Someday, Someday, Maybe: A Novel

by Lauren Graham

  “When …?”

  “Sorry, when’s Joe back? So I can call him back. When he’s back.”

  There’s a long pause, and then Richard clears his throat.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Franny, but Joe’s not here.”

  “No? Oh, yeah, look at the time. He’s probably at lunch, right? That’s okay, I’ll just call back tomor—”

  “No, Franny, I mean Joe’s not here at all. And listen, this has nothing to do with—even if you’d decided to do the movie it wouldn’t have changed anything. You should know that.”

  “What wouldn’t have changed anything? Sorry, I’m confused …”

  “He was supposed to—I’m sure he’ll call you to explain. As of yesterday, Joe Melville doesn’t work here anymore.”

  24

  You have three messages.

  BEEEP

  Frances, it’s your father. I hope you’ll still recognize me when we see each other at the Finnegans’. You’re still coming, right? With Jane? Call me back, please. I’d like to—there’s something—call me, please. Also, one of my students says there’s a show called E.R.? I think that’s the name of it. About doctors, I suppose? Anyway, that’s supposed to be a good one you should apply to.

  BEEEP

  Frances, Joe Melville calling. I’m sorry to leave you a message, but I’m not going to be reachable for a few days, during the, uh, transition. I want you to know that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with you, but I’m moving on to a more exclusive, er, a smaller agency, and I’m only able to take a very few of my clients, who are the, uh, top—well, only bigger names, you understand, are making this transition with me. I want to thank you, and wish you luck in all of your endeavors.

  BEEEP

  Franny, it’s Richard, from Joe’s office. I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed working with you. I really tried to convince one of the other agents to take you on, but everyone’s freaked out about Joe leaving, and no one’s taking new clients right now. I’ll still just be the assistant at the new office, or I’d represent you myself. Take care and keep in touch, okay? I wish I could be more helpful. Maybe someday in the future? Anyway, good luck.

  “Pinkeye?” I keep repeating the phrase as if that will somehow make it disappear from Jane’s face. “Pinkeye? You have pinkeye? How can you be sure?”

  “Well, by looking in the mirror, for one thing.”

  “But maybe you just have something in your eye? Or allergies?”

  “Sorry, Franny. I’ve had it before. This is what it looks like. It’s really contagious. There’s no way I can go.”

  Jane was going to be my date for Katie’s wedding. Jane had arranged the rental car in her name. Jane has pinkeye.

  “If you can’t go, I can’t go. Metro-North is on strike, so I can’t take the train. I have no wallet, no driver’s license. I can’t pick up the rental car.”

  Two nights ago on the way home from James’s, I arrived at our front door just as our downstairs neighbor was leaving, and Dan and Jane were home with the door to our place already open, so it wasn’t until I went to get bagels the next morning that I realized in my rush to leave, I forgot my purse at James’s apartment. I left him a message, but he must have already taken off for Los Angeles.

  “Shit. I forgot about the license thing,” Jane says, her good eye widening in sympathy. “I know. Maybe I can give you my I.D. and you can pretend to be me?”

  “Good thinking. Where can I get colored contacts, an olive complexion, and darker, straighter hair in about an hour?”

  “I’m just brainstorming here.”

  “It’s fine. Forget it. I just won’t go.”

  But it feels terrible to even speak that possibility out loud. I’ve never missed a Finnegan wedding. I haven’t seen my dad in months, haven’t even really spoken to him. His messages have had a strange sound to them lately. I think he’s lonely.

  “I can rent the car. I can take you.”

  I look over to see Dan hovering in the doorway of the kitchen, and I blush at the thought of him escorting me to the wedding. “Oh, thanks. Really. But this is a very crazy, giant wedding. It would be awful for you. This family is insane. And there’s no time to get you a tux.”

  “All families are insane. And I have a tuxedo. In my closet.”

