One Last Thing Before I Go

by Jonathan Tropper

  “You came!” she says with delight. She takes his arm to lead him inside, but he remains fixed where he is.

  “I’m not sure about this.”

  She turns to look at him, then gives him a quick kiss on his cheek. “Be sure,” she says.

  CHAPTER 52

  They’re doing a cocktail hour before the ceremony. Rich, in tails and a white bow tie, stands in a cluster of men near the bar. Silver watches him joking around with his friends. He assumes they’re all doctors, but maybe not. Maybe some are bankers, or run hedge funds or technology companies. Either way, they all look scrubbed and polished, every hair in place, every tuxedo perfectly fitted. He instinctively moves in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you going?” Casey says.

  “I don’t think he wants to see me.”

  But Rich does see him, just then, and while the good cheer that’s animating his face definitely falters, he doesn’t seem terribly angry. He excuses himself from his golf buddies—Silver has no idea if they even play golf, but that’s how he thinks of them—and makes his way across the room to Silver and Casey.

  “OK,” Silver says. “Be cool.”

  “I am cool.”

  “I meant me.”

  “It’s OK, Dad. He’s not going to get into it at his own wedding.”

  “I play about sixty or seventy weddings a year. Trust me, I have seen some shit go down.”

  Casey takes his arm. “Well, you have me to protect you. Just try not to say anything stupid.”

  “Have you met me?”

  Casey laughs just as Rich comes over to them, still carrying his glass of scotch. “Hey, honey,” he says, kissing Casey. “You look magnificent.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  Silver extends his hand. “Congratulations, Rich.”

  Rich hesitates just long enough to make him anxious, then he takes the hand and shakes it. “How’s the nose?”

  “It’s OK. How’s your hand?”

  “It’s fine.”

  Rich looks at Casey. “I’m sure your mom would love your help getting ready,” he says.

  Casey looks unsure. “We’ll check on her in a few minutes.”

  Rich smiles. “It’s OK, honey. Silver and I will be just fine, won’t we, Silver?”

  “You’d know better than me,” Silver says.

  Casey looks torn, but then nods. “OK. But you two behave, OK? No drama.”

  “No drama,” Rich says.

  Casey casts a last anxious look in Silver’s direction, then turns and leaves. Silver turns to Rich. “So, I’ll let you get back to your guests.”

  “You are my guest,” Rich says. “You may have crashed, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “If you don’t want me to be here, I can go.”

  “I don’t want you to be here. What man in his right mind would want you to be here? But Casey wants you to be here. And she may be your family, but she’s mine too, and I won’t be the one who disappoints her.”

  “You’re a better man than me,” Silver says. “They’re both lucky to have you.”

  “You’re damn right I am,” Rich says, more angrily than he’d intended to. He takes a breath and checks himself. “The thing is, Silver, I can get past that bullshit with you and Denise—some last, crazy impulse—she’s getting married, you may be dying . . . I recognize that there’s a lifetime of unresolved issues that were there before I came along. I don’t like it—believe me, I don’t like it—but I can’t change it, and I’m smart enough to know that.”

  Silver nods. Rich leans in and looks him square in the eye. “Now you have to be smart too, and I know that runs contrary to your general MO, but you have to know what it is that you can’t change.”

  “I do.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. And I know it’s kind of late for this, but I’m very sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused.”

  Rich looks at him for a moment, then takes a long swallow of scotch. “I used to like you, Silver. I don’t know why, and I don’t anymore. But on the subject of things you can and can’t change, you need to have that operation. I’m not going to beg you. But whatever it is you’ve lost, you still have a family.”

  “Thanks, Rich,” Silver says. “And I do hope you and Denise will be very happy together. You both deserve it.”

  Rich searches his face for any trace of sarcasm. Finding none, he nods and allows a small smile. “Thank you.”

  “And thanks for being so cool about me crashing your wedding.”

  “Thank the Xanax-scotch cocktail,” Rich says, holding up his glass as he backs away. “Do me one favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t fuck up my wedding.”

  Silver smiles. “You got it.”

  “Seriously, man. Don’t.”

  * * *

  The ceremony takes place in the courtyard. The guests sit in rows of chairs facing the chuppah, which has been rigged to four white columns festooned with roses. Silver sits in the back next to his mother, feeling highly conspicuous as he sweats into his shirt.

  “Breathe,” she tells him.

  The Scott Key Orchestra is playing. Silver saw them at cocktails, and he nods a quick hello to Baptiste, who is playing a standing bass for the small combo that will be handling the processional. The music starts and, as always, Baptiste throws him a quick little riff. Silver nods his thanks.

  They are playing Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight,” a foolproof, if somewhat sappy, selection. Casey walks down the aisle with a poise that puts him on the verge of tears. She turns to look at him and flashes a wry smile. She will be OK, Silver thinks to himself.

  “Breathe,” Elaine whispers again.

  “I am,” he tells her, too loudly, and she shushes him.

