The People We Hate at the Wedding

by Grant Ginder

  She says, instead, “Your father wasn’t the man I thought he was, and we needed a change.”

  A half-finished glass of water sits next to the stove, and Paul hurls it against the wall.

  Alice stands up, steadies herself, and leaves the room.

  “Bullshit,” Paul says. “You’re embarrassed by him. That’s why you did it.”

  Donna stirs an extra tablespoon of butter into the potatoes and watches it melt.

  “You always thought you downgraded when you married Dad,” Paul says. “Just because he wasn’t some rich French asshole.”

  Reaching for a knife to chop the carrots, she cuts her finger.

  “You’re right,” she says, and closes her eyes.

  “I knew it. You married Dad so you’d have someone to pay the bills, and now that he’s gone you can go back to pretending you’re special. Well, guess what, Mom, Dad was special to me. And now you’re … what? You’re trying to erase him from our goddamned lives.”

  She wraps a paper towel around the cut.

  “He should be erased. I was young and desperate. It was a mistake to marry him, and an even bigger mistake to waste thirty years of my life with him.”

  Her finger throbs, and she feels her anger pulse with it. Finally, she bursts. She stares at Paul and says, “There, are you happy now?”

  Ten minutes later, her son is gone.

  June 10: Present

  She presses the phone to her ear. “Paul?”

  Her throat still burns from the pot, and she coughs.

  She says, “Is that you?”

  “Who the hell else would it be?”

  Her mind gets wrapped up in the question; she’s thinking through a screen.

  “How are you, sweetheart?”

  “I just assaulted my boss and lost my job.”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  She realizes immediately that was the wrong response, and she should probably correct herself, but she doesn’t—she’s just so happy to hear his voice again.

  “If you’re going to be a bitch, I’ll just hang up.”

  Donna stands up and knocks her knee against the coffee table. Pain radiates up her thigh.

  “Ow, shit,” she says. “No, honey, wait. Please don’t hang up. I’m so sorry about your job. It’s just…” She searches for the words. They’re there somewhere, she knows, hiding behind a wall of smoke. “It’s just so good to talk again.”

  “I know why you’ve been calling.” He’s curt, unfriendly, transactional. It’s not good to hear him again, she decides. He’s acting like an asshole.

  “You do?”

  “Eloise’s wedding.”

  She reaches down and rubs her knee. “Well, that’s one reason. But also it’s been two and a half years since—”

  “I’ll go, all right? So you can stop calling from random Indiana numbers to beg me. Because I’m fucking going.”

  PART TWO

  Everybody has a heart.

  Except some people.

  —BETTE DAVIS, All About Eve

  Mark

  June 11–July 1

  Paul’s a wreck. Mark looks on from the kitchen as, in the living room, Paul slides farther down on the couch and rubs his face, panicked. He taps his forehead before kicking his feet up, the muddy heels of his loafers slamming down on the coffee table. Or, specifically, on top of the first edition of Irving Penn’s Moments Preserved that Mark had unexpectedly (and ecstatically) stumbled upon last year at Cappelens Forslag in Oslo. He’d bought that book with the money he was given when he won the Gunnar Myrdal award for the paper that put him on the map at Penn: a study of risk distribution and reindeer herding among Swedish Sami populations, with a particular focus on the two winter cycles of that peoples’ eight-season calendar: Tjakttjadálvvie and Dálvvie (the Season of the Journey and the Season of Caring, respectively). In fact, now that he’s remembering, he paid nearly a thousand dollars for that book (which was roughly half the price of the coffee table, which he’d also bought), and now he watches as dirt and grime and guilt and whatever else Paul’s tracked home from Main Line Philadelphia smears across its glossy jacket.

  He opens his mouth to say something, but he stops himself. Generations of observation and experience have taught the Sami that the risks of startling a reindeer when it’s confused or straying from the herd far outweigh the rewards of correction; a startled reindeer will often stumble or fall while fleeing along high, steep slopes, resulting in death or injury.

  “There was blood everywhere,” Paul says. “Like, everywhere. I guess I hit him pretty square-on, because I swear he was bleeding out of his eyes.”

