by T. C. Boyle
She set his drink on the table and glimpsed the message he had taken so long in writing. To Beth and John, a beautiful couple. Wishing a long life to you both, full of happiness and love!
The kindness of these words filled her with shame.
When she looked at him her eyes came up only to the top buttons of his shirt.
“How many for you this year?” he asked, nodding to the surroundings. White and yellow paper lanterns draped the porch and swayed in the wind. Beth, the bride, had fought her mother to put these up. A pack of young nieces and nephews roamed between the tables of appetizers, their lips dyed red from multiple Shirley Temples. Aunts and distant cousins, stepfamily, coworkers, and the friends of grandparents shook hands vigorously and gave half kisses on cheeks. A small wedding with a big reception—the whole effect was like being invited to eat at a nice restaurant with someone else’s family.
“Four,” she said, squeezing a lime into her gin and tonic. “Not as bad as it could be. You?”
Liam’s eyes darted to Miriam’s right arm.
“It’s gone,” she told him, touching her bicep where a patch of skin was discolored. “Took a whole paycheck to get it removed.” As soon as Liam had turned eighteen they had driven to a tattoo parlor in downtown Nashville. After years of drawing possible designs in the margins of their notebooks, they’d finally settled on something they hoped they would still like at age thirty—their first initials in medieval-manuscript letters. Miriam had volunteered to go first. Fifteen minutes into the appointment, Liam had gone for some fresh air. He had not returned. When it was over, Miriam had wandered outside and found Liam sitting on the curb three blocks away with his head between his knees.
“I can’t do it.” He shook his head.
Miriam felt sick. Four hundred dollars. The tattoo burned underneath layers of gauze.
“I just can’t do it,” he repeated. “I’m sorry, Mir.”
She threw up by a lamppost.
Liam had walked to the Pizza Hut and bought her a Sprite. He was afraid he’d regret the tattoo. There was no way they were getting married right after high school like their parents. She’d sat down on the curb, lit a cigarette, and offered it to him. His concerns were legitimate, she’d told him. But even if it didn’t work out, at the very least they would want something to remember the other by. Whatever happened, they would always remain friends.
“Have you thought about getting yours removed?” Miriam asked.
“I’ve thought about it.” He rolled the ice around his glass with the little plastic sword. “When people ask I just tell them that the M stands for ‘Mom.’” He smiled and looked at her sadly. “They think it’s sweet.”
“It’s different for women.” Miriam’s ears grew hot. “You never see guys wearing sleeveless tops.”
“So you’re saying that if you’d gotten it on your ass you wouldn’t have it removed?”
Miriam opened her mouth and then closed it.
“It’s all right.” He laughed and slapped her shoulder.
Miriam struggled to think of something meaningful to say. Tell him, maybe, that she was glad that they had been such good friends, or how on his birthday she thought about calling but never did. She was relieved to see Gloria walk up to them, her face flushed and exasperated. Miriam was requested upstairs. More than likely it was trouble with the bustle. Ten hooks! She followed Gloria up the long winding staircase.
In the dressing room, half-eaten finger sandwiches and overturned plastic cups were strewn across a card table. The bridesmaids’ gift bags were lined up neatly by the bathroom door next to a pile of jeans and sneakers. Beth sat at the edge of an antique chair, the tulle of her dress blooming around her so that she looked like a stamen in the center of a giant flower. Gloria shut the door behind Miriam, and Beth glanced at her nervously. Miriam told herself there must be a serious problem with the bouquet toss or speaker system, but looked at Beth’s face and knew that it was none of these. She leaned her back into the door.
“Did you see him? Did you see Caleb?” Beth asked.
“I thought I did, out on the patio,” Miriam said. “Then I thought I made a mistake.” Miriam meant to sound calm but her voice came out falsetto.
“We were hoping to get you up here before you saw him.” Beth stood up to embrace her, but Miriam’s arms felt too heavy and cold to return the hug. Caleb was being seen out to his car, Beth assured her. Someone would have to explain to John’s cousin Mary-Beth why her plus-one had disappeared, but that wasn’t so hard. Mary-Beth always had the worst taste in men.
