One Last Thing

by Rebecca St. James

  “I can’t—”

  “Hear me out. Someone who doesn’t know the family, maybe someone you don’t even know yet yourself.”

  “Like a counselor?”

  The resentment was rising again. Why should I be the one seeing a shrink when Seth was the one with the problem?

  “Maybe, maybe not,” GrandMary said. “I think whoever it is will come to you when you’re ready. In the meantime, I’d be talking to God about this.”

  I shivered, and her eyebrows rose.

  “Is that a problem?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s just hard to imagine taking this—thing—to God.”

  Not that I’d taken anything to God, probably since I walked unprepared into my Victorian Lit final junior year. For a churchgoing family who was there every time the Reverend Paul Grissom opened the doors, we didn’t talk much about God himself. The question What are you talking to him about today? didn’t come up over dinner.

  “This thing that God already knows about?” GrandMary said. “Is that the thing we’re talking about?”

  She smiled and reached across the small space between us and covered my hand with hers. It was both frail and strong.

  “I suspect it’s been a while since you two have talked, but don’t worry about that. God is patient.”

  GrandMary straightened and looked at the silver watch dangling daintily on her wrist. “You’re supposed to meet your mother for lunch at eleven. The Soho South Café, I think she said?”

  Conversation over. I was both relieved and sad. The longing to tell her ached in my chest.

  “You’re coming with, right?” I said.

  She shook her head. “I have to pack.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Tonight.”

  “You’re not staying for Christmas?”

  “I may come back.”

  She stood up and held out her hand to me. I stood up and took it.

  “Your timing was actually good,” she said. “Yesterday I discovered something—nothing serious, I’m sure, but something I want to see my own doctors about.”

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Probably nothing. This is just a ruling-out process.”

  She wasn’t going to tell me anything more. Her face was set, and her body was already turning toward the door. It occurred to me that GrandMary and I might be alike after all.

  “You’re going to be all right, baby girl,” she said, and then she kissed my forehead. “I think I should stop calling you that. You’re not behaving like either a baby or a girl.”

  “No, don’t stop,” I said. “It’s your name for me.”

  She smiled again and then she was gone. I stood there for a while, wishing I was that innocent small child again. Wishing I didn’t know what I knew now.

  The Soho South Café on Liberty Street was a classy, eclectic place that had a sunny bar in front with turquoise-upholstered barstools you could see through the glass front. There were lamps with fluted shades, stucco walls cracked to expose the brick beneath, and in the foyer where I waited for Mama, an ornate old-fashioned chandelier was juxtaposed with contemporary paint-flung-on-the-canvas art. I hadn’t been there since it reopened under new management, and I would have dug it completely if I wasn’t dreading the conversation I was about to have with my mother. I hadn’t planned to do it in a public place, but Mama apparently had. Probably because she wouldn’t come undone in front of other people. She just wouldn’t.

  But the moment she walked through the glass doors, I knew that process had already started. She was polished and impeccably dressed in winter-white slacks and a pale yellow sweater combination, so that wasn’t what tipped me off. It was the too-cheerful smile and the pseudo-bouncy step and the high-pitched voice that greeted the hostess, all before she even noticed I was there.

  I had never seen my mother resemble a Barbie doll before.

  “Mama,” I said.

  She went into a mini-spasm as she turned around. Her usually poised blue gaze was all over the place.

  “I’m getting us a table!” she said.

  The two people behind the reservation desk exchanged glances. One of them looked as if someone had just run a fingernail across a Styrofoam cooler.

  I linked arms with Mama and nudged her to follow the hostess so she wouldn’t wander off to the bar or back out the door.

  “We’d love a corner table,” I said to the girl.

  She led us to one tucked near the window and shielded from the rest of the dining area by a ficus tree. I pulled a gold gilt chair out for Mama and perched unsteadily on the one across from her. I felt like I should be ready to pick up any pieces that fell off of her.