  He can see Rich up front, greeting Casey with a hug and a kiss. He is jealous and grateful and flushed with shame, all at once. He failed, as a husband and father, and this better man has stepped in and cleaned up his mess. And it’s while he is awash in these feelings of shame and regret that all the guests rise, and Denise steps into the room.

  Silver looks at her, luminous in her white gown, her hair teased into unfamiliar, luxuriant curls that frame her face, her eyes as wide as her smile. He can see, beneath her makeup, the faintest trace of the bruise from where the door hit her what seems like a lifetime ago. She takes her first step into the room, and he can feel his face grow hot. The last time he saw her in that dress, a few days ago, she had fallen into his arms, and he’d entertained absurd notions of getting her back, of turning the last seven years into a bad dream. Now, looking at her face, filled with joy and purpose, he understands that that was never an option. Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you’ve lost.

  As Denise passes his row, Silver fades back, trying to confer on himself a form of invisibility, but something makes Denise stop and turn. Their eyes meet, and he feels his legs begin to tremble. She looks at him for what seems like an eternity, then she turns and steps out of the aisle and into his row. It’s happening, he thinks for one insane moment.

  The people standing between them in his row back up to make room for Denise, their chairs scraping noisily against the stone floor of the courtyard, and he is aware of small, hushed whispers breaking out in the crowd.

  Her ex-husband.

  I don’t know, he wasn’t invited.

  The Bent Daisies. The drummer.

  Silver.

  And then she is in front of him, and even now, here, knowing what he knows, he wonders if she’ll ask him to run off with her.

  She smiles, and puts her hands on his shoulders. “Silver,” she says.

  “You look beautiful,” he tells her.

  Her smile grows wider, even as
tears form in her eyes. She pulls him into a hug, and he feels the skin of her back against his fingers one last time.

  “We need you alive,” she whispers to him, even as he feels things inside of him dying.

  And then she’s back in the aisle, although he can’t remember letting go of her. And then his father is chanting a blessing, and then rings are being exchanged, and then Rich stomps on the glass and kisses his bride as the courtyard erupts into applause and cheers. Denise is married. And even though nothing has changed, not really, in that moment he feels like he has lost her all over again.

  * * *

  The reception is in high gear, and the family has converged on the dance floor in a wild and sweaty horah. Silver watches from his seat as they go around in a tight circle, holding hands and laughing. Denise, Rich, Casey, Rich’s two sisters—tall, gangly women who could, at best, be referred to as handsome—Rich’s parents, who are surprisingly small given their towering offspring, Denise’s father, whose face remains without creases from a lifetime of not smiling, and Ruben and Elaine, who don’t seem at all put off by the fact that they have just married off their ex-daughter-in-law. Ruben, in particular, has his face raised to the ceiling, his eyes closed, and an almost rapturous smile on his face as he moves around the circle, holding Elaine’s hand on one side and Casey’s on the other.

  Casey momentarily steps out of the circle and comes running over to Silver, grabbing both of his hands. “Come on, Dad.”

  She called me Dad.

  “I think I’ll sit this one out,” he says, but even as he says it she is pulling him, off his chair, onto his feet, through the throngs of onlookers clapping to the beat, and into the center of the dance floor to join the circle. It’s Denise who breaks ranks to let him in, so he ends up holding her hand on one side and Casey’s on the other as they dance the horah, pulling one another around in an accelerating circle. Ring-around-the-rosy at high speed, Silver thinks. Denise smiles happily at him and squeezes his hand. He is happy for her, even as her joy leaves him dented.

  Around they go, and even as they pick up speed, keeping time with the band, he feels everything slowing down. He is aware of Casey, her fingers in his hand as she laughs, trying to manage the excessive folds of her gown while keeping up with the tempo. He remembers her as a little girl, squealing with glee as he held her hands and swung her in circles around the room. And here they are now, older and sadder, but still spinning.

  He sees the band, playing this strange hybrid of a traditional Jewish horah fused with jazz, sees Baptiste, like him, years away from their brief moment in the sun. He wonders if Baptiste’s life after the band has mirrored his own. They’ve never really talked about it. He sees Dana, standing with a second backup singer he doesn’t know, remembers her toes curling up on his comforter that last sad, sexless night they spent together.

  He sees his father and mother looking over at him, the love in their eyes tempered with concern and confusion over what he’s become. He’d like to tell them how grateful he is to them, how none of this is their fault. He should tell them that, as soon as this dance is over. That they did everything right and he turned out wrong anyway. Just like he did everything wrong, but Casey will turn out right.

  He sees the beads of sweat forming on the highest peaks of Rich’s forehead, where his hair is beginning to recede more aggressively. He’ll be bald within a few years, but it will only make him look better, more dignified. Silver always reserved a quiet contempt for men like Rich, straight-laced, earnest, uncomplicated. Content. And now he’d give anything to be like that, to have always been like that. Instead, he was blinded by the flare of fleeting, accidental stardom, and when it was over, he never stopped seeing spots.

