You Don't Love This Man

by Dan Deweese

  “You must think I’m incredibly stupid,” I said. “Do you really think you can feed me a line of conventional wisdom from some parenting guide and I’ll be persuaded by it? You only ever have deep thoughts when you think they’ll help you get what you want. You don’t want me to let Miranda go because you think she needs to be her own person. You want me to let her go so she can belong to you.”

  “She’s free to walk away from me if she wants.”

  “Like she was free to walk away from Ira?” I said.

  He reacted as if mention of that name was some kind of disappointing but predictably underhanded move. “She was fifteen then.”

  “You’re only right about one thing,” I said. “Which is if you hurt my daughter, I will destroy you.”

  “As well you should,” he said.

  I had meant it as a real threat, but when I saw that Grant seemed not the slightest bit intimidated, I began to have the sinking feeling I have had so many times in my life: in the instant I am trying to be most forceful, I feel I am somehow losing my way. Because how was it that Grant was now agreeing with me? And how, by agreeing with me, did he seem to be strengthening his own position, rather than mine? I wanted to abandon words and thoughts and just grab him. But even in a blunt physical attack—even though I was taller than him and outweighed him—I felt confident he would withstand me. Fighting him was like fighting a wall: he was right in front of me, but there was no way to engage him. “You have to prove this to me,” I said finally.

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “You take this slowly. And you prove to me that this is real. For a long while.”

  “I understand.” Only then did his gaze seem to turn inward—only then did I catch a glimpse of what might have been uncertainty.

  “So what are you going to do now?” I asked.

  “I’ll see her again, if she wants.”

  The idiot. Did he not see he had already won? “I mean right now. Tonight.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I told her I would call her after you and I talked. She was pretty upset.”

  “How gallant.” I finished my drink while looking at the two of us in the mirror behind the bar. I had somehow become much older than Grant—I didn’t like looking at myself next to him. “We’re obviously not friends anymore,” I said. “It would be completely impossible and ridiculous.”

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “I suppose that’s true.” He turned to me and gathered himself as if to say something more, but seemed to change his mind. Without another word, he headed toward the door. I didn’t turn to watch him, but followed his progress in the mirror’s glass until he moved beyond the frame.

  When I summoned the bartender a minute later to ask for another drink, I discovered my request wasn’t necessary. He already had one ready for me.

  EVERY SHIFT IN THE BREEZE, every creak of the half-open back door, every shuffle or sigh from the front room: each triggered the same little flourish of anxiety in me as I sat in Gina’s office, waiting for Miranda. At first Gina kept up the pretense of doing work at her desk while I sat there, but she closed her laptop after only a few minutes, and now it was just the two of us sitting there, at loose ends. She didn’t complain, but neither did she seem happy. Everyone wants a privileged position, and as the person who was to deliver the bride, she’d thought she had one. But now here I was, ruining it—and she had to make conversation, on top of it. “So Sandra said you’re going to miss the photos,” she said.

  “We can take them after,” I said. “The photographer has a plan.”

  She nodded, hesitating, and then plunged ahead. “And I suppose you know about her news?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s exciting, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “Are you angry I didn’t tell you?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t think it was my place. But you’re not looking forward to being a grandfather?”

  “Would you look forward to being a grandmother?”

  “No,” she said. “But isn’t it different for men?”

  “You mean death?”

  She frowned, as if I were being rude. “It doesn’t have to be death.”

  “That’s what it’s about, though.”

  “No. That’s long off.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  I heard the front door open and close then, followed by the faint press of steps. Gina went out into the gallery, and when I heard her say hello in a cheerful tone that implied familiarity, I stepped past the edge of the back wall prepared to see Miranda. The eyes that brightened with recognition at my appearance weren’t hers, though. They were Grant’s.

  It may have been the first time he ever greeted me without smiling. All I got was a nod as he stepped past me to look into the back office. When he saw there was no one else there, though, he turned back, disappointed. “Someone is missing,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But her friend here says she’s on her way.”