  Even as I thought that, she dropped her clutch bag on the floor. Our server retrieved it and gazed at it with enormous, mesmerizing eyes.

  “This is lovely,” she said to Mama. “And so are you.”

  Mama’s reply—“You’re so cute!”—was automatic, but the exchange seemed to calm her somehow, as if she’d finally come upon something normal in a morning of things that weren’t as they should be.

  Our server introduced herself as Ruth-Starr, described the specials, and floated off to get waters. I opened the menu, the first page of which listed the beverage offerings. I wasn’t big on cocktails, but I was tempted by one called Corpse Reviver.

  “It all sounds good!” Mama said. “You like tomato bisque, don’t you? Should we try that?”

  “Mama.”

  “I’ve heard the crab cakes are just to die for—ooh, now I have never had a salmon BLT—”

  “Mama.”

  She looked at me over the top of the menu that hid the lower half of her face.

  “Can we not pretend we care about the food right now?” I said.

  The wounded look in her eyes made me feel like a chump. Of course she was going to try to cheer me up. When Andrea Breneman found out her husband was having an affair, Mama took her shopping in Atlanta. A suddenly widowed college friend she hadn’t seen in years got a plane ticket to join her at a spa in Tampa. It was just what she did.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I haven’t felt much like eating. Why don’t you pick something out for us to share?”

  Ruth-Starr reappeared and Mama ordered the asparagus quiche and I tried to regroup. On top of learning that her mother had some kind of something a doctor needed to look at, Mama then had to go out and tell a bunch of vendors that her daughter had for some mysterious reason canceled the wedding that was probably supposed to pay their Christmas expenses. I couldn’t expect her to understand what I needed at that point. I didn’t even know myself.

  When Ruth-Starr had gone off to get our house salads, Mama picked up the black cloth napkin and smoothed it across her lap. She was visibly pulling her scattered self together.

  “How did it go with Randi?” she said.

  “Mama, first I want to tell you myself what—”

  “Daddy told me,” she said, hand up. “I won’t make you go through it again. Was Randi rude to you?”

  I felt my eyes narrow. “Why?”

  “Well, she was a little prickly with me—”

  “You talked to her?”

  Mama nodded. “She came by while you were in the shower. Fortunately your father had already gone, because I think he would have thrown her out. Bodily.” She waved her hand. “I understand she’s upset, so it didn’t bother me . . .”

  Now there was a lie. She was refolding the napkin in her lap for the third time.

  “But I didn’t want her hurting your feelings. This is hard enough for you.”

  “My feelings were hurt before I even walked in there,” I said. “What did she say to you?”

  “She just needed to vent.”

  “Mama.”

  She shook out the napkin. “She said Seth didn’t tell her anything that made any sense, and she was going to get to the bottom of it with you. Did she push you?”

  “She tried.”

  Mama aban
doned the table linen and looked sadly at the chrome saltshaker. “Randi is one of my best friends, but when she starts acting like Jack McCoy, I just can hardly stand her.”

  I laughed for the first time in days. “Are you talking about the guy on Law and Order?”

  “Isn’t that his name?”

  “It is.” My grin faded. “I hope this doesn’t come between you and Randi.”

  “That’ll be up to her. Oh, now that looks wonderful.”

  Ruth-Starr wafted salads in front of us and offered fresh ground pepper, which gave me a chance to gather my own scattered pieces. Friendships could come loose because of this. My mother wouldn’t be the only one unraveling because I’d pulled out the string.

  “You don’t have to do all the canceling,” I said when Ruth-Starr was gone again. “I feel bad that you’re dealing with the florists and everybody.”

  Mama poked at a crouton with her fork. “I don’t know what I can say to help you. I know I can’t fix it for you. But I can take care of the arrangements. That’s what I can do.”

  She was so close to tears I could feel them in my own throat. I didn’t know what to do to help her either. Maybe all you could do for an heirloom teacup was make sure you didn’t shatter it.

