Odds : A Love Story (9781101554357)

by O'Nan, Stewart

  Instead of discussing the happy possibility of spending their days and nights together, they fought. He thought he was being thoughtful and responsible. She thought he’d taken her answer for granted. Why didn’t he just talk to her instead of sneaking around behind her back? Didn’t he think she should have a say in her own life? He had no defense save for his good intentions, which now seemed self-serving or, at best, mistaken. One of her capping arguments was that her parents would expect them to get married. The way she said it made it sound like it might never happen and she didn’t want to give them a false impression.

  “Do you want to get married?” he asked.

  “Come on, Art,” she said, as if he were making an unfunny joke.

  “Do you?”

  “Stop. Nobody’s marrying anybody. Jesus.”

  From then on, whenever he was tempted to think of a future with her, he would remember how absurd she made it seem, so that even after they’d moved in together he sometimes still felt as if he were her second choice, their situation temporary. When they finally decided to get married, it was more of a negotiation than a proposal, concerned primarily with timing, since Celia was getting remarried and didn’t want to hold off making arrangements for a whole year.

  Their waitress reappeared with their drinks, and he wondered where Marion was. Their dinner reservations were at six. He’d ordered a Molson draft, the same thing he had their first time. He sipped it, trying not to get too far ahead of her. The room had rotated so he could just see the Canadian end of the Rainbow Bridge. They might catch part of the American Falls but not the sunset.

  She came up from behind, surprising him.

  “Sorry. There was a line. I almost wet my pants. Then when I came out, you’d moved and I couldn’t find you. How are we on time?”

  “We’re okay.”

  “There was this woman in there with her little girl, I swear she’s one of the ones from Heart. She had the eighties rock star hair and everything.”

  “Which one? The blonde one or the dark one?”

  “The skinny one.”

  “Nancy Wilson.”

  “Whoever. Her daughter was not having a happy time.”

  “You know who she’s married to.”

  “No, enlighten me.”

  “Cameron Crowe.”

  “Help me out.”

  “The director. Say Anything? Jerry Maguire?”

  “Don’t turn around,” she said, her eyes tracking someone behind him.

  She might have been right. The woman who passed at his elbow with her daughter in hand did look like Nancy Wilson—willowy, with long teased hair and a tiny waist—though it was hard to tell from the back. She had on a black leather jacket, cigarette-leg jeans and biker boots. She was probably just a fan dressed for the concert. He couldn’t imagine Nancy Wilson, with all the money in the world, eating at a place like this a couple hours before showtime, just as he couldn’t imagine Nancy Wilson with a sulky four- or five-year-old daughter.

  “She’s got to be our age,” he said. “Or older.”

  “All I know is, someone wants their activity book.”

  “Aha.”

  A few tables away, the woman turned to help her daughter into her booster seat, giving him a better view.

  All he had to see were her eyes. Her face was leonine, iconic, calling up album covers and magazine spreads.

  “Oh my God,” he said, whispering, as if it were a secret. “It is her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Weirdly, she hadn’t changed. Despite the dated hairstyle, she was still striking—high cheeks, the straight nose and full lips, the dimpled chin. Under the leather jacket she wore a frilly vermillion blouse she might have worn onstage. There was a younger woman with them, black-haired, possibly a nanny, because she was helping the girl with her napkin.

  Marion sat up, obstructing his view. “Don’t stare.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “She has on a ton of makeup.”

  “You’d think they’d have a sound check to do, or something.”

  “I thought you liked them smaller,” she said, an allusion he could either refute or let pass. The worst thing he could do was hesitate. “And younger.”

  “I like you.”

  “You’ve got to be quicker than that.”

  “I do like you. And love you.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  The box was a lump in his pocket. Of all the possible moments, right then he should have been able to give her a lifetime of reasons, except that he felt attacked. Unfairly, he would have said, though, knowing how often he thought of Wendy—pointlessly, since it had been twenty years and in the end he’d been relieved to be free of her—he was even more skeptical of himself. He knew what he’d done. She didn’t have to keep reminding him.

