by Joey Bush
*****
When I got to Graham’s work, a customer was just leaving, a woman my mom’s age. I tried to imagine my mother coming down here to get a tattoo. She smiled at me as she left.
“Graham here’s the best!” she said. “Can’t go wrong with anything he does!”
“That’s very kind of you, Linda,” he said as the door swung shut. He looked at me with a smile. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
“Well, I thought of texting you but then I figured I’d just stop by. I’m here to extend an invitation.”
“Oh yeah? What for?”
“My parents would like to have you over to the house for lunch.”
He raised an eyebrow. “They would?”
“Yes. I’m looking at it as though they’re trying to extend the olive branch. It’s a start. Do you remember the other night, when I told you about how my dad basically bribed Parker into taking me out? I think he—I think they feel bad after this whole thing. Which they should feel bad about, because that was completely messed up.”
“Then it sounds like I should take them up on the offer. Yeah, sure, that’s fine. Just tell me when and where.”
There was a part of me that wanted to put it off indefinitely, just because I knew the potential there was for things to go badly. But maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe my parents really were going to try to step out of their comfort zones and be welcoming. There was only one way to find out.
33.
Graham
All right, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous about this whole thing at Chloe’s parents’ house. Lame, I know, but I found myself actually wanting to make a good first impression. Granted, her father kind of sounded like an ass and from that one interaction, I knew her mother was stuck up and pretentious, but I was willing to overlook all that. I had my preconceived notions about them, and they no doubt had their own about me, but maybe, just maybe, we could all get past that.
This time, when I went up to the front door, I was granted entrance. It was Chloe who opened the door. She wore a navy-blue, sleeveless romper with a vintage, floral print and these leather, strappy sandals that laced halfway up her calves. I still couldn’t get over how hot she looked with the hair; it was like seeing her for the first time every time I saw her.
“Hey,” she said with a smile. We kissed, briefly, though I would’ve liked it to last much longer.
“You look great,” I said.
“So do you.”
I hadn’t been sure what to wear; the usual jeans and t-shirt was not going to fly, I knew. I eventually settled on a short-sleeve, plaid button-down and a black pair of shorts. I looked respectable, I thought.
“Hi there, I’m John Singer,” Chloe’s dad said, holding his hand out. I reached to shake it, but we ended up mistiming it and I ended up enclosing his fingertips in my palm.
“Graham,” I said as we both let go. “Nice to meet you.” Jesus. Talk about awkward.
It wasn’t much better with her mother. “Claire,” she said. “I know we’ve already met, but we got off on the wrong foot. So, let’s just pretend that never happened.”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not.”
They looked about as uncomfortable as I felt, so I guessed we were all just going to have to try to grin and bear it. Alcohol would help. As if reading my mind, Claire’s dad suddenly said, “Would you like a beer? Wine?”
“Beer would be great.”
“Why don’t we go out onto the deck,” Claire said. “Chloe and I will get the drinks; Alicia’s made some delicious appetizers, so the two of you can get started on those and we’ll join you shortly.”
“Sure,” I said, though I had no clue who the hell Alicia was. A sister? I didn’t think Chloe had mentioned having any siblings.
I followed her father outside. The deck was huge, overlooking an even bigger green lawn, broken up by several garden plots overflowing with all types of flowers. “Have a seat,” he said, and we sat down at the teak wood table, which was laden with several trays of food.
“So,” John said. He didn’t say anything else after that, though, and just looked increasingly uncomfortable. He didn’t strike me as the sort of person who was usually at a loss for words. He looked over at the food and cleared his throat. “It looks like Alicia has put together a fine spread.” He blanched at the potential innuendo that could be deduced from “Alicia’s fine spread,” but neither of said anything. Under other circumstances, we might’ve shared a laugh, but that was clearly not going to happen.
“And Alicia is ...?” I looked around, not seeing this Alicia or any signs of her. I really had no recollection to Chloe ever mentioning her name.
“Our chef,” he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Today’s usually one of her days off, but we asked she come in and prepare something since you were coming by.”
I smiled. “I gave my chef the day off today.”
He returned my smile, though I could tell it was mostly to cover up his confusion as to whether or not I actually had a chef.
“Anyway,” he said. “These are the appetizers here, and it looks like we’ve got some grilled portabellas, bacon wrapped scallops, and some crab cakes, which are one of Alicia’s specialties.”
“Everything looks great.”
I imagined Alicia, trapped in the hot kitchen, a huge ball and chain attached to her leg, being forced to make hundreds and hundreds of crab cakes ....
I laughed, just a little, but enough that I couldn’t cover it up with a cough or something.
Chloe’s dad looked at me. “Something funny?”
“Oh, uh ...”
Luckily, Chloe and her mother appeared with the drinks, saving me from trying to think up an excuse for my laughter.
“Here we go!” her mother said cheerfully.
“So, Graham, tell us about your childhood. Did you grow up here?”
