Nine Minutes in Heaven

by David Connor

  “I’m sorry I didn’t see the signs. I’ll never forgive myself for that.” Shelby turned away. “After how we grew up, I definitely should have noticed something was off.”

  “Ditto,” Rip said.

  “Stop. If it wasn’t for the two of you, Max, and then Willy Wonka Wilbur, I would have given up early in and allowed him to just…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “I got good at hiding.”

  “That should have been a sign,” my sister said.

  “You won’t do that again, right?”

  “I don’t have to,” I told Rip.

  “See, here’s the thing.” He yanked my belt loop to get me to sit back down as he did. “I think we can get how you’re feeling about the marriage thing, because how do we know for sure?”

  When I sat, Wilbur chose the ottoman again, instead of my lap.

  “We’re not saying we think Patrick could do the things Tom did,” Shelby added quickly. “We just don’t altogether trust ourselves to know when you need us now, because we should have done better before. And I have to think a lot of that uncertainty, something similar, is swimming around up here.” She tapped my forehead. “All the ‘What ifs?’ Despite how wonderful your snow night was, from what you said, all of that history, all of those feelings, can’t disappear just like that.”

  “They do in Hallmark movies and fairy tales.”

  “Real life, Little One.” Rip liked to call me that sometimes, to remind me how short I was. “Real life.” I often thought he needed a little one for real.

  “Things for Tom and I were bad before we moved in together,” I said. “Then, they got worse. I guess I do worry the bloom will fall off the rose for Patrick once he sees me every day, twenty-four seven, you know? It’s stuff like that I worry about.”

  “It makes sense. You will annoy him.”

  “Geeze, Shell. Thanks a lot.”

  “Coworkers, spouses, siblings, lovers…people get on each other’s nerves once in a while. It happens. I don’t bug you certain days? Of course, I do, but you don’t just dump me, right? And we’ve never come to blows, despite how we were raised. You don’t think this one is annoying as hell from time to time, like, once or twice a day annoying, or twenty times a week downright irritating?”

  “I beg your pardon!” Rip said in mock shock.

  “There’s constant, ‘Where are my keys?’ like breasts have built-in GPS, or his nightly ‘He shoots! He scores!’ He misses the hamper and leaves his underwear on the floor, or the whole bathroom thing, the toilet seat and never putting out a new roll when he empties the old one. Should I go on?”

  “No thanks.” Rip clicked the tongs, as if they were answering. He even altered his voice. If his regular job as an electrical engineer, the snow plowing for free, and the stand-up comedy thing failed, he might have a career as a ventriloquist.

  “Nobody is perfect,” Shelby said. “But Rip makes up for every one of those cliché things in other ways.”

  “I’m a ninja in the boudoir.” He winked.

  “Super-fast and basically undetectable?” I did the same.

  “Hardy-har, Bro-ford.”

  “He never lets me wash dishes by myself.” Shelby kissed his cheek. “Always shovels out my car and starts it on cold mornings, and best of all, he has a sixth sense about when I really need a cat meme while at work. It’s those things that make everything else so worth it.”

  “Thank you. I try.” Rip stood and leaned over me to reciprocate my sister’s smooch. “Tomorrow, we’ll do you.”

  “I’m perfect in every way,” she claimed.

  “Yes,” Rip agreed. “Come to think of it, you are. Now, I gotta get those burgers going.”

  He turned to smile at my sister again, before disappearing through the archway. That made her smile, too, and in turn, also me.

  “Patrick’s so excited about the whole thing,” I said, recalling his joy at the proposal and when picking out and exchanging rings. “Three months later, his face still lights up when he looks at the stupid strip from the pool tube wrapped around his finger.”

  I looked at my ring, and then thought of another video Patrick had posted to his Facebook page. The entire O’Hanlon clan had gathered for St. Patrick’s Day a couple weeks back, dozens of them, all adorned in green clothing and paper leprechaun hats. I’d tried to put faces with names while watching it. He had a Carrie, too, a sister. There was also Kimmie, Willie, Kathryn, Meagan, Johnny, Travis, Tammy, Yu, Midori, Han, Jesus…Though ginger features and Irish eyes did appear here and there, Patrick’s extended crew was actually a melting pot.