  He looked at Gina, then back at me, and it was then that we got the smile. “So we’re all in the same place, waiting for the same person,” he said. “How will we get to decide who gets to talk to her first?”

  He asked the question in a tone so completely genuine that I assumed he was being ironic, though it’s possible I was imagining strategy where there was none. “I don’t think you’re supposed to see her before the ceremony,” I said. “It’s bad luck.”

  “I’m just starting to think she might be looking for reassurance,” he said.

  I turned to Gina. “Is that what she needs?”

  “I don’t think she needs anything from either of you,” she said. “But I don’t know that my opinion carries much weight here.”

  “Of course it does,” Grant said. “But I think a husband needs to be able to speak to his wife.”

  “You’re not married yet,” I said.

  “Why do I feel like I’m in a competition here?” he said, still smiling.

  “It’s not a competition,” I said. “You just can’t see her now. You get to see her at the ceremony. And then for the rest of your life.”

  He looked at me as if trying to look into me, and I knew my gaze had probably gone flat and blank at that point. “I’m worried that you want to spirit her away,” he said.

  “No. I just want to speak to her,” I said.

  He continued to seem as if he were estimating something, though I wasn’t sure what.

  “You said you would prove it to me,” I said. “That this was real.”

  “I think I’ve done that,” he said.

  I didn’t. I had attached no concrete agenda to the demand and had set up no evaluative criteria, but still: all Grant had done was continue forward in the direction he’d already been going. He treated Miranda well, it seemed. And she fell further and further in love with him. It had been no great surprise when she stopped by my place early the previous fall to tell me the two of them were engaged. Grant hadn’t asked for my consent, but I still managed to respond as if I were happy for her. Later that same evening, after Miranda had left—Sandra called. “I’m only going to say this once, and then never again,” she said. “But I thought this was just something she needed to get out of her system. I honestly hoped he would do something stupid or horrible, and she would dump him and move on. Now I feel like she’s announced that this disease is terminal.”

  “I should have stopped it,” I said. “I made it too easy for him.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m not going to blame you. I’m not going to blame anyone, because I can’t. Because it will drive me crazy. I just need this one time to say how I feel about this. From here on I’m going to be positive, and I don’t ever want to talk about it again. Do you understand that I can’t talk about this, ever again? Because it will ruin my relationship with my daughter.” She started to cry then. “I want my daughter to like me,” she said between sobs. “But I hate what she is doing.” And then she hung up. And
she never did speak about it again. She never let any private conversation between the two of us—about Miranda, about the wedding, about anything—drift in the direction of her feelings. We were just planning a wedding—an event—and nothing more.

  And yet there in the gallery, standing across from Grant, I thought: I should have asked him to perform a feat of which he was incapable. I should have named a price he could never pay. But what had I said? We’re obviously not friends anymore. What did that matter? “Let me speak to her, Grant,” I said. “She’s my daughter.”

  He peered at me curiously, and then shrugged—and in doing so, his whole posture relaxed. “Maybe it is bad luck,” he said. “Maybe the groom shouldn’t see the bride.” He looked at Gina.

  “She’ll be there,” she said.

  And he turned to leave. I said nothing. Before opening the door, though, he stopped. “You know you don’t get your money back on a lot of that stuff if there’s not a wedding,” he said.

  “Have you ever known me to burn money?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Once in a while. And with me, especially.” But he pushed the door open anyway, headed out onto the street, and was gone.

  “So do I have to go, too?” Gina said.

  “No,” I said. “I would never kick you out of your own place.”

  And it was then, finally, that I heard footsteps on gravel. Someone was in the alley behind the building. And when Miranda stepped around the back wall and stood there looking at us, still in her black T-shirt and khaki shorts, she looked perfectly dressed for a summer afternoon—if that afternoon weren’t the one on which she was supposed to be getting ready for her wedding.

  “Hi,” she said. “Sorry if you’ve been waiting.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  She tugged at the front of her shirt, ventilating, and stood at the edge of the office wall as if reluctant to actually step forward into the gallery. “Do you want to go for a walk?” she said.