  “I know why,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “Because you care about everyone, you want everything to be fair, and you’ll fight for what’s right.”

  “Did you just come up with that?”

  “I did.”

  “I’m impressed.” She raised her glass and dipped her head in tribute. “I don’t think that’s entirely true, but I’m impressed.”

  “What’s not true?”

  “I’m not nearly as nice as you think I am.”

  “You actually helped people. I didn’t.”

  “You did what you could,” she said.

  “I should have never taken the job.”

  “It put the kids through school.”

  “We could have done it some other way.”

  To confess these misgivings secretly thrilled him, and the fact that, after everything, she would defend him. At home they would have never picked apart their lives so clinically, airing their regrets as if they were some other couple’s. Like middle age, vacation provided a necessary distance, an extra perspective.

  Outside it was night, blackness filling the gaps, flattening the world below to patterns of lights, a schematic view usually glimpsed from an airliner in its final descent. The room had rotated so the Rainbow Bridge was almost beside them, still packed with traffic. He thought of the house, locked and dark, the realtor’s sign a public admission in the yard, and wondered if the trip had been a mistake, the plan, everything. They could ride it out another six months if they had to.

  “Melody hasn’t called,” he asked.

  “I think I’ve given up on Melody,” she said, but dug out her phone.

  “Not that it matters.”

  “No, nothing.”

  “I never thought we’d lose money on that house.”

  “It was a good house,” she said. “It was the right house for us then. Oop—I can see the Falls. Look at the hearts.”

  He twisted his neck. Projected pinkly onto the curtain of falling water was a plump pair of hearts skewered by Cupid’s arrow. “Very nice. The thing I worry about is the kids not having a place to come back to.”

  “I think they’re okay with it. When was the last time they were back?”

  “I still miss my old house.”

  “I know you do,” she said.

  “It would be nice to have a place for the grandchildren.”

  “I think that’s down the road a ways, Grandpa.”

  “Not that far, at least for Emma. I know Mark wants kids.”

  “Okay, now I feel old.”

  The waitress appeared, pointing back and forth between their glasses. “Another round?”

  Marion looked to him, the official timekeeper. If they left now they’d have just enough time to get back and change for dinner, but he was pleasantly buzzed from the beer, and the way they were talking seemed more important than making their reservation. They could see the Falls, Nancy Wilson was sitting three tables away, and rather than cut short the moment, he veered from his plan and gave the waitress the okay.

  Looking back, he would see this decision as the one that determined the rest of t
he evening, if not the weekend, an obvious tipping point, as if by taking the first step off the path he was knowingly leading them deeper into the woods. Whether that was true or not—and they would fight over it—later he would blame himself, thinking he’d been greedy, but at the time, honestly, all he wanted to do was go on talking with her.

  Odds of a 53‑year-old woman being a grandmother:

  1 in 3

  They had an expensive bottle of Cabernet with dinner, and Irish coffees with dessert, and were tipsy enough that they took a cab the few blocks back to the hotel rather than risk slipping and falling on the icy sidewalk. She had to concentrate to make sense; her eyes stung from the effort. Through her window she could see the stars spread across the sky like a connect-the-dots puzzle and wondered what secret message they were trying to send her. She was hot in her coat, and struggled to free her arms as if it were a straitjacket. With his help she finally succeeded, smacking him in the lip with her ring. She laughed, then apologized, laid a hand on his jaw and kissed him to make it all better, when suddenly they were there, under the portico, the white-gloved valet opening the door for her, helping her out, telling her to watch her step.

  The escalator made her sway, and she took Art’s arm. It was bright inside, the lobby achime with the ringing of slot machines, and she was relieved when the elevator doors closed, shutting it out. She leaned against the back wall, felt the rushing uplift in her legs.