  Mark says, “Can I get you anything?”

  “A whiskey, I guess.”

  He wrestles two ice cubes from a tray and pours some Knob Creek into a tumbler. Typically he’d keep it to two fingers—Paul gets irritating and needy when he’s drunk—but given tonight’s circumstances, he fills the glass a little more than halfway.

  “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” Paul takes a long sip and sinks farther into the couch. “I had to pinch his nose and help him hold his head back while we waited for the ambulance.”

  “I still don’t see why an ambulance was necessary.”

  “Too many people at the clinic are terrified of blood. Germs, you know? Didn’t stop them from pressing their faces against the window and gawking as Goulding ripped me a new one, though.” Another long sip. “In any event, it was humiliating.”

  “And then you got fired.”

  Paul stares down into his glass. He swirls the ice. “And then I got fired. The man’s blood was literally on my hands, and he fired me.” Paul’s voice softens. “At least he’s not going to press charges. He said he wanted to be the bigger man.”

  Mark frowns and works through a series of mental calculations. Paul’s pay at the clinic was middling. Peanuts, really. Particularly when Mark compared it to the ludicrous raise he demanded from the university, and received, once he’d snagged the Myrdal award. If anything, what Paul brought back from the clinic afforded them cash for booze, and pretty shitty booze, at that. But there were other risks at play. The biweekly paycheck provided Paul with a sense of worth, however small, which was crucial to his own delicate process of self-actualization. A process that Mark has been gently guiding for the duration of their relationship.

  He frowns harder: he wonders if a pint-sized mannequin has derailed his efforts. He needs to work on Paul’s temper.

  “You’re disappointed in me,” Paul says.

  “What? That’s crazy.” Mark wraps an arm around him. “Goulding was an asshole.” He pulls Paul closer. “If this hadn’t happened, I was planning on telling you to quit, anyway.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. That place was a madhouse.”

  He strokes Paul’s shoulder until he feels it relax, and then he stops.

  He loosens his tie.

  “And look at it this way—now you won’t have to beg for time to go to the wedding.”

  Paul drains the rest of the whiskey. He says, “I know that you think I should go, and I already told you that I’m going to. You win, okay? Christ, I called Donna this afternoon for the first time in two and a half years to tell her as much.”

  Mark feels the tug of victory, but he resists a smile. A reindeer wanders away from the herd toward a craggy precipice. The Sami approach it gently, calmly. A dead buck means three less calves come spring.

  He rubs Paul’s leg. “I’m sorry, kid. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I know you’re stressed.”

  “It’s fine. And it was nice of you to offer to come along with me, though I wouldn’t wish this wedding on my worst enemy.” Paul buries his face in his hands, and Mark prays that he doesn’t start crying, though he knows that awkward moment is inevitable.

  “God, I’m such a mess.”

  Tears rage against the floodgates, threatening to burst them open. Mark grabs Paul’s head and buries it against his chest. He loo
ks past the errant wisps of blond hair toward the framed Munch print that hangs on the opposite wall. He wonders if it’s crooked.

  “Hey,” he says. “Hey. Knock that off, all right? You’re not a mess. At all.”

  Paul’s tears form damp patches on Mark’s shirt, and his nose runs against his tie. Mark does his best to ignore his irritation over an unscheduled trip to the dry cleaner. The painting’s definitely crooked.

  “And you’re doing the right thing. Going to Eloise’s wedding. That’s the right thing to do, and I’m happy to do it with you.” He adds, “In fact, I’ll start looking into tickets tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Mark scrolls through the new messages in his inbox: Facilities will be closing early for the Fourth of July holiday. Non-tenure-track faculty members are demanding representation in university governance. Next week a visiting economist from Princeton will be giving a lecture on “inequality and stagnation” titled “The Greater Depression.” Amanda Lyons, one of the students in Mark’s summer-term Behavioral Economics survey course, wants to meet with him at eleven thirty about an essay that’s due next Wednesday. He checks the clock next to his computer: eleven ten. He fires off a reply saying that he’s happy to meet and banks on the hope that she won’t check her e-mail in the next twenty minutes.