  When he’d first told me about his family, during our Tennessee road trip, he’d mentioned how his parents weren’t completely onboard with his sexuality. “My dad doesn’t really get the concept of fluid sexuality. He liked my ex-wife but wasn’t keen on the next person I was serious with. His name was Estefan. Mom is okay with it, though, especially Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, she prays I’ll be forgiven.” That was how he’d put it at the time. Though he swore that had changed, now, because of me, I wasn’t completely convinced that was true.

  Someone had recorded the March 17 festivities, which included Irish singing, Irish dancing, and Patrick showing off his engagement ring to everyone, one at a time, while extolling my virtues and telling everyone how in love he was.

  “Look at the ring he gave me.” If he said it once, he’d said it at least fifty times. There were that many O’Hanlon relatives in his living room. Every one of them seemed to adore him, their constant hugs, smiles, and friendly ribbing evidence of that. They all expressed happiness for him as well, and one younger brother called me the luckiest son of a bitch alive. I couldn’t agree more.

  Mrs. O’Hanlon, moved with emotion, put it gentler. “If you love him, I’m sure we will, too.” Maybe Patrick was telling me the truth.

  I’d been invited to join them all, of course, and had intended on going—until the very last minute, when I called and backed out.

  “I’m sorry. I just…I just don’t think I can.”

  The guest list had started at ten people but grew day by day.

  “Too many of us, and only one of you,” he’d said. “I get it.”

  Patrick loved being around his family and the feeling was mutual. I got that.

  “I’ll miss you,” he’d said. “I’ll write your name over my heart whenever I think of you. Maybe you’ll know.”

  I had done it then.

  “You just did it, didn’t you?” he’d asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll dress in green for me another day, Goose, and I’ll put on the hat the next time we’re together.”

  “Nothing but the hat?”

  “If that’s what you wish.”

  “Goose, are you listening to me?” Shelby asked, bringing me out of my head to the present.

  I did tend to zone out. “I was thinking of St. Patrick’s Day. Mine is a saint, too, for putting up with me.”

  “He’s lucky to have you,” Shelby claimed. “I was asking if you’re not excited about the wedding.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “But not…all the way. Don’t you deserve to be, Goose? Wouldn’t Patrick want to wait until you are?”

  I shifted my gaze down to my shoes.

  “Communication, Maxwell Tucker…”

  “Uh-oh. Now, we’re using my given name?”

  “Just this once. Or…every time I talk to you, unless you promise to talk to him. I get doubts,” Shelby said, checking to be sure Rip was out of earshot. “Richard wants kids so badly.”

  It took a moment for my brain to translate “Richard” to “Rip.” It really did.

  “But what if I’m like Mom?”

  “Shell…you’re not.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. She ditched us…for good reason, maybe, but she ditched us. Dropped us at Gramma’s and Grampa’s and never came back.”

  �
�She came back.”

  “A few times, she came back, but never to take us. ‘Hi.’ ‘Bye.’ Gone again.”

  “Things were so much better at Gramma and Grampa’s.”

  “They were. I…” Shelby put her hand over her heart. “I think I’d be a good mom.”

  I looked her straight in the eye. “You’d be a great mom. What you’ve done for Carrie over the last three months…Man, just ask her.”

  “Well, maybe fate felt otherwise all those times Richard and I came close. Maybe I waited too long to start trying. As you’re aware, Richard wanted to marry me on prom night. You know why I said no?”

  “That ninja in the bedroom thing?”

  I liked making Shelby smile. “No. I never had, nor will I ever have any complaints in that department.”

