The People We Hate at the Wedding

by Grant Ginder

  “You knew damned well what you were doing.”

  Should she be sorry? Should she be feeling empathy for him, right now? She wonders if she could, even if she wanted to; she wonders if she’s lost the capacity to empathize.

  “It’s not my fault you married Nancy Fucking Drew,” she says.

  “Fuck you, Alice.”

  “I had a miscarriage.”

  “What?” His voice lightens, hovering somewhere between shock and panic. I’m despicable, Alice thinks. “When?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  She starts crying.

  “I’m sorry, Alice, I really am, but that’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Do you know where I am right now?”

  “I’ve got a meeting in two minutes. I’ve got—”

  “I’m sitting in a cow stall in England, Jonathan. A cow stall that’s probably never been used, but was built to make rich people believe that they’re staying in a farm that people actually used to use. I’m sitting here in a fucking gown that my sister bought for me. A gown that all of the other bridesmaids are wearing. These awful women whose one goal in life seems to be making me feel like shit. My sister hardly spoke to me tonight, and my mother—literally the person I’ve been trying to prop up for the past three years—was more interested in flirting with her ex-husband, this guy who absolutely fucked her over, than in spending time with me.” She’s sobbing now. “About a hundred yards away a group of preteens from the fucking Boys’ Brigade just watched me walk barefoot down a gravel hill after saying their nightly prayers. And—”

  “I’ve got to go, Alice.”

  “Wait.”

  He doesn’t, though; he just hangs up, and Alice throws her phone against the stall’s wall. It doesn’t break—it bounces off and falls back to her feet, its screen now bearing a small, hairline crack. The distant dog starts barking again. The owl on top of the chimney cranes its neck around, and takes flight. Alice watches it beat its wings against the night, then vanish somewhere in the tangled branches of a tree.

  “Goddamn it,” she says, picking up her phone. “Goddamn it.”

  She runs a finger over the crack, and as she’s doing so she hears shoes crunching against the house’s gravel drive. Standing up, she sees her brother’s silhouette, lit dimly by the porch light.

  “Heyo,” he says, spotting her, and she wonders how much he’s heard.

  “Hi.”

  “What’re you doing over there?” He wobbles a bit before finding his balance.

  “Nothing,” she says. “Just listening to the sheep.”

  “Bet that’s the first time in your life you’ve ever said that.” Paul grins.

  “How long have you been standing there?” she asks him.

  “About two point five seconds.” He sneezes. “You see all those boys up there? In their little tents?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Just acting like a bunch of boys.” She wipes the wetness from underneath each eye. “Why aren’t you still at the party?”

  “I couldn’t be there anymore,” he says, scratching his cheek. “It was making me too depressed. All those people in love. I hate those people.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  Paul rubs his eyes and cranes his neck from side to side. He’s untucked his shirt, and now the tails of it hang loose and wrinkled at his side. It’s too big for him, Alice thinks. It looks like it belongs to a set of pajamas.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asks.

  She looks on either side of her. “There’s only one bucket.”

  It doesn’t matter, though; he steps into the stall and sits, cross-legged, on the floor.

  “What happened to your jacket?”

  “Left it there, I guess,” he says. “Were you crying or something? You look like someone slugged you in the fucking face.”

  How much should she tell him? she wonders. On one hand, she wants to lay herself bare and confess to her epic decline—a fall that could be described as Icarian, had she ever actually been close to the sun. She wants to confess to Paul how, two weeks ago at Claridge’s, she snorted enough Klonopin to seduce a woolly mammoth before gorging herself on a thousand pounds’ worth of room service. She wants to say how, two minutes ago, Jonathan slapped her with a scarlet letter before telling her to fuck off for good. But then, on the other hand, she doesn’t think she can stand another ounce of familial judgment, not from Eloise, or her mother, or, most of all, from Paul. She imagines what words of wisdom he might have for her: that she made her own adulterous bed and now she’s got to sleep in it; that, as a victim of a recent breakup, he can only imagine what the wife is going through; that this is the problem with heterosexuals—they extol the importance of marriage, only to go and do shit like this.

