by Jessica Pine
“You’re not funny. And it’s not that bad.”
“It is that bad. You look like you’re about to bust out the Winter of Discontent speech.”
Great. Shakespeare. All I needed. I was going to ask him if he’d been playing trivia with Psycho – beg pardon, Uncle – Bob again, but when I managed to straighten my neck out to a reasonable degree I could see something was up.
I have no idea how long he’d been sitting at his kitchen table, staring into a cup of coffee, but his posture and general jitters were not good for a man in his position. Not good at all.
“You don’t look that great yourself,” I said.
“I’m fine. I’m upright. That’s a start.”
“Steve, you look like you’ve seen a goddamn ghost.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know I don’t believe in ghosts.”
I poured a coffee and pulled up a chair. Oh God. Lower spine was getting involved now. Oh goody. “Listen,” I said. “I know you’ve read all kinds of books and I know Machiavelli and Lao Sun Tzu and all your other devious little friends have told you to show no fear...”
Steve held up a hand. “I’m gonna stop you right there...”
“...no you’re not. It’s okay to feel nervous. It’s normal.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I don’t.”
“So shut up.”
“No. I may be hobbling around like fucking Igor, but when I walked into this kitchen you were sitting here looking like you’d been stuffed. You know what they say – speak now or forever...”
Steve slumped forward with a groan and began to gently bang his head against the kitchen table.
“So maybe that was a bad choice of words,” I said.
“Shit. Oh shit, shit, shit.”
“Steve, stop. Sit up. Breathe.” Well, I guess this was what I was here for.
He straightened up and buried his face in his hands.
“Okay,” I said. “How long has this been going on for?”
He shook his head.
“Come on. It’s now or never.”
“I KNOW!” His hands came down slap on the tabletop. He took a breath. “Goddamnit,” he said. “Don’t you think I know that? I’ve had all this time to say something and I haven’t.”
“Say what?” I felt a weird little rollercoaster swoop down in the pit of my stomach, like I knew this was coming. Oh, he’d picked a fine time to admit it was just a phase he was going through.
He bit his lip. “I’ve had this feeling the whole time. Ever since it was official.” He got up from the table and poured himself another coffee. “And fuck you, by the way. Making me talk about my feelings on a day like today.”
“Steve, today’s the day if ever there was one. What feeling?”
He took a long swallow of scalding coffee. “What if we’re about to fix something that isn’t even broken?”
I frowned. “So...what? No harm done, right?”
Steve shook his head. “Yes. There’s a million ways this could fuck up. What if I’ve taken something that was perfect and wonderful and just applied...pressure? And what if I can’t handle the pressure?”
Oh. So that’s what it was.
“You can handle it,” I said. “Trust me.”
“How do you know?”
“Steve, I have a kid. You want to talk pressure? Try sleepless nights, teething and shots. Come on – eat something. Take a shower. Get dressed. Tomorrow morning you’re going to be waking up in Barbados.”
He opened the fridge. “Ass-pirates of the Caribbean,” he muttered. “I wonder if they ever made that porno. You want eggs?”
We’d come a long way, baby. The inside of Steve’s fridge looked like an adult’s – no more beer, mustard and bloated hotdogs. He had broccoli in there, soy milk (Trey was lactose intolerant) and ordinary milk you didn’t have to sniff carefully before attempting to use it. Milk was a goddamn minefield at home – you never know which mammal it had come from.
Next to the broccoli was a tray of boutonnieres. We had never found the rare and precious Himalayan orchid that said ‘I’m sorry I called you Princess Fuckpants’, but the late red roses were pretty, if traditional. “Did you pick these up?” I said.
“Delivery.”
“Holy shit – I didn’t even hear the doorbell. I must have been dead to the world.”
“You were,” he said. “No wonder your neck got all fucked up.”
“I can straighten it. It’s fine.” I held my head up straight. The pain shot down one side of my neck.
“Put some heat on it. I’m not having you screw up the photos by looking like an anxious parakeet.”
“Thanks. So sweet of you.”
“Hey – I get to be shallow. It’s my day. You’ll get your turn.”
My turn. Jesus. Like we’d even had time to think about that. “Is it this a good time to mention that I have no idea where I put the rings?”
He stared at me and turned a shade of whitish green that I have never seen before or since.
“I’m fucking with you,” I said.
“You’re going to hell, Clayton,” he said, when he could speak again. “And I can’t help you.”
I knew it. But it was worth it. It was maybe the only time in our lives I’d ever seen him off balance.
It was a beautiful service. On my way down the aisle I caught sight of her standing next to her old man. She was wearing a clingy, gauzy blue-green dress, and she’d done as I asked and not tried to straighten her hair. It was piled up behind her head, a few curls hanging loose around her neck. She had obviously given up trying to pin the boutonniere onto her dress and instead stuck the rose in her hair.
I think I must have been dragging my feet, because she raised her eyebrows and inclined her head to where I was supposed to be, where Steve and Trey were waiting to be joined in what Trey referred to as ‘unholy matrimony’.