  “Try the dressing,” she said. “It’s lovely.”

  “Mama . . . I feel so bad . . . I hate for you to have to face your friends—”

  “Tara.”

  Her tone startled me.

  “Do not worry about what I’m going to tell my friends. That is the farthest thing from my mind. People will think what they’re going to think. We can’t do anything about that.”

  I knew my mouth was hanging open. And yet, why was I surprised? Madeline Faulkner might be coming apart in a few places, but underneath, she was still pure class.

  If that was all she could give me in this, that was enough.

  So I tried the dressing and ate some quiche and let my mother think she was cheering me up. That was what I could give her.

  I waited until Thursday, the eleventh, to tell the Bridesmaids. It was the first time I could get all of them together, for one thing, and for another, I needed the space to come up with the possible scenarios, all of which started with:

  TARA: I have something to tell you and I just want you to listen until I’m all done.

  It went nothing like that. Nothing.

  In the first place, the minute I saw all of them gathered at our round table at the Distillery, it hit me that this could be the last time we would get together like this, in this place. I sat down with them and burst into tears.

  “Oh my gosh, Tara, what’s wrong?” Lexi said.

  “You cut your hair!” Alyssa said.

  “Where is your ring?” Jacqueline said.

  The babbling stopped and all eyes went to my left hand, which currently covered my mouth. Alyssa grabbed it and examined it as if the diamond might be hiding in the folds of my knuckles.

  “He broke up with you?” she said.

  “We broke it off,” I said. “For now.”

  “What does that mean?” Jacqueline said.

  “It means I—we—have postponed the wedding. Indefinitely.”

  The stunned silence lasted only seconds. Alyssa’s very round blue eyes flattened. “Is this about that fight you had?”

  “I can’t really tell you what it’s about,” I said.

  That silence was even more stunned. Jacqueline’s lips blued as if she were going into shock.

  “What do you mean you can’t tell us?” she said.

  “Maybe we should leave her alone.”

  They both looked at Lexi as if she’d suggested they drop me off a cliff.

  “First of all,” Alyssa said, ticking off fingers, “we’ve been friends since forever. You don’t just announce you’re canceling your wedding and not at least tell us something. And second of all, I mean, don’t we deserve it?”

  “Why?” Lexi’s usually soft voice cracked like an eggshell. “Tara doesn’t owe us an explanation.”

  “Maybe I do,” I said. “I’m leaving every one of you with a floor-length gown you’ll probably never wear.”

  “Until you reschedule.” Jacqueline folded her arms. “I’m keeping mine. I can’t believe you and Seth are really breaking up for good. You’ve been together too long. You’re too good together.”

  “Evidently not.” Alyssa leaned on the table. “I know you, Tara. You wouldn’t call this off if something heinous hadn’t happened. So dish. C’mon, we’re your friends. We can help you.”

  “No,” I said, “you can’t. Well, yeah, you can—by just trusting me on this and not trying to make me explain.”

  Lexi immediately nodded. Alyssa did not.

  “I don’t know,” she said, face stiff. “This kind of ticks me off. You’re obviously hurting. You chopped off your hair. Geez, this is reminding me of, like, Britney Spears when she went off the deep end—”

  “I’m not going off the deep end!”

  “Then tell us—or you totally will. You look like you’re about to explode.”

  “Lyssa, leave her alone,” Lexi said.

  Alyssa sat back hard in her chair and stared over our heads. Beside her, Jacqueline pressed her eyelids. I had only seen her cry once before—when she told us she and Oliver had split up.

  “This must be like déjà vu for you,” I said. “I’m sorry—”

  She shook her head and jammed her bob behind her ears. “It isn’t that. I just feel like you’re shutting us out and I don’t understand it. Talk about trust—it doesn’t seem like you trust us.”

  “I do trust you.” I reached back to pull up the hair that wasn’t there. “But I promised Seth I wouldn’t talk to anybody about it.”

