by Dan Deweese
Miranda’s attempts to retroactively bolster the self-esteem of my sixteen-year-old self were cute, but I could also sense—especially as she hesitated there in the conversation, as if picking her next move—that she was trying to make some kind of deeper point. “But don’t you see that Ira isn’t that different?” she said. “He’s always had to work, too. And maybe he’s not always good around people, but that’s just because he hasn’t had good role models.”
Did I sigh aloud, or just inwardly? “He has to work because he’s not in high school anymore, Miranda. And I’m sure his problems have a source, but he’s not the only person in the world who has problems. And also, I don’t see how you can already know him well enough to be coming to these conclusions about him.”
“But if a lot of people in the world have problems, and if a lot of people need help, then why are you against him?”
As she stood there waiting for an answer, a pencil behind her ear and a hammer hanging idly from her bandaged hand, I felt for the first time in a very long time that she was actually listening. She was studying me intently, as if alert to the possibility of unlocking some bit of new or important information not about Ira, but about me. It felt almost mathematical: Why was I against him? Why did x not equal y?
“Because not everyone breaks down doors,” I said. “And I don’t see how you can expect me to be okay with him when you won’t even tell me what happened. I understand that a young man was so angry that he actually destroyed the front door of our home. I don’t respect that kind of person.”
She tapped the handle of the hammer thoughtfully against the side of the house. “He was just being jealous. It was stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“What is?”
“He said he knows I don’t really like him, because he thinks I want a boyfriend who’s rich. He said I probably want a rich, fancy person like Grant.” Her eyes darted quickly toward and away from mine before she laughed, and resumed tapping the siding.
“Did you tell him Grant is your father’s age?”
“He said it doesn’t matter. He said you and Grant don’t like him because he’s not from a rich family.”
“You’re not from a rich family, either. And I still don’t understand how this turns into smashing the door.”
“He was saying stupid things, so I told him to leave. And then he said that proved he was right.”
“What kind of stupid things?”
“He was just trying to shock me. It doesn’t matter. He just needs to learn to trust people.”
She was so invested in this idea that people could be good on the inside, regardless of their actual behavior, that I could see direct argument would get me nowhere. It was a marvelous consolation to know that the situation was already on its way to being resolved. “Hand me the drill,” I said.
Her eyes actually widened in alarm. “Why?”
“Because I need to put this hinge on.”
“Right!” she said, and jumped to retrieve it.
We didn’t get that door in until almost eleven o’clock that night. It took that long primarily because I slowed the pace of the project to make sure Miranda would have to be at my side for the entirety of the evening. When we were done, I opened the new door a few inches and then closed it, listening to the crisp sound of the latch. Miranda asked if she could try, and when I moved aside, she opened the door wide, shifted her grip, and then swung it with enthusiasm. It slammed shut with a clean, two-note strike: latch against plate, door against jamb. “Good work,” she said, nodding with satisfaction.
“I hope so,” I said.
THE SECOND TIME I entered campus on Miranda’s wedding day, it was from the side opposite where I had earlier in the day. I passed a row of squat, utilitarian buildings that in previous years I had considered little more than glorified tin sheds, but on the day of the wedding, I was struck by how clean and solid the places now seemed to me. Armed with the knowledge that somewhere within each structure’s dim, oil-stained concrete interior lay a glassy little office, fluorescently aglow Monday through Friday, I felt a wave of gratitude for the invisible number of hands that had indeed cleared the Quad that day, that had mowed its grass and silenced its sprinklers and completed the other unseen tasks that, together, created the sufficient conditions for my daughter’s wedding. I knew—had been warned repeatedly, in fact—that the buildings were empty and locked that day, and should there be a problem, there would be no one to appeal to. But that was fine, I thought. It was as it should be.
When I turned into the Quad, I saw Catherine and a man I assumed was our photographer standing beneath the trees. Earlier in the day I had felt uneasy about accepting her help, but I also found her presence comforting. I suppose I felt uneasy because I felt her presence comforting, and I knew well that comforts could not be relied on. And yet there she was, a protective spirit watching over the careful rows of plastic chairs that lent the area the charged aura that precedes any piece of theater. If she wants to help, she wants to help, I told myself, and with a tautology no more complicated than that, I sailed forward. The grass was still slick and wet from the rain, and I could see, even from the edge of the Quad, that the chairs were beaded with water, too. We were scheduled to take the wedding photos there at four o’clock, only half an hour away, and my solitary march across the grass felt like a formal movement, the true beginning of things. The silence with which Catherine and the photographer watched me only added to the sense of ceremony, and I was glad to reach them there beneath the trees and, by speaking, to break the spell.
