Friday Mornings at Nine

by Marilyn Brant

  Not for the first time (or even the first fifty times) that night, she wished Dr. Luke would have been there. Maybe she would have been able to chat with him in another room, like the kitchen. Maybe they would have inspected the Wieners’ cookbook collection or checked out their hanging copper saucepans. Maybe he would have spoken to her, not at her, and she would have been able to lose her self-consciousness in the joy of that.

  She tugged at her red cloak until it rested warmly against her shoulders and adjusted her hood. Then she glanced one last time at the table. She and Graham were going to have to go outside in a minute if they wanted to catch the final, gory act of the evening.

  She looked at her husband, who was still talking with his friend, reached for a wall chocolate out of habit, then pulled her arm back. No! She wasn’t going to blindly grab more junk food. She just wasn’t. But a cold voice next to her made her jump.

  “What? Did the skeleton on the wall scare you? Tell you not to eat anything unless it was Italian?” said that frightful voice, and Bridget realized it belonged to none other than Dr. Nina, who’d dressed herself up as Glenda the Good Witch. Yeah. At least she got the witch part right.

  Bridget said, “Um,” but mostly stared at her. It was odd to even hear the woman speak. The female dentist had spent the past two weeks ignoring her so completely in the office that Bridget had begun to believe she was invisible to Dr. Nina, like an audience member was to a lead performer when the houselights were out and the show was in progress. Glendale Grove’s very own production of Wicked.

  “I talked to my sister Nancy this week,” Dr. Nina said loudly. “She said she’d met you downtown. Ran into you and Dr. Luke having lunch together. Said the two of you looked awfully cozy for not being related.” Her ice-chip eyes pierced Bridget with their frigidity, her narrow lips thinning to painted horizontal lines two inches above her pointy white chin.

  This knowledge of Nina’s was a revelation to Bridget. Until that moment, she hadn’t gotten any vibes from the Witch that clandestine behavior at the dental group was suspected by anyone. Perhaps Bridget and Dr. Luke had been oblivious to the signals they were sending. Perhaps they had been a subject of office gossip without being aware of it. But, still, they were hardly lewd. So what if they chatted a lot? They were friends. Friends talked to each other.

  She opened her mouth to tell Dr. Nina this, but the other woman beat her to the punch.

  “Oh, I know you both think you’re being subtle, but it’s a slippery slope, Little Red Riding Hood. Better watch who’s riffling through your basket of goodies.” Dr. Nina pivoted away from the table, clearly intending to march away, while Bridget was tempted to fling the contents of a Poisoned Appletini at her in hopes that she’d melt. But, to both their surprise, another voice joined the conversation.

  “Hey there,” Graham said to Dr. Nina, a black beer and a wienie on a toothpick in his left hand, his right hand extended out to her. “Don’t think I know you. I’m Graham, Bridget’s husband.”

  Dr. Nina’s eyes grew wide and a cloud of some emotion—possibly regret, but Bridget wouldn’t bet on it—passed over the woman’s face. She swallowed and shook Graham’s callused hand with her bony one. “I’m Dr. Nina Brockman-Lew—” She cut herself off and her stiff posture slackened for a moment. “Nina Brockman,” she corrected. “It’s very nice to…” She stopped and sighed. “Oh, hell. Are those things spiked?” She pointed to the green tequila-infused Kool-Aid cups.

  Graham nodded. “Sure are.”

  “Thanks.” Nina grabbed one and beat a hasty retreat. Which left Graham and Bridget facing each other with nothing but a basket, a bloody wienie and a black beer between them.

  The expression of hurt on her husband’s face left her with no doubt that he’d overheard Dr. Nina’s allegations. Graham set down his toxic-looking beverage, tossed out the ketchup-dripping snack and turned slowly back to her. “So, you went downtown…with another guy? That gay dentist from your office?”

  Before Bridget could consider the implication of her words, she blurted in exasperation, “Dr. Luke is not gay.”

  Graham leveled a serious look at her. “Exactly. Sounds like you got lots of little secrets at that office of yours.” He paused. “What the hell else has been going on over there that I don’t know about?”

