by Tanya Chris
“Did you talk to him yet?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I talked to him. Twice last week I went up to him while he was bouldering and acted like I needed advice on doing a climb.”
“And?”
“And nothing. He gave me advice. We did the small talk thing and eventually I was like ‘well, I guess I should get back to climbing’ and he was like ‘OK’ and that was it.”
“Sounds like a good start.”
She pulled her pony tail over her shoulder and twisted it. “Why doesn’t he ask me out?”
“Why don’t you ask him out?”
“Be serious.”
“I’m serious. A woman who can climb upside down can ask somebody out. Ask him if he wants to go to North Cliff on Saturday.”
“We’re going to North Cliff.”
“I’ll take a rain check on the climbing. If you don’t get lucky after, call me and I’ll sub in for the evening portion of the program.”
“That’s so trashy.”
“Then make sure you get lucky.”
I purposefully picked the rope next to Tommy to climb on, even though it was on one of the steeper walls. Jenny gave me a look like there was no way I was going to get it up it, and she was right. From halfway up the wall, I hung on the rope, pretending like I was trying to figure out the next move while I listened to her take the least direct approach ever to asking someone out.
It worked though, which was how I ended up on spending Saturday afternoon on my mother’s living room floor playing with my nephew Carrington instead of out climbing.
I wondered if Jenny would call tonight, but mostly hoped she wouldn’t. I was too nice. Deb wouldn’t agree, but I was. I wanted these women to be happy, even though that always meant being left behind. I wouldn’t have to flirt with every woman I met if they’d stick around longer. It took continuous effort to keep the slots in my rotation filled.
But now there was Sherry.
Another burst of happiness flooded me, like a sunbeam through my heart. I tamped it down. I was getting too attached to her, to Joshua, to the situation.
Sherry and Joshua were a couple. That was the bond. I was a toy, a temporary diversion. How long Joshua would continue to humor me with threeways that only covered two sides of the triangle, I didn’t know, which was why I hadn’t gone over in the middle of the week, even though I’d been invited, why I’d saved my visit for last night. If I kept it to once a week, if I kept out of their way in between, maybe I could hang on to what I’d found.
The first morning I stayed over, Joshua pulled a new toothbrush out of the medicine cabinet for me—something they stocked, apparently, like condoms. But now my toothbrush lived next to theirs in the holder, like a part of me belonged in their home.
This morning, Sherry had surprised me by appearing for breakfast. I’d been enjoying the omelet Joshua had whipped up for me when she stumbled out of her bedroom an hour earlier than expected wearing one of her husband’s t-shirts and a pair of striped knee socks.
“Rehearsal,” she said by way of explanation. She filled a cup with coffee, didn’t add anything to it, and narrowed her eyes at her husband when he suggested eggs.
“A band rehearsal?” I asked.
“You remember the horrible wedding band?” Joshua said. “Apparently they realized that the least horrible thing about them was Sherry.”
“The most horrible thing about them is this insane requirement that we rehearse at nine a.m. on a Saturday. And given how bad their bass player is, that’s really saying something.” She propped her head up with a hand. Sherry in the morning was a different animal. Even her curls were lifeless.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to sing with a bad band?”
“Not like there’s anyone important around here who’s going to hear me.” She finished her coffee with a heavy gulp and dropped her head onto her crossed arms on the table.
Joshua brought the pot over and refilled her cup. He topped off mine while he was there, then went back to the counter and started a fresh pot.
Sherry picked her head up and pulled her cup to her mouth like it weighed more than she could handle. “July,” she announced.
“July what?”
“That’s when we get the hell out of Dodge. No way a band that bad could even exist in New York.”
“I didn’t realize you had plans.” My heart sank just thinking about it.
“We don’t,” Joshua said. “Where did July come from, Sher?”
“You get your bonus in May and then in June you’ll have been there two years, so you’ll be twenty-five percent vested in your company’s 401K match.”
“How do you know that?”