  So all she says is: “It’s over with Jonathan.”

  “Is that why you broke your phone?”

  She looks down; she hadn’t realized she was still holding it, the crack catching fragments of the porch light.

  “Yes,” she says. “I guess. Or, I don’t know. It was one of the reasons.”

  He lays his head in her lap, and at first she doesn’t know what to do. She straightens her back and watches as he closes his eyes. She stays still for a moment, listening to the sheep baa, and finally relaxes. She reaches down and brushes his hair, damp with sweat and humidity, from his eyes.

  “He sort of sounded like a douche, anyway,” Paul says with his eyes still closed.

  “He said I ruined his life.”

  “You don’t ruin anyone’s life. People do that on their own. People ruin their own lives.”

  She wants to start crying again, but she can’t. For whatever reason, the tears won’t come. Instead, she listens to the crickets out in the field.

  “He basically called me a whore.”

  “Yeah? And what is he, then?”

  “I think…” Alice says, “I think just for once I want someone to be on my side. Like, unequivocally and unconditionally on my side, even when I’m obviously so fucking wrong.”

  Paul shifts. He makes a pillow with his hands and slips them under his head. She can feel his fingers, hot and clammy, on her knees. He squeezes her leg and sighs once.

  “Mark and I had a threesome,” he says.

  “Wait, what?”

  “In London. With that Alcott guy.” He adds, “Mark wanted to, so I did it.”

  “The one who looked like a porcelain doll with a dick?”

  He sits up. Faint impressions of knuckles form dull craters on his cheek. “Yeah. That one.”

  Alice laughs. She buries her head between her knees to try to contain herself, but she can’t—she just keeps laughing.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

  “I let him fuck me, Al, and now I probably have AIDS.”

  She reaches out and sweeps her hand through his hair again. “Pauly,” she says, and leans forward to kiss his cheek. “You do not have AIDS. Scabies, maybe, but that’s just an inconvenience.”

  He doesn’t laugh.

  Pulling herself together, she asks him: “Is this why you guys broke up?”

  “I don’t think so,” he says. He kneels on the cement and sits back on his heels. “I think Mark broke up with me months ago, and this was just a reason to finally end it.”

  Alice braces herself on the side of the bucket, then lowers herself to the floor. Resting her head against Paul’s shoulder, she gazes at the stall’s wall of uneven concrete, and then beyond it, through the sliver of space between the stall and the ceiling, and finally at the deep indigo of the sky, the dusting of stars stretching over the English Channel.

  “I wonder why this shit always happens to us,” she says, and presses her cheek against his neck.

  “I don’t know…” Paul says. “I guess because we let it.”

  Donna

  July 10

  At nine o’clock in the morning Henrique knocks lightly on the front door, an
d even though she’s been ready for the past two hours, Donna invites him in and says that she’ll be ready in a moment; she’s just finishing her coffee.

  “Would you like some?” she asks him as he sits at the kitchen table.

  It’s warm out—muggy—and condensation clings to the base of the windows.

  “No, thank you,” he says, smiling, and she tries to stop herself from blushing.

  She finishes her coffee, which is now cold, in near silence. Every so often, either she or Henrique makes an innocuous comment about something they can see—the state of the house (lovely), the weather (humid), the overgrown lawn (needs a good mowing)—but mostly they just listen to each other breathe. Watching him watch her, she presently wonders if this—their day together—is smart thinking. Last night, in the glow of tea lights and too much champagne, the prospect of a reunion struck her as a terrible idea, but terrible in that magical, thrilling way that she knew she was powerless against. Now, in the light of day, she fears that she’s set herself up for disappointment. An afternoon of tripping over each other. Of scratching open wounds that she’s spent too many years nursing.

  “Es-tu prête?” Henrique says.

  “Oui.”

