Unreliable

by Lee Irby

  It takes a few agonizing seconds to shake off the stunned silence that engulfs me. “Did Jeb put you up to this? Why are you butting into my business?”

  “Dude, chill out for one second and listen to me. Leigh Rose needs help, okay? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “You followed me here? Do you work for them?”

  “Eddie, wait a second. Hold up. You’re not hearing me. Leigh Rose is a danger to herself and others, including you. She’s been in institutions because of her issues or whatever the fuck you call it. She had a nervous breakdown. She lost her mind.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s what her shrink is saying.”

  “You’ve spoken to her psychiatrist?”

  “Don’t get cute like that, Eddie. I’m not yanking your chain, so don’t yank mine.”

  A threat, one I take seriously due to the one making it. I can’t say that John Graziano was my best friend, but we went to school together starting in kindergarten, played youth sports together, smoked joints at parties, snorted his coke, and generally moved in the same orbit until I stopped coming home as much. So this exchange is extremely unsettling and hurtful. And it’s also based on a complete fabrication. Leigh Rose isn’t crazy—she displayed no symptoms of disassociation, no hallucinations, no self-harming behaviors—just someone whose family was placing her under ungodly stress, evidenced by the fact that one of them, probably Jeb, sent John Graziano to warn me off.

  “Listen, I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me,” I say in a voice that I hope reminds him of Chuck Norris. “If you’re saying Leigh Rose is mentally unstable, well, I don’t see it. And why do you care anyway? She’s an old friend of mine and I’m concerned about her. Why is that wrong?”

  “It’s not! Dude, no one is saying you’re wrong. You just don’t know the whole story.”

  “Which means what?”

  “It means be careful because you wouldn’t want to set her off. She’s done things in the past that are pretty screwed up.”

  “Such as?”

  “She’s tried to hurt herself, know what I’m saying? For real. This is no joke.”

  I nod and notice that Graz is sweating like he’s just finished running a 5K. He’s not enjoying this parley, but he’s been sent here for the express purpose of keeping me away from Leigh Rose. He’s Jeb Wardell’s flunkie, or business partner, or some combination of the two.

  “So obviously if she has feelings for me,” I say through gritted teeth, “that’s evidence of her being crazy.”

  “No, what I’m saying is, she might say she has feelings for you, and then you look at her wrong, and she slits her wrists. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.” I turn away from him and stare straight ahead, but I know Graz remains standing behind me. The bar is crowded and there’s no stool for him to sit on, and anyway I’m done talking to him. I need to get going if I plan on making it to the rehearsal on time, but I also don’t want to slink away from this fight. If Jeb Wardell would go to this extreme to keep me away from his sister, then he must be in big financial trouble. Or something.

  “Eddie, don’t get mad at me.”

  I ignore him and instead count the bottles of booze arrayed on the shelves opposite me.

  “Seriously, dude,” he tries again, “I’m giving you friendly advice and you’re acting like I’m a punk. I thought you had more brains than that. Why would I lie to you?”

  “Money.”

  “Can you talk to me man-to-man? There’s a table over in back.”

  “I’m leaving now. Follow me if you want to, I don’t care. See, that’s what you don’t understand and Jeb doesn’t understand—I don’t care. I’m not scared. You can’t scare me.” My voice is louder than it needs to be and draws more attention than Graz prefers.

  “No one is trying to scare you, Eddie,” he whispers. “Settle down.”

  We’re facing each other again, and I stand up, brushing into Graz’s chest while doing so. He stiffens and glares at me, and I burst out laughing like I just heard the funniest joke in the world. “You wanna kill me? Go ahead. Right here, right now.”

  Those who can hear us gaze on, aghast and appalled. I don’t know what’s come over me, a kind of liberating death wish that has loosened the fetters of my usual cowardice. Nothing matters anymore anyway. The noose is already around my neck and all I need is a shove from the hangman, then gravity will do the rest.

  “Cut the crap, Eddie.”