“He says it all the time,” she told me. “Twenty-five percent after two years. Fifty percent after three years. Seventy-five percent after four years. A hundred percent after five years. He thinks I don’t listen.”
Joshua met my eyes over her head, confirming that he thought she didn’t listen. “So we wait until I’ve been there five years.”
“We’re not living here three more years so you can be Level X and I can be the featured singer of the worst wedding band ever. July.” She dragged herself out of her chair and over to the kitchen doorway. “I’m taking a shower. Then you have fifteen minutes to change my mood before I have to put clothes on.”
“Are you really moving to New York in July?” I asked Joshua when she’d shuffled off to the shower.
“Of course not.” Joshua cleared Sherry’s mug and my dishes from the kitchen table into the dishwasher. “Maybe we won’t wait three more years, but it won’t be July. Better go get ready for her. She’ll come out of that shower a lot more awake than she went in.”
“You coming?”
“Nah, you should have some time with her to yourself. Have fun, sweet pea.”
I wasn’t sure having Sherry to myself was more fun than sharing her, but it’d been plenty fun enough. I wondered what Joshua was up to for the rest of the weekend, already looking forward to Sunday night’s rehearsal. Today was looking glum. If Jenny didn’t call, I’d have no reason to get away from this birthday party.
Desi plopped Mallory and Aubrey in front of me. “Can you watch them too? I’m going to help Ma in the kitchen.”
“I didn’t know I was watching Carrington. I thought I was playing with him.”
“You looked like you were daydreaming. Daydream over all three of them. Just don’t let them get out of arm’s reach.”
I sighed. It was a tall order. Mallory and Aubrey were one and three. They both had motor skills without intellect. Carrington, at five, could at least be reasoned with.
“Can you share your trucks with your sisters?” I asked Carrington. He bonked Mallory on the head with one of them by way of an answer. She started wailing.
“I didn’t even make it into the kitchen,” Desi complained. “Is this really the best you can do? God help you if you ever have kids of your own.” She picked up Mallory and walked off with her.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” I muttered to Carrington. He grinned, clearly having done it on purpose. “And this is why I moved out. And also why I won’t ever have my own kids. You’re a walking advertisement for condoms, did you know that?”
“What’s a condom?”
OK, saying that out loud had probably been a bad idea. “It’s like a balloon, except instead of being made for children, it’s made to prevent children.”
“I want one,” Carrington said, of course. Because he wanted everything. If I’d had a condom on me, I’d have been tempted to hand it over, but wallet storage was a no-no. I seriously didn’t want children.
Aubrey stood up and took two toddling steps towards the china cabinet. I grabbed her by the back of the shirt and hauled her into my arms. She squirmed in grim struggle with the monstrous overlord trying to deny her destiny while I laughed at her determination. Accepting defeat physically, she went for the vocal attack. Her piercing shriek filled the room just as Bell
a walked into it.
“Thank God.” I let go of Aubrey who made a beeline for Bella.
“I’ll watch them if you get me a drink.” Bella settled herself onto the couch with Aubrey in her lap. “Who’s three today?” I heard her ask as I left the room in relief. “Who’s the biggest girl?”
In the kitchen, I found a wine glass and put it under the spigot on the box of white wine in the refrigerator. Knowing my sister, I filled it to the top. I pondered the six-pack of Molson’s on the shelf next to the box of wine. My mother had stocked it for me, I knew, but I’d been put off drinking lately. Maybe Joshua was rubbing off on me or maybe it was Deb. It seemed like everyone I knew either didn’t drink or drank too much.
Rehearsal on Tuesday had been completely dysfunctional, between Deb who was clearly drunk, and Pete and Repeat who were determined to make the most out of April Fool’s Day. Every prop had been sabotaged, every set piece triggered to collapse when used. They’d rigged up some nice effects with stage blood to fake an injury to Rudy during the big fight scene. It would’ve been convincing except by then we were all expecting it.
