My Best Man

by Andy Schell

  As we pull into the driveway, Grammie, in a handsome maroon silk blouse and matching pants, is sitting on a bench beneath a grand old oak tree in the front yard of her Tudor home in enough. She waves at the sight of us, and we wave back before getting out of the car and walking over to her. “Hello,” she calls as we approach.

  “Hey, Grammie,” I say, bending over and hugging her

  I step back and hold her hand. “Grammie, this is Amity.”

  Amity cocks her head, reaches out for Grammie’s free hand and lays the accent on each syllable. “Grammie Ford, I’ve heard so much about you.” The truth is, I’ve told her very little Grammie. Amity is turning on the charm autopilot.

  “And I’ve heard something about you,” my grandmother

  answers sweetly, while looking at me. “Your mother called me last night and told me the aim of our gathering this evening has changed.”

  “That’s right,” Amity answers, letting go of Grammie’s hand and replacing it with mine. “Harry and I are engaged.” Amity is a little too confident. And she realizes immediately that her confidence has no effect on my grandmother.

  There is a moment of uncomfortable silence. I’m holding both their hands, and though no one is moving a muscle, it feels as if these two women are pulling me in opposite directions. I look at Grammie, who is smiling, but neutral. “It was kind of sudden, Grandmother.” I rarely call her Grandmother. She knows I’m slightly off edge.

  “Life is always full of surprises,” she answers. “Sit down.” We all release hands, and Amity sits on one side of her, I on the other. Grammie turns to Amity. “Harry tells me you two have no secrets is this true?”

  “Absolutely,” Amity answers firmly.

  “Why are you marrying my grandson?” she asks directly. She’s not aggressive or distrusting in manner, merely honest.

  “I do love Harry,” Amity answers, her feathers just the slightest bit ruffled. She can tell my grandmother is real, not easily flattered or manipulated as my mother can be.

  My grandmother asks, “Is that why you’re marrying him?” Amity looks at me. Before I can offer help, she quickly reclaims her perfect instincts and follows them accordingly. “No. I’m marrying him to help him get his inheritance.” Dead on.

  “Thank you, dear,” Grammie answers. “The last thing this family needs is another pile of horse manure.” She pats both of our legs. “So. What about true love?”

  “She really does love me, Gram, and I love her too,” I answer.

  “But not like you would another boy,” she reminds me. Turning to Amity she says, “And no matter how much you may feel for

  my grandson, you know he simply isn’t able to feel the same in return?”

  I’m amazed that my grandmother is so steadfast in her knowledge of me. “We know, Grammie,” I say, starting to sound defensive. “We’ve talked all this out. We know what we’re doing.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think you do,” my grandmother tells us. “I know the provisions of your father’s will. He talked about it with me. I strongly disagreed with him about it. Ten years you have to stay married. Ten years. Believe me, the next decade will be the most significant of all. It’s the only time in your life that your body will remain young while your mind will ripen. It’s a precious combination that lasts only for a short time. I fear you’ll be making a mistake by this marriage. If you are planning on coupling in your lives, it’s during this period that you should offer yourselves fully to the right person, each of you.”

  Amity dispassionately explains, “I’ve told Harry he’s free to sow his wild oats. Be with whoever he needs to be with. He’s offered me equal treatment.”

  “It’s not the same,” my grandmother answers, shaking her head sadly. “The years will pass. You’ll never be able to go back.”

  “Grammie,” I say quietly, “trust us. We’re not going to screw our lives up over this. It’ sthe only way. Dad forced my hand, and now I have to play it.”

  My grandmother sighs, takes a moment to think. “I could fix all this by giving you money,” she says, exasperated.

  I look ahead, then over at Amity. She looks back at me, and we both remain silent. It’s true. She could put a stop to it. But as soon as I realize the possibility of it, she speaks up again.

  “No,” she says, resolutely. “I’ve trusted you since you were a little boy to do the right thing, and you always have. You’re better than the rest of us in that way. I respect your decision, Harry. I

  just felt the need to give you my two cents.”