Trey looked stupidly handsome, but then he always did. Lacie informed me afterwards that Steve ‘cleaned up nicely’, but I said I’d defer to her judgment on that one.
“To me,” I said. “He’s always going to be the snot-nose little bastard who made me walk into a biker bar wearing three fisherman’s sweaters and his Mom’s shoulder pads.”
“He looks good,” she said. “They make a really handsome couple.”
“Speaking of which...”
She smoothed the front of my tux. “Yeah, yeah. Stop fishing. You look edible.”
“I was talking about you, actually?”
“Oh, this old thing,” she said, patting her hair and adopting a Southern accent. “I just threw it on.”
Bullshit. She’d had about five separate panic attacks and had asked me on no less than seventeen occasions if it made her look fat. “I don’t suppose it’ll make any difference if I tell you that I’ve never seen you look so beautiful?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said, turning pink. “Try it. See what happens.”
I didn’t get any further. Steve’s brother caught hold of my sleeve and told me the photographer needed me. And after that there was dinner, and speeches, so I didn’t get her to myself again until it was time to join the couple on the floor for the first dance – It Had To Be You. My choice. Steve wasn’t a big fan of the oldies but I’d managed to talk him into it and out of his original choice of Killing In The Name. Trey had been no help at all; his choice was Down With The Sickness.
“You pulled it off,” said Lacie, as she swayed back and forth against me on the dance floor. “Although I can’t help thinking something’s missing.”
“Nothing is missing,” I said, confidently. If anything had been missing, Steve’s Mom would currently be screaming, hyperventilating and demanding to know why the exact number of balloons hadn’t fallen to the dance floor at the right moment.
“I don’t know. Some part of me thinks this wedding is missing a mosh-pit...”
“Funny.”
“...and a bunch of grandmas screaming along wi
th ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me’...”
The rose in her hair was starting to wilt around the edges. I leaned down to kiss her and her left breast started to ring.
“Shit,” she said, and took her phone out of her bra.
She covered her ear and listened for a moment. We’d been doing so well so far – no tears, no fevers, no missing coins, diarrhea, ear-aches or bad attacks of the barfs.
“Rita?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Courtney. Voicemail.”
“Is she okay?” She’d been doing better. After a year in a residential rehab for eating disorders she’d baled on her modeling career and was taking her Masters in Psychology. We still got cards from her folks at Christmas.
“She says she sorry she couldn’t make it and wants to know if we’re having a good time,” said Lacie, waggling her eyebrows like Groucho Marx. “And apparently Erik says hi too.”
“Erik?”
“The Viking. The big Swede who broke her ribs at the gym.”
“Oh,” I said. “You think that’s a thing?”
“I think it could be a thing,” she said. “If he’s still around. I guess nothing says ‘I love you’ like CPR. And...you know. He knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Her damage, dummy.”
The phone bleeped again and this time she scurried off the dance floor. One of Steve’s elderly aunts asked me if she could ‘cut in’ and so I finished out the dance with her.
“That was Rita,” said Lacie, when I caught up with her. “And we officially have a tantrum on our hands.”
“Oh shit.” Figured. It was just late enough for us to start enjoying ourselves and just time for her to get cranky. “She hasn’t even hit the terrible twos yet.”
“She’s very advanced for her age,” said Lacie.
“You think so?”
“Of course I do. The alternative is realizing that I gave birth to the kid from The Omen.”
“She’s not that bad.”
“She is that bad. When it’s bedtime.” Lacie sighed. “Oh God. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to cut this short...”
Cassandra, misery-magnet that she was, spotted our expressions and came over. “Trouble?”
“Tantrums. Rita’s up against it.”
“Oh dear,” said Cassandra, and waved her brother over. “Gus, are you sticking around for much longer?”
He wasn’t. That was the great thing about Lacie’s Dad – he was never too tired or too busy to do grandparent duty. “I’ll pick her up,” he said. “Try and settle her down.”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Lacie, and started going through the list of instructions. It’s a common joke that babies don’t come with an instruction manual, and there’s a reason for that – they write their own. Walk her up and down the hallway five times and if that doesn’t work then sing Itsy Bitsy Spider, but you have to do it in the right tone of voice and if she doesn’t have the purple binky she won’t go down. Also she has to have the blanket with the bunnies on the corner and it has to be fleecy side up because of allergies, and don’t give her juice at night even if she begs because she turns into a sugar gremlin...
And so it goes on. My eyes had just about finished glazing over when a brunette sidled up to me and gave me that kind of shy ‘Do I know you, do I not know you’ look.
“Hi...?” I said, slowly, then I saw Bog lurking behind her.
“Gerald!” I said.
“Gerald?” said Lacie, turning away from her Dad.
“Lacie, this is Gerald. We met in a...in a...”
“Titty bar,” said Gerald. “I used to dance.”
“Used to?” said Lacie. She hadn’t quite gone psychotic. Yet. Oh dear.