  “Are you gonna make it?” he asked.

  “I’m good,” she said, Emma’s favorite phrase, and pictured her alone in her cozy apartment in Boston, the quiet, solitary life Marion sometimes envied, except from her Facebook page she knew Mark was taking her out for dinner and dancing. That was better anyway, Marion thought. When she was single, she and her friends used to go clubbing every weekend, coming home at daybreak with a half dozen stamps on their hands. When was the last time she really let loose? She was tired of moping around the house, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Maybe Art had the right idea—why pretend anymore? If they were going down, they might as well do it in style.

  They barely had time to use the bathroom and change. As always, the mirror reminded her that she wasn’t young anymore. She hadn’t been to an actual rock concert in over a decade. Lacking anything sexier, she’d brought her best dinner party outfit, a slimming pair of black slacks and a flashy silver top, but after seeing Nancy Wilson she felt self-conscious and grandmotherly.

  “I hate what I’m wearing,” she said, “but I don’t have anything else. Sorry, what you see is what you get.”

  “You look fine.” All he’d changed was his shirt, from a white oxford to a cornflower blue. He could have been going to work.

  “What a couple of old farts,” she said.

  “I guarantee there will be people onstage older than us.”

  “There’s something to look forward to. Kidding. Just kidding, just kidding, justkidding, justkidding.”

  “Do I need to cut you off?”

  “That’s the problem, I’m sobering up.”

  “We can’t have that.” He moved to the living room and used the little key to open the minibar, stepped aside and presented its contents like Carol Merrill. “Your pleasure, milady?”

  “They’ll have drinks there, I’m assuming?”

  “If you want to stand in line all night. Plus this is on the house.”

  “What kind of red wine is there?”

  “Sutter Home.”

  “Ew, no. What else is there?”

  There was a little of everything.

  “Is there tequila?” she asked.

  “Someone’s getting serious.”

  “It’s a rock concert, right?”

  “Rock and roll.”

  “Hells yeah, rock and roll,” she said. “Take that Jack too.”

  “I wasn’t gonna leave it.”

  She watched him slip the miniature bottles into his socks. “What are we, in high school? You think they’re gonna frisk us?”

  “You never know.”

  “I can take a couple.”

  “Where you gonna put them?”

  “I have my hiding places.”

  “I’m sure you do,” he said, though it turned out to be an empty boast. Her slacks were too snug to fit a bottle in the pockets, and she wasn’t wearing socks.

  “I’d be a bad smuggler anyway,” she said. “I’m too chicken. You’re the criminal in the family.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I think I’m maxed out. I don’t want these falling out while we’re walking through the mall. Time to get our pregame on.” He twisted open a nip of Southern Comfort and handed it to her. “To rock and roll.”

  “Rock and roll,” she said, and tipped it back. She’d forgotten the boozy sweetness, the way it coated her tongue and teeth like syrup. “We really are back in high school.”

  “Just for one night,” he said, as if that might be fun, and for a moment, slowed by everything she’d had to drink, she thought, if offered, she might actually seize the opportunity to rewind to sixteen or seventeen and start over to avoid all of this—then remembered Emma and Jeremy. You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole—like the world, or the person you loved. With the Southern Comfort warming her, short-circuiting her thoughts, the idea seemed profound, and then as Art was leaving a note for the turndown service and she was checking to see if she had her room key, she dropped the stupid plastic card on the carpet so it bounced under the glass table. Recovering it required all of her faculties, and by the time she straightened up, clutching the arm of one chair like the rung of a ladder, the notion was gone, replaced by the urge to dance until she was sweaty and party till she didn’t give a shit about anything.

  Odds of Heart playing “Crazy on You” in concert:

  1 in 1

  Even as they waited outside in the bright, sterile mall, shuffling toward the theater doors with the other latecomers—most of them their age, Art noted—the reek of burning weed was overpowering, and brazen. He’d forgotten it was legal here, or at least decriminalized. Marion sniffed the air and arched her eyebrows like Harpo.