“Afraid so,” I said, intending it to be a joke—yes, a bad one, I know—but realizing that neither of Chloe’s parents were going to take it that way.
“Oh.” They exchanged glances. “Is something wrong with the Cape?” her mother asked.
“No, I don’t mean it that way. Although, winters here can be kind of rough. That was just my attempt at a lame joke.”
There was some forced laughter and then some more silence.
There was absolutely no cohesion, no meshing, no middle ground for us to meet on. To combat the complete awkwardness, I drank more beer. Drinking more beer made me more affable. I laughed louder, longer. Was that thing Chloe’s dad said even that funny? Questionable, but I laughed anyway. And here was her mother, trying to reignite the conversation, asking me what my parents did for a living.
Under normal circumstances, I would have said that my mother was a waitress and I didn’t have contact with my father. But not today. Today I chugged the rest of my beer. I looked at Chloe’s mother.
“My mother works in the service industry. And by service industry I mean The Finery. Know of that place?”
Claire had no idea, but for a second, I swear, John blanched. And the reason he did so was because he did know the place. Whether that was just because he’d driven by there or actually had personal experience, I had no idea, but finally! Common ground. I seized the opportunity.
“Yes!” I exclaimed. I leaned over and clapped him on the back. He nearly jumped out of his seat. “You know The Finery!”
“What? No, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But the look on his face said he knew exactly what I was talking about.
“What is it? What’s The Finery?” Claire asked, looking first to John, then to me.
Chloe nudged me. I had no idea if she knew what The Finery was, but from the expression on her face, I had a feeling she’d at least heard about it.
“Is it some place I’d like to go?” Claire asked after no one answered her previous question. She fixed her gaze back on me. “So, your mother works there, Graham?”
/> “It’s basically been the only job she’s ever had. Started right out of high school. A dancer, back then, but now she’s waitressing. That’s where she met my dad! Allegedly.” I took another sip of beer.
It wasn’t quite registering for Claire, yet. I could see her trying to process what I’d just said, figuring out if by “dancer” I met New York City Ballet or ... the other kind of dancer.
“This risotto’s really good,” Chloe said.
“What ... what kind of dancing did she do?” Claire asked.
It was like there were two parts of me: the rational part that knew I should just shut the hell up, there was no reason to keep going with this, and then the other part was enjoying this, that wanted to see where this was going to go. That enjoyed seeing John squirm a little, because he’d probably never had to squirm in his life, because he was the sort of guy who was used to giving the orders and being in charge and never having anyone question him. It felt good, to that part of me that was having fun, yet the rational part of me knew it wasn’t fair because I didn’t really know Chloe’s dad. Yes, it was easy enough to just group him in with all the other, wealthy summer residents, with his salmon-pink, Lacoste golf shirt and his pressed, cream-colored shorts, but did I personally know the guy? No, I did not. Not yet anyway, though from the look on his face, I probably wasn’t going to have the chance to get to know him. At least not today.
Claire looked at John. “What kind of place is this?” she demanded.
“Honey ...” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s nowhere, okay? Let’s just drop it.”
“No, I want to know.”
“Maybe we should just drop it, Mom,” Chloe said.
But Claire acted as though she hadn’t even heard Chloe, and John was looking more agitated by the second, and suddenly the air had a very electric feel to it, kind of the way it does right before a big lightning storm.
“Yeah, I’m not staying here to witness this,” Chloe said. She stood up and reached for my hand. “Come on, let’s go.”
34.
Chloe
I had been hopeful that our get together might go smoothly. I had prepared myself and accepted the fact that there was bound to be some awkwardness, but that if my dad had a drink or two, and Graham had a beer, then eventually the conversation would gel, everyone would find something to talk about, maybe there’d even be a couple laughs.
But then Graham ended up having a few more beers than I thought he would, and while he wasn’t drunk, he was definitely a little tipsy. And then the whole thing with The Finery came up, and it was like I was watching a car crash in slow motion and there was nothing I could do about it.
So we left.
We took my car and Graham sat there in the passenger seat, hands on his knees, looking out the windshield.
“Shit,” he said as I pulled out from the driveway. “What the hell just happened?”
“I think you just started World War Three.”
He winced. “Was it that bad? I’m not even drunk, you know. I don’t know why I brought that shit up. Fuck, I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “It’ll blow over.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Why would I be?”
“Well, I’m not trying to make your home life any more complicated, you know. Your mother didn’t look happy.”
“I’m sure my father will have some sort of explanation for her.”
Graham gave me a sidelong look. “You do know what The Finery is, right?”
“Everyone knows what it is. Except maybe my mom. I’ve never been there before, but I know it’s a strip club. My parents have been coming to the Cape every summer for a long time now; it wouldn’t surprise me if at some point before I came along my dad and his buddies went there some night.” We came to a red light and I stopped. “Or maybe even after I was born. Who knows? Obviously that’s not something I talk to him about.”
