Twenty steep, uneven, Escher-like stone steps.
I stopped still at the top. The steps were tall and narrow. I could navigate a curb back in the States, and possibly two low steps on a very lucky day, but not this. No way was I making it down this. Not without dying.
I watched couple after couple use their working legs and feet to walk thoughtlessly up to the boat and step in, and I felt a sharp stab of despair. What was I doing here? Kitty had bailed, I’d lost my mother, and now there was no way I could make it to the reception that I wasn’t even invited to.
I felt a funny little pressure in my throat, like I might cry.
I took a shuddery breath. I should never have come. Time to give up. Long past time, probably.
That’s when the boat driver noticed me.
“Est-ce que vous allez à la soirée?” he asked, in French.
He thought I was Belgian. How flattering! “Non!” I shouted back. “C’est d’accord.” No. It’s okay! High school French for the win. It didn’t often come in handy in Texas.
But the driver was already gesturing at the two guys on the dock, both of whom looked about seventy, and then they were both clambering toward me, up the steps with determination.
“Non, non,” I said, shaking my hands at them like I didn’t need help. “Mes jambons sont eclatés.” I was trying to say, “My legs are broken,” but I didn’t realize until later that I’d confused the word jambe, French for “leg,” with jambon, French for “ham.” I’d also accidentally switched “broken” for “burst”—and so I’d basically just told them that my hams exploded.
The two men paused to look at each other.
Then they kept coming. I clearly did need help.
Of course I wasn’t just a passerby in wedding attire. Of course I was a guest at this wedding. Just because I couldn’t make it down those steps didn’t mean I wasn’t going to.
Over my protests, one elderly but surprisingly strong dock worker lifted me and cradled me in his arms as if he carried women like this every day, and then we were off, teetering down the steps. The other guy folded up my chair and followed us, and before I knew it, they were stepping into the boat and depositing me there—in a seat up at the prow that faced backward toward the crowd.
Every other seat, as far as I could tell, faced forward—except the one I was in, and the empty one beside it. In the churchyard, absolutely no one had noticed me. Now, they all stared.
What could I do? There was no getting off. There was no changing seats. I stared back. I didn’t recognize anyone. My chair and my wedding-crashing self were stuck alone on a boat full of curious strangers. A boat that wasn’t going anywhere.
The taxi crew had switched back to Flemish, but I could tell that the driver wanted to leave, even though the dockworkers thought he should stay. He kept telling them to untie the boat, but they didn’t think they were supposed to. Finally, one of them dashed back up those lethal steps again to get a look around, and he called something down and pointed out of view.
Was somebody coming?
And then I saw.
Somebody was coming, all right.
The wedding party.
Twenty-eight
THEY GATHERED BY the bridge at the top of the steps to the taxi stand like a pouty spread in Vanity Fair, at the very spot where I had just been. I got my first good gander, and it was so strange to see all the guys who would have been our groomsmen—Woody, Statler, Murphy, and Harris—paired up with a flock of female strangers. Just as I thought that, a breeze rose up and caused all the bridesmaids’ gowns to billow in slow motion.
Then the group parted, and I braced myself for the appearance of the bride and groom. But the couple that appeared were not Chip and the Whiner, but instead, Jim and Evelyn Dunbar. Chip’s folks.
I had seen Evelyn several times since the day we’d fought in the hospital, of course. She was our next-door neighbor, after all.
But I had not spoken to her. Not once, in all this time.
At first, if she popped by, I hid. I felt like I couldn’t face her, and I gave myself permission not to. As time went by, I stopped caring about avoiding her. But by then, she and my mother had begun their secret rendezvous.
We didn’t work to avoid each other. It just happened.
After a while, my mother insisted that Evelyn had “entirely forgotten” our little “tiff” at the hospital. But I suspected that she’d long ago made me the villain of the situation: the desperate, broken girl who’d tried to manipulate her perfect son into giving up his perfect life out of guilt. Evelyn had never been the kind of person to face her son’s limitations head-on. She could be very selective about her facts.
Hence, the “omission” of my name on the invitation.
It was fine. I didn’t care. Except for one thing: She was coming my way, and I had no escape.
As she walked closer in her pale blue mother-of-the-groom suit and pearls, I wondered how she would react to the sight of me.
Not well, it turned out.
I have a theory that we are at our meanest when we feel threatened. People really seem to do their worst when they think you’re out to hurt them, or steal from them, or take something that’s rightfully theirs. And I could tell the minute Evelyn Dunbar’s eyes met mine that she immediately thought all of the above.
She must have thought I was there to ruin the wedding. In her shoes, I might have thought the same thing.
She stepped into the boat, and froze when she saw me. Mr. Dunbar walked on to chat with some guests, but Evelyn bent toward me in my seat and dropped her voice about an octave. “What are you doing here?”
Other guests looked our way. No way was I discussing the Parent Trap plan in public. I shrugged instead. “Kit got sick, so I took her place.”
She glanced around. She arranged her face into a smile. “You were not invited.”
“I noticed that,” I said.
“We thought it would be awkward.”