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Graziano?” the bartender calls out, which is my cue to exit. With one last cluck of disappointment, I skip out, head held high and feeling stronger than ever. I pull out the “I Have Issues” hat and proudly doff it, winking at a pretty woman who looks to be endlessly bored by the company of aging frat boys she’s with. I’ve just kicked the hornet’s nest, and soon enough they’ll be coming at me. Unless I go at them first. I spin around to see if Graz is following me and see no sign of him. His betrayal certainly stings, but he’s lived in Richmond too long and lost his way. Yet has he really changed all that much? He was a me-first sort of guy and still is, just on a much bigger scale. I hope he’s on the phone right now with Jeb Wardell telling him that the target evaded capture.

  12

  I’m being followed. I hear footsteps behind me as I head for my car, and I turn around to see a tubby little man with bushy eyebrows and a bad comb-over. Harmless buffoon? Or cold-blooded assassin? I can’t let my guard down, not even for one second, because trailing him is a middle-aged woman whose stern face exudes homicidal rage. She’s got a phone pressed to a cheek and she’s barking out orders…to Jeb Wardell? John Graziano? If not her, how about the louche hipster across the street…is there a pistol hidden in the folds of his vintage cardigan sweater?

  Just to be safe I stand aside, pretending to check my phone, while the tubby man and angry woman pass by. But on the crowded sidewalks of downtown Richmond throng countless office workers who might moonlight as contract killers.

  Then I focus on my phone—for real this time—and I see that I do have a message. It is a missed call from my mother, at precisely 5:53 p.m. Her voice mail is simple: “Eddie, please be on time. We’re here now and waiting for you.”

  The rehearsal! If anything ever deserved a walk-through, it’s marriage. But the only part that gets rehearsed is the actual ceremony, which is the easiest part in some ways, whereas the performances that require much practice must take place in improv, a two-character show without a script. If only Bev and I could’ve rehearsed, say, a weekend seduction, or a captivating dinner…instead we tanked. We missed cues, stepped on each other’s lines, screwed up the sex scenes, and then came the cancellation notice.

  I’m late, and I hate being late to things. College professors are slaves to the clock and the calendar, and so I begin to panic. Luckily for me, the location of the rehearsal, Tredegar Iron Works, is close by, and the worst-case scenario is I’ll be just a few minutes late, which still makes me slightly nauseous. I hop into my Honda and take off, speeding not just to rehearse a wedding ceremony but also to go back in time, to a factory on which the Confederate States of America pinned its aspirations to begin a country dedicated to the preservation of slavery. A thousand cannons were produced at Tredegar, and those cannons killed tens of thousands of Yankees—and were produced by the very slaves those Northerners were fighting to free. When I was growing up in Richmond, the big brick buildings of Tredegar sat empty and forlorn, a vast testament to defeat. Driving past it, I always looked down from the Manchester Bridge and could almost hear the groans of lamentation rising up from the ruins. In the emptiness lay the residue of secession, which even into the 1980s remained a palpable entity and not some schoolbook abstraction.

  Now the buildings of Tredegar have been restored, a park opened, and instead of the stain of surrender, loving couples can come together as man and wife and celebrate the wonders of monogamy. I find a place to park, next to a hug
e cannon that is pointing out at the James River, resplendent in the first kiss of dusk that has turned the brown water into a luscious shade of chocolate. I’m not sure in which building the rehearsal is being held, but then I see an older man and woman carrying matching guitar cases and I recognize them as Sylvia and Dan (whose last name I can’t recall), dear friends of my mother who must’ve agreed to play music during the wedding. Sylvia and my mother work together at the law firm, and Dan is a pediatrician, but why I remember them is due to the fact that they have a son my age, DJ (Daniel Junior), who has become everything I’m not. Oncologist, father of two boys, champion tennis player, philanthropist…for the past fifteen years my mother has dropped subtle hints about how I fall short of DJ’s accomplishments…but soon enough I’ll have feathers to stick in my hat, too.

  They stop and wave, smiling broadly, genuinely glad to see me, as neither is capable of expressing a negative emotion or thought. “Hey there, stranger!” Sylvia sings out in a voice that reminds me of pre-anorexia Karen Carpenter.

  “Well, hello to you guys!”

