If We Lived Here

by Lindsey Palmer

  Now Eli was reciting his vows to Annie. They were the stuff of Hallmark, laden with cliché, and yet tears brimmed his eyes. Why was it, Emma wondered, that guys like Eli, who had ruthless jobs where the sole goal was to amass money, were also the most sentimental? Perhaps there was a connection—more was more, for wealth and for schmaltz. Nick, on the other hand, who expressed his feelings in two-and three-word notes, who deconstructed every ad for how it played on viewers’ emotions, had the kind of job some might call stagnant. He’d confided that one of the appeals of teaching was the opportunity to do the same thing again and again, but with each iteration to revise and hopefully improve. Because how often in life did you get another chance to go back and try a new tack? For over a decade Nick had been perfecting his approach to the fifth grade. Emma respected this kind of repetition, the purpose and thought that went into it. And yet, now she wondered what Annie’s and Eli’s take on this would be—another kind of stunted growth, a bonsai of a job. (Emma didn’t even want to consider her own career in this light.) When Emma had mentioned her bonsai centerpiece idea, Annie had made another good point: “They’d be pathetic in the pictures. You want to be able to look back at your wedding album and remember the day as larger-than-life.” Emma had to admit, the ostentatious bouquet she was struggling to hold would look gorgeous in the photos.

  She sighed, re-bent her elbows, and beamed up at the freshly married pair, who were now locked together in an R-rated kiss, prompting whoops and whistles from the hundreds of onlookers. The couple eventually detached, then Eli stamped hard on a wineglass, sending up a spray of shards that scintillated in the sun.

  Chapter 8

  “Hey, Happy Anniversary, man!”

  “Yeah, what is it, three years now? That’s epic.”

  “Your girl must be expecting a proposal one of these days. Time to grow a pair and get down on one knee, right?”

  “Whatever, don’t listen to them. I dated my wife six years before I bought a ring.”

  “Yeah, marriage is a completely outdated institution. Weddings, too. I hear Eli and Annie blew six figures on this thing. That’s like 30 K an hour. Fucking crazy.”

  “Three whole years! You two must be thinking about next steps.”

  Nick had been deflecting these remarks all night, in a few cases from people he could’ve sworn were strangers. Though as cocktail hour gave way to dancing and speeches, and he’d lubricated his gut with a couple of drinks, and then a few more, Nick started feeling more equipped to respond—mostly with non-responses, patting the person on the back and then excusing himself for the bar. He’d never understood why people felt it was acceptable to comment on the status and progress of other people’s relationships, and why as a rule the less close they were to the people in question the nosier they became. To Nick, this felt about as appropriate as asking after an acquaintance’s sex life—which positions did he and his partner go in for, how often did they do it, what were their feelings about vibrators? What would happen, Nick wondered, if he were to answer any of these people in a genuine way? What if he were to reveal to near-strangers that he and Emma were in some ways anxious about formally and legally hitching each other’s wagons together; that they felt both totally, wonderfully dependent on each other, but also sort of freaked out by that dependence; that in his hardest, darkest moments Nick sometimes entertained the thought that maybe it was inertia rather than love that was keeping them together; and that they sometimes had a tendency to stoke and exacerbate rather than alleviate each other’s frustrations and fears about life and growing up and figuring out the types of people they wanted to be.

  Whoa, Nick thought, get a grip. He was retreating too much into his thoughts—hitting on that morbid, middle-of-the-night panic that lived in the deepest pits of his brain. He abandoned his half-finished drink, intent on giving the booze a rest. But then he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, and he felt jumpy, and soon he found himself back at the bar. Without his asking, the bartender served him up a bourbon, neat. Nick raised his glass in cheers, having run out of singles for tips.

  Sipping at his drink, Nick watched Eli feed a bite of risotto to Annie. They sat at a private table perched on an elevated platform and highlighted by an actual spotlight—ridiculous. Emma had told him this was called a “sweetheart table,” which seemed even dumber than calling a couch a loveseat. The funny thing, Nick thought, was that everyone was going on about how head over heels Annie and Eli must be to sprint so quickly to the altar, but Nick knew it hadn’t been that romantic.