  I smile and tell her, “Well, that’s two cents more than anyone

  else has given me in this family.” She chuckles, and Amity looks uncomfortable. “Come on, Gram. Don’t worry. Just give it time. Everything will work out OK. Let’s go to dinner.”

  We arrive at the club to find my mother again beaming like the Statue of Liberty, her family gathered around her. Amity and I approach with my grandmother on my arm, as if the royal couple is now escorting the queen mother, and my mother starts in with the picture taking. Amity knows my mother is making this evening an event, and there’s nothing Amity likes more than an event, especially when she’s the theme. My relatives are slightly nervous, my female cousins stifling excitable giggles. Amity rises to the occasion with flair and grace, shaking everyone’s hands and repeating names as she goes. My uncle Jack, like Donald when he met her, holds Amity’s hand a little too long and greets her with his face so close to hers that I’m sure she is intoxicated by the gin on his breath. She continues on before he can jam his tongue down her throat, and by the time she’s done, she’s soaked every hand with her perfume, and we all smell like the Este6 Lauder section of the cosmetics department at Maxwell-Grey.

  As much as I despise him, I’m feeling sorry for my brother, Winston. He’s brought several girls to various gatherings over the years, and my family’s never made a fuss over his dates the way they’re making a fuss over Amity tonight. It’s the engagement, I’m sure, but maybe I was wrong about my mother and father, maybe deep in their hearts they knew these women of Winston’s weren’t the real McCoy. They were props. He’s always used ex-sorority, husband-seeking girls to put himself at ease. Even with our father gone, I don’t see him changing. He never talks romantically about women. Never kisses them in front of the family. Never asks them to stay over. Yet they love being with him. He actually can be exceedingly charming when he wants to be. He looks incredible in a suit. Has a great sense of humor. Impeccable style. And when not being a cad, he’s the quintessential gentleman in the classic

  sense of the word. He stands when a lady enters the room, opens doors for her, seats her at a table, selects the wine for her. The problem is, he would also enjoy dressing her, styling her hair, teaching her how to walk, and entering her in a pageant if he could. But I suspect the last thing he’d want to do is to sleep with her.

  And Amity knows this. And that’s why he’s threatened by her. The competitive part of me is amused. It’s quite ironic that the “straight” brother has no respect for his women and the gay one now does. But the other part of me is saddened that Winston has never understood that truth is the great emancipator. I take no pleasure in his self-imposed prison, and in a way I find it cruel that my mother is so desperate for some genuine heterosexuality within her sons that she’ll forsake the past pretenses offered by my brother, in order to flaunt the authenticity of this real, live, dick-smoking girlfriend of her formerly gay child. I admit, I love the attention almost as much as Amity does, and it’s fun being so worshiped by my extended family, but I embrace no joy in Winston’ spredicament, regardless of what a shit he is.

  We drink cocktails and more cocktails. And Amity answers all the stock questions about Texas, Fort Worth, and her accent. Somehow the subject turns to cooking, and Amity, whose icebox still holds nothing but champagne, Diet Dr. Pepper, and nail polish, claims she’s an expert pie maker. “I’m famous for making pie.”

  My aunt Shirley, blessed w
ith a sick sense of humor, starts laughing, and I know right away why. With her accent, it sounds like Amity has said, “I’m famous for making Pa.” Aunt Shirley explains to the group what she thought Amity said, and my family, all of them possessing a wicked wit, joins in laughter at the thought of this beautiful and cultured girl saying, in a polite and acceptable way, that she’s famous for fucking her father.

  Amity, ever the good-time gal, takes it in stride and laughs along. She even good-naturedly shakes her finger at Aunt Shirley. But now there is a crack in her mask so small that even Winston doesn’t

  see it, probably because he’s concentrating on concealing his own. And inside that microscopic fissure of Amity’s, that only I can see, the pain of something awful is revisited. And I have a feeling that if all the lights and cameras were turned off on this dinner and we were alone and she spoke, she would sound as she did earlier in the day when she swore with an authentic voice that she would never have children.