  “It’s that bad?” Jacqueline said.

  I looked at each of them—Alyssa smoldering in anger, Jacqueline tearful with hurt, Lexi brimming over with compassion that had no place to go—and I imagined myself telling them that no matter what Seth said, he wanted porn more than he wanted me. What would their faces tell me then? That they were disgusted? That I was a fool not to have seen it? That I wasn’t Tara the Good One anymore?

  The realization hurled itself into my face. It wasn’t just Seth I was protecting. Why would I? He hadn’t protected me. No—it was myself I was shielding. I didn’t even know until now that I was suffocating in shame.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for all of this, but I just can’t.”

  Before they could see any more of my humiliation, I left the table and ran down the steps, nearly plowing into Vic on my way.

  “You married yet?” he said.

  I sobbed all the way to the door.

  I was halfway across the parking lot when I heard Lexi calling to me. I only stopped because I couldn’t catch my breath. When she reached me my lungs were clawing for air.

  “Tara, are you okay?”

  I nodded—yet another lie—and let her put her arms around my waist. Lexi’s face only came to my chest, and I let my own face rest in her hair as I cried.

  “I’m not going to try to make you tell me,” she said. “But I’m here, okay? Even if you just need a place to go and not talk.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I pried myself away and told her good-bye and blindly crossed the parking lot and Montgomery Street. Not talk. That really was all I could do—not talk.

  Not to my best friends.

  Not to my big brother. Or my parents. Or my grandmother.

  GrandMary told me to talk—to someone who wouldn’t be hurt by what I had to say. Who would that be for a churchgoing girl like me? My pastor? Seth’s father?

  I didn’t stop half-running, half-wheezing until I got to Chippewa Square, where I sank onto a bench in front of the statue of James Oglethorpe. Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump sat in that very spot, on a bench created by Hollywood set builders, and talked to anybody who would sit next to him and listen. For me, there was no one.

  Anxiety needled through me
and came to an uneasy stop in my core. And there it stayed.

  EIGHT

  Two more things became apparent to me.

  One I realized that night when Kellen asked me to come up to the carriage house, just to hang out and watch some TV. I was thinking, Aw, what a sweet big brother, until I walked into his living room and found Seth sitting on the edge of the couch between a pile of Kellen’s unfolded laundry and a half-empty bag of Doritos. Kellen made a hasty exit to his bedroom and cranked up Dave Matthews and left me alone with my former fiancé, who looked even worse than he’d sounded when we talked on the phone.

  That had happened several times a day since Monday. Seth called and said he wanted to meet and talk things over, and I said there was no place to go and nothing to say. Now here he was, eyes underscored with deep, dark half-moons. His whole face was imploring me, and I couldn’t turn away.

  “Your hair is cute,” he said.

  I couldn’t say the same for his, which was standing up in unkempt spikes like he’d been raking his fingers through it all day. Saying nothing, I fell into Kellen’s red corduroy beanbag. Seth slid off the couch and sat cross-legged on the floor facing me. Just behind his head, salsa dripped over the side of a Tupperware bowl.

  “I’m sorry about the ring,” he said. “I didn’t know my mother was going to do that. I wouldn’t have asked you for it.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Randi is going to do what she’s going to do.”

  “I will put it back on your finger, Tara.” Seth’s voice was suddenly steady. “I’ll fix this.”

  “Do you have a plan?” I said. “Are you seeing Gavin Johnson?”

  Seth shook his head. “No. He obviously wasn’t helping me. When I told him what happened he just said everybody relapses at first.”

  “So it is like an addiction.”

  “I don’t like to think of it that way. It makes me feel like there’s no way out, and I know there is.”

  “So what is it?”

  I hated the way my own voice was sounding—prickly and judgy and everything I hated in the way girls down-talked to their boyfriends. But then, what didn’t I hate right now, really?