The Might-Have-Been

by Joe Schuster

  “When was this?” he asked.

  “No. I won’t tell you. You just want to know so you can figure out my age. You’re …” She closed her left eye and regarded him with her right, calculating. “You were alive by then. I’m certain of it.”

  “I’m twenty-six,” he said, for some reason shaving a year off his own age.

  “Twenty-six,” she said, laughing. “I’m still not trading you my secrets. Okay, Mr. Twenty-six. What’s your story?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I play ball. I’ve always played ball. That’s it. Not much of a story.” He picked up a roll and broke it in two, buttering half and laying the other half on the bread plate between them and then took it back and put it on his own plate, aware of his gaffe: they were strangers. She wouldn’t want to eat half a roll he’d touched. “Were you part of that wedding I saw earlier?” he asked her.

  “My baby sister’s,” she said, and then brightened. “She’s twenty-five. Younger than you, so there you go. That answers one of your questions.”

  “Questions?”

  “ ‘Is she old enough to be my mother or just an older sister?’ ”

  “My mother is—”

  “Oh, God, here we go.”

  “She’s fifty-nine.” Or had she turned sixty by then?

  “That’s a relief. I’m nowhere near fifty-nine.”

  She had me late, he thought, but did not say. His mother was thirty-two when he was born, a Catholic woman who by then despaired of ever having children, until he came along: her one and only miracle.

  “My sister wanted to be married in Paris,” the woman said, cutting a bite from her sirloin and eating it.

  “Wow,” Edward Everett said. “Paris. Your family goes there quite a bit.”

  “You see, that’s just it. I went. She didn’t. The fortunes, well, have fallen since my father …” She finished her sentence by waving her fork in the air in a gesture that suggested she was dispersing smoke. “The Herron family, well, had its wings clipped. Financially. This was a compromise. Faux Paris. Here we are in the Salon de Jardin.” She gave a short laugh. “Garden Room,” she said in an exaggerated Midwestern accent, prolonging the “a” in “garden” and the “o” in “room.” She shook her head. “Pretentious—my sister has no idea what this is costing my mother. She took on a mortgage. I only hope to God she can pay it.”

  “Isn’t the wedding still going on?”

  “I’m confident it is.”

  “But you’re—”

  “Not there. Correct.”

  “Shouldn’t you be?”

  “Oh, it most definitely is unseemly that I’m not. The maid of honor has left the building. Not literally, of course. I’m still in the building, but … you know what I mean.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “No. I haven’t had enough wine to tell you that particular secret. But maybe soon.” She winked at him, picked up the carafe and poured more wine into her glass, although it was only half-empty, filling the glass until the wine rose nearly to the brim. She started to set down the carafe but then, as an afterthought, filled his glass to the rim as well. “Cheers, Mr. Everett. Cheers.” She lifted her glass in a toast and when they touched glasses, wine lapped from hers onto the tablecloth. “I am not a good customer today, am I?”

  They fell into a silence then, eating their steaks and potatoes, while the restaurant around them began to fill up. Before they finished their meals, every table in the place had a party at it and there were patrons two and three deep at the entrance, some standing on tiptoe, craning their necks to gauge their prospects of being seated. The woman had ordered a second carafe of wine without asking if he wanted any and, between the two of them, the second was nearly empty: perhaps half a glass remained in it. Edward Everett had drunk three or four glasses, Estelle twice as much. Her eyes seemed unfocused and as she cut her meat, her movements lacked the precision they had when they began. He finished the wine in his glass and drained the carafe into it to prevent her from drinking any more. Not that another half glass would matter, he thought.

  “Shall we—more?” she said.

  “Probably not,” he said.

  She nodded. “One of us is wise,” she said. Inexplicably, she began crying. Not in a way that someone at another table would notice, but silently, her eyes closed, tears welling at their edges, streaking her cheeks with mascara. “I’ve made a royal botch.”

  “How so?”

  “Have you been paying attention?” she said, fiercely. “Hello? Maid of honor? Fancy dress? Fifty-dollar hairdo? Orchid?” She plucked the flower from behind her ear, regarded it a moment and then crumpled it, letting the petals fall onto her plate, where they darkened as they absorbed the blood and juices from her steak.

  “I …” he began, although he had no idea what to say. He had never been good with women who cried. His mother. The girls he dated. He had always felt helpless in the face of them, even when he was the cause of their grief: girls he no longer wanted to see, girls who misinterpreted his attentions at parties, when they saw the prospect of a capital “R” relationship after only an hour together and all he was seeing was sex.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist. “You’ve landed one crazy, crazy broad here.”

  A busboy came by to collect their plates and the waitress wheeled a dessert cart to their table: a half-dozen cakes and some sort of torte.

  “What’s the worst thing you have on the cart?” the woman said.

  “Worst?” the waitress asked.

  “Most wicked. Dessert that most says ‘I am off this diet I’ve been on for three months to fit into this dress.’ That sort of thing.”