  Should she tell her children she’s leaving? No, she thinks. Probably not. They need their sleep. Last night when she returned home, she found them both passed out on the sectional in the living room, the TV blaring some reality show about young people in Essex. Paul’s head was resting on Alice’s knees, and her hand was set on his neck, like she couldn’t decide whether to pet him or strangle him. Donna had tried to wake them both up so they might move upstairs to their beds, but with little luck; when she poked Alice in the shoulder, all she did was grumble and readjust herself. So she let them stay there, exactly as they were, drawing maternal comfort from the fact that, at least when they’re unconscious, her children seem to legitimately care for each other. And she figures it’s only reasonable that when she came downstairs this morning she felt a dull but predictable disappointment in discovering that they had separated, left the couch, retreated to the isolation of their own rooms.

  “D’accord,” Henrique says, standing. “D’abord, je crois qu’on—”

  “Ha, uh,” Donna laughs. “My French is a little rusty. How about we stick to English for the day?”

  He kisses her cheek. “Of course.”

  This is a lie, she thinks, but only a small one, and one that’s hardly malicious. The truth is her French is fine. Still, she feels that speaking English gives her a bit of power in what would otherwise be a powerless situation. Besides, she doesn’t want Henrique to know how much practice, how much time, she’s put into maintaining her French. She doesn’t want him to get any ideas about her preparing for anything. Because what, after all, would she possibly be preparing for? This? Today? The moment Henrique realizes his mistake and comes sweeping back into her life? Oh God, she thinks. She hopes not. She hopes she’s not that naïve, that foolish.

  Quietly she shuts the front door and follows Henrique out to the gravel driveway, where he’s parked his rental car, an electric-blue Audi convertible coupe with the top already down. How gorgeous, Donna thinks, which is followed instantly by Christ, my hair. She spent nearly an hour on it this morning, combing it and recombing it, trying to hide the gray with the blond. Maybe she should run back inside, she thinks. Grab a scarf or a handkerchief. Something she might wrap around her head to keep things in place. But then—for what? She’s not exactly young anymore, and at sixty-three she’s liable to look more like some old Russian babushka than Marilyn Monroe on a leisure drive.

  No, she thinks, as Henrique opens her door for her. She’ll let the wind do its work and just hope for the best.

  “So, where are we off to?” she says, buckling her seat belt.

  He winks at her. “It’s a surprise.”

  “I feel terrible that we’re not at Ollie’s parents’ house helping to set up for tonight.”

  He starts the car. “You shouldn’t. Eloise told us to explore today. She asked us not to help.”

  “She’s just saying that.”

  “And we’re just doing what she says.”

  They climb the hill, the gravel crackling beneath the wheels of the car, and pass the Boys’ Brigade jamboree. As they wait to turn left on to the main road, Donna watches in the rearview mirror as two boys in uniform unfold the Union Jack and send it up the flagpole. Behind them, three of their mates are clipping wet bathing suits to a clothesline. Then Henrique turns, and they’re gone.

  He drives too fast—she had forgotten this from their marriage—banking around blind turns like he’s the only man on the road, hardly slowing down as they pass by a stopped truck with its hood open. The wind howls so loudly on either side of Donna that she can’t hear herself think, let alone Henrique talk. When they reach Dorchester they’re forced to slow down, lest Henrique careen through a roundabout or smash into one of the cheap vacation-wares storefronts that line the town’s anemic roads. But it seems that as soon as they enter the town they’re out of it again—these cities don’t sprawl in the same way that Donna’s used to, at least not here, in the southwest; she feels the car lurch forward as Henrique shifts into fifth; she ventures a quick touch of her hair and abandons all hope.

  They travel west on the A35, slowing down again as they pass through Winterbourne Abbas, and speeding up once they leave behind the town’s ancient limestone walls. Resting her arm against the windowsill, Donna watches as the countryside stretches out around them: shallow hills of unimaginable green; ramshackle and futile fences zigzagging toward oblivion; the occasional tree, sprouting up from nothing, tossing shade in all directions at once. Aesthetically it’s not that different from her home in Illinois, but somehow, here in England, all this bucolic laziness stems from a more exotic, enticing place. She could stare at these hills for hours.