  The Emperor, still wearing only a crown and those beige briefs, burst into the room with the pronouncement, “The ceremony’s starting, everyone!”

  Bridget said, “We should talk, Graham. But please—could we do it at home?”

  Her husband nodded, the flash of distress in his eyes causing her to feel a scarlet wave of shame as they rushed out of the room. He said, “Yep. Let’s get this dumb show over with so we can go.”

  With a heart full of dread and a silent prayer to the God she felt she’d been disobeying lately (in hopes He would help her anyway), Bridget agreed and followed Graham to the backyard.

  In the living room, Jennifer felt the vibration of the phone in her palm and knew David waited on the other end of the line. With Michael still in the bathroom, she figured she’d have at least a few minutes to talk. And she needed to tell David to stop the constant messaging. That was how she talked herself into answering.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she told him, cowering in an empty corner of the room, which suddenly seemed much more open considering the mass exodus outside.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” David said simply. “What’cha doing now, Goldilocks? Have any porridge at the party?”

  “No. Just an oatmeal-raisin cookie. And kind of a weird green drink.”

  “Sounds like frat party wackiness. I’m betting you got in some damn good people-watching tonight.”

  “Yeah,” she said, glad someone could understand the incredible level of information overload that hit an introvert like her at one of these gatherings. And how she felt about the social element of it, too. She couldn’t lose herself in an event like this, not the way Tamara could. Nor could she interact in some sweet and meaningful way one-on-one like Bridget. No. She could only watch the spectacle like the outsider she was and try to withstand the three-hour-long pummeling. Had Michael truly been company for her that night, and not merely another source of tedium, maybe she could have carved out an itty-bitty niche of enjoyment despite the cacophony. But neither “fitting in” nor “fun” were in the cards for her this time.

  “Do you have a minute? Can you tell me about it? I miss seeing the world through your window, Jenn.”

  In spite of her frustration with the evening and her irritation with him for his text intrusions, she agreed. “Fine. But only for a minute.” She described the trio of lipstick ladies she had overheard earlier, complete with conversational snippets. She gave him a ten-second rundown of the Wieners and the other party guests in their fairy-tale costumes. And she explained the setup for the “beheading ceremony” set to begin any moment.

  David laughed on the line, injecting a previously absent bolt of amusement into her night. “Thank you,” he said when, really, for this tiny sliver of delight he had passed along, she felt she should be thanking him. “That was hilarious. I know you need to go. I just don’t wanna stop talking to you.”

  She sighed. “I don’t want to stop talking to you either, but this needs to be the end of our conversations for tonight. No more calls. No more texting. Okay?”

  There was a long pause on the line. “Okay, Jenn. But just tell me one last thing. You’re coming to the reunion for sure, right? Absolutely positively for sure? Your husband knows about it and everything?”

  It was her turn to pause. She’d kept that weekend clear, yes, but she still hadn’t mentioned the reunion to Michael. A noisy group of revelers skipped by, so she walked deeper into the corner, brought the phone closer to her left ear and plugged her right ear with her fingers. “I haven’t talked with him about it yet, but I’m coming. I promise. And I’m going to tell him all about it. Soon.”

  “I’m counting on that
,” he told her and, indeed, she could detect an edge of desperation in his tone. “Without Marcia and the boys here to distract me, I’ve been alone with my thoughts. And, I know it’s my fault and everything, but there are some seriously unresolved things between us, Jenn.”

  “Look, David. Now’s not the time to—”

  “I know. I know. You don’t have time right this second to discuss this. I get that. But I just wanna know that we are going to discuss it. I can’t wait another eighteen years, babe.” His voice sounded ragged and more tired than she’d thought when he added, “Listen, you were always my golden-haired girl. I keep on thinking about you…. And I need to see you again.”

  “You will. I’ll be there in a few weeks.”

  “Good. G’night, Jenn. Be careful which bed you fall asleep in, okay?”

  She laughed. “Okay, David. Bye.”