  I’ve only ever seen Dan in a T-shirt and jeans. He has no coat or blazer that I know of. In the winter he wears this sort of windbreaker-type blue jacket that can’t possibly be warm enough, but if you ever ask him if he’s cold, he says no, he’s fine. He has one white-collared shirt and one blue-collared shirt that he used to alternate when he went out to dinner with Everett. I’ve never seen him wear a belt or a tie or socks that aren’t white tube socks. Yet, Dan owns a formal tuxedo?

  “But there’s only one, ah, room, you know, in the motel,” I stammer. “Just the one. So …”

  I can’t imagine bringing him into this party. The thought of it makes me unaccountably nervous. Our lives have gone back to normal: back to simply co-existing here in this apartment, the three of us going out occasionally to the upstairs Chinese place, or sitting on the couch and guessing who the killer is on Law and Order. The daily routine of being roommates has almost eclipsed what happened that one night out after the theater. I don’t want to go outside these familiar surroundings, don’t want to leave Brooklyn let alone spend a night with him in a motel—even one with two beds. But the thought of missing Katie’s wedding, and not seeing my dad, makes my heart ache.

  “This is silly,” Jane pipes in. “We already got a double room for the two of us. So, what’s the big deal? It’s not like you two aren’t already used to sleeping under the same roof. Make a wall out of throw pillows or something. It’s Katie Finnegan’s wedding, for Chrissakes! You’re going! Yay, Dan!”

  Jane smiles at me, as if it’s all been decided.

  “But how will I explain it to James?”

  “Just tell him the truth.”

  “But don’t you think leaving my purse, plus a Metro-North strike, plus pinkeye, plus Dan happening to have a tuxedo seems, I don’t know, fishy?”

  “No. I think, ‘I’m shooting in the desert and I don’t know when we’ll talk’ sounds fishy. He could’ve been your date if he’d wanted to.”

  “Jane. He’s working,” I say, but she rolls her eyes.

  “Okay, Dan, listen.” I turn and reach up to put my hands on Dan’s shoulders, looking him in the eye like a football coach giving a pep talk to a player who is on the verge of winning the big game. “Really. I’m fine if I don’t go. Are you sure you want to do this? You’re sure this is how you want to spend your Saturday night? With a bunch of crazy drunken Irish strangers?”

  My coach move was meant to be mock-serious, to lighten the mood and make it easy for Dan to laugh and say no, sorry, on second thought I really don’t want to go. But with my hands on his shoulders, which are stronger than they seem under his slouchy T-shirt, my face tilted up to his, way up, because he’s so tall, making me feel almost dainty by comparison, his big brown eyes free of bangs for once, gazing steadily into mine, that night at Sardi’s comes tumbling back, and all this time I’ve spent convincing myself I never kissed Dan is wasted because I remember it all as if it happened five minutes ago.

  I’m going to tell him he shouldn’t come with me to Katie’s wedding. I’m going to call my dad and say I’m sorry, that I’ll make it up to him another weekend. I’m going to take my hands off Dan’s shoulders and never, ever put them there again.

  “Yes,” he says without blinking. “Let’s go.”

  25

  I’m telling you. We went to high school together. We did. I’m sure of it. Are you sure you didn’t go to Carver High? That’s so weird. You look so familiar. Well, then, where do I know you from? You’re a what? Really? You don’t look like an actress. No offense, I mean you’re pretty, but I thought they all had to be like anorexic or something. What show? You’re in a what? A commercial? Oh no, God no. It can’t be th
at. I don’t watch television. I mean, once in a while I flip through the channels, but, no. Especially not commercials. No offense. But seriously, where do I know you from? Maybe we went to the same summer camp?

  Congratulations, Franny! How exciting! Remember at the last wedding when you said you were trying to be an actress? And I said How are the tips?’ Remember that? Hahahahaha! Because people who say they’re actors are usually just waiters? Get it?

  But your father said you wanted to be a real actress. In the theater. What happened to that? He says you got an agent, right? So that’s something at least. What’s that? You had an agent but you don’t have one anymore? Oh, how terrible!