They all sat down on the couch and said nothing. Miriam knew that Beth had already procured some emergency Xanax from her mother. A box of tissues waited on the coffee table. Beth and Gloria sat very straight, poised for her to do something dramatic. They were ready to console, restrain, or calm her. For instance, Miriam might take a lamp and throw it into the mirror, or lock herself in the bathroom for the rest of the night, or march to the bar and eat a jar of maraschino cherries. Any of these actions would have been understandable and acceptable. Miriam waited for a strong feeling to overcome her, but nothing did, or at least nothing she could communicate. A shiver of pleasure ran up her spine. Perhaps he had seen her. Perhaps he saw how well she looked. She sank into the couch, disappointed that he was leaving.
Even though they lived in the same town, Miriam had run across Caleb only a handful of times since the eighth grade. The last time was two years ago. She was visiting home over Christmas break from graduate school, driving her mother’s truck to drop some old clothes at Goodwill. Caleb had jogged across the intersection in a polar fleece and a hunter’s orange wool hat, his breath leaving puffs of steam in the air. He had looked better than well. He’d looked happy, with a thin, Buddha-like smile across his face. A thick layer of ice had covered the road and it was dark and gray outside. Had a car come and hit him, she would have liked to be the one to call an ambulance. She would ride in the back with him to the hospital. He would wear an oxygen mask and for a moment he would not know who she was but in his daze would mistake her for an angel. Then all at once he’d go wide-eyed with recognition. He would be unable to speak. She would take her glove off to squeeze his hand to let him know she had forgiven him, to demonstrate she no longer wished him dead.
Miriam told no one about these sightings. She treated these few moments with the same guilt and exhilaration others reserved for secret love affairs. Beth threaded her dress around her fingers; Gloria chewed on her lower lip. Everyone looked so pretty and fine today, even when their faces were tight with worry.
“You sure you’re all right?” asked Beth. Miriam felt a dry lump form in her throat. In the never-ending list of awful things that happen to people each second, Miriam’s awful thing was so small that she could render it insignificant. But whenever she thought it had disappeared completely, it would come back as clear and uncomfortable as a hot light on her face.
She had been only thirteen. She woke up in her underwear in the woods behind the First Baptist Church, covered in mosquito bites. He later admitted in the courtroom that he thought he had killed her by accident. In a panic he covered her body with a few branches and an old tire before running away.
He was three years older than her, the shortstop at the high school and the brother of a friend from the softball team. He brought them Gatorade and oranges and ran a special practice on how to steal bases. When he invited Miriam to drink in the basement with his high school friends, her heart somersaulted.
She spent what felt like hours looking for her clothes. For some reason her sneakers were still on. She had to pee terribly but nothing came out. Finally she covered her chest with her arms and limped across the parking lot to the side door of the church, where a gray-haired woman bolted from her car and threw a blanket across her. Miriam looked down and saw that the blanket had dog hair all over it, that it’d been used as a seat cover and not been washed in a very long time. “Let’s call your parents,” said the woman.
It dawned on Miriam that she had stayed out long past her curfew. She would be grounded forever. Her heartbeat quickened. There was no way her mom would let her go to Myrtle Beach in the summer or play softball ever again. At the thought of her punishment she passed out in the woman’s arms.
Miriam assured her friends that everything was all right. People downstairs would be wondering where the new bride was. Beth cried and mascara ran down her cheeks. Miriam retraced eyeliner on Beth’s lower lids and dusted blush on her cheekbones. Gloria poured them all a glass of champagne and toasted Caleb’s death from a flesh-eating disease, or at least testicular cancer. Miriam forced herself to laugh. The champagne bubbled in her throat and a longing pooled up inside her. If only he had stayed he would see how nice she looked tonight. She would walk across the room and he would fidget nervously, not knowing what she wanted. Then she would smile and ask how he was doing. She would look him in the eyes and look at nothing else.
“I’ll be right down,” said Miriam.
“Want us to wait for you?”