  I shake Dan’s hand and give Sylvia a hug. They both radiate the healthy glow that comes from a good diet, regular exercise, and a clean soul. “We’re the band!” Dan laughs, holding up a guitar case. “Now where are the groupies?”

  “Stop it!” Sylvia chuckles, rolling her eyes, which are still bright and kindly. Supposedly she had cancer a few years ago, but she looks younger than I do. Dan is so muscular that he could probably pick up a cannon and twist it into a pretzel. “This is going to be a blast! Your mom is so happy. And Mead seems like a very nice man.”

  “I just met him today. And his kids.”

  “We’re looking for the Pattern Building,” Dan says, leading us to a smaller brick building about twenty yards from the cannon.

  “How’s DJ?” I dutifully ask, bracing myself for the litany of excellence that’ll surely follow.

  But there’s a slight pause before Sylvia answers, as if in this interstitial silence dwells some unspeakable calamity that has befallen DJ. My nostrils flare and my eyes seek out solace somewhere on Sylvia’s placid face, but she avoids looking at me. Is her son dead? Dying? In prison, where I’ll soon be?

  “He’s doing better,” she finally asserts with her usual chirrup.

  “Has he been sick?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “His wife left him and took the kids to Maine,” Dan says wearily, standing by the entrance. “It’s been awful. He’s got custody now, but it wasn’t easy or pleasant. We should go in. We’re late.”

  I allow Sylvia and Dan to enter first, and I linger at the heavy wooden door, contemplating DJ’s bumpy ride through the wilds of divorce. If someone like that can’t stay married, then what chance did I ever have? Suddenly I don’t feel like such a failure—and I glance at the phone with a new surge of confidence. Right on cue, my phone buzzes with another incoming text from Lola, another nail in my coffin…and another picture of Thor, this time a side view, his protruding cannon very conspicuous.

  My reply: Nice spatial composition

  How did it even begin, this sickness that courses between us? How did we ever broach the subject? How did we go from a discussion of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to the endowment of her past lovers—a descent to madness that we called love? Love! She doesn’t love me, but the idea that I’m a tortured intellectual, a modern-day Kierkegaard, and she’s my Regina…

  Enough! Time to plaster a smile on my face and head in.

  I follow Sylvia and Dan through a small gift shop and reception area and back into a small conference room (the Stonewall Jackson, but in fairness another is called the George McClellan), where I find my mother talking to a frail old woman in a wheelchair that’s being pushed around by a very large African American CNA with a bursting Afro and nails painted red, white, and blue in honor of the holiday weekend. Folding chairs have been set up in two sections of twenty seats each, and a trellis of confederate jasmine forms the altar where bride and groom will wed. Along with a reed-thin minister, Mead, Graves, Gibson, and a woman I don’t know—Aunt Paula?—stand at the impromptu altar, while Sylvia and Dan sit just offstage and begin strumming their acoustic guitars to warm up.

  “There you are!” my mother shouts at me, wagging a finger in playful rebuke. “You’re late! But better late than never! This is my prodigal son, Eddie. Eddie, this is Mead’s mother, Dahlia Simmons, and her nurse Beatrice.”

  Dahlia! Of all the names in the world, I must confront another with that toxic appellation. A chill spreads across my skin as though I’d slipped into an ice-fishing hole. Dahlia is the real problem in my life, the one I trust least, Lola’s roommate who’s also in love with her and views me as a rival and a pervert and a fraud. She’s probably the one who turned me in to the dean, if anyone did…why did Lola have to drag Dahlia into our secret love nest? I don’t know that I’ll ever get a satisfactory answer to that question.

  “Hello,” I say, sounding like an idiot, complete with idiotic wave. The old woman stares up at me, lips quivering, folds of skin drooping down from her chin, thinning white hair still neatly combed, and then she bursts out laughing. At what, I’ve got no clue. Beatrice reaches down and gently touches the crone’s shoulder but she continues to guffaw, until my mother takes me by the arm and leads me away.

  “She does that,” my mother explains in a whisper. “I think it’s the heart medicine she takes. Anyway, you stand over there next to Graves.”