  When Eli had been plotting his move from Los Angeles to New York the previous year, he’d confided in Nick that he’d felt ready to get hitched but hadn’t found West Coast women to be marriage material. He’d decided he wanted one of those sharp, motivated New Yorkers, a girl with a job she liked but wouldn’t mind quitting, and who’d happily manage their social life and eventually their family life with the same vigor she’d previously devoted to Manhattan nightlife. Eli described his life like a puzzle with one piece missing—he had all the trappings of the upper-crust existence he’d envisioned for himself, all but the girl. Nick had tried to talk some sense into his friend, explaining that no girl, whether the kind of New Yorker Eli imagined he’d meet or not, was going to be that exact puzzle piece he was seeking; love wasn’t that neat. And yet when Eli had moved to New York, and Nick and Emma brought Annie to his welcome party, he’d practically pounced. Annie had caught on quickly and done an expert job of reshaping herself into what Eli wanted. Then, voilà!—the puzzle was complete. Call him naïve, but this didn’t sound like Nick’s idea of perfect love.

  Nick was sucking with a straw at his almost-empty glass when Connor clapped him on the back. “She’s doing great up there.” Looking up, Nick spotted Emma at the front of the room, delivering the speech he’d watched her write and rewrite for the past month.

  “One of my favorite memories with Annie is our spring break trip to Jamaica, back in ’07.” Emma looked beautiful up there—radiant. “We’re at some little reggae club, flushed with sunburn and rum drinks, and we start hanging out with a group of Jamaican guys. They’re teaching us dance moves and the words to all the songs, and they start asking us questions about our lives. Eventually they get to our kids—how many we have, boys or girls, what ages. We’re twenty-five, by the way, and these guys literally can’t believe it when we say we don’t have any kids. But aren’t you in your mid-twenties? they’re asking. Uh-huh. They make it very clear how worried they are for our dwindling fertility, and then—most of you can probably guess what happens next—Annie spends the rest of the night drunkenly crying into her piña coladas, going on about how she’ll never meet the right guy to marry or have kids with. She had her hair braided that day, and all those neon-colored beads are clinking against one another as she sobs. Folks, she looked ridiculous. I had to take photos. I had to! Even she laughed about it the next morning.

  “Because that’s so Annie, right?—spending her vacation in the most laid-back country in the world, freaking out about her life plans and taking these guys’ crazy comments seriously, but then making fun of herself for it, too. As many of you know, Annie has been dreaming about this day and her future family long before we jetted off to Jamaica. In kindergarten recess, I’d be swinging from the monkey bars probably thinking about chocolate milk and 3-2-1 Contact, and meanwhile Annie would be off in the sandbox, designing the perfect tiered wedding cake, decorating it with sticks and pebbles.

  “Well, Annie, my best friend in the world, you’ve finally made it to the altar, and with the perfect guy, too. He plucked you up off the streets of Manhattan like the prince revived a slumbering Snow White in the forest. How lucky you are, and how lucky I am, too, to be your maid of honor on this fantasy day, and to live mere blocks away from you in real life. I plan to bask in your happy marital glow forevermore. I love you guys!”

  The applause reached a crescendo and Annie stormed the stage to bear-hug Emma. “And p.s., I’ll be hiding out
in your suitcase so I can join you on your safari.”

  Annie snatched the mike away. “Sorry, Ems, I’m bringing half my wardrobe so there’s no room for you in the luggage. Drop ten pounds and then we’ll talk.”

  Nick wanted to get to Emma. He wanted to tell her that she’d nailed it—depicting Annie exactly how she liked to think of herself, serious but with a zany side, a princess who’d been rescued by her prince. (Nick had lobbied against the Snow White allusion—it freaked him out to picture a guy falling for a comatose girl in a coffin, but he had to admit it had gone over very well.) But Emma was all the way on the other side of the room, entwined in some kind of a friendship pretzel with Annie that looked vaguely sexual. Hordes of people were closing in on them for congratulations. They looked like a mob of predators, poised for attack. Nick felt himself break out into sweat. He wanted no part of this. He also suspected he maybe wasn’t thinking straight. He beamed a mental “Good job” to Emma, downed the rest of his drink, then slipped out of the ballroom.