  See Len, I told you she didn’t get her nose done. It just looks that funny way on the TV. Sort of squashed or something? Whatever it was, it made you look so much older. I told him, Franny. I said, Len, Franny would never get her nose done. And even if she did, why would she give herself a little, short, squashy nose that added years to her face? It’s the TV,’ I said. You’ve heard that thing about the camera adding twenty pounds. It must do something to the face, too. What? It’s just ten pounds the camera adds? Hmm, well, it looks more like twenty. Maybe it’s our television. We have a new one. Everything looks so much larger than life. Those lovely girls from Still Nursing look fine, though, those delicate figures! Maybe it’s just when commercials play …

  Aunt Elaine is continuing on and on, hardly stopping for a breath, and, finally, I reach over and squeeze Dan’s forearm in an attempt to say “save me.”

  “Will you excuse us?” he says to her politely, guiding me away with his hand on the small of my back. “Franny and I—we need to—we have to call the sitter.”

  I’m afraid Aunt Elaine can hear the giggle I try to suppress, but she hardly seems to notice, not skipping a beat, turning her monologue seamlessly onto the next victim.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t sure how to help you,” Dan says sheepishly. “That’s what my mother always used.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, smiling, happy to have Dan by my side, like a giant tuxedoed security guard. “I hope we left enough food out for the baby.”

  All the Finnegan weddings take place in a tent in the backyard of my aunt and uncle’s huge old house right on the shore in Madison, Connecticut. As a kid, I could never get over the excitement of their house being right on the beach. I thought they were so lucky to live like they were on vacation all year long. The house itself would be beautiful, if anyone ever painted over the peeling dove-gray paint, or repaired the formerly white shutters near the front door that hang crazily at opposing angles, or mowed the backyard more than twice a year. But as much as my father’s sister, Mary Ellen, tries to keep her house in some kind of order, with eight kids, there was always just “too much goddam fun to be had.” You were lucky if you could find a bed with an actual blanket on it, but I always went to sleep happy, even if I had to use my rolled-up sweatshirt as a pillow. At the Finnegans’, it wasn’t neat but it was comfortable, and there was always someone to play with and always something to do.

  When we’d visit, my mom and Aunt Mary Ellen would usually stay up after us kids had gone to bed. They’d sit on beach chairs on the front lawn talking, and I’d fall asleep to the sound of their laughter and the Joni Mitchell albums playing through the open windows of the porch. I can’t help thinking about that now, as we stand gazing out over the water, and I look around for my dad, wondering if he’s remembering her too, but can’t find him in the crowd.

  Even though the guests are encouraged to wear tuxedos and long dresses, it’s just for fun—the rest of the event is down-home casual. The “cocktail hour” (which mainly consists of a couple of coolers full of ice and some cans of beer) is held on the sand right in front of the house. There’s a crowd on the beach now, but Katie pushes through, squealing when she sees me. “You’re so skinny,” she says as she hugs me. “Well, hello,” she says to Dan, and gives me a wink. Then she peels off her shoes and veil, tosses them on the sand, and dives headfirst into the ocean, her fully clothed new husband by her side. “It’s a family tradition,” I explain to a visibly shocked Dan. “They have a special dress they all use for the ocean. She’ll put her real dress back on for the reception.”

  Beers on the beach is usually my favorite part of a Finnegan wedding, but after tonight’s assault, I’m relieved to finally enter the tent and find our table. My dad has taken his seat already and has an expectant look that tugs at my heart. He’s missed me, I think to myself. He’s wearing the tuxedo I’ve seen him in a dozen times. The cut still fits him as it did when he was younger, but the lapels are shiny now from wear. He’s recently had a haircut, and something about him looks unexpectedly youthful. I give him a big hug.

  “You look beautiful!” he says, still holding on tightly.

  “Doesn’t she?” Dan agrees, and I blush and smile at him from over my father’s shoulder.