  But why? she wonders. How can a sheep in Dorset capture her imagination in a way that a cow in St. Charles can’t? She resists attributing her intoxication to Henrique, though she fears he may have something to do with it. She wants, desperately, to believe that their outing is innocuous, the acting out of a diplomatic accord between two people who used to be married. Instead, though, she’s got this awful excitement fluttering around her stomach. This schoolgirl inkling that causes her to wake up two hours early, to steal glances, to worry about her hair. And for what? So she can fall in love with him all over again, here on the A35? So he can reach down and pull her out from the ache of widowhood? So she can open herself up, only to be shot down? No, she instructs herself. No. As mesmerizing as the sheep are, as seductive as Henrique is, she’s smarter than she was when she was twenty-three. She knows how to protect herself, even if it means committing to another two decades of loneliness. She repeats the mantra she’s always told her children, and for the first time she tries believing it: Never expect someone to change, because he won’t. If you don’t love someone at his worst, you shouldn’t bother loving him at all.

  At the B3071 they bear south, zooming through Coombe Keynes and Burngate before arriving in West Lulworth, a smudge of a seaside village smelling of fish and algae and ice cream cones. They park in a crowded lot near the visitors’ center, and before Donna can get out of the car to stretch her legs, Henrique lays a hand on her bare knee and says to stay put, that he’ll get the door for her.

  “Oh, really, you don’t—” she begins to protest.

  “No, no.” He smiles. “I insist.”

  “Well, then. All right.”

  She waits, and watches in the rearview mirror as he circles around the trunk of the car. He looks like he’s ready for a cruise, she thinks. Slim khaki pants paired with a white linen shirt unbuttoned to the sternum. Strappy, Jesus-ish sandals that she can’t imagine are comfortable, particularly on these rocky, barely paved roads. The wind blows gray hair away from his sun-kissed forehead.

  Donna folds her hands in her lap and waits.

  “Mademoiselle,”
he says, swinging open the door and offering her his hand.

  She doesn’t take it. She stands up and flattens the creases from her pants.

  “So what are we doing here, anyway?”

  He lightly takes hold of both her shoulders and spins her around to face a small shack. In front of it is strewn a small armada of plastic sea kayaks, along with a collection of fiberglass paddles. Looking up to the shack’s tin awning, she sees a handpainted sign: SVEN’S KAYAKING AND COASTAL EXPLORING. The letters shrink as they fight for space at the sign’s end. Donna panics.

  “Henrique,” she says, turning to face him again. “I don’t really think this is for me.”

  “Nonsense. Everything is for you. Besides, I’ve already made a reservation.”

  There’s hardly a crowd gathered around the shack. Aside from a pair of Germans lathering sunscreen across their doughy bellies, only one man is present: a leathery fifty-something in board shorts and nothing else who Donna assumes to be Sven.

  Still, despite her efforts otherwise, she’s flattered by Henrique’s thoughtfulness.

  “You made a reservation?”

  “For a private tour,” he says.

  “In boats?”

  “In kayaks.”

  “With Sven?”

  Henrique shakes his head. “No. Sven, he is only the owner.” He points to the grizzly board-shorts wearer. “That, I think, is Kenny.”

  “I didn’t realize they made Kennys in England.”

  He rubs her arm and kisses her cheek again. “I’ve missed you.”

  She lingers by the car as Henrique trots over to Kenny. Maybe she’s been too selfish, she thinks. Maybe this desire of hers, born in Paris, for something exotic and elegant and chic is nothing more than materialism dressed up as culture. She thinks of Bill. He had his shortcomings, certainly, but maybe she was too quick to dismiss him after his death; sure, he may have turned out to be a closet homophobe, but he would have known better than to ask her to go kayaking.