The photographer, a short fellow with dark eyes whom I hadn’t had occasion to meet before, introduced himself as Kurt. The anxiousness with which he raked his fingers through the sand-colored hair that fell perfectly across his forehead, and the enthusiasm he showed for his spearmint chewing gum (its odor fully detectable and identifiable from ten paces) reminded me of any number of male customers in early middle age I had helped over the years, men whose financial lives were in tatters due to bad divorce settlements or amateur investment strategies, and who tended as a result to focus their attention almost exclusively on matters of health and personal appearance: they drank bottled water and chased it with breath mints, gelled their hair rigidly in place, and shaved so closely and with the use of such bracing aftershaves that the tight skin of their ruddy cheeks shone with an unhealthy plasticity. Radically uncertain of where they stood with the fairer sex, these men often ended up worshipping at the feet of Catherine. Her dual backgrounds in finance and femininity placed her in a position to take them by the hand, it seemed. And something about the way Catherine was standing under the trees there in the Quad—she was a bit farther from Kurt than seemed necessary, and wasn’t looking at him—made me wonder if perhaps the opening exchange of some transaction had already occurred between them. But Kurt seemed perfectly at ease. He shook my hand with great earnestness, leaning forward as if he had reached the end of a diving board and was prepared to jump, and then punctuated his words with staccato chomps of his gum and with what struck me as an excess of eye contact as he assured me his equipment was in his van, and if I let him know what I might like as the background, he would begin setting up. “The buildings here are great,” he said, “and I’ve done a lot of weddings where we take pictures in front of them, or on the steps or by the columns, but the trees are great, too, of course, so we could use those just as easily. It’s all up to you.”
“Why do you still have your suit on?” Catherine asked. “Shouldn’t you be in your tuxedo?”
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
“It’s fine,” Kurt said. “You have plenty of time.”
“We had a plan for inclement weather, didn’t we?” I said. “We would take the photos after the ceremony?”
“Sure. It looks like it’s going to be clear, though, doesn’t it?” He looked up into the trees, though from where we were standing, their canopy blocked any view of
the sky.
“It’s not the weather,” I said. “We’ve had a change of plans. The bride has decided she doesn’t want to be seen before the ceremony.”
Kurt nodded not only with his head, but with his shoulders, too. He followed a band around the country for a while when he was younger, I thought—it was that kind of nodding. “That’s cool,” he said. “Like you said, we can do them after. It’ll work fine.”
“Good. I was hoping that would be true.”
“Did you find that person you were looking for?” Catherine asked.
“Someone flake on you?” Kurt said. “Not the groom, I hope!”
For his benefit, I smiled. It wasn’t necessary for him to be there any longer, and I didn’t want to discuss Miranda’s disappearance in his presence. Some irrational part of me probably feared he would set about shooting photos of me standing there without her, and that the images would appear in the city newspaper, fronting some inside section devoted to tales of local trouble. “Just a minor detail,” I said.
“But minor details aren’t the father’s job,” he said jovially. “The dad’s just supposed to be the money man.”
I assured Kurt that I had never been anything other than a money man, and hinted that if he were looking for cues on how to prepare for our new plan for the wedding photos, I would get back to him about that in just a little while. But he persisted in making what he clearly believed were helpful comments. He had a prediction for how long it would take him to set up after the ceremony, suggestions for how to quickly hustle the guests off to the reception so we would have the Quad to ourselves, and thoughts on how he would streamline the process, which, he told us in the lowered voice of a magician revealing one of his tricks, would involve him moving back and forth between two cameras. Eventually I was forced to tell him that it all sounded very good, I trusted him implicitly, was glad we were in his experienced hands—but could he please allow me a moment or two with Miss L’Esprit?
“Absolutely,” he said. “So Cathy, I’ll catch you at the reception, then?”
I almost laughed as Catherine admitted she would indeed be at the reception, news which sent Kurt marching happily across the grass, almost but not quite at a trot. I waited until he was safely out of earshot to say, “If you’re Cathy now, we should probably change the nameplate on your desk.”
“Catherine is fine,” she said. “What have you heard from Miranda?”
“Nothing.”
“And how did things go at the bank?”
“Fine. Though after I left, John called and asked if I would come back. He looked in my employee file and found out I was robbed once back when I was a teller, and he thinks that’s something he should talk to me about.”
“Why does he want to talk about that?”
“He wants a promotion, I think. He wants to be super-thorough and tough as nails. So when I told him one conversation was enough and I couldn’t talk to him again today, he got upset and told me things would be easier if I came in to talk to him. I think we don’t like each other.”
“What did he mean by ‘easier’?”
“I think he was just practicing making empty threats.”
Catherine knew as well as I did, though, that in their company-sponsored zeal, bank security had been known to pester employees for months about the details of even standard robberies. “I imagine they’ll be calling me again, too, then,” she said doubtfully. “And now we can be sure that they’re really combing through all of our personal accounts.”
“Well, when they call you in, don’t let them break you, Cathy.”
She shot me a warning look. “Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry, Cathy.”