  Before we’re seated for dinner, I excuse myself for the restroom, and my cousin Brad, home from Yale, comes with me. He’s a big handsome guy. A soccer player. Quite intelligent, but macho, definitely a jock. We’re standing at the urinals, an empty one between us, and he’s got a shit-eating grin on his face. He says to me, “She’s pretty wild. All that hair. That accent. This is really something.”

  I know what he’s trying to say. This is really something that not only have I brought home a girl, but one who looks like that.

  “I’m totally in love with her, Brad. Can you believe it?”

  He pauses. Decides to tell the truth. “Not really.”

  We look at each other, start laughing, splashing our pee onto the sides of the urinals. “I know, I know,” I tell him. “Everyone thought I’d end up with my high school drama teacher, Mr. Sweeney.”

  “Something like that,” Brad says. “This is a better choice, man. Why’d you do it?”

  “She makes me laugh,” I say. I can tell he still doubts me.

  “And she gives good head.” Now he doesn’t.

  “She can even bake a pie,” he adds.

  Man, this is so sexist. I can’t believe I’m standing at a urinal, taking a piss, talking about how my fiancee can give head and bake a pie. My lesbian friend from college, Debbie, would punch me in the mouth if she heard me talk like this. It’s such a guy thing-, to talk about chicks while you shake the pee off the head of your dick,

  then skip the hand washing and head out. I don’t even check my hair in the mirror.

  I can’t believe I just peed like a straight guy.

  Everyone is feasting on their prime rib or pork loin or duck or whatever they ordered. The black waiters, in their white waiter’s jackets, keep the water glasses and the wineglasses filled. A trio plays in the background. And Winston compliments my grandmother for the third time this evening only this time he adds a little fire. “Grammie, that’s such a lovely silk blouse. Alacrity has been eyeing it all night. You’ll have to leave it to her in your will.” My mother slams her knife on her plate.

  Grammie smiles and tells Winston, “Maybe I will.”

  Amity jumps right in. “I do love silk, Mrs. Ford,” she says to my grandmother, “but I’m not interested in taking the clothes off anybody’s back unless it’s coming directly from the silkworm itself!”

  Everybody laughs, including Winston with a forced sotto prof undo

  “Actually, silkworms aren’t worms at all,” Amity explains, buoyantly still afloat after Winston’s shot across the bow. “They’re caterpillars. We just refer to them as silkworms.”

  “I never knew that,” my grandmother says. “And I’ve been all the way to Japan to buy a kimono robe.” “I remember that robe,” Aunt Shirley chimes in. ‘

  blue with yellow swans on a river. Pagodas in the background.”

  “How lovely,” Amity says. “Did you know it takes about thousand silkworms to make a kimono?”

  Everyone is charmed. They’re all looking to Amity now, enjoying her trivia. Winston is rolling his eyes and cutting his meat. “Go on, Calamity. Tell us more,” he snivels.

  “They’re little eating machines, y’all. They have to their body weight ten thousand times during their lives and only live about twenty-eight days!”

  “So do some girlfriends,” Winston digs.

  “Like Patty?” I ask, poking him back.

  My mother steers the conversation back to Amity. “What do silkworms eat?”

  “Ham hocks and grits?” Winston spouts with a bad Southern accent.

  “They just love mulberry leaves,” Amity chirps, ignoring Winston

  “Don’t we all,” Winston chirps back.

  “A little known fact is that they’re very fragile,” Amity states, no longer ignoring Winston but looking pointedly at him. “Anything can upset a freshly hatched worm: the bark of a dog, the crow of a cock, a foul smell.” She’s labeling Winston as she goes.

  “What about a female dog?” Winston asks, striking right back.

  “Oh, I’m sure she could upset a worm,” Amity replies, “if she put her mind to it.”

  Aunt Shirley takes an off ramp from the Competition Highway. “What about a horrible singer?”

  Everyone laughs as the small trio with a female vocalist labors on the far side of the room. Aunt Shirley, with her wickedly caustic wit, nearly collapses with laughter as the off-key vocalist hits a dreadfully wrong note while butchering “Fly Me to the Moon.” Her slack tempo and dull ear betray an obvious overdose of Valium.

  “She’s got to be deaf,” my aunt wheezes with laughter. “She ought to just sign the words.”