  A ragged band of local musicians, regulars at all the Finnegan events, play an almost recognizable version of “Strangers in the Night” at varying tempos. The chair next to my dad is empty, and my cousin Tom and his wife, Beth, are seated across from us, struggling to keep their toddler from eating the centerpiece. Dan goes to find us another couple of beers and a scotch for my dad, who leans toward me once he’s gone.

  “He seems like a smart fellow,” Dad says. “Very polite.”

  “Yeah, he is. But he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “You mentioned that.”

  “Len and Elaine asked me if I got my nose done.”

  “They don’t know what to say. They’re excited for you. People aren’t used to seeing someone from their television in person,” he says, giving my arm a little squeeze.

  “I’m barely even on TV. I’ve done two dumb commercials in two and a half years, and now I’m getting stuck in these bizarre conversations with total strangers. I’ve hardly seen any of the cousins tonight. I’ve hardly seen you.”

  “We’ve got the rest of the night. You know these things never end early. Now listen, I wish you’d called me back, because—”

  “Dad, I call you. I call you lots. You just don’t know it because I can’t leave you a message because you don’t have an answering machine.”

  “I don’t want an answering machine. A taped message is redundant information at best. I need so-and-so just letting me know that they called when I wasn’t home? Or I’m supposed to tell them on a recording that I’m not at home, or that I’m too busy to talk right now? I already know I’m not home, due to the fact that I’m the person who’s not home.”

  “But me leaving a message is a way of letting you know I called.”

  “If you call and I don’t answer, you already know I was busy and couldn’t have a conversation. I get the same information when I get your machine—it lets me know you’re absent or too busy to have a conversation. If we both had machines this could go on forever, this never actually speaking. I’m saving you a step by not having a machine. If the phone rings—”

  I’m distracted by the presence of a strange woman who has appeared just over my father’s right shoulder. She’s wearing a soft blue dress, and she’s swaying slightly, as though she’s deciding whether to sit down in the empty chair beside him. Or maybe she’s just had a few too many. She must be another drunken Finnegan, but it’s odd because I don’t recognize her from any of the other weddings. Is she my aunt’s cousin Maureen from Ithaca? She puts her hand on my father’s shoulder, obviously confusing him for someone else, since if I don’t know this random Finnegan, he certainly doesn’t either. I should warn him that he’s being approached from behind by a drunken woman who thinks he’s someone else, and who—eerily—looks like she might be about to kiss him.

  “Dad, um—”

  “Eddie?”

  She says his name, so I guess she isn’t a stranger, not to him at least. In fact, the look on my father’s face as he turns and then springs to his feet to greet her tells me she isn’t a stranger to him at all.
>
  “Franny,” my father says to me, beaming. “I’d like you to meet someone.”

  Her name is Dr. Mary Compton, and she’s some sort of eye surgeon my father met when he had “that thing with his cornea,” which he apparently told me about but I don’t remember. She’s divorced and has a daughter “about your age,” which immediately makes me fatigued as I imagine a future where Mary Compton’s daughter and I are forced to go shopping and have lunch and pretend to enjoy ourselves because our parents are dating. “I’ve always wanted a sister!” I imagine Mary’s daughter saying to me, as we lunch in a brightly lit department store café.

  My father and Mary don’t seem to notice the cloud that settles over me while they chat away together easily. “Dr. Mary had to perform an emergency surgery tonight,” Dad says, beaming at her. “We’re so lucky she could make it at all.”

  I nod in what I hope is convincing agreement.

  When Dan returns to the table with our drinks, I slump down in my chair and take too many gulps of my beer all at once. As Dad introduces him to Mary, I watch as if from a great distance, unsure why I feel so strange. I truly want to be excited to meet this new person my father likes. I want to ask her questions and make her laugh and show her how well he raised me. But instead, I’m strangely quiet, inexplicably unable to think of a single thing to say.

  Thankfully, Dan takes over, engaging her easily, learning about her recent promotion, and the fact that she lived in London for ten years, and hearing stories of her daughter’s time at Oxford, and how she met my dad. I try to nod and smile in the right places, but I’m finding it hard to focus.