  “Your mom’s expecting you at the hotel, you know,” Gina said.

  “I know,” she said. “But I think there’s time. Dad?”

  “Yes,” I said. “A walk sounds good.”

  MIRANDA AND I SET out a bit past four-thirty, at what was surely the hottest part of the day. We walked at first along the alley wall, taking advantage of the four or five feet of shade it cast across the gravel. After half a block, though, the alley ended, and we stepped onto the sidewalk and into the full-force blast of the sun.

  “How are you wearing a suit today?” Miranda said. “You have to be boiling.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to change.”

  “But why did you put it on in the first place?”

  “I had to go to work.”

  She nodded as if that were a satisfactory answer. Above us, the sky held not the faintest shred of cloud—it radiated a blue so intense as to be almost sickening. The odors of asphalt and car exhaust hung in the air, and there was neither breeze, shade, nor shelter. Most drivers had their windows up in order to enjoy their air-conditioning, but a lone pickup with lowered windows treated us to a classic rock guitar solo that turned Doppler-shift sour as the vehicle passed. I felt a sheen of sweat rise over what felt like my entire body, but when I move to loosen my tie and undo the top button of my shirt, I realized I’d already done that, hours ago.

  “They say it’s the hottest day of the year,” Miranda said brightly.

  There was a beatific, unburdened quality to her smile—strange, I thought, less than an hour and a half from the scheduled start of her wedding. I walked forward at a steady clip, but Miranda altered her pace in accord with every little obstacle she discovered in her path, nimbly negotiating the cracks and crumbles of the old sidewalk by taking twice as many steps as me. Rather than taking a walk, she was choosing to play at taking a walk—but with perfect ease and without breaking a sweat. I had been called a string bean often enough as a kid, but any sense of myself as a dancer who might zig and zag around the cracks in a sidewalk had disappeared long ago. Before we had gone fifteen steps, I was dabbing at a trickle of sweat rolling from my temple. “So how have you been?” I said. “People have been looking for you.”

  A look of irritation replaced her smile. By mentioning the day’s actual schedule, I had broken some kind of spell, it seemed. “I’ve been fine,” she said. “Why were they looking for me?”

  “I think you were supposed to be in certain places at certain times.”

  “They’ll survive,” she said, walking shoulder to shoulder with me until, at the end of the block, she leaned into me in order to turn me down another street. Amused by the rough affection of her technique, I asked where we were headed. “To see where everyone’s going,” she said.

  “It’s some kind of beer-drinking festival,” I said.

  Her eyes brightened. “Ooh,” she said, quickening her pace and pulling me along by the arm. “Let’s see what it looks like.”

  “Did you want to talk to me about something?” I said, resisting being hustled. “Or is this just a walk for our health?”

  “What would I need to talk to you about?”

  “You stuck me for the bill at lunch, for one.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said, closing her eyes as if envisioning the event. “I’m sorry, Dad. I just couldn’t talk right then.”

  “I suppose I wonder whether you’re planning on attending your wedding today, too.”

  She pretended to think it over. “Will I get a decent table at the reception?”

  “I think yours is supposed to be good. You might have to stand up and say something at some point, though.”

  “Shoot,” she said. “I was hoping I could just have a good time. Now I have to make a speech?”

  The lightness in her playacting seemed to bode well, or at least to suggest she understood there was more than one perspective on the day. And I always enjoyed playing her straight man—there was something tender about the way she trusted me to follow her. “A simple thanks will probably do,” I said.

  “As long as I don’t have to say anything serious.”

  When we reached the end of the block, we came upon waist-high metal railings that blocked any further progress. Beyond the fence, one could see the chaos of the festival in full swing: an immense crowd filled the entire area, moving among and between tables set up along the perimeter of the streets. Aluminum kegs sat in ice-filled trash cans behind the tables, and the lines of tables extended in every direction, making it impossible to tell how many blocks the festival filled. Music carried from somewhere within, and napkins, wrappers, spilled food, and plastic cups covered the entire area. Squeezing my arm, Miranda flashed me a conspiratorial grin. “Let’s go in,” she said. “For just a few minutes.”