“Wow,” Graham said, sounding surprised. “You’re being pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.”
Was I? I’d always assumed my parents had a good relationship, but I’d also seen the way my mother flirted with the landscapers, who were always young and handsome and often took their shirts off while they mowed the lawn or trimmed the hedges.
“I mean, if it comes out that he goes there all the time and has fathered a dozen illegitimate children or something, then I might care, but if we’re talking about him going there just to watch or whatever, I don’t see what the big deal is. My mom probably has more of a problem with it not being a four-star establishment than anything else.”
The light changed and I started to drive again. I didn’t know where I was going, so I just ended up driving around for a while until I finally ended up back near my parents’ house.
“I’m fine to drive,” Graham said. “I should at least get my truck out of there.”
So I drove back down the driveway, hoping that neither of them would come out of the house, which they didn’t. “You want to come back to my place for a little bit?” Graham asked.
“Sure,” I said, because I sure as hell did not want to stay here right now.
*****
It was dark when I got home, and the front light wasn’t on, so I didn’t see that my mother was sitting outside in the Adirondack until I almost walked past her.
“Hi, Chloe,” she said. I heard the ice clink in her glass as she took a sip of whatever it was she was drinking. “I’m sorry about earlier today.”
“Hi, Mom. Um, that’s ok.”
“That certainly wasn’t how I planned for the day to go.”
I went over and sat on the arm of the chair. I patted her shoulder. “I know. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have Graham over just yet. I mean, meeting the parents is something that happens when you’ve been together longer than we have, probably.”
“Are you two together?”
I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “We are. And he feels bad; he didn’t mean to bring things up like that. Honestly, I think he was kind of nervous, and then he probably had one too many beers ...” I stopped talking, realizing that if I was trying to make him sound better, I probably wasn’t.
“I would just never expect your father to go to a place like that,” she said. “He said he only went once, a long time ago, before you were even born, for a bachelor party, actually. You know whose party it was? Parker’s father’s.”
“Oh,” I said, remembering my conversation with him at my parents’ party. “He actually seems pretty nice.”
“He is. He’s a fine upstanding gentleman, and very successful, just like your father.”
“So, you shouldn’t be mad at him then, Mom. It sounds like it was a long time ago, and isn’t that the sort of thing people do at bachelor parties?”
“They do, I suppose.” She sighed and took another sip of her drink, ice clinking. “And that’s what I’ve been telling myself—that people do that sort of thing when they go to bachelor parties, that’s the whole point, but I still feel as though he kept a secret from me. We weren’t married then, but we were together. And I know you might find this hard to believe, Chloe, but I was a lot like you as a kid. I always wanted to do the right thing, and I never gave my parents a hard time or any of that. There was no teenage rebellion phase for me, and I was really thankful that you didn’t seem to have one, either. It just seems like now, you’re sort of making up for that.”
“I’m not trying to be rebellious. I guess I just don’t like feeling as though my life is being planned out for me. Which is kind of what I felt like was happening, especially with Parker.”
“So, the two of you just didn’t hit it off?”
“He’s nice and everything, but no, we didn’t. And Dad offering him a job to date me probably didn’t help things, either.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. And Graham did seem nice,” she said. “I can understand him being nervous. Not that we were trying to make him nervous! Maybe we can try to get together another time.”
“Well,
I’m going to go visit him at work tomorrow after I go to the art center, so I’ll mention that to him.”
My mom reached up and squeezed my arm. She was trying, she really was, and I did appreciate that.
*****
The next day, I spent the morning at the art center, working on some more sketches. I didn’t want to start sculpting anything until I had a better idea of what I was going to do. I’d decided to scrap the mermaid thing—that was nice, and maybe I’d do a mermaid sculpture another time, but I wanted to do a piece that meant something. I just still wasn’t quite sure what that was.
But I made some good progress with my sketches and an idea started to take shape. Part of me wanted to talk to Graham about it, but then I decided that I wasn’t going to talk to anyone about it—I was going to have it be a surprise that would get revealed at the show.
Around lunch time, I decided to leave. Tara called and said that Michael had been in touch and he still wanted to meet up with her today.
“You still in?” she asked. “If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.”
“No, I will,” I said. “As your friend, I feel it’s my responsibility. What time are you meeting up with him?”
“Six.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
Graham was finishing up with a customer when I got there, so I went and got us coffees.
“Look at you,” he said, “with that giant iced coffee at one in the afternoon.”
“I know.” I took a big sip. “I’ve got big plans tonight.”
“Oh yeah? What’s going on?”
“I’m chaperoning Tara’s get-together with her psycho ex.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m just going to make sure that everything goes okay.”
“Tara doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who needs a chaperone.”
Unlike yourself, I could practically hear him thinking.
“Well, I’m going to be incognito. I’ve got a baseball cap. And sunglasses.”