  “I like the triple chocolate cheesecake,” the waitress said, holding up a plate that bore a thick slice of the dessert, a chocolate cake with some kind of chocolate crumb crust, chocolate syrup dribbled across it in a pattern of overlapping arcs.

  “Done,” Estelle said.

  “Nothing for me,” Edward Everett said.

  The waitress wheeled the cart off. Estelle picked up her wineglass although it was essentially empty and drained the last few drops by tilting it above her open mouth and letting them fall onto her tongue. “I don’t think they’re serving triple chocolate cheesecake at the wedding. I think I won this round.”

  The waitress brought the cake to the table and set it in front of Estelle, who took up the dessert fork, cut a small bite from the edge of the cake and put it into her mouth, closing her eyes and giving a look that suggested ecstasy. “That is so much better,” she said when she had swallowed the bite. “You should have some.”

  “No, really.”

  “I insist.” She cut a slightly larger bite from the cake and held it across the table toward him, cupping one hand beneath the fork. Tentatively, he took it. The sweetness filled his head.

  “Ooh,” he said.

  “Yes, ooh,” she said. She removed the butter patens from a small dish of them, stacking the slivers neatly on the table, cut a piece of the cake, laid it into the dish and slid it toward him.

  “Estelle,” someone said from across the restaurant. “Estelle.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Jesus Jesus Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

  A tall, bony older woman in a blue sequined dress was pushing her way through the crowd of patrons waiting at the entrance.

  “Madam, you’ll—” the hostess said.

  “My daughter,” the woman said, pointing toward Edward Everett and Estelle.

  The hostess let her pass. Like Estelle, the older woman had an orchid nestled behind one ear. Her floor-length dress wrapped her so tightly that she could take only small steps. Partway across the dining room, she gathered some of the fabric in her hands and pulled the dress until it extended to just slightly below her knees, allowing her to walk more quickly.

  “Estelle,” she said again when she reached the table, whispering through clenched teeth. “This is unacceptable.”

  “It’s n
ot one of our better days, is it, Mother?” Estelle said. She took a forkful of the cake and made a show of moving it toward her mouth slowly. “This really is quite good,” she said. “You should try some, Mother. Miss,” she called to the waitress who was pouring coffee at the next table. “Would you bring another of these for my mother?”

  “Yes, madam,” the waitress said.

  “Technically, it’s mademoiselle,” Estelle said.

  “Oh, Estelle,” her mother said. “Now is not the time.”

  “It never is.”

  “What about your sister?” her mother asked.

  “My sister will be fine. She’s all well and married. Mrs. John Ogden. He’s an attorney,” Estelle said in Edward Everett’s direction. “She married quite well. Vanderbilt. Law review. Order of the Coif. He’s an associate right now, but his father is senior partner and so it’s in the cards for him.”

  “Estelle, I don’t understand why you’re doing this to us.”

  “Mother, just go back to the reception. Enjoy yourself. Just say, ‘She’s Estelle.’ That’s always been enough of an explanation.”

  Edward Everett became aware that the diners at the nearby tables had stopped their conversations and were listening intently to the two women. He wondered if he should get up and leave Estelle and her mother in what passed for privacy in such a public place.

  “Estelle, please.”

  “No, Mother. I am going to finish my very nice meal here with Mr. Everett and then—and then, I don’t know where the evening might take me.” She gave Edward Everett another wink.

  “I’m sorry,” her mother said. “I don’t know—Mr. Everest?”

  “Ever-ET,” Estelle said. “Not like the mountain. Like the city in Washington.”

  “Mr. Everett, I don’t know what pull you have with my daughter, but, could you?”

  “Leave him out of this, Mother.”

  “Maybe I should go,” Edward Everett said, extending his good leg to snare his crutches so he could draw them out from under the table.

  “And leave me with the check?” Estelle said. “I see your plan.”

  “No. I can just sign …” Edward Everett lifted his hand to signal the waitress.

  “I was being funny,” Estelle said, touching his raised arm, and he lowered it. “Please stay.”

  “Who—” Estelle’s mother said.

  “Mr. Everett is a serial murderer,” Estelle said.

  “Mr. Everett, I don’t know anything about you, but my daughter—”

  “She didn’t believe me,” Estelle said. “Tell her.”

  “I’m not a serial—” he started to say.

  “Estelle,” her mother said sharply. “This has to stop now.”

  “No,” Estelle said. “The only thing that has to stop is the scene you’re making. We were perfectly enjoying ourselves until you came in. Please go. Please give Alicia my love. Tell her that I hope she and Jack will have many happy years.”

  Her mother gave a sigh, shook her head. “The Ogdens will wonder what sort of family they have married into.”

  “It’s not like they can wrap her up and take her back to the store. It’s a no-deposit, no-return deal.”

  “I can’t go back and face those people.”

  “Yes, you can, Mother. Courage under fire. That’s the motto. Courage sous le feu. Remember? Sous le feu.”

  “This is just making Frank’s decision—”

  “Leave him out.” Estelle banged her palm on the table, rattling the dishes and toppling Edward Everett’s wineglass. Only his quick reflexes kept it from tumbling onto the floor and shattering.