  He scrolls through the inbox a second time to make sure he hasn’t missed anything, and his frustration develops a dull, blunted edge. Not a single word from London.

  Mark drums his fingers on the arm of his chair, then pushes back from the desk to admire his office. The books are what he looks at first: all hardcover first editions, alphabetized by author, and divided evenly among the room’s three teak cases. In the space between them hang his diplomas—the first recording his bachelor’s in philosophy from Amherst; the second his Ph.D. from Columbia. They are displayed in matching Pottery Barn frames that cost $69.99 each. He knows this because, when Paul presented the framed diplomas to him as a sort of congratulatory gift for his appointment at Penn, he googled the price. Back then he’d done so because he was sensitive to how much money Paul had spent on him; he knew that Paul had moved to Philadelphia because of him, and he’d feel awful if his boyfriend had gone broke over a set of frames on his account. Mark was heartened by the gift. He’d still felt like an unqualified impostor in academe—and the little conscious gestures that Paul made to acknowledge his worth helped him feel like he belonged. Like he deserved to be there.

  Now he thinks they look tacky, hanging there. The sort of self-conscious accoutrement you’d expect to find in a dentist’s office, right next to a smiling, plush-toy tooth. He knows he can’t take them down. Not yet, at least. Now that Paul’s unemployed, he’s liable to swing by at any moment, and if he were to see the diplomas off the wall—stacked in a corner, say—he’d be crestfallen. He’d get all wounded and teary eyed, like one of Mark’s students whom he’s just smacked with a D. So, he’ll keep them up. For another year he’ll let them hang there, gathering dust. Then, once Paul has forgotten about them—once some other minimal crisis has taken hold of his thoughts—Mark will quietly replace them with something else. A Gustaf Fjaestad print, maybe. Or a smartly framed Öyvind Fahlström. Lately, he’s been really into Fahlström.

  He walks over to a credenza (cherry, midcentury modern—these things matter) on the far side of the room and flips through a set of hanging file folders. They’re color-coded and labeled with obvious, one-word titles: GRADES, COMMITTEES, PAUL. He’s not looking for anything in particular so much as he’s appreciating the organizational system that he’s created. The clean, sharp edges of papers clipped together. The absence of Post-it notes and frantically written to-do lists. Meandering through the department’s halls, he’ll often find himself becoming mildly disgusted as he pays visits to his messier colleagues. The towering stacks of loose-leaf paper, threatening to topple over if anyone should dare open a window. Books left open on desks, their pages gaping like the ribs of some pathetic dismembered corpse. On two separate occasions, a sleeping bag, stuffed behind a plant with brown and brittle leaves. It’s like they’re trying to patch together nests, Mark thinks. A shitty tangle of twigs and trash. He’d seen something similar last February, on the fire escape outside the bedroom he shares with Paul. A pair of starlings had built it over the course of four industrious days. On the fifth day, Mark knocked it down. The squawking had turned unbearable.

  Light spills onto the grass in front of College Hall, where two girls and a shirtless boy lounge with their arms propped up on the feet of a Benjamin Franklin statue. Typically, on a day like today, the lawn would be rammed with undergrads, and Mark would be driven to near paralysis over the options of chests to admire, of abdominal muscles to count. But it’s July. The middle of summer term. The only students on campus are slackers with beer guts who failed a class last fall, or pasty strivers who’ve never set foot in a gym. Maybe the rare refugee who can’t bear the thought of four months back in the suburbs. Point being: the options are not what they should be.

  A knock startles him.

  “Professor Gordon?”

  Amanda Lyons doesn’t wait for Mark to open the door—she knocks and comes right in. They all do.

  Mark checks his watch: eleven thirty.

  “You said you were available to meet now?”

  She holds her iPhone up—evidence to justify her presence—and Mark sees the e-mail that he sent twenty minutes ago.

  “Of course.” He smiles and motions to a chair on the other side of his desk. “Take a seat.”

