How Lucky You Are (9781455518548)

by Kusek Lewis, Kristyn

  I think of Kate. This summer will mark her and Brendan’s third anniversary. Their wedding was a five-hundred-person affair on the back lawn of a private home on the banks of the Chesapeake. Tuxedoed cocktail waiters offered glasses of champagne in crystal flutes, a six-course dinner was prepared by Evelyn’s longtime caterer, and members of the National Symphony played a string version of “Someone to Watch over Me” for Kate and Brendan’s first dance. In short, it was Evelyn’s gig, and nothing at all like the intimate ceremony that Kate had fantasized aloud about having on the roof of a boutique hotel that she’d discovered while on assignment in Buenos Aires. Kate wanted calla lilies and Evelyn wanted peonies. Kate wanted a city wedding; Evelyn insisted on the country. My take on the whole thing was that since Kate already seemed perfectly happy marrying someone who represented the lifestyle she’d always said she wanted to run from, then why should the actual wedding day be any different? Just by dating Brendan, she’d already buried much of the freewheeling, adventuresome spirit that had once been her compass. At the time, I didn’t give much thought to it. In some ways, I guess I figured it would go against the laws of nature for her to live any other way.

  On the day of the ceremony, with the sea air softly blowing and the sky bluer than blue, Kate looked radiant as she walked on her father’s arm toward the pergola where I stood with the rest of the wedding party. Kate wore her grandmother’s gown, refitted into a more modern design by a sought-after designer I’d never heard of. Amy and I wore custom-made bridesmaids dresses, sea-foam green raw silk sheaths that did nothing for us.

  I stood behind Kate during the ceremony, her slender bare back to me. As she and Brendan began exchanging their vows, I twisted the gold band on my thumb that Kate was about to slip onto Brendan’s left ring finger. Evelyn would have loved a stand-in for maid of honor—one of Kate’s blueblood cousins, perhaps. Instead, I stood in the sun, my upper arms pressed tight to my sides to hide the half-moons of perspiration that had appeared under my armpits, and watched Brendan stare at his almost wife with a reverence that soothed me somehow. He looked like he couldn’t believe he’d gotten so lucky. As the bride’s best friend, I was comforted to see that he knew it. They’d barely dated a year. I hardly knew him.

  During dinner, Amy, Mike, Larry, and I were seated with Brendan’s two brothers and their wives. They looked well bred and robust, like all of those years spent in the fresh air on their horse farms had paid off. The brothers were strong jawed, with clefts in their chins deep enough to slip quarters into. Their wives both had the same Ivory scrubbed look—hardly any makeup, with identical chin-length blond bobs and discreet pearl earrings. The women asked me a thousand questions about Kate: What was she like growing up? Even mouthier. She’s so thin—does she ever eat? You should see the girl around a meatball sub. Did I think that Brendan could ever convince her to move to Charlottesville? Anything could happen, now that she’s gone this far.

  We dug into our dinners—roasted duck and a prissy mélange of spring vegetables—and the conversation drifted toward…what else do people talk about at weddings? Marriage. Larry and I quietly chewed our food and sipped our drinks while one of Brendan’s brother’s wives explained how she met her husband through a boarding school friend and the other gushed about her Mustique honeymoon.

  “So what about you guys?” the shorter brother of the two asked, waving toward us with his drink.

  Larry and I looked at each other and laughed, a nervous huh-huh-huh that meant, So are you going to take this one or am I?

  “Yeah, what about you two?” Amy said, grinning and raising her eyebrows at me. It was her first time out since Emma was born.

  “Well,” I said, clearing my throat before the moment could get awkward. “We’ve lived together for seven years and we’re pretty content. We’re still relatively young. What’s the rush?”

  “We have the rest of our lives,” Larry boomed with conviction. He put his arm around me and crossed his legs, resting one of his scuffed loafers on the knee closest to me.

  “I wish I could have convinced this one of that,” one of the brothers said, nudging his wife. She rolled her eyes.

  “But marriage is so wonderful,” Amy gushed. She gazed dreamily at Mike. This was the first wedding I’d attended with her outside of her own and she was every bit as oversentimental as I’d expected.