Carol called everyone together for an impassioned lecture about taking rehearsals seriously and that was when Deb fell to pieces. I’d have sworn she hadn’t been that drunk at the beginning of rehearsal. She’d smelled of alcohol, which had become frighteningly the norm, but she hadn’t been acting out of character. She must have been drinking during the actual rehearsal. That was the only thing I could figure.
At any rate, when Carol finished her lecture she gave us all five minutes to get any remaining funny business out of our systems while Rebekah cleaned the puddle of red-dyed Karo syrup off the stage floor. Walking down from the audience seating, Deb tripped over one of the risers. She stood up undamaged but livid, screaming that she’d been pushed and what was everyone staring at, we were all laughing at her like we always did because no one liked her, everyone took Nate’s side. That last part was a surprise to most of the cast who had no idea there were sides to take.
In the end, Mikaela had driven Deb home, Rebekah had read their lines for the rest of the rehearsal, and a subdued Deb who for once didn’t smell like alcohol had shown up for rehearsal Wednesday.
I didn’t really worry about my own drinking—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been more than slightly tipsy—but as quick as Joshua had been to point out that Deb was drinking nightly, hadn’t he noticed Sherry and I were too?
“Does this ever bother you?” I’d asked him the night before when he’d handed me my usual Molson. “I mean, I know you said it doesn’t bother you to see people drinking in general, but does it ever worry you that someone might be drinking too much, if it’s someone close to you?”
“You mean, do I worry about Sherry’s drinking?”
I nodded, because that was exactly what I’d meant.
“When I first met her, I was pretty newly sober, so I saw alcoholics everywhere, but I’ve learned that most people aren’t me.”
“Sherry can really down that tequila, though.”
“You only see her during prime drinking hours after a gig. She doesn’t drink before a gig, or during. She doesn’t have any trouble cutting herself off when there’s a reason. She drinks less now than when I met her, which is the normal progression as people get older and have more responsibilities. And most importantly, she doesn’t talk about quitting without being able to follow through.”
That last one resonated. Until recently, I’d never seen Deb drink in any kind of worrying way. She rarely drank at all when we were alone together and at parties she didn’t drink any more than the next person. She’d never needed to be driven home, for instance, unlike at least one person at every cast party.
But through the years she’d had periods of “taking a break from drinking” or “trying to drink less.” Since she always ended up drinking again, I thought that meant not-drinking was no big thing. I now realized I’d been seeing it the wrong way around the whole time. The fact that she kept quitting, and failing to quit, was the obvious symptom I’d been missing.
“In other words,” Joshua concluded about Sherry, “she doesn’t show any signs of a drinking problem. But yes, sometimes I worry anyway. I have to remember that she has her own Higher Power.”
Seeing me struggle to make sense out of his last sentence, Joshua explained. “Sorry, I forget not everyone knows recovery lingo. It just means God will take care of Sherry. I don’t have to. In fact, I can’t.”
“You take care of her all the time. And me too.”
“I make you breakfast. I don’t take care of you.”
“Five minutes after you met me, you basically told a roomful of strangers that if they wanted to mess with me, they’d have to go through you.”
“I never thought of that as taking care of you.”
“Well, that’s exactly what it was.” I could still feel the warm strength of his gesture that day. If he denied it, our whole story would change.
He ran a hand over his head, the way he did when he was considering something. I wondered what his hair felt like. It must feel nice—soft and comforting. I’d like to run my own hand over it to find out.
Joshua sighed. “You do bring something out in me. Anyway, that’s different. I can be a friend Deb can talk to, but I can’t make her ready to stop drinking. I can tell the cast to give you a chance, but I can’t make you the right guy for the role. Which, by the way, if it had turned out that you sucked, I’d have deserted that sinking ship so fast a rat wouldn’t have caught up with me.”
“Good thing I don’t suck then.”