We stepped from under the trees and headed across the Quad. Little crystalline globes of rain clung to the grass blades, and when I looked behind us, I could see that we were leaving dark, wet footprints in the grass.
“You’ve been looking for her?” she said.
“Yes.”
“And no one has been able to help? No one knows where she is?”
“No. But I’m starting to think she’s doing exactly what she wants to do today.”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “She knows where she is. And she knows my phone number. So wherever she is, it must be where she wants to be.”
Catherine nodded, reserving comment. I watched as she pulled something from her pocket and dropped it into her purse. “What was that?” I said.
“Oh. You can have it,” she said, pulling it back out and handing it to me.
It was Kurt’s business card. I flipped it over and found a handwritten number on the back. “I believe they call these ‘the digits,’” I said. “Is this his home number on the back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you give him yours?”
“No.”
“He seems nice. He said he’ll catch you at the reception.”
“I hope not.”
“You should have a good time at the reception. I don’t want you continually acting as our family servant.”
She looked at me with a frightening lack of expression. “I guess I didn’t realize I was a servant.”
“That’s what I’m saying. I’m telling you you’re free to enjoy the party.”
“And you’re seriously suggesting I hit on your photographer?”
“I’m just saying.”
She had acquired the tightened jaw and deliberate gait of someone genuinely angry. “He’s not my type.”
We had reached her car by then and stood next to it in the street. Catherine had never, in the decade that I had known her, given me any clear impression of her personal life. She dated. I knew that. But how often, I did not know. And the gentlemen were not allowed to come by the bank, it seemed. I had tried to joke with her once about it a few years before, saying that if she were really serious about someone I assumed she would bring him by, and her response had been to immediately assure me that would never happen. “No one needs to visit me at work,” she had said. “I had an issue once with a person who bothered me at work, and there’s no reason for that to happen. It’s off-limits.” I pressed her for details, but she said it wasn’t important, all that was important was that people respected her boundaries. So the next time I had an excuse to do so, I of course scoured her employee file for any reference to an incident. There was none. It was a mystery episode not in the books, so all I could know was that Catherine had boundaries, and that I was on one side of them, and her personal life was on the other. Which, I will admit, was exactly in line with how human resources suggested we manage our personal lives in the workplace, so I was hardly in a position to complain, or even to ask further questions. The manager is not to ask questions about the staff’s private lives.
And yet. “But I have no idea what your type is,” I said to her as we stood there by her car.
“It’s not that guy,” she said. “And there are other things to think about right now, anyway.”
“You always say there are other things to think about.”
She fixed me with another warning look, as if outraged by my behavior.
“What?” I said.
“Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Just stop. Not today.”
“Not what today?”
She studied me, shaking her head. “I hate that I can never tell what you’re aware that you’re doing, and what you’re not aware that you’re doing.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” I said.
But I knew what she meant.
IT WASN’T MORE THAN two or three days after Miranda and I fixed the front door that Catherine stepped into the doorway of my office and said, “You have a visitor.” And then in walked Miranda, in the worn khaki shorts and wrinkled T-shirt she wore around the house in the mornings. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, as if she’d been crying, but she seemed calm as she took a seat across the desk from me. “You’re up early,” I said.
>
Her lips twisted toward what might have been an attempt at a smile, but then she abandoned it. “Something happened,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Grant didn’t like Ira. He made fun of him. And Ira didn’t like Grant, but now he thinks he’s great.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ira just told me he wants me to fly down to Los Angeles with him. He’s going there to do some kind of work for Grant. I told him there was no way you would let me go.”
“Not remotely.”
She went on to tell me that Ira had called and told her he was going to make some quick money doing some work for Grant, and might be gone for a few weeks. It was easy money, he said, just making copies and deliveries and buying furniture and supplies for an office, and buying things for an apartment Grant had rented there, too. “Which I don’t understand,” Miranda said, “because it sounds like he’s doing something that’s kind of a job, but more like just being a gofer. And why wouldn’t Grant just have someone who lived there work for him?”
“I’m sure he wanted someone he knew,” I said. “He has to be able to trust the person.”
“But nobody trusts Ira. You said he had negative energy, and Grant made fun of him.”
“And I still think that. But Grant makes his own decisions.”
“Grant didn’t talk to you about this? He didn’t mention it to you?”
“Grant doesn’t ask me how to run his business. And maybe he’s doing it as a favor. It sounds like Ira’s going to make some money. Are you upset about it?”
“All I was doing was dating someone. It doesn’t need to be a big deal.”
“I agree with you.”
She slowly pushed her hair back from her face, a common-enough gesture. This time, though, it seemed an expression of sadness. “You used to take me everywhere,” she said. “You used to answer every question.”
“I still do.”
“No. I think there are things you don’t tell me now.”
“And there are things you don’t tell me. Should we really be telling each other everything?”