  Amanda blushes and lets her bag drop to the floor. She’s dressed like she’s ready for an afternoon date: frayed jean shorts that accentuate her tan legs, a spaghetti-strap tank top, a cream-colored cardigan that she’s currently wriggling out of. Her face is caked with makeup. Many of his female students doll themselves up in similar fashion when they come to see him, and Mark appreciates the effort, the subtle acknowledgment that they’re willing to pursue other arrangements to help their GPAs. It’s misguided, of course, but Mark encourages it nonetheless. He likes the flaming chili pepper that appears next to his name whenever he checks ratemyprofessor.com.

  “Right, then,” Mark says. He leans back in his chair and presses the tips of his fingers together pedagogically. “What can I do you for?”

  “I … I…” Amanda stutters and grins, realizing what Mark has just said. Then, composing herself, she mutters: “I don’t think I’m doing this paper right. The one on altruism and fairness.” She leans over to fish the draft out of her backpack. Brown hair falls in her face.

  “Well, let’s take a look.” He stands, crosses to her side of the desk, and sits on its corner. He picks up a shard of reindeer antler that he found during his last trip to Lapland and strokes a smooth patch of bone. He says, “And remember, all I’m looking for here are your thoughts. Your response to the Knox and Wright texts. How are they speaking to each other? How are they complicating each other? There’s no ‘right’ way to do this, per se.”

  He smiles again, pleased this time with the vagueness of academia. Stake-free crises couched in a lovely, untranslatable jargon.

  “Right, no,” Amanda says. She hands him the draft. A pink staple binds the pages together. “I know all that. I guess I’m worried that my ideas aren’t, like, flowing? Like they aren’t making sense or something?”

  Mark scans the pages, his eyes stumbling past the reductive, empty sentences that he’s come to expect from eighteen-year-old minds: society shapes our identities; every individual is unique. Couched between these half-assed attempts at thinking are a series of vulgar summaries of the readings Mark assigned last week.

  Amanda scrolls through her phone. She double-taps a picture. She sends a text.

  “You’re doing good work,” Mark says, and sits in the chair directly next to her.

  Amanda looks up. “I am?”

  “Sure you are.” He flips to the second page. “I guess what I’m looking for now is more of your thinking, th
ough. Here, for instance. You say that everyone’s good on the inside, and that’s why we’re altruistic.”

  “Right?” She tucks her hair behind her ear, and tilts her head, showing Mark her neck.

  “How true is that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for starters, what’s the ‘inside’?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you talking about the soul?”

  “I … yeah. I guess that’s what I mean.”

  Amanda’s phone buzzes in her purse.

  “So you’re presupposing that a soul exists.”

  “You don’t think that it does?”

  Mark smiles. “What I think doesn’t matter.” He folds his arms across his chest. “When was the last time you did something nice for someone?”

  She says, “Last week, I guess?”

  Mark leans forward. “What’d you do?”

  “Uh, my friend Lindsay was having this massive bed delivered to our sorority house, but she’s doing some internship at a blog in New York this summer so she wasn’t there to sign for it.”

  Mark crosses his legs. “So you were there to sign for her.”

  “Yeah,” Amanda says.

  “That was nice of you.”

  She adds, “It was on a Friday afternoon. They gave me, like, a four-hour window, and they were still an hour late.”

  Mark says, “You gotta hate that.”

  “I was happy to help, I guess.” Amanda shrugs.

  “But that’s an interesting point,” Mark says. “Were you happy to help? Or I guess the more vital question is: Why did you help?”

  “Because it was the good thing to do?” she ventures. “Because she’d probably do it for me?”

  “Tell me a little bit about Lindsay.”

  “She’s the president of my sorority. Her dad’s some big producer in L.A. She’s from Malibu. Um…”

  “Sounds like she’s a good person to know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want her to like you?” Mark reaches again for the reindeer antler. “Do you think she likes you more for wasting four hours of your Friday to wait for her bed so she could cavort around New York City? Is that, maybe, why you agreed to do it?” Amanda shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “As opposed to, say, out of some theoretical, intrinsic, altruistic ‘goodness’?” He turns the antler over in his hand. He remembers where he found it: in a bed of arctic cotton weed a mile east of Abisko. “Which begs the more fundamental question of when we think we’re being good, are we really just desperately yearning to be liked?”