  I take my place as instructed, looking across at Gibson and the woman to whom I haven’t been introduced and who I’m guessing is Aunt Paula, Mead’s sister. She looks to be in her mid-forties, a fit and trim professional with strawberry blond hair that just touches her shoulders and whose sleeveless black dress reveals toned arms and muscular legs. In short, a juggernaut, very attractive and sturdily constructed…but I feel nothing for her and not just because my penis has become a phantom limb. As unlikely as it seems, despite all that is happening in my life, including the possibility that I’m a killer, I’ve fallen in love with Leigh Rose. It has to be love, when you think about a person nonstop and long to be with them…if only we’d been left alone to allow our affection to blossom, but instead the seedling was trampled by the jackboots of a fascist brother.

  “I’m Paula,” the woman opposite me calls out.

  “I’m Eddie.”

  That’s as far as we get before my mother begins barking out stage directions, revealing her theatrical acumen as board member of a community theater. The woman takes charge as if she’s putting on a show. Gibson and Paula are ordered to stand closer to the minister, and Graves and I must come closer to the chairs. Mead is told to take a half step back. Then my mother studies the configuration, nods in satisfaction, and cues the music. I recognize the tune as one of my mother’s favorite songs, “Just My Imagination” from the Temptations, which is an unusual choice for the processional since my mother is a traditionalist and more likely to pick the “Bridal Chorus” than Motown. But I applaud the deviation from the tried-and-true, and Sylvia and Dan sound great together. I actually start to think that this wedding won’t be as offensive as I initially feared.

  Then Mead gets a phone call, one that he must take, and he speeds away from the altar and out of the room, scooting past my stricken mother, who was just about to begin her walk down the aisle. She tries to put on a brave face and cracks a joke that sounds more like a barb: “I guess everything is an emergency today.”

  Paula and I again make eye contact, but she quickly looks away and I do the same. For two years I meet nobody and then today women are tumbling into my life, just as I verge on total ruin.

  “He’d better have a good excuse,” Paula quips. “I’ve gotten rid of men for doing far less.”

  My mother nervously looks around the room, and then turns and marches out to the hall to retrieve the groom. Graves brushes past me and sinks down into a chair, obviously upset about the delay. But seconds later Mead and my
mother come bursting back into the room, waving his phone like a white flag of surrender.

  “I’m turning it off!” he cries. “I’m so sorry! Won’t happen again.”

  “You’re rude,” Gibson sneers at him. “It’s your wedding rehearsal.”

  “I had to take it, it was a business call. Now where were we?”

  “Go back up there and stand still.” My mother gives Mead a playful push to propel him forward. He stops, though, when he notices that Graves is still sitting in silent protest. The music starts again, but father and son are locked in mortal combat and oblivious to its charms.

  “You ready?” Mead asks.

  Graves slowly stands and slowly steps forward and slowly retakes his position by me, all under the aghast gaze of the minister, who clutches his Bible like a shield. “Easy now,” I whisper in Graves’s ear, words of wisdom he shakes off as if they were flies buzzing around his head.

  Soon my mother begins to walk slowly down the aisle, noticeably limping but still beaming in delight and unfazed by the lingering tension created by the interruption. Look at us all, tossed together like castaways on a desert isle! Mead’s mother continues to emit a barrage of jarring ululations, while Mead himself has launched a hundred shady schemes of varying legality, and caught in the collateral damage are his two children, who don’t seem able to stand on their own two feet. How did my poor mother end up here, joyous despite the obstacles that remain? Look at how bright her smile is, in stark contrast to the visage of indifference of her future husband…who really seems pained or perhaps bored…when my mother reaches him, he holds out his hand like a footman helping a dowager down from a carriage. A perfunctory gesture, a kindly one, but not loving in the way I imagine love to be. Which is what, exactly? What right do I have to pass judgment on a relationship, having botched all of mine? Not with Leigh Rose! That one I was getting right.

  My mother stops suddenly and spins around.

  “How does this look?” she asks, and the only people in the crowd with a clear view are Mead’s mother (Dahlia!) and Beatrice. They don’t answer, and so Sylvia stands up and goes over to get a better view of the dramaturgical elements of the ceremony. Ever the thorough critic, she stands at two different vantage points before rendering her verdict.