“I could use a moment, if you don’t mind.”
Beth and Gloria nodded. Miriam went to the bathroom and locked the door. She wanted to wash her face but that would require putting on her makeup all over again and she would never make it down in time for the toast. She took a hand towel and ran it under hot water, wrung it out, and put it over her chest until her heart slowed down. Someone had forgotten to turn off the curling iron. She opened and closed its trap. Once it might have calmed her to press the hot metal to the nape of her neck and hold it until it burned a flat red mark—but now she was too old to do such a ridiculous adolescent thing.
Because she had been a minor her name had been kept out of the newspaper. Everyone in town had known anyway. The gray-haired lady at the First Baptist Church liked to talk. The drama teacher had given Miriam a leading role in the high school musical, even though she was only a freshman and her audition was terrible. Other teachers at school had been extra patient with her, the way they were with the kids with autism. No one had asked her to the homecoming dance. Boys had quit talking to her. Except for Liam. Liam had still shot glances of undisguised longing across the sea of cafeteria tables, like nothing had ever happened. Because of him she had begun to remember what she used to feel like.
Miriam quietly walked back down the stairs. She could hear Beth’s dad making a speech, thanking all the loved ones who had traveled so far to be here on this special occasion. That’s what she’d tell Liam tonight. She’d tell him thank you.
L
The camel had the most beautiful long eyelashes. She blinked at Liam and chewed on something in the back of her mouth. After Miriam had gone upstairs, he realized he’d lost his keys and returned to the field to look for them. There was enough light left to maybe spot something metallic shining in the grass, but there was nothing unusual except the dark, humpbacked shape of the camel, who greeted him at the fence. The camel gave a low growl and carefully extended her neck without even grazing the wire. It didn’t seem like she wanted to escape. He patted her on her muzzle and saw a large bald patch around her left ear. He rubbed it with his thumb and remembered she’d been rescued from a petting zoo. He hoped a person hadn’t hurt her while she was there, but if so the camel seemed to have forgotten all about it.
“Did you eat my keys?” he asked the camel. Her lips felt the cuff of his jacket. “I’m sorry but I didn’t bring anything with me.” Disappointed, she turned and headed back to the barn.
Liam went back inside the house and retraced his footsteps. He searched on the floor near the long polished wooden bar, the billiards room in the basement with the red leather couch, the parlor with the out-of-print books lining the shelves, the organ whose keys made no sound but a hollow tapping. The house was regularly rented out for banquets, conferences, weddings, memorial services, and family reunions. In the daytime, seniors from the retirement home took piano lessons and played cards in the mint-colored breakfast room. The manager behind the front desk was an attractive older woman with a large silver clip fastening her hair. No keys had been found. She suggested he look in his car while he was at it.
“Please, please, please,” he muttered as he jogged to the gravel parking lot. He had locked his sister’s keys in the car last Thanksgiving and never heard the end of it. The parking lot had filled up and for a second he couldn’t remember where he’d parked Julia’s ancient Honda. He wandered the rows of cars when he saw Beth’s dad, Mr. Johnston, step into the bright light of the side entrance and follow a man out. Mr. Johnston’s large farmer’s hands rested on the man’s shoulders, but not in a friendly way. They stopped at a truck, where the man turned around and said a few quiet words, keeping his gaze low. When he opened the driver’s door the light from inside shone on his face.
If the universe had any fairness in it, Caleb would have been missing a few teeth. He would have aged prematurely, or grown bloated and red-faced from drinking, or haggard and thin from drug use. Had he been a decent man he would have, at the very least, bags under his eyes from not getting a good night’s sleep in the past fifteen years. But he looked well-rested, handsome even.
Caleb started his truck and slowly drove down the gravel road. Mr. Johnston stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited till the taillights disappeared before turning back toward the house. Liam discovered his feet would not move. A rush of blood returned to his hands when he unclenched his fists. Miriam had once brought him to the library at the high school and opened the old yearbook with Caleb’s picture from his junior year, before he was sent off to juvie. “He doesn’t look crazy, does he?” whispered Miriam. Her eyes settled on the page with a kind of unnerving softness. She swallowed and placed the yearbook back onto the shelf. As they walked to math class Liam told her that he’d kill Caleb when he got out. Miriam didn’t respond. Or maybe he wouldn’t kill him, Liam said. Maybe he’d just break his arms, or beat his face so no woman would look at him.