  Silver sees all of this in an instant as he dances around in the circle, his feet stomping the ground, the sweat dripping down his face. And then he lets go of Casey and Denise and finds himself in the middle of the circle, spinning counterclockwise, like an inner wheel within their wheel, spinning and sweating and laughing and crying. He feels the love around him, feels the people in his life swimming past him in a blur, feels the grief and regret crashing down on him in waves. He spins. Faster and faster, his feet keeping time in half beats, quarter beats, eighths. His hands come up to his sides, then higher, reaching up above him. He is faintly aware of clapping and cheering, catcalls and whistles as he spins, eyes closed, the lights flashing like lasers behind his lids. He remembers going to the planetarium in high school to see a laser light show set to rock music. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Sneaking in a joint and getting high as the lights exploded across the ceiling. There was a girl. He held her hand. He can’t remember who she was, but he has a sense of her smile, her clean white teeth, the smell of her shampoo as they rested their heads together, the erection he hid artfully under his shirt until the marijuana calmed it down.

  Silver spins and sees his life in its entirety, laid out before him between the crunching beats of the music; all of the joy and pain and anger and lust and love and song and sex and regret. All of the points at which he should have turned right but instead went left, the places he should have stopped but instead kept going, and the cost of it all. A deep sob escapes him and he opens his eyes. He sees the ceiling, high and ornate, a painted fresco, spinning above him, making him dizzy. And then he sees it: a cluster of bad spackle work to the side of the chandelier fixture, a sand-swirl finish that reminds him of the ceiling in his childhood bedroom. And just before everything goes down, Silver remembers God, and surprises himself by offering up a lightning-quick but no less heartfelt prayer. Then he closes his eyes and surrenders to the incessant buzzing in his ears, which continues to rise to an ungodly decibel until everything goes dark.

  CHAPTER 53

  He opens his eyes in a hotel bed. The room is dim, and the first hints of morning are starting to come through the window. He rubs his eyes, feeling the incipient throb of a hangover behind them. He had some wild dreams last night, intense and vivid, only now fading into vapor. He turns onto his side to study the woman asleep beside him. Denise. The wedding. He remembers now. He smiles.

  She stirs beside him, her arm sneaking out from underneath the comforter, flailing until it finds his chest, where it comes to a rest, and he savors the warmth of it as he relives the night. His cousin Bruce’s wedding. She was the slightly sad bridesmaid. They had danced and laughed, then come up here and had much-better-than-expected sex. And now she’s asleep beside him, and he has a chance to study her face. She’s prettier than he remembers, a rare feat in these situations. There was something about her, a warm wit that he had enjoyed. He runs his fingers gently up her back. He likes the way her skin feels beneath his fingertips, hot and so incredibly smooth. He does it again. She makes a sound, like purrring, and rolls herself closer to him, nestling into the curve of his body.

  “Silver,” she whispers to him.

  “Yes.”

  “Keep me warm.”

  Something about the way she says it moves him profoundly. He wraps his arms around her, her back pressed against his chest, and presses his lips against her shoulder, and, as he listens to her soft, shallow breathing, decides that that is exactly what he will do.

  CHAPTER 54

  When he opens his eyes again, he is lying on a couch in the small back office of the restaurant, and Rich is taking his pulse.

  “I’m OK,” he says.

  Rich shakes his head, trying to conceal his anger. Or annoyance, really. “You are a lot of things, Silver, but OK is not one of them.”

  Silver sits up, to prove him wrong, or to prove to himself that he still can. He feels a wave of dizziness and almost lies down again, but he fights through it.

  “Where’s Denise?”

  “She’s outside. You know, at her wedding.”

  “I’m sorry,” Silver says. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” He could be summing up the moment, or his entire adult l
ife.

  Rich fixes him with a hard look, and then sighs, his expression softening. “I know you didn’t.”

  “Get back out there. You can’t miss your own wedding. I’ll be fine.”

  “Casey went to get you a drink. I could use the break anyway.”

  They sit in silence for a moment. The office is small and musty and smells of dog, with messy stacks of paper on every available surface. Silver can’t imagine any real work getting done in here, but then again, what does he know from offices? Or work.

  “Hey, congratulations,” Silver says.

  Rich smiles archly. “Thanks.”

  “I thought I was dead.”

  “You’re not too far off.”

  Silver smiles grimly. He has run out of time, he can feel it. “You’ve got a wedding full of doctors here. Why are you the one in here with me? You should be out there, enjoying yourself.”

  Rich gives him a funny look. “Because you’re family,” he says. “You’re a colossal pain in the ass, but you’re family.”

  Silver nods. He still feels the urge to hit Rich, and maybe on some level you never stop wanting to inflict some kind of pain on the man your ex-wife loves, no matter how decent a man he is. But beyond that, he feels the simple, effortless generosity of Rich’s statement, including him in the family he has lost any right to claim. He doesn’t like to be pitied, will go to great lengths to avoid anything resembling it. But the sense he gets from Rich is that, despite his consistently bad behavior, Rich would like to be his friend, and for some reason, this notion, as strange as it may be, fills him with something that, if pressed, he would define as hope.

  The office door swings open and Casey comes in carrying a glass of water. “Hey,” she says to Rich. “How’s the patient?”