  “It is different than just dating,” Mike said, glancing at her. “There’s something about getting that ring on your finger that just changes things,” he said to the rest of the table. I remember this now as one of my last glimpses of the old Mike, before it became impossible for him to socially interact without offending someone. But then I realize—no—Emma was a newborn, so things had already changed between them. He was deceiving all of us, including Amy.

  Later that night, after the cake cutting, Larry and I danced on the platform that had been constructed by the water’s edge. I looked up at him. “Why do you think it is that married people are always pushing other people to get married, too?”

  “Misery loves company,” he joked. “It’s like being a vegetarian. Or living in New York. People want you to suffer as much as they do, and when you don’t appear to want to, they feel the need to convince you, and probably themselves, about why their way is so superior.”

  I laughed into his shoulder. I could smell the dry-cleaning chemicals that had been used to launder his suit.

  “You’re happy, right?” I said, squinting up at him.

  He squeezed me closer. “Of course,” he said into my ear. “Aren’t you?”

  “I am,” I said. And it was true.

  I still so clearly remember watching Amy and Kate at the wedding that night, huddled together and inspecting Kate’s shiny new ring with a kind of wonder that would have made you think that it had been chipped off of the actual Hope Diamond. And I remember the little pang of jealousy I felt when Kate returned from her honeymoon in France and she and Amy compared the details of their trips—rose petals on the bed, champagne at breakfast.

  It’s not that I can’t have those things without a wedding ring. I mean, really, I don’t even like all of that smarmy, rose-petal stuff. I am simply tired of being in limbo. We need to either decide that we’re going to get married or not, and I know, I think, that we should. But marriage scares the fuck out of me. Especially tonight, given what I’ve just learned about my two best friends and their relationships, which I thought were perfect. Kate seemed to have such an easy life. Amy seemed to have exactly what she wanted.

  I am so disoriented that I feel like someone has removed my brain from my skull and is shaking it inside a cocktail shaker. I need some clarity, some relief. I down my drink.

  “Hey, Lare?” I yell through the steam. “Larry!” I yell louder.

  I hear him come up the stairs, taking them two by two. “Yeah? Everything okay?”

  “Come in here a sec.” I hug my knees to my chest.

  “Yeah? What is it, babe?” He pushes my pile of clothes aside and sits down on the matted bathmat by the tub.

  “Marriage,” I say solemnly.

  He raises his eyebrows at me.

  “Commitment,” I say.

  He looks around the room. “Are we playing Password?” he jokes. “Are those clues? Am I supposed to guess what you’re thinking?”

  I take a deep breath. “Why do you think we haven’t gotten married?” I say.

  He twists his mouth to one side and nods. “Today’s got you thinking about it?”

  I nod.

  “I’ll go down to city hall tomorrow,” he says, like always. “If it’s what you want.”

  I shake my head at him. “Uh-uh,” I say. “Do you want to marry me?”

  “I still feel the way I always have.” He sticks his finger in the tub and draws a figure eight in the bubbles. “I’m happy how we are.”

  “We always say that, though. Are we really? Are we really happy? And if we are, then why haven’t we started talking about the next step, lik
e kids?”

  “Why not?” he shrugs. “I’m happy. I’d love to have kids with you, married or not,” he says. I know that he’s being honest. Larry’s easygoing nature is so innate that it almost has a religious quality. “The question is,” he says, running his finger along my damp shoulder, “are you happy like this? Because if you’re questioning it this much, you must not be.”

  I shake my head. “No, no.” I grab his hand.

  “This does seem to come up every six months or so.”

  I tilt my head in acknowledgment. “This has nothing to do with how much I love you,” I say. “I don’t know—I think it’s just this day. I keep thinking that the problems we have are nothing compared to what other people suffer through, so what are we waiting for?” I stare perplexed at the bathwater, as if the bubbles might magically part and reveal the answer I need. “I think about Amy, so sure about Mike, and Kate, so sure about Brendan. And look what’s happened to them. I thought their lives were so flawless when, really, they’re a wreck.”

  “Right,” he says. “But then look at our parents, with the decades of marriage that they racked up. And all of my siblings, all happily married.”