  I plugged my ears. “La-la-la…”

  Shelby pulled my hands away from my head. “At first, it was because I was a senior and he was a junior. It was bad enough I was dating one. How would it look if I married him? Sadly, I kept telling him he wasn’t mature enough. Eventually, he believed me and went away. Thank God he came back. My point is, I had the same issues you’re having, and wasted so many years because of them. Who knows how many of those any of us get?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Learn from my mistakes. Talk to Patrick. Tell him all of it. I’ll bet you’ll come away knowing one way or another if the time is right.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That said, from what I’ve seen so far, the man adores everything about you. And how could he not?”

  I pulled the pillow from behind my back to cover my face.

  Shelby chuckled. “Talk to him.”

  I got a kiss on my cheek, too, before she exited as well. My sister made a lot of sense. Patrick wouldn’t want me worrying so much. He’d said so. “I wish you didn’t have all those bad thoughts up here,” he’d told me once. Instead of a tap, he’d lovingly put his lips to my forehead afterward, and that, at least for a moment, would always take a lot of them away. I loved him. I did.

  Buzz.

  So, why, when my phone went off again, did I let that call go to voicemail, too? I wanted to blame the aroma of barbecue that wafted in every time Rip went in or out the back door. I loved burgers, burgers and pancakes. If someone ever invented a burger on a pancake, I’d be in food heaven. Naturally, I had to ask Siri if anyone ever had.

  “Here are several hamburger pancake recipes, Goose.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  I decided to text the results to Patrick. I would eventually. He’d make them for me.

  I truly did want to be near the man I loved. At the same time, I didn’t want to seem too needy or uncooperative when it came to my reluctance to sit down to dinner with a hundred O’Hanlons—something I had yet to do—or visit Perth, which I’d had to look up on a map in case we went “someday.” My ambivalence concerning the whole “‘Til death do us part” thing was fucking with me bad. I’d always figured the worst part about being a mess was realizing it. And boy, did I realize I was a mess! A healthy relationship was a whole new thing to me. I didn’t know all the rules.

  “I almost forgot.” Carrie interrupted my thoughts before I could break out the imaginary whip to give myself forty lashes. “Do you have anything in your closet that could pass for Siamese royalty garb or something a British schoolteacher would wear?” she asked partway down the stairs.

  “Maybe.”

  I turned at my sister’s response from the kitchen door. Somewhat surprised by it, I was about to make a joke about her and my bro-in-law’s bedroom role playing but decided against it.

  “The drama club is running out of money.” Carrie explained with a frown. “I’m supposed to ask, because we don’t have a lot for costumes and stuff.”

  “Feel free to look,” Shelby offered. “Our closets are your closets.”

  Rip clicked the tongs behind her. I hadn’t even seen him there. “I have Hawaiian shirts Goofus keeps giving me for Christmas. Could you do anything with those?”

  “I can do you one better.” I grabbed my phone from my pocket. “I bet I could get Cost-Mart to donate some fabric. Shell is a whiz with a sewing machine. They’ll probably throw in some lumber and paint for sets, too.” My boss’s number was third in my contacts list, which said a lot about my social life. “I’ll call right now.”

  Carrie’s face lit up like those wedding bands in the jewelry case. “Isn’t he dope?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rip said. “Is he?”

  “He is.” Carrie nodded. “Definitely.” Then she disappeared again.

  “Dope…I’d like to buy an A, Pat.” Rip’s smirk was both annoying and endearing. “You know, to put in front of it.”

  “Yeah. I got that,” I said. “Go finish the food. I’m hungry.”

  “You can’t rush a good burger, Bro-ford. Ten more minutes.”

  My boss got back to me almost as soon as Rip disappeared from view. “Anything they need,” she said. “Bring me a list.”

  When I hollered up to Carrie to give her the news, she suggested I go to rehearsal with her and talk with Mrs. Quintero personally, to see what items would come in most handy. My heart seized. My stomach growled. Only one issue was easily solved.

  After desperately scouring my sister’s kitchen for cookies, then shoving down my third, I decided maybe I could—maybe I would drop by the school—before heading to the store to clean. I tried to get Shell or Rip to come along, but Shell wasn’t feeling so hot. She’d taken only one bite of her Oreo, before moving on to some ginger ale.