“Well.” Joshua let the innuendo lie there for a moment, then he winked and went on. “Anyway, what I’ve learned in recovery is that I can’t fix other people. Not Deb, not you, and certainly not Sherry. It makes my life easier not to try.”
“And you think God will do it?”
“That’s the way it worked for me.”
I wasn’t religious. My mother was Jewish and my father had been Catholic and the Holy War between them had resulted in an embargo on the word God in our house.
“Were you raised religious?” I asked Joshua.
“Much too much so. The God I grew up with isn’t the one who helps me now. You don’t really want to hear me talk about God, do you?”
I shook my head because that seemed like the answer he expected. Sometimes I envied people who felt like they had Something Bigger backing them, but when I tried to imagine God, I could only imagine one who disapproved of me very strongly.
“Shut the refrigerator door, Nathaniel,” my mother admonished, bringing me mentally back to her kitchen where I’d been contemplating whether or not to grab myself a beer long enough to have attracted her attention.
“Sorry.” I left the beer where it was and picked up the glass of wine I’d poured for Bella and carried it over to the counter where she minced onions. “Are you still Jewish, Ma?”
“Of course I’m still Jewish. How would I stop? You’re Jewish too, you know. Jewish lineage follows the mother.”
“And Catholic lineage follows the father, I know.” That was why I was both and neither. “I mean, in your heart are you still Jewish?”
“God hasn’t gone anywhere just because I don’t go to Temple.”
“Why didn’t you go back? When Dad died, I mean.”
“Your father never tried to stop me from going to Temple. I could have gone any time.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
She put down the knife and wiped her hands on the dishrag hanging from the oven door. “Guilt, I suppose. Thinking God wouldn’t want me there because I didn’t follow his laws. Or maybe just pride. I’d made my bed so I had to act like I enjoyed lying in it. I don’t know. Too many questions when I’m trying to make dinner. Bring your sister her wine before it gets warm.”
I kissed my mother on the cheek, then headed to the living room. Before I’d made it all the way out of the kitchen, the door burst open and Gwen
buzzed through it, her husband trailing behind her.
Gwen carried her baby. Her husband carried everything it took to keep a baby happy. Both Gwen and the baby were screaming, Gwen at her husband and the baby at whatever babies scream about. I waved at them over my shoulder and escaped to the relative quiet of Bella, Carrington, and Aubrey in the living room.
“Was that Guinevere?” Bella asked.
“And circus.” I handed her glass to the hand that looked least occupied with trying to keep Aubrey entertained. “You’re going to need this.”
“Thank God you and I don’t have children to add to the noise level. Four grandchildren seems like enough to keep Ma happy.”
“You wish. She brought it up with me as recently as last week. She doesn’t bug you?”
“Maybe she’s given up. I’m nearly forty, you know.”
“Oh, I know.”
Bella threw one of the decorative pillows at me. I caught it and tossed it lightly at Carrington who, finding the game amusing, threw it at his sister, who started screaming.
“And this is why we don’t have children,” Bella said. She lowered Aubrey down to the floor at her feet. “If you’re going to scream anyway, I’m not going to bother trying to entertain you.”
“Up!” Aubrey climbed back onto the couch. Bella handed over her phone and turned to me.
“Seen Irene lately?”
“About a week ago, why?”
“She turned her hair blue.”
Irene, Bella’s business partner and my longtime lover, was always doing something with her hair.
“On purpose?”
“It’s the latest thing the kids want. She claims she was practicing the technique, but I think she’s trying to keep the interest of the younger folk.”
“She’s never lost my interest, Bella, whatever she’s done with her hair.”
“I didn’t say that as a dig to you.”
“Yes, you did. Irene and I can handle our relationship without your help.”
“Have I ever passed judgment on you and Irene? Christ, when did the great Nate get so touchy?”
About a month ago, when Derek started acting like I’d taken Jenny’s virginity, and Deb turned into an alcoholic, none of which was Bella’s fault. Bella was the one family member I could tell things to.