  “But how are they so happily married?” I say. “How do they know it’s a sure thing? I mean, is it better to do it our way, where we know we have an out?”

  “Do you need an out?”

  “No, I just…I don’t know how to feel sure. One hundred percent, undeniably sure.” I glance at him. “After ten years, shouldn’t I be sure?”

  “I think that when you start needing to feel sure, you get into trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything’s a leap of faith, Wave. Everything. You can plan all you want and wait for confirmation that what you’re doing is the right thing, but you know better than anyone that things just happen. Life can get turned upside down in an instant.”

  I remember one of my grandmother’s favorite quotes—the one that she had taped inside the door of one of the kitchen cabinets: “Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.”

  On the day after my parents’ funeral, she forced me out of bed and made me take a long walk with her. My legs felt like they’d been weighted down with sandbags. I couldn’t say a word. All the while, my grandmother, this woman who’d just lost her only child, pointed toward the trees and noted the colors of the leaves, a bluebird on a branch, the fiery orange mums in a neighbor’s front yard. She could just press on, no matter the situation, whereas I can spend three hours agonizing over what to have for lunch. Or ten years trying to decide whether to marry a wonderful man. A wonderful man who might leave me when he discovers that I’ve been keeping secrets from him.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Larry says.

  Even if…, I think. I should tell him about the money stuff right now. He has to know. This is our home. Say it, I think. Just say it. I smile weakly. “I’m sorry about this. I just—”

  “I know,” he interrupts.

  “I don’t want you to misconstrue that how I feel about this has anything to do with how I feel about you. I love you,” I say. “I can’t imagine my life without you.” Tell him.

  “I know,” he says.

  “You do?” I say. Tell him now and get it over with. This day can’t get worse, after all.

  “I do,” he says. “And I really think that you’ll feel better about all of this after a good night’s sleep.” He stands up and pulls a towel off of the rack. “Come on. You’re pruning up.”

  I step out of the tub, holding Larry’s hand for balance, and stand on the mat, naked, while he towels me off. I close my eyes. Tomorrow. I’ll tell him tomorrow.

  “Hey,” he says, brushing my hair away from my forehead. “I love you.” He wraps the towel around me, tucking it in at my chest.

  “I love you, too,” I say. I press my hand to his heart. “I’m just going to brush my teeth and stuff.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I’ll go lock up.”

  I’ve always pictured my life as so messy compared to everyone else’s seemingly dollhouse-perfect ones. I’m an orphan. Is there a word more pity inducing than orphan? I spend most days running around in a dirty T-shirt, flour in my hair, trying to maintain my fledgling business. I drive a rusted old Subaru. I live in a home that was given to me through no accomplishment of my own. I have this flimsy, cardboard box of a life—a not quite grown-up life, really—but now, after today, after everything I’ve learned about Kate and Amy, I almost feel like I should be thankful. God, they always seemed to know exactly what they were doing. I aspired to be as certain, to have my shit together like they did.

  Larry knocks lightly on the door. “Come to bed,” he says when I open it. I shuffle behind him into our bedroom. A glass of water sits on my bedside table. After I get in, he kneels down next to me as if he is about to pray.

  “This is hard for you,” he says.

  I nod.

  “Anything you need, you just tell me,” he says.

  A tear escapes down the side of my face and he rubs it away.

  “I’m never going to leave you,” he says.

  I nod. He doesn’t know.

  “Okay, get some sleep.” He kisses my forehead and then circles around to his side of the bed and turns out the light. I nestle myself against his side, the way that I always do. He is, when you get right down to it, the thing that I know best, and what should comfort me in the dark.

  I lie there, listening to Larry’s soft snoring, a sound that’s so familiar to me that I hardly notice it half the time. The amount of time that we’ve been together is long enough to become a doctor. Or have several children. I don’t necessarily believe in the idea that you can ever completely know a person, and I know how that sounds, coming from me—the dishonest, lesser half in my relationship—but I do think that ten years is long enough to develop a true, down-to-the-roots understanding. And this is what I know about Larry: He is a good man. He is solid