Miriam had grabbed Liam by the sleeve and pulled him into the stairwell. “That’s not why I showed you,” she told him. Then what was the point?
“I don’t know.” Miriam shook her head. She’d dyed her hair red for the school play and the color made her hazel eyes appear bright green. She put a finger in the center of his chest. “If you touch him,” she said, “I’ll never speak to you again.”
He saw from her face that she’d gone to a place deep inside herself, and he knew she would never allow him to go there. That was all right, Liam had decided. He didn’t need to understand her secrets to love her completely.
Around eleven o’clock, Miriam dragged Liam from his spot in the corner and onto the dance floor. Up close he noticed the absence of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She always used to get freckles at this point in the summer and tried to cover them up with powder. Her round face had grown sharper, especially when she smiled. Liam felt awkward dancing. “I can hear you counting inside your head,” she teased him.
He wondered what Miriam would look like had she simply been a pretty woman at a friend’s wedding. Her long blond hair was pulled into a bun with loose pieces around her face. Like all the bridesmaids, she wore a fragrant white flower behind her ear. Nothing in Miriam’s movements or behavior indicated that she had seen Caleb, and yet Liam felt certain that she had seen him and was now refusing to let this incident ruin a good party.
They danced four songs in a row when she suddenly leaned into Liam, turning her face so that her temple met the inside curve of his neck.
The feeling it gave him was this: Miriam had been dead for years. She now had returned for one night to dance with him in a large house with all these people who couldn’t see her ghost.
He felt an emotional pain so sharp that he staggered into an elderly couple dancing nearby. Miriam apologized and rolled her eyes at Liam. She led them into the next dance, a slow Latin song that brought a little cheer from half the dance floor. It appeared that the entirety of Tennessee had been taking ballroo
m-dance class since he moved out to California. The best dancers, he noticed, were the grandparents who didn’t know the steps but brought with them a generational knowledge of the cha-cha and the Texas swing so that their pear-shaped bodies, their flat and wide rears, their bony shoulders, were all infused with such lightness and grace that the song didn’t feel at all foreign. Miriam’s right thigh gently pressed the inside of his right leg and they rocked back and forth. The half erection caused by this movement was little more than an erratic wandering of the blood, the result of breaking up with Crystal three months ago. Miriam must have felt the hardening between his legs but instead of moving back she drew him nearer. He realized she must be drunk. When he didn’t push her away he realized that he was drunk too.
“What’s this type of song called?” he asked over the music.
She said a word in Spanish that he forgot almost immediately, but the word sounded like it could mean both hello and goodbye, so long and please come here. When the song came to an end Miriam walked away without saying a word or looking at him, exiting through the tall doors that led out to the back porch. A fiddle swelled into a country tune that everyone knew the chorus to. He excused himself across the dance floor. Outside the paper lanterns dimly lit the porch where a few smokers had congregated, and Miriam waited at the top of the steps for him until he saw her. She disappeared into the dark backyard.
Liam walked down the steps and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The moon was bright and high, and the sky was full of different shades of gray and dark blue clouds. It felt like it might rain. It felt like it would be a terrible idea to have sex with her in the long insect-ridden grass. He would find her, lead her back inside, and order them both a club soda. He would make sure she found a sober ride home, and the next morning, he’d invite her out to breakfast to let her know there was nothing to be embarrassed about. The grass was wet and cold and Miriam had discarded her shoes, one after the other. He picked these up and held them in his left hand by their straps. He could recall what she had been like before this kind of loneliness. And then everything that had happened to her happened to her, and afterward it was like she carried a bomb inside that couldn’t explode. Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible idea. Maybe it could make them happy. He found a mark on Miriam’s shimmering pale dress and followed it through the trees.