“It would have been.”
“But here you are.”
“My mother thought it was an oversight.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I’m not going to cause any trouble,” I said at last, lifting my hands in a gesture of innocence. I meant to deescalate, but that just made her madder.
“How can you do this?” she hissed.
It seemed like an overreaction. “Do what?” I asked.
“Come uninvited and sit there like a goblin staring at everybody. It’s creepy.”
Was that what I was doing? “Did you just call me a goblin?”
“Just what are you trying to achieve?”
“I still can’t get past the word ‘goblin.’”
“Chip is moving on, and you should do the same.”
“I agree.”
“But you still had to come here? You still have to make this day, of all days, weird for him?”
I hadn’t come here to make anything weird for anybody. But anger is contagious, I guess. Now, I couldn’t resist. “Chip has made every day of the rest of my life weird for me, so maybe we’re even. Except we’ll never really be even. Unless I paralyze him back.”
Evelyn’s eyelids stretched a bit in surprise, like she suddenly feared that might be why I’d come here: to paralyze the groom. “That’s not funny,” she said.
I looked at her, like, Come on. “It’s a little funny.”
“It’s time for you to go.”
Sometimes you have no choice but to fail. But now was not one of those times. I hadn’t gone through all this just to give up at the end. I had a mother to rescue.
“I’m not leaving,” I said.
But Evelyn leveled a don’t you dare look at me. “You’re leaving,” she said. “Now.” She snapped at the boat crew to come over and deal with me.
Was that how this night was going to end? Me being tossed back onto the dock by an elderly team of Flemish boatmen? I thought about why I was here. I thought about who I wanted to be, and I decided that I
wanted to be stronger for my struggles. Wiser, too, if I could. I wanted to be someone who made things better, not worse.
“I’m sorry I cursed at you,” I said to her then.
Evelyn blinked. “What?”
“Back at the hospital. Last year. I used some language that upset you.”
Evelyn pursed her lips at the memory. Her expression didn’t exactly soften, but I could tell I’d surprised her.
“I was hurting, a lot,” I said, “and I lashed out. I guess I thought if other people hurt, too, I might hurt less. But it didn’t make me feel better to hurt you. It made me feel worse. I regret it, and I want you know I’m sorry. I should have been kinder.”
Now she blinked some more.
When the crewman she’d snapped at made it over to us, he did not look like he was there to do her bidding. Instead, he looked like he wanted her to sit down. He started insisting that Evelyn take her seat, gesturing at the line behind her.
The usual Evelyn wouldn’t have stood for it.
But it was like I’d taken the wind out of her self-righteousness. Or maybe I’d just shown her that I came in peace. Whatever it was, she didn’t fight them. Instead, she went all docile and let them lead her to her spot.
* * *
THE REST OF the wedding party filled the remaining rows, leaving only the two prime center seats—directly across from me—open for Chip and the Whiner, the guests of honor.
Whatever lagniappe of peace had come from my moment with Evelyn, it disappeared at the sight of them cresting the bridge and then descending the steps so glamorously they could have been in slo-mo.
I looked around to check where the boat driver had stashed my chair. As if I might use it to roll away before they could spot me.
Of course, there was no rolling away. Staying right here, trapped in a seat directly across from the two reserved for the bride and groom, was apparently my only option.
I didn’t know what to do with my hands—clasped? loose?—or where to turn my head. Should I gaze out at the swans and pretend I didn’t notice them? Or maybe I should bend my face into a pleasant smile and look right at them on arrival, like, Oh, hello! I didn’t see you there.
Instead, I reached up to rest my fingertips on the silver bar of Ian’s necklace. Courage.
Chip didn’t notice me until after he’d sat down. For a second, as he draped an arm around the Whiner, man-spreading his legs wide and taking in the sight of the canal, I sparked a hope he might never notice me at all.
No luck.
When his gaze drifted to a stop at my face, he leaned forward and flat-out stared. “Margaret?”
At the sound of my name, the Whiner sat up and stared, too.
There she was. Chip’s new me. With a spray tan and too much eyeliner.
Tara. A girl I’d only ever seen in pictures. A girl Chip had compared me to from time to time—but only to point out my superiorities. I made better coffee. I had a better sense of humor. I had more rhythm. Here she was, in the flesh.
She looked awfully pouty.
I gave a little wave and said, “Hey!” like I was just now noticing them. “Happy wedding!”
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Chip said, and in that moment I could just tell: He did not know that I’d been left off the list.
What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “We all came,” I said, and then added, “Everybody.” Safety in numbers.
Chip looked around for the rest of the Jacobsens but came up short.
“I’ve lost them all now,” I said, like, No biggie.
Then he looked around for my chair but didn’t see it. “Where’s your chair?” he asked. “Do you still need it?”
If my life were a movie, the answer would have been “That old thing? I haven’t seen it in months.” It would’ve been my moment to rise from my seat like a goddess and triumph over Chip and the Whiner and every person who had ever doubted me, including myself: Stand. Triumph. Roll credits.
I had longed for an ending just like that. But that’s not the story I wound up with. And this wasn’t the ending, either.
I pointed toward a storage compartment. “It’s there.”
“So you’re still…”
“Paralyzed,” I said with a nod.
He leaned a little closer, cautiously—like I might be feral. Then he put a big, fake smile on his face, leaned in even more, and said, “How are you?”
That’s when I knew. He pitied me.
The bride was leaning forward, too, now, her arms crossed over her chest, but it wasn’t quite pity on her face.
I matched his expression. “I am super great,” I said, showing all my teeth. “How are you?”
Before Chip could respond, the Whiner jumped in, pulling his focus. “Chip!” she whined (there it was). “What the hell?”
Chip let go of his smile and got serious with me. “Why are you here, again?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
Chip pushed out a sigh. “Because I’m trying to start fresh here.”
“That’s great,” I said. “I cheer you on.”
“Is that sarcastic?”
“No!”
“I don’t need you to cheer me on, okay?”
I gave another shrug. “Too late.”
My read on the situation at this point: Chip was mostly puzzled, and pitying, and jumping to conclusions about my motivations. But his brand-new wife was only one thing: furious.
“Look,” I said to them both, “I wish you both well, okay? I am not pathetically stalking you. I’ve moved on.”
But neither of them believed me.
That’s when Statler called out from the next row of seats back, “Here to ruin the wedding, huh, Jacobsen?”
It was a joke, of course—meant, no doubt, to deflate the tension—but I suddenly realized that’s what they all must have been thinking: that I’d come here with tragic, ridiculous hopes of sabotaging the wedding.
“I’m just here to celebrate,” I said, lifting my hands in surrender.
But Statler just laughed. I was clearly a broken ex making one last desperate attempt to—what? Roll off with the groom? There could be no other explanation. Fair enough. Out of context, flying three thousand miles to your ex’s wedding might seem a little suspicious.
Before I knew it, I was trying to make them understand.
“It’s been a rough year,” I found myself announcing then, to Statler, and the happy couple, and the whole damned boat. “It’s not the life I would have chosen,” I went on, “and parts of it are absolutely brutal. But there are upsides, too. I’m wiser. I’m kinder. I’ve taken up knitting.”
They couldn’t possibly get it. Some kinds of wisdom can only be earned. I should have dropped the whole thing right then. But I just needed to stand up for myself.
“I am building a summer camp,” I said next, “and I’ve started my own nonprofit, and I’m as busy and happy and productive as I’ve ever been. I’ve found my calling. I’ve found work that’s so satisfying and thrilling, I wish I didn’t even have to sleep.”
I read their faces. They weren’t convinced.
But it was okay.
Needing to find reasons to live had forced me to build a life worth living. I would never say the accident was a good thing. I would never, ever claim that everything happens for a reason. Like all tragedies, it was senseless.
But I knew one thing for sure: The greater our capacity for sorrow becomes, the greater our capacity for joy.
So I went on, “That’s the thing you don’t know—that you can’t know until life has genuinely beaten the crap out of you: I am better for it all. I am better for being broken.”
The truth of it both steadied me and left me a little shaky.
It felt like a real triumph.
Until Chip’s bride gave me a look, like, Please.
Chip didn’t seem too convinced, either. “You’re saying you’ve moved on?”
Ugh. “Yes.”
His eyes we
re like dares. “Does that mean,” he asked, “that you’re seeing somebody?”
Seriously? Was this the only definition of moving on? Was there no way to get better or be happy or live a great life that did not involve dating? Was being in love the only kind of happiness out there? I took offense at the question on feminist principle. I felt tempted to lecture him all night on the ways that women’s lives did not need to be validated romantically by a man. Ridiculous! Narrow-minded! Conventional!
I almost said so. One more second, and I would have.
Twenty-nine
BUT THAT’S WHEN we all heard a person shout, “Wait! Hold the boat!”
At the sound, I noticed that the guys on the dock had already untied the ropes, and we were starting to motor away.
We turned in the direction of the voice, and one of the dockworkers shouted, in Flemish, what I presumed was “Hold up! One more!”
A lone man in a tuxedo was sprinting down the steps toward us.
A man who at first looked weirdly like Ian.
A man who in fact kept on looking like Ian, even as he got closer.
And then turned out to actually be Ian.
My Ian, of all people. Not in Edinburgh. Here. In Bruges. Running to catch the boat to Chip’s reception, in a shawl-collared tux.
Ian. Here, apparently, to crash the reception, too.
I saw him, but he didn’t see me. Too busy running and looking deadly handsome.
I would have told you my reaction to seeing Chip and Tara was visceral—but I did not know the meaning of that word until I watched Ian sprinting down those steps.
My lungs stopped working.
If I could have turned my eyes away, I would have looked for a place to hide.
But I couldn’t turn my eyes away. I took in Ian’s new haircut—a little shorter, a little spikier—and the fit of his tux, noting how European men seemed to wear their pants a smidge tighter than Americans, like they’d shrunk them in the wash.
In a really good way.
How to Walk Away Page 28