  Inside, a fog hung in the trusses overhead, reflecting the kaleidoscope of the light show, and he wondered how the owners got around the fire code. When a joint came down their row, she hit it and passed it to him as if it was natural. He held the smoke in his lungs, watching Nancy Wilson strumming her twelve-string and stepping forward to press a pedal, her skin tinted yellow and then red under the gels. Her hair was only shoulder-length, and straight, not the luxuriant tresses he remembered, and she was noticeably thin, as if she’d been sick, her wrists bony. Though he’d sworn it was her, the woman from the restaurant had been someone else. It wasn’t the first time he’d gone out of his way to prove he was a fool. This was minor, comparatively. He exhaled, adding his breath to the cloud above. Beside him Marion swayed to the music, the crowd singing along so loudly he could barely pick out the vocals. It was like being trapped in a giant karaoke bar on Heart night.

  For years he’d been hearing that dope was stronger. Now he believed it. They’d been drinking for hours, so maybe it was the combination. His lips were numb, his face a rigid mask, as if he were slowly being paralyzed. He felt himself receding, a flickering brain cell trapped inside a thick, inert head, like the lighted stage at the end of the dark auditorium. He watched the crowd as much as the band. They played two or three favorites, then a new tune nobody knew, everyone settling again, as if in protest. Someone down the row must have had a bag of joints, because they kept coming. The smell was piney, almost sweet. Marion coughed and laughed at herself, offered it to him. He needed to be in control for the dry run later, and rather than abstain and look like a lightweight, he took in a shallow mouthful and blew it out.

  The new tune garnered tepid applause, and then the stage—the whole place—went blac
k, as if they’d lost power, only the red exit signs floating in space. In the dark, people shrieked and whooped and whistled, called out songs. After a long minute a single orange spot found Nancy Wilson downstage, perched on the very edge, one high-heeled boot atop a monitor, her right hand raised straight in the air like Pete Townshend about to windmill. She waited until the shouting and catcalls subsided, lowered the pick to her Stratocaster and broke into the galloping opening riff of “Barracuda,” making everyone jump up.

  She played it twice, three times, torquing the whammy bar, bending the last jangling chord so it ricocheted off the walls and scattered, then spun, kicked, and the flash pots bloomed like fireworks, blinding, as the rest of the band jumped in, thunderous, hitting them like a wind. So, this ain’t the end, I saw you again, Ann shrilled. Marion grabbed him, and though he had no idea how to dance to the song beyond a headbanging pogo, and understood they looked as ridiculous as all the stiff, middle-aged baby boomers around them, he tried to match her enthusiasm, sticking out his chin and pouting, Jagger-like, lip-syncing to the words he didn’t know he knew. Her smirk was a challenge, half put-down, half come‑on. They mock-taunted each other with the chorus. And if the real thing don’t do the trick—no?—you better make up something quick. You’re gonna burn burn burn burn burn to the wii-iick. The coda was all churning guitars and flashing strobes. After the last cymbals crashed and the lights died, they embraced, sweaty, celebrating the greatness of the song and how wasted they were. When she kissed him, he tasted weed and tequila. She hung on his neck, shouted in his ear, “Is there anything left to drink?”

  He made it his mission. There was no sense in both of them going. His mouth was dry and he had a craving for a beer anyway.

  As he’d predicted, the lines were endless, the concessions people painfully, irritatingly slow. He didn’t mind missing a couple of cheesy power ballads from the eighties, but while he was still a dozen people from the front, he recognized, from a lifetime of AOR radio, the fingerpicked flamenco intro and then the strummed buildup giving way to the big fuzzy falling-down-the-stairs riff—“Crazy on You.” We may still have time, we might still get by. The song could have been about them, and he wished he were there with her for it.