  She clicked off the phone and exhaled a long slow breath, but she didn’t even have a chance to turn around before hearing the growl of the Bear as he cleared his throat behind her. As she swiveled to face him, it would have been impossible to miss the steady, infuriated look on his face. In the animal kingdom, it would have been the deadly silence of preattack. Michael, no longer hiding in his cave and licking his wounds, was not remotely klutzy for once. He deftly stepped around the coffee table, narrowed his eyes at her and said, “You told me the battery needed to be charged, Jennifer. Quite an interesting conversation to have on a dead cell phone.”

  Oh, crap.

  Alone in the library loft, Tamara and Aaron still sat on the floor, the dim glow of the jack-o’-lanterns painting thin streams of golden light on the walls of the otherwise darkened room. A few other candles had burned down to stubs, too, creating the warm cocoon of a fireplace, and she and Aaron remained in the middle, like those final smoldering embers.

  Aaron, concentrating intently on the delicate process of building a series of card houses and one multistoried tower in the space between them from one of Kip’s card decks, murmured, “Could’ya help me add a wall to my fire department?”

  Tamara picked up a card and let it hover dangerously above one of the card fixtures. “Where do you want it?”

  “No, not there. That’s the library. Here.” He pointed to an empty spot on the carpet. “I’m just starting to build it.”

  She snorted. “What’re you doing? Making an entire village? Should we grab some of Leah’s Precious Moments kiddies to populate it? Maybe a couple who could stand in for the Wieners and give fund-raising orders?”

  “You’re laughin’ now,” he said seriously, “but you’re gonna be blown away by my kingdom.”

  “I think you mean your kingdom is gonna be blown away. Just one big gust of wind and—”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” he said, shooting her a threatening look.

  “Oh, yeah? I’m gonna huff…” She took a deep breath and leaned forward mockingly, but the unnaturally high level of oxygen threw off what little sense of balance she had left, and she had to pull away from her jest and sink back against the bookshelf. “Why is the room spinning?”

  “Because we’re on a planet that rotates,” he said reasonably. “The earth spins on its axis, making day into night and night into day. And sometimes”—he squinted through one of the windows—“they all kinda blend together.”

  She tried to follow his gaze out the window. He seemed to be staring at the moon, but when she strained to look through the one to their left, she saw Jennifer scurrying after Michael down the front walkway. Why would they be leaving before the big horrific event? Not that she blamed them, but still. That was odd.

  She glanced out the other window where everyone else had congregated, and she spotted Bridget and Graham in the back, although they were standing about a yard apart from each other. Then she saw Jon playacting some role in the ceremony. A palace guard or something, given his princely status. She rolled her eyes and, finally, just squeezed them shut. She couldn’t stand to witness any more of that chilling outdoor affair but, inside, she wasn’t sure if she could trust what she was seeing either.

  She’d passed from pretty buzzed into unequivocally drunk an hour ago at least, so everything was very, very fuzzy. With her eyes closed, though, she could let the sensations swirl around within her, not making her nearly as dizzy as when she tried to focus on any one thing. Or any one person.

  “I knew you wouldn’t wreck my village,” Aaron confided, knocking all of his card houses over with a sweep of his arm and gathering the cards back into a deck. “You’re not a d-destroyer. You’re really nice.” He laughed briefly. “I hadn’t expected that, actually, since I met Jon first.”

  Most people, unless they were very drunk, weren’t honest with her about their first impressions of her husband, which were almost always negative. When Aaron moved into the neighborhood last year, she could see the wariness in Aaron’s eyes when Jon introduced them. Maybe she’d tried to be extra nice to Aaron at first because he was so transparent in his caution. Or maybe it was because there was something very much anti-Jon about him. Two very different Princes…

  “Appearances can be deceiving, remember?” she told him. “S-So can relationships.”

  She sensed Aaron was struggling to extract her meaning as he balanced the card deck on top of an empty Appletini glass and inched his body over by hers. Soon, he was sitting so close to her that his princely robes touched her peasant blouse. This made her breath inexplicably quicken and, as she shook her head to try to break the enchantment, one of her long Rapunzel braids flopped forward and grazed his elbow.