  Outside provided little relief—the air had been a net for the day’s worth of stink and sweat and dust—but at least it was quiet and dark. Nick lit a cigarette, which he’d bummed off one of the groomsmen. Emma would smell it on him later, and be angry; when they’d quit together two years ago, they’d made a pact that if either of them caved they’d invite the other along for the indulgence.

  Nick wandered over to the patio where they’d held the ceremony. The tiki lamps were gone, or were at least no longer lit, and a stack of folded chairs took Nick’s shin by surprise. He managed to catch his trip before toppling over, and as he reached for his throbbing leg, he spotted what looked like a flag whipping in the wind. He edged toward it. The gusts were picking up, whistling and whining in his ears. Getting closer, he saw that the material was part of the chuppah. It was still intact from the ceremony, although if the weather got any wilder Nick imagined the structure’s four stakes might lift free from the ground and hurl themselves across the patio. The chuppah was supposed to represent the home that the newlyweds would build together—spend enough time around Jews and you learned things like this. Nick could picture Annie’s look of angry horror as the symbol of her new marital home went careening, torn and tattered, through the storm. Better that than their actual home, those 1,500 square feet of luxury space in prime SoHo. How ridiculous, Nick thought, that a sheet and a few poles were supposed to be a standin for that multimillion-dollar property.

  Nick found himself mesmerized by the chuppah’s cloth, its muscled movements in the wind like performance art. He remembered Annie blathering on about which fabric store was the best. He and Emma had laughed—who would notice or care whether the fabric was the finest or a salvaged scrap?—but now he saw how beautifully the material blew and billowed. It was perfect. Annoyingly so. It had probably cost them four figures. “Perfect, perfect, puuurrrfect, ” Nick whined aloud. He recalled something he’d read about Persian rugs, how the weavers always stitched in a small irregularity because they believed only God was perfect; it would’ve been haughty to create a perfect earthly thing. Eli and Annie should’ve followed those rug makers’ lead, Nick thought, and not aimed for the perfect wedding, the perfect marriage, all this goddamned perfection that made Nick want to bend over and retch. He had a brilliant idea: He would help them out. He’d give the chuppah an irregularity. He took his cigarette and stubbed it out on the cloth.

  Nick had intended to create a perfectly imperfect hole that the Persian weavers would’ve approved of. Instead, he watched as the ash seared its way speedily across the material. He was mesmerized, staring at the smoke coiling up in the wind. The smell of singe hit his nostrils. Just as it was occurring to Nick to worry, a torrent of rain released from the sky. It was full blast, like someone had cranked on a faucet. The fire smoldered and then died under the damp, and within moments the burnt fabric collapsed under the water’s weight, toppling a stake along with it. As Nick was trying to decide whether to flee or make some effort to hide the evidence of his arson, he felt a wet slap on his back.

  “My man O’Hare, what are you doing out here? Plotting for your own sacrifice at the altar?” It was Connor. He wore a smug grin, and Nick felt tempted to punch it away; he’d only been in one fistfight before, during a much-too-late-night misunderstanding back in college. Perhaps sensing danger, Connor shoved a bottle of Jim Beam into Nick’s grip. “Purloined, my friend.”

  “Thanks.” Nick untwisted the cap and took a long swig. The liquid’s burn down his throat reminded him of the cigarette burn across the cloth.

  “Join us on a romp through the rain. Even the groom’s on board.” Connor pointed to a colony of suited men, whipping through the water across the grounds.

  Nick wouldn’t have thought he had it in him to run right then. But off he went, one foot flying in front of the other, relying on the rhythm of soles squashing into earth to propel him forward. He ran and ran, gulping from the bottle that Connor had not reclaimed, and whooping it up along with the pack. His voice echoed full and fierce in the wet air. He felt fantastic, leaping and spinning and skipping through the night. He imagined he was one of those African phenoms who could sprint entire marathons, their lanky limbs like liquid steel. On and on, the ground disappearing fast behind him.