  “You can handle it,” she said.

  “You gonna eat that?”

  She shoved the cookie at me, then touched the P sitting against the stripe on my sweatshirt.

  “This is new.”

  I told her all about that morning. “Patrick has one with a G on it.”

  “Aww. That’s sweet.” After that, she was on to grabbing some plates out of the cupboard to set the table. It was a one-woman job, so I took cookies four, five, and six to the living room and sat with my phone to send a text, the hamburger pancake recipe, to start. Patrick answered right away.

  Patrick: Hey, handsome. We’ll make them next Thursday. You in just an apron…

  I got a screenful of drooling emojis.

  Goose: How’s work going?

  Patrick: Almost closing time. Can I call? Hearing your voice is like music to me still.

  Goose: Sure.

  I picked up the phone after half a ring. Patrick was already singing, sweetly butchering the melody to “Here Comes the Bride” with made up lyrics. “Here come the grooms, Patrick and Goose. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, moose.”

  I laughed.

  “I really should have thought that through,” he said.

  “It’s a shame my name doesn’t rhyme with camel.”

  “Right? Is my voice music, at least?”

  More like nails on a chalkboard to everyone else, but to me, “Absolute perfection,” I told him.

  “You’re sweet when you lie. I wonder if I’ll sing better as an angel, like Jefferson and Calvin. ‘Voice like an angel’ is a thing, right? Do they all sing well?”

  “I’ll ask next time I see them.”

  “I wish I was holding you in my arms right now.” Patrick sighed. “It’s been a while.”

  I hugged the phone to my chest, and then said, “Over one point five million seconds since we’ve done it naked.”

  “I was tempted this morning.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I can’t wait to hear our necklaces clink together when we love fuck,” Patrick said.

  “Wowza!”

  “You know what I did today?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I ordered new bedroom furniture…for our bedroom.”

  “Oh.”

  We’d discussed living at Patrick’s house after the wedding, in so much as I was willing to discuss anything more than an hour into the future
whenever we spent the night together in his old bed. Three or four sentences in, I’d get up and say, “I think Wilbur needs to pee.” Eventually, Wilbur wouldn’t budge, no matter how many times I clicked the clasp on his leash to get out of discussing a wedding for which I wasn’t ready. Wilbur was a tiny dog. His bladder could only empty so much.

  As far as living arrangements went, though I did enjoy—if that word was accurate—locking myself in my house, I wasn’t particularly sentimental about the structure itself. My ex, Tom, had renovated it from the ground up. The only reason I got to stay in it, once he’d fled to Florida, was because I paid the mortgage and for all the supplies for repairs.

  “I bought an armoire and a huge dresser just for you,” Patrick said on his end of the phone.

  “I don’t have that many clothes,” I told him.

  “That’s okay. There’ll be a new bed, too…ours. It’s all being delivered in two weeks—but no pressure,” he added quickly. “I…I know we haven’t even set the date, yet. June, maybe. Though that’s so cliché.”

  I’d been thinking of May for Jefferson and Calvin. The notion of a double ceremony was either sweet or stupid. I couldn’t decide which. What might have been even dumber, though, was the fact I’d gotten ordained online at BecomeAMarryingManOrWoman.com in order to officially be able to perform the ceremony for them, should they want me to. All of that aside, I did like the thought of moving in with Patrick, of sharing a bed every evening, when he got home from work. We could prepare a very late dinner after napping or love fucking, before I had to go to my job. Kissing him good morning every single day when things were reversed would be nice, too. We likely wouldn’t have a lot more time together than we did now, other than that little bit here and there, but that would be something. The route from his house to the store would be different, but pretty much the same as far as distance, and I would still be close enough to Shelby and Rip to drop in anytime I wanted to see them and Carrie. Those were the only things that really mattered. Those and Wilbur, of course. He liked Patrick’s house just fine. Though he still checked the stairs for pancakes every time we went there.

  Patrick’s voice brought me back. “Goose?”

  “Sorry. I got lost in thought.”