  “Is there a problem?” the hostess said, approaching the table.

  “Estelle, one last time.” Her mother’s tone was pleading now. She began wringing her hands in a gesture that he imagined might have been the same one she used in Estelle’s story about the International Herald Tribune and the Louvre.

  “The last time?” Estelle said. “Good. Then we’re finished.”

  Her mother opened her mouth as if to say something but instead sagged as if she had been staggered by an actual physical blow, turned and left, a little unsteady on her feet. After a moment, the silence that had descended on the restaurant during the scene broke: flatware clinked against plates, conversations began again, no doubt people rehearsing the stories they would tell when they went home. You will not believe what happened in the restaurant tonight.

  “I am sorry, Edward,” Estelle said. “So so so sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. Still, how he had ended up across a table from her, part of an argument with her mother, was vague to him.

  “Who is Frank?” he asked her.

  “He was someone I was with and now I’m not anymore. That’s all.”

  Their waitress approached their table and set the slender leather portfolio containing the bill onto it. “Will there be anything else?”

  “I don’t think so,” Edward Everett said, opening the portfolio. The sum staggered him. Fifty-seven ninety-six. If he added a fifteen percent tip, it would approach seventy dollars. He had never seen a restaurant check for so much, at least not one that he was paying. He studied it—two steaks, potatoes, salads, two carafes of wine, two chocolate cheesecakes, one of which they’d never received—waiting for Estelle to offer to pay half but she did not. He took the pen the waitress had slid into the portfolio, glanced at Estelle, noted a tip of ten dollars, and scrawled his name on the line at the bottom of it.

  “The restaurant should just hang on to the check,” Estelle said. “That might be worth something someday, what with your autograph.”

  “That’s not likely.” He realized he had gone more than half an hour without thinking of his injury, without the thought that next year at this time, he might be stamping prices on grapefruit and bananas in a supermarket instead of playing ball.

  “Oh, come on, now. As my mother always said, Courage.” She gave the word a French pronunciation, rhyming it with “garage.”

  “Well,” Edward Everett said. “It’s been—”

  “Are you going?” she said.

  “I have to pack. I have to phone—” he stopped short of saying “my mother,” as that would make him sound like a boy, and went on, “—to make arrangements for someone to meet me at the airport. I’m sure you will want to get to the reception after all.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” She gave him a look, one he understood to mean, “Don’t leave.” Did she want to sleep with him or just not be alone? He doubted it would be the former: there were so many years’ difference between them.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “Okay.” She sounded disappointed. “I’ll walk out with you, though, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure.”

  Getting up, he realized for the first time that he was slightly drunk. Over the past weeks, he had become adept at maneuvering on crutches but as he left the restaurant, he had trouble getting his arms in sync as he hefted himself across the dining room, weaving through spaces that were more tight now than when he had gotten there, because of how crowded it was. At one table, where four obese men incongruously ate four identical cottage cheese salads, he had to reverse course because he could not slip between their table and the one beside it, where a pregnant woman nearly reclined in her chair rather than sitting up in it. By the time they reached the lobby, pushing through the dense crowd of people waiting for a table, he was exhausted, as if he had just run several miles.

  The lobby, too, was crowded. Outside, the rain—which he couldn’t hear when he was in the windowless restaurant—continued to pour and a throng was gathered just inside the doors to the hotel, peering out at the street. He turned to say good-bye to Estelle, but for some reason she was shrinking back into the restaurant.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s Frank,” she said, pointing to the lobby beyond them. Edward Everett looked in the direction she was
pointing but could not tell whom she meant: a heavyset man in plaid shorts with a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that was too tight for his belly was talking earnestly to a plump woman in a matching Minnie Mouse T-shirt, clutching a shopping bag from the Museum of Fine Arts. An athletic, bespectacled, ponytailed, white-haired man in a blue suit stood chatting with a young blond woman in a gold dress that barely reached mid-thigh. Three middle-aged men, in nearly identical brown suits, stood at the concierge desk, listening while she gave directions to somewhere, tracing a line on a map one of the men held out for her.

  “I don’t know—” Edward Everett said. Estelle shifted her position so that Edward Everett was between her and the lobby, as if she needed him to buffet a strong wind.

  “Can we wait here for a minute? Then you can have your life back. I promise.”

  Edward Everett maneuvered so that he was facing her, nearly losing his balance when he set one of his crutch tips onto a slightly uneven spot on the floor.

  “Esty?” a man said. “Esty?”

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Estelle said.

  Edward Everett turned his head. The ponytailed man in the blue suit was making his way toward them, the young woman trailing behind with her hand laced through the crook of his arm as if she were being escorted onto a dance floor.

  “Esty, your mother has been going crazy looking for you,” the man said.

  Estelle stepped around Edward Everett. “She found me, but she’s probably still going crazy.”

  Up close, the man seemed perhaps as old as sixty, the woman with him nearer to Edward Everett’s age. He could tell that her hair was not naturally blond; where she had parted it, not quite at the center of her scalp, the roots showed through as auburn.