  Nick wasn’t sure how long had passed when he realized that the rest of the guys were missing. Where were they, and where was he? He found himself surrounded by trees of nightmares, massive with gnarled trunks and branches like tentacles. Spooky shadows seemed to be playing tricks on him. He was shaking and shivering. He halted his run and made a move to turn around. But his toe went sliding on something mossy, which sent the bottom half of his body flying out in front of the top half. The last thing he heard was the sharp shatter of glass against hard ground, and the soft splash of bourbon.

  Chapter 9

  In retrospect, Emma couldn’t understand why it had taken her so long to notice Nick’s absence. That she felt guilty was an understatement, but she was also troubled by her lack of scrutiny. She was usually a noticer, sharply attentive to details. Besides, she was at a wedding whose soundtrack was saturated with love songs, music that would’ve usually sent her clinging to her boyfriend’s frame, head heavy against his shoulder.

  Still, Emma had been preoccupied. Delivering her speech had elated her. After its favorable reception, she was already fantasizing about abandoning her snotty teen clients in favor of a more glamorous career in speech writing. Maybe she could specialize in wedding toasts; a package deal could bundle in the vows and the programs—plus bonus recommendations for poetry at the ceremony (though not Edith Wharton).

  Plus, Emma had been busy. After Annie had pumped her full of champagne, she’d made a beeline for the bathroom, where she’d gotten caught up experimenting with all the toiletries and goodies in the baskets by the sinks. She’d floofed her hair back up with military-grade hairspray, and then was painting over her nail art with sparkly silver when Annie found her and dragged her back to the dance floor to sway with her to “At Last.” Emma crooned along with the bride, the two of them doing their best Etta James impersonations (embarrassingly off-key). They made it through two verses before it occurred to Emma to ask, “Where’s Eli?”

  “All the guys went running like madmen into the storm,” Annie said, flinging Emma off to the side, then spinning her back in. “They tried to get me to come, but ruin this incredible updo by choice? They’ve got to be kidding.” Annie expertly dipped Emma, who shrieked with glee, feeling as if all the bubbles from her many glasses of champagne were now pop-pop-popping in her upside-down head. Her nose tickled, too.

  Only when Eli and Connor and the rest of the groomsmen burst back into the ballroom did Emma realize that Nick had also been gone. But he was not among the guys now literally wringing out their shirtsleeves to create little puddles at their feet. One by one Emma questioned the group: Where was Nick? They shrugged, or said “Who?” or “We must’ve lost track of him,” or “I bet he�
��ll be back in a minute.”

  The late-night sliders were served, the band announced the last dance, and guests began lining up to retrieve their shawls and jackets from the coat check. Still no Nick. Emma didn’t want to unload her worry on Annie, who seemed to be savoring the last moments of her wedding by drawing smiley faces on the foggy windows with the flower girls. She approached Eli instead: “I can’t find Nick. Have you seen him?”

  “Oh, he probably went back to the hotel.” Eli pronounced this with his trademark confidence. But before Emma had a chance to counter that that wouldn’t make any sense, Eli had wandered off to a group of departing couples to shake hands (heartily, no doubt). Emma wondered if this was how Eli was in every situation, so cocksure, so resolute even when he didn’t have reason to be, never, ever doubting himself. He’d probably taken a business school course on perfecting his greetings and good-byes. Emma cringed to consider that Annie might find these qualities attractive in her new husband.

  So Emma was left alone, standing unsteady in her dyed-to-match heels, incapacitated by uncertainty. She considered calling Genevieve, but she knew her friend couldn’t help her from so far away. Plus she worried Gen would think her pathetically dependent on her boyfriend, freaking out over briefly losing him amidst the party crowd. Emma could sense her nerves gearing up for a panic. She knew she should distract herself, maybe with another glass of champagne, or something stronger, or—

  Emma felt fingers latch onto her upper arm. She teetered around to see Annie’s mother, Mrs. Blum. “Wait right here, dear, and eat this. It’ll soak up some of the liquor.” Emma took the dinner roll and began chewing like an obedient child. When Mrs. Blum reappeared five minutes later, she was sporting a yellow poncho over her gown and matching rubber boots. She handed an identical set of rain gear to Emma, and shined a flashlight in her face. “Goody, it works.”