  He lifted it up, the fake strands gingerly pinched between two of his fingers. “This isn’t you. I wanna see your real hair.” He dropped the braid. “I like your real hair.”

  “Yeah?” She blinked at him, the irritation and general discomfort of the wig suddenly poking through her consciousness. She couldn’t wait to be rid of it and began to peel it off just as the library’s grandfather clock struck midnight, the chimes reverberating through the entire wing of the house, empty except for the two of them.

  Aaron glanced at his watch. “That’s weird. I’ve got five-past-twelve. The Wieners’ clock is off.”

  “Or yours is,” Tamara shot back, finally freeing her auburn waves from the confinement of their bobby pins and the itchy heat of the Rapunzel wig. There were so many mixed up fairy-tale symbols in the house, she’d long since lost track of which should go with which story. In her head and outside it, it was all chaos and disorder—nothing was certain or logical except for her determination not to pretend anymore.

  He tugged off his watch and handed it to her. “It’s totally right. You check it out later.” Then he heaved off his Prince crown and ran his fingers through his blond hair. “‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’” he quoted, grinning at her. “I’m sick of that thing.”

  She giggled. “A man who can recite from Henry IV even when he’s drunk? Who are you, Aaron?”

  “I’m your neighbor,” he said. “‘Do onto your neighbor as you would have them do onto you.’ Or something like that.”

  “Isn’t it supposed to be “unto” you?”

  “Not in my book, and certainly not tonight.”

  Tamara wasn’t quite sure how to take that, so she just said, “First Shakespeare and now warped biblical references? Way to go, show-off.”

  “But I’m not a show-off. I’m not trying to impress anyone,” he insisted, looking closely at her, his fingertips skimming through the twisted ends of her real hair, his tongue darting out to wet his lips, his body flush against hers.

  In a moment she couldn’t have anticipated until a couple of seconds before it happened, he closed the gap between them and touched his wet lips to her dry ones. The swirl of sensation she’d experienced before intensified and deepened with his kiss. It was like the sounds and the colors and the scents became pulses of feeling. All of her sensory input was channeled into the minute indentations of their lips pressed together in the semidarkness
. She wanted to live forever in that tiny but infinitely wonderful space.

  Some jolt of sound, however—a cry from outside as the ax swung down upon the hapless Wolf?—distracted them both. For Tamara it was merely a momentary intrusion. She turned her face up toward Aaron’s again. But he stopped and pulled away from her.

  “Oh, my God,” he murmured. “I’m sorry. I can’t fucking believe I did that.”

  He groaned and wrenched himself off the carpeted floor, strode toward the door and stumbled down the stairs. She had no idea where he went or if he’d be back, but she felt the bitterness of his absence immediately. The last of the light and the warmth was sucked from the room.

  She still clutched Aaron’s watch in her hand a half hour (maybe more?) later when Jon prodded her to standing. “Time to go home, wench,” her husband said with the voice of vague boredom, although she supposed he was trying to be amusing. She was aware of trailing after him to their car and dozing off on the short drive home. She did not see Aaron’s car in his driveway or any lights on in his house when they passed by, and she was too tired to fight her way through the mental confusion of the evening before bed.

  But as she slipped Aaron’s watch into her skirt pocket, a motion unseen by Jon, she knew she wouldn’t have to check the time for accuracy. Numbers were meaningless. Half the watch’s face might as well read “Before” and the other half “After.”

  She was now living in the After.

  17

  After Midnight

  Sunday, October 31

  Bridget and Graham drove in silence to Jennifer and Michael’s house to pick up their kids, the goriness of the show still making Bridget shudder involuntarily, even though she knew it was all fake blood and feigned screams.

  Graham, who had been studying her from a safe distance ever since he overheard Dr. Nina’s comments, didn’t press her for an explanation yet, which she appreciated. She’d tell him the truth about her luncheon with Dr. Luke, of course—nothing had happened!—but there were other issues they ought to discuss. And, really, Bridget had no idea how to form those clusters of dissatisfaction into coherent and, above all, fair talking points.