  “We have things to do,” I said. “And I’m not dressed for this. I’ll look ridiculous.”

  “So take your jacket off and carry it over your shoulder. Roll up your sleeves.”

  I gave her my sternest gaze. “We have places we need to be.”

  And with the same gaze, in the same low tone—like an audience member mocking a hypnotist—she said, “Five minutes, Dad.”

  The command was one I had used in her youth. When she didn’t want to leave a playground, a birthday party, a roller-skating rink, or anything of the sort, I had always stated that same limit, in the same tone of voice. It had been more than a decade, though, since I’d said anything of the sort, and her sudden calling up of the phrase—and of the tone and facial expression—neutralized me to the point that I couldn’t respond. And then she was leading me by the hand along the fence, toward an entrance manned by people uniformed in bright orange T-shirts covered with logos. “Miranda,” I said.

  “We’ll just find out how much it costs,” she said, continuing forward. “This is my dad,” she told the woman in a floppy sun hat and oversized black sunglasses who sat at the table by the gate. “He wants to know how much it costs to go in.”

  “Five dollars to get in, one doll
ar per token, and each cup of beer costs two or three tokens, depending on the brewer,” she announced.

  Miranda looked at me. I shook my head, but that seemed to be the very response she wanted. “Two, please,” she said firmly, pulling a twenty from her pocket. “And ten tokens.” She handed the woman the bill, and the woman passed Miranda ten wooden nickels before stamping the backs of our hands. The stamp’s image of a Tolkienesque sorcerer in a robe and pointed hat softened before my eyes as the ink bled into the reticulations of my skin.

  “Can he leave his jacket here?” Miranda asked, pointing toward a cardboard box behind the woman that held an assortment of shirts, hats, and glasses.

  “We don’t have a coat check,” the woman said. “That’s the lost and found.”

  Miranda nodded, but when we stepped past the woman and into the festival, she circled behind me and tugged at the collar of my jacket until I obliged by slipping out of it. “The tie, too,” she said, and I obediently removed it, then watched her stuff it into the jacket’s inside pocket. While the woman manning the entry was engaged with the next customer, Miranda dropped my coat into the cardboard box. “No one’s going to take it,” she said, patting me on the back. She examined her palm with amazement. “You’re soaked.”

  Of course I was. It was a hundred degrees, and I’d been wearing a suit and tie while she led me through city streets at a rapid clip. I could feel my shirt stuck to my skin all across and down my back. “I didn’t dress to attend Brewfest,” I said.

  “Well,” she said. “Roll up your sleeves.”

  I followed her order, but also furrowed my brow. “Five minutes, Miranda,” I said sternly.

  She laughed. We moved forward.

  I was struck first by the tumult of voices and squeals and laughter, the sputtered hiss of valves dispensing beer, music from various distances and directions, suffering various degrees of distortion, and beneath it all the steady rumble and shuffle of shoes against pavement. By that hour, many of the tables were askew, with staffers and patrons who could no longer hide what a day of heat and alcohol had done to them. Some festivalgoers appeared, like us, to have just arrived, and therefore still to possess some composure, but that population was vastly outnumbered by those at other points on the sobriety scale. An energized group of braying college boys were pushing or jumping into one another in a ragged, sunburned way, spilling beer and mock-threatening one another with an enthusiasm frayed enough that one sensed the jousting could slip into actual violence, should one of them say the wrong thing, with the wrong shove, to another. There were also those whose energy was completely sapped: they shuffled slowly, stood in place, or sat on the curb, holding cups of beer they probably didn’t want to drink, but from which they drank nevertheless. When Miranda moved to one of the nearest tables, I heard an eruption of applause and laughter behind me, but turned to find only a small group breaking up and moving off, and no evidence of what might have merited the cheer.