  “Mother,” Ellie, her oldest daughter, scolds. Ellie is home for summer break from law school at Tulane.

  “For God’s sake, it sounds like she’s singing “Drive Me to the Moon,” ” Aunt Shirley counters.

  Mary, her other daughter, who was studying English literature at Sarah Lawrence, but scandalously dropped out to open her own bookstore in Boston, comes to her mother’s defense. “She is pretty awful.”

  “Wait till she scats,” my aunt chokes, practically falling into her plate. “Let’s write a request on a napkin and make her sing really fast.”

  We’re all laughing now. Thinking of fast songs.

  ” “Fascinating Rhythm,” ” I suggest.

  ” “Anything Goes,” “Amity says, scoring a winning laugh from the gallery.

  “The Theme from HR Puffinstuff.t” Mary adds.

  I’ll bet no one’s ever requested that before,” my uncle Jack contends.

  “Why not request something really hard to sing like an aria from an opera?” Winston suggests, ever the wicked one.

  “Good idea,” Aunt Shirley says, laughing harder still, tears pooling in her eyes.

  Donald doesn’t really understand our family’s humor, and he tries to defend the poor gal. “I don’t think she’s that bad. Why not let her do what she’s prepared?”

  Boos and hisses ensue, and everyone strikes him down. My mother comes to his defense. She never questions him, but we know she secretly enjoys the game because she’s secretly still one of us.

  Winston, to impress Amity, snaps his fingers and condescendingly summons a black waiter. We all cringe at his manner, but we know he always addresses the help in this way, and we’re used to it. He requests a cocktail napkin and a pen.

  “What’s a good aria?” he asks.

  “The one from Madame Butterfly,” Aunt Shirley suggests.

  “And make her sing it in G sharp.”

  “What does it sound like?” Brad asks.

  Silence. Then a couple feeble attempts to hum it.

  “We all know what it sounds like,” Winston dismisses.

  “I’ll sing a little,” Amity offers, smiling wickedly at Winston.

  My mother is overly impressed. “You will?”

  “Sing us a little!” Donald cries.

  “Yes,” Uncle Jack agrees.

  “But sing it quietly, so she can
’t hear you,” Aunt Shirley cautions, referring to the legit singer.

  Winston looks pissed off. Amity has stolen his thunder.

  She sings twenty seconds of the aria. She’s soft and has no vibrato, but she sings it evenly and on-key.

  Everyone applauds. Everyone but Winston.

  After dinner, Winston quickly volunteers to take my grandmother home I assume to accomplish two things: remove himself from “Amity Night” and ingratiate himself further with Grandmother in order to receive more in her will. The rest of us stay behind and make our way to the piano bar. My family has always been too stuffy to indulge themselves with drunken, off-key singing while sipping cordials, as a few select families do after dinner. But having Amity among us has made the evening a very special occasion, and everyone seems years younger and somehow more childlike around her.

  After a few songs like “I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” which Brad changed to “I Left My Harp In Sam’s Clam Disco,” and “Guantanamera,” which everyone modified to “One Ton Tomato,” Amity leads everyone in her favorite little song the “Bee I Go, Bee I Go, Bee I Bicky Go, Bee I Go, Bicky By Go Boo.” Or something like that. It’s from a scene in a Three Stooges movie. We’re all drunk, and we butcher it into further nonsense, which only makes it more fun. And by this time Amity has charmed everyone: my family, the waiters, the busboys, the pianist at the bar. My mother is sailing with happiness, waving her wineglass in the air and singing so unbelievably off-key, as she does in Episcopal church, that I fear our glasses may shatter at any moment.

  And in the middle of all this boozy dare I say gay frivolity

  I suddenly become a little sad. Because I realize how much my mother wants me to be straight. And even though she loves me dearly, and there’s never been such levity in her heart as there is

  this evening, here, with Amity, I find it all to be a little false. And I realize that it wouldn’t even matter if my mother did know that in the short time I’ve known Amity, she’s fucked Bart, Troy, Hunt, Miguel, Wade, and me. As long as Amity is willing to provide legitimacy to her son’s life, she’s in the fold.