Quietly, I grab two chocolate pudding cups, two spoons, and climb back up with our rations.
Eric has turned on the bare-bulb light over the bathroom mirror, leaving the door open a crack. He’s on the floor next to the bookcase, in his boxers and T-shirt. Bad leg stretched out straight, sorting through VHS tapes.
“Anything good?”
“US Coast Guard Boating Safety Tips for Kids. No, thanks. Historic Lighthouses of North America... Ah, score. What do you say?” He holds it up.
“Two thumbs-up.”
He shoves the movie in.
We pull our blankets and pillows to the floor, close to the screen. We keep the volume on three so we won’t disturb Grigg, eat pudding, and watch Easy Rider.
“Eric?”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve missed you.”
He stares at the screen intently. It’s the diner scene. Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper getting grief about their long hair.
They joke nervously. Leave the diner, get on their bikes.
They fly down the highway.
Slow as I can, I lean forward, touch Eric’s banged-up foot with my right hand. He’s taken the boot off, so his foot is bare except for the thick white figure eight of gauze, which winds around his stitched, fractured toes and circles his ankle.
I touch him on the ankle lightly, tracing the line of gauze, careful not to disturb the tape or tiny silver clips. Back and forth.
“I’m not hurting you, am I?” Though my touch is a feather brush.
He shakes his head.
I brace for it: Becc. Stop. We can’t.
Or the pained look in his eye that will hurt even more. But he doesn’t stop me.
I’m so close to the screen that Jack Nicholson is reduced to dots, like pointillism. Sunday in the Park with George. I’m blocking half of Eric’s view.
We both pretend to watch the movie as my hand ventures higher, up his taut inner calf. Slowly, until my hand is on his knee, then down to his ankle again. Up and down again, not going higher than his knee. Three agonizingly slow round trips. Four.
Eric clears his throat, shifts his other leg.
I leave my hand on his bare knee and turn to look at him, my back to the TV. It’s like we’re back in his closet screening room. Back in those theaters in San Francisco. Meeting up in the dark, setting our own schedules. Just the two of us, not because it was wrong, not because we were hiding. But because we were searching for something we couldn’t find out in the light.
He covers my hand with his.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
* * *
“Becc,” Eric murmurs into my neck. “Becc. You taste the same. Like...”
“Like?” I laugh as his tongue touches my collarbone.
“Like Becc. Exactly like Becc.”
I stop laughing as he rubs his face in the curving nook between the base of my neck and my jaw, his hands sliding up my shirt.
The smell of him, his hair and skin, is so familiar. He smells like all my favorite days.
“Careful. Your foot.”
“It’s fine.”
On our sides, we kiss, long, sliding, effortless kisses. We’re naked except for his boxers. I try to work them over his bad foot but we’re not patient enough and leave them mid-thigh, a limitation we work around just fine. Beautifully, in fact, stuck together, lying on our sides.
Someone’s rolled onto the remote and the volume’s blasting, blaring the discordant jazz from the New Orleans cemetery LSD scene.
I fumble for it, for buttons, desperate for Off, settle for Mute.
We freeze, hot limbs locked together, him deep in me, waiting.
I’d been so close I can’t stop completely, and I press against him, the smallest tilt of my hips against and away from his, as we wait for the terrible sound of a tread on the iron staircase below us.
But it’s quiet. The only sound our hurried breathing.
59
Better Time
Sunday, 10:34 a.m.
“Becc! We’re late.”
We are wrapped together in scratchy blankets on the floor and the TV is on the bright blue-and-white VCR settings menu.
The clock on the VCR says we’ve overslept. The light shooting up through the staircase opening is white, not blue. Everything in the room feels different.
Including us. Before we fell asleep, being together felt effortless, but now our bodies are weighed down, clumsy. Separate.
We’re so late. The wedding’s at four, 160 miles north, and there’s so much to do.
Last night feels too big to talk about.
We dress quickly, not looking at each other. All politeness.
“Do you have your purse?”
“Here, I’ll help with that. Your phone’s down there.”
“Thanks...”
56 minutes before the ceremony
Seal Beach, Oregon
Traffic up the coast is slow, and I’ve watched the minutes tick past with growing alarm.
I told myself Seal Beach would have at least one boutique where I could grab a dress, so we passed up a Target, two Walmarts.
But Seal Beach is a sleepy, wind-battered town with a one-block shopping district, and my only option is a resale store. Eric swing-hops to the druggist next door for cleaning solvent and wrapping paper. “And a bow,” I call. “And tape and a card!”
I want a hairbrush and a razor, too, but we’re running out of time, and maybe the hotel will have those desperation kits for forgetful guests.
“Dresses?” I ask the cashier.
“Back wall.”
I attack the dress rack. Size 4 bronze lamé—no way—strapless cream velvet in my size, 8—but reeking of stale Obsession and bald across the seat. The Velveteen Rabbit of dresses, please, no, a green size 12 one-shoulder number with a busted zipper and deodorant stains down the sides...
I shove hanger after hanger across the rod. Maybe I can squeeze into a size 2 of Maggie’s. Or beg random guests to lend me something or Serra’s mom will help but she’s petite, too, and it’s so late, how rotten to waylay the mother of the bride minutes before the vows. Maybe Velveteen Rabbit won’t be too tragic if I borrow a sweater.
Three hangers from the end there’s a black knit in 10. Knee-length, short sleeved, an unfortunate diagonal ruffle across the skirt but at least it’s not in contrasting fabric. It’s got shoulder pads but I can rip them out, and it smells okay. We have a winner.
I reach the convertible at the same time as Eric. “Did you get everything?”
“Yeah, but they only had two dinky things of wrapping paper left. It’s not the greatest. You found a good dress?”
I start the ignition. “In relative terms. What do you mean, not the greatest?”
He squeezes the top of the yellow plastic bag.
“Just show me.”
He pulls a corner out. Pale pink, a block pattern spelling B-A-B-Y. “Sorry.”
“We’ll turn it inside out.” I gun the gas.
3:56 p.m.
We’re on time.
We’re showered and changed. The front desk gave me a Kourtesy Kit—razor and comb, toothbrush and toothpaste. I kept the shoulder pads in my dress, worried that yanking them would tear the fabric, but I’m hoping they give me a Trekkie flair.
In the parking lot we scrubbed the white marks with Goo Gone, attached the third panel. We wrapped two-thirds in inside-out baby-shower paper and a third in USA TODAY comics.
We made a card from hotel notepaper, signed it, taped it to the top.
The porters rolled the present to the designated alcove of the Indrijo-Fisher Wedding private dining room, pushed it into the shadows behind the table bearing other white-and-silver-wrapped offerings. Maggie is in charge of seeing the gifts to Serra’s house, two towns away,
after the reception tonight, and I’ll help. When Serra returns from her honeymoon in Friday Harbor, it’ll be waiting.
I want her to open it in private. Not surrounded by drunk wedding guests, not pressured to overdo her thanks.
Now there’s nothing left to do but sit, spent and a little breathless, in white folding chairs in the sun, on the Sea Whisper’s bright oceanside patio. I’m to the left of the aisle and Eric is next to me. It feels strange to have him on my left side; for most of our 904 miles he’s been on my right.
Eric smells of lemongrass hotel shampoo, and his combed hair is damp. He has circles under his bloodshot eyes, purply-gray shadows so vivid they look painted on. Mine are worse, but I had time to dot on concealer.
“Well, you pulled it off,” he says.
“We pulled it off.”
“Yes.”
He nods and turns to me, an expression of gratitude on his weary face.
I wait. This can’t be all he wants to say.
I smooth the skirt of my secondhand dress. Read the back of the program. Set it on my lap and fold my hands over it.
He bends to adjust his pants cuff over his boot. Checks that his crutch isn’t going to trip anyone. Though it’s exactly where he stashed it one minute ago, under our seats.
“It’s a nice thing, Becc. It’ll make her happy.”
“Thank you.”
He nods and closes his eyes, lifting his tired face to the sun.
* * *
It’s a casual, nondenominational service: no chuppa, no altar, no bride’s or groom’s sides. Just a bearded guitarist plucking out a Steely Dan medley and a professor friend of Serra’s as officiant. She’s standing in a flowy green pantsuit with her back to the sea, nervously reviewing three-by-five cards. So close to the edge of the patio I worry she’ll topple back into the sea grass.
Someone bops my right shoulder pad. Maggie.
Eric stands, one steadying hand on his chair, and Maggie leans across me to hug him. Her hair, pure black at the moment, more versatile for auditions and go-sees, is pulled into a low knot, and she’s wearing a vintage apricot swing dress. I helped her find it, in a funky shop in West Hollywood.
“Nice dress,” she says to me.
“Don’t even.”
“How was the drive?” she whispers, looking meaningfully past me at Eric.
I shake my head subtly. Not now.
“You got the masterpiece here okay?”
“It’s all set.”
“I still think she should open it tonight.”
“No. When she comes back, like we planned.”
The guitarist downshifts to classical and Serra’s fiancé takes his place up front.
I’ve never seen him without his sand-filled leather ball, never been near his body when it wasn’t moving in a hypnotic rhythm of kicks and bounces within the hacky sack’s flight patterns, the imaginary dotted lines that surrounded him like Pig-Pen’s dust cloud.
Glenn teaches history at the community college where Serra works.
“Glenn looks good,” I say to Maggie. “Have you seen her?”
“Yeah. She’s nervous. Looks like it’s showtime.”
“Break a leg. Oops, sorry,” I say to Eric, hoping he’ll smile. But he’s deep in conversation with the man on his left.
Maggie squeezes my shoulder pad and heads up front.
The guitarist starts “Canticle” and we all stand and turn and there’s Serra walking toward us. She wears a long white sundress and her hair blows back in loose waves. She carries wildflowers tied with a scrap of old lace. She’s smiling broadly, a little freaked out, a little giddy.
When she approaches our row I brace myself for her to pass without noticing me.
But she slows, turns her head to take both of us in, me and Eric, and her grin relaxes for a second into a subtler smile only for the three of us.
And it’s enough, that brief I remember.
The tears that have threatened all weekend come quickly now. I watch the ceremony through a rippling, glassy curtain.
* * *
Eric and I are assigned seats next to each other, near the head table. The place cards are the one formal touch of the wedding, and I’m grateful Serra took the decision out of our hands.
It’s a happy, lively reception. But I’ve been to twelve weddings, of varying budgets, and there are few surprises. Salad and rolls and butter shells and champagne—fish or pasta, miss?—knife clinks on glasses commanding the couple to kiss.
Then the toast-off, as guests battle to be funniest.
Glenn’s father: They were meant to be together, even though they were too stupid to realize it for years.
Serra’s cousin: Sometimes love is right under your nose, except you’re too damn stubborn to notice.
Eric and I find plenty to do during these pronouncements. We sip, we observe the head table, we pass the salt and pepper and laugh with our tablemates.
We don’t look at each other.
After the second off-color hacky-sack joke, I clink my glass and stand. When I’m on my feet I flush, blanking and wishing I could back out. But someone’s handed me the mic.
I was going to say something about Plato House. But the words have evaporated.
I stall. “I’m so happy to be here today...”
Eric stares at his salmon en croute, probably worried that in my panic I’ll hold forth on miniature log rides and Greek islands and second chances.
But I seize on an image: the Mary Cassatt print. I address Serra directly, fumbling at first. “Serra. You had a poster, back in the dorm, freshman year. Remember? It said, With strangers we must try. With the ones we love, we lean back into the simple joy of being ourselves.” My voice is firmer now. “And you and Glenn are a walking poster for that. You deserve all the joy in the world.”
Glenn and Serra tilt their heads together affectionately. There’s a smattering of respectful applause, a single hear, hear; my earnest speech goes over just fine. Sincerity always gets a more subdued reaction than a joke.
* * *
Serra and Glenn came to our table to say their thanks and she hugged both me and Eric, but she was pulled away quickly, and since then she’s been busy or surrounded all night.
After the sweet dances, the Sinatra and Patsy Cline, the DJ badgers everyone into a bunny hop to liven things up.
He borrows Eric’s crutch for a limbo contest and I do a couple rounds, easy ones requiring only a quick bend and a head tilt. Then I stand to the side next to Eric, watching as the bodies get lower, until only the truly flexible or delusional make the attempt.
Holding the back of a chair for balance, he shouts into my ear about his crutch, currently bobbing horizontally in the center of the packed dance floor. “Do you think I’ll ever get it back?”
“I’ll rescue it for you if I have to!”
I don’t need to extricate the crutch from the dance floor. Glenn’s brother hands it back to Eric right after the limbo contest.
We still haven’t talked about last night.
I keep thinking that there will be a better time. A moment when it’s just the two of us, and we’re somewhere dark and otherworldly, like last night.
We’d found our way back to each other almost in a dream, in a strange room like the turret of an underwater castle. A room hidden from the world.
Maybe I did dream it. Or hallucinated it.
I’ve never been so tired in my life, but I dance to the next twelve songs. I do the Macarena and YMCA, every arm fling and jump. I throw my wrung-out muscles into the warm throng, staying close to the speakers, where conversation’s impossible. Eyes half-closed, I dance with anyone. Cousins, neighbors, artist or teacher friends.
Eric sits at a table near the back, his bad leg up on a chair. Deep in conversation with a pretty woman I don’t recognize.
I know he isn’t trying to make me jealous. And I’m not. But the image of him sitting across the room with a stranger is so starkly different from what I pictured.
Last night, in the lighthouse, curled against his chest, I saw us dancing together.
* * *
It’s a cash bar now. Two guys are lying flat on their backs on the patio, smoking cigars, making a spicy, leathery-smelling cloud. The seniors and parents with young kids have gone to bed.
It’s time for me to leave, too. But I’m not ready.
I’m desperate for sleep, but the idea of retreating to my cool hotel room upstairs, to the quiet of my vast, soft bed, makes me ache. The party is a heart, sticky and messy but throbbing with life, and I want to stay near it until it stops.
Someone grabs my elbow. Serra. She’s pink-faced, her professionally waved hair hanging in lank strips down her neck. “Come talk!”
She pulls me to the back of the room, to a deep windowsill by the gift table. She cranks the window open. “That feels so good. Eighty dollars for this do, and look at me,” she says, laughing. “My mom paid for the stylist. She insisted.”
“You look beautiful, Serr.”
“You, too. Is that a vintage dress?”
“Serra.”
“What? Okay, it’s not the kind of thing you usually wear, but I like it.”
“I lost my luggage. Long story. Let’s just say this was the best among limited options.”
“The Least Hideous?”
“Exactly.”
She adjusts my shoulder pad. “Mags said you and Eric had a good time driving up together? That must mean...no?”
“Long story.”
“Funny. That’s what he said to me when I asked him.”
“It went well. Considering.”
“Yeah?” She waits for me. Even on her wedding day, she’s interested in how I’m feeling.
I could tell her all about Eric, how I understood it was too complicated for him, and I wasn’t upset.
We’d reconnected the triptych—beginning, middle, and end. And if Eric and I didn’t find our new ending, at least we had the memory of what came before.
Summer Hours Page 33
