working on Sudoku puzzles. “Now will everybody please shut up? I’m trying to concentrate!”
“Ay, forgive me,” the old man said, “but ye have a rather poorly-organized group here. I suspect they be up to no good. Ay, they’ll probably stage a mutiny behind yer back when ye least expect it.”
“Good!” Grandma Roche said. “You boring fucks! You had the whole house to yourselves for years and you never threw a single goddamn party!” She coughed and hacked.
“Hey,” Nick said. “Grandma. Chill out.”
“I ought to call your mother,” she said. “Treating a guest like that. You never even offered him a water! And lying! To an old man! Where are your manners?”
“Yaar, where be yer mannerisms?” The old man sneered at Nick. “I oughta make every single one of ye walk the plank for yer blatant disrespect.” He pointed the rusty sword at everybody, taking time to linger over each person, allowing them to notice the fat maggot crawling out of his empty eye socket. It fell to the floor. He picked the maggot up and stuck it in his mouth.
“Um, begging your pardon,” Parker asked, “but would you happen to be dead?”
“Arr! Insulting!” the old man said, straightening up his bent vertebrae and puffing out his chest. “I’m un-dead, thank ye for asking! The name’s Captain Fishbeef!”
“Nice to meet you,” Brooke said.
“Shut up, cabin boy!”
Brooke frowned.
“Well, Mister Captain Fishbeef,” Parker said, “you do understand this is the land of the living, and not the undead, correct? And also that it is not a ship?”
“What?” Captain Fishbeef said. His glass eye blinked a few times in confusion. The eyelid made a weird sticky noise each time. “Looks like a ship to me!”
“No, see, actually this is a house,” Parker said. “You’re on the wrong existential plane. The undead pirate ships are a few hours over, in Minnesota.”
“Oh, damn,” Captain Fishbeef said. He sighed heavily and put his sword back in its scabbard. He scratched at his cranium. “I feel quite the scoundrel.”
“You are,” Nick said.
“Sorry.”
Parker stood next to Captain Fishbeef. He grabbed the Captain’s bony arm and his skeletal, flea-bitten hands, pointing with Captain Fishbeef’s own hand out the door, so the old man could understand, even with his glass eye. Parker suspected the glass eye was some sort of real eye, but years of undead shenanigans had warped it into what appeared to be glass.
“Well, Minnesota’s that way,” he said. “Go out the door and take a left. Follow the sidewalk until you get to West Street Boulevard Avenue, and from there, turn a right. Keep going right. You’ll get to a gas station where you can buy a ticket for the bus, and they�
�ll take you to Minnesota. Once you get there, wait until the bus driver reports you’ve arrived at Lake Superior.”
“Ay, a lake,” Captain Fishbeef said, nodding to himself. “A superior lake.”
“Yes,” Parker said. “That’s where they keep the undead pirates.”
“I see,” Captain Fishbeef said. “Well, thank you, dear boy.” He clasped Parker’s hand with his skeletal hand shape. A shred of flesh hung off his knuckles, and he scratched at it. “I suppose I’ll be going now.”
“Okay, bye,” Nick said, trying not to gag at the smell as Captain Fishbeef staggered outside in search of Minnesota.
They waited to make sure he was really gone.
“Man, who was that guy?” Austin asked.
“Never met him,” Brooke said. She paused. “I think he just got lost.”
“Shut up, cabin boy,” Nick said, and she pushed him again.
And that was the end of that story.
There were more stories later, about Valentine’s Day, and Halloween, and the wedding, not to mention the honeymoon. But some stories are better off described only in epic poetry books or smarmy romance novels, neither of which fit the scope of this publication.
For everything, there is a time and a place.
But if you really wanted to know, it’s true. Captain Fishbeef made it back to the land of the undead pirates, and Nick O’Doole married Parker Beloit, and everybody lived happily ever after.
Acknowledgements
First I’d like to thank my friends. You are such great people and I hope life brings you all the love and success you deserve. Special mentions for Derrick, Linda, Zac, Bridget, Mike, Addie, Kyle, Kayt, Elizabeth, Heather, Joel, Adam, Tamee, and Veronica. Thank you for your kindness. May prosperity follow you wherever you go.
Furthermore, I owe a note of gratitude to everyone who ever called me retarded, slutty, or fat, and anyone who said my life would never amount to anything. You guys helped me learn to move forward even in the face of opposition. Never accept anything as truth without considering the source.