“I have mild to moderate OCD,” said Gerald. “The pole just fucking skeeved me out...pardon my French. Also I got a back injury. What about you? What do you do?”
“Me?” said Lacie. “I write things. I’m a writer.”
“Oh my God. Cool,” said Gerald. “Anything I’ve heard of?”
“Probably not yet. I’ve only got one book out there at the moment but I was busy – had my daughter.”
“No, seriously – text me the name, so I won’t forget. I love to read.”
Bog lurched over and grinned. “So?” he said. “What do you think?”
I thought Lacie was doing really well. She was showing Gerald Willow’s baby pictures on her phone. “Of what?”
“My girl.”
“Gerald? You’re with Gerald?”
Bog frowned. “Dude, her name’s Veronica.”
“Veronica,” I said. “Right. Of course it is. Goddamn it, Bog – you kept that quiet.”
Bog shrugged. “Discreet. I’m discreet. It’s the better part of valor.”
“Yeah – well. You know. It’d be nice to be kept in the loop. When did that start?”
“A while ago,” said Bog.
“He told me he was a direct line descendant of Genghis Khan,” said Veronica. “I’ve got this thing about nomadic tribes in history. Scythians, Huns – that kind of thing. And the Mongols were the biggest badasses of the lot.”
“Wait,” I said. “I told you that. About the Genghis Khan thing.”
“So you did,” said Veronica. “Huh. You’re quite a matchmaker.”
Brown Eyed Girl started playing. “Hey – they’re playing our song!” said Bog, and led Gerald (she would always be Gerald to me) onto the dance floor.
“A nomad groupie,” said Lacie. “Unusual.”
“Do you think she’s just into him for his DNA?”
“Nah.”
“You were very civilized,” I said, heart in my mouth. “About the whole...titty bar thing.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “I’ve got your DNA now anyway. Nobody can take that away from me.”
“True.”
We watched Bog and Gerald get down. Her dancing was pretty sexy; his was not.
“I love this song,” I said.
“Do you?”
“Why isn’t this our song? You have brown eyes.”
“Because when Steve asked me what was our song to play at the reception, this wasn’t the one I chose.”
“So what did you choose?”
“Wait and see.”
“It’s not Down With the Sickness, is it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I handed her another glass of champagne. “Wanna dance?”
“Sure. You can finish telling me I look beautiful.”
“Done.”
We danced and drank until we were sloppy drunk and needed to get home, so we left the happy couple and got a cab.
The light was on in the workshop when we got back, which was weird. As Lacie said, Gus never left the light on. The light went off when he left and that was that.
“Maybe we’re being robbed,” she said. She walked maybe three or four steps, realized her heels were making a noise and wobbled on one foot to take them off.
“Here, hold these,” she said, shoving her shoes into my arms.
“Lacie...wait.”
“What?”
“If we’re being robbed...”
“Yeah – well. They’d better stop robbing us. Like, now.” It was the first time she’d had a real drink in two years. It was as much as she could do to walk in a straight line.
“You can’t just go running in there,” I said. “I’m sorry. I know I don’t think like you. I know I’m not brave like you...”
She laughed. “Excuse me? You talk back to my aunt.”
And she was off down the alley before I could stop her. I hurried after her. She’d stopped stock still in the dark, just beyond where the light from the workshop ended. Gus was sitting in a rocking chair, Willow on his lap. I couldn’t see her face. Lacie didn’t like to cut her hair, which was as curly as her own but as red as mine had been when I was a kid.
“Shh,” said Lacie. “Listen.”
I caught little snatches of Gus�
��s voice. He wasn’t singing Itsy Bitsy Spider, but his tone was the same night-night, go-to-sleep trailing off one we used when singing to Will. “...if there’s no chimney then he finds some other magic way into the house. He never misses anyone...”
Lacie sniffed a couple of times and went inside. “Hey.” She brushed the hair back from Willow’s face. Will’s eyelashes fluttered, but her face was flushed and she looked like she was finally out for the count. “Was she terrible?”
“Nah. She just missed her Mommy.”
“Yeah, well - I think after all this time Mommy deserves to get her drink on.”
“I’ll take her up,” said Gus. “Lock up when you’re done.”
“Thanks.” She leaned back against a paneled door and yawned. “Oh my God – I’m going to know about this in the morning.”
“No, you’re right,” I said. “You deserve it. Okay, so you’re not pulling down J.K. Rowling’s kind of money, but you finished the damn book – and had a baby.”
“I guess,” she said, and sighed. “Oh, dammit.”
“What?”
“We left too early. You never heard the song I picked for you.”
“Tell me,” I said, putting an arm around her waist. “Better yet, sing it.” At that moment I really hoped it wasn’t Down With The Sickness.
“Me? Sing? Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. We’re both drunk. This is the natural state for singing to occur.”
“Fine,” she said, and swayed into my arms. She hummed a little, and then she began to sing, off-key but with feeling – “If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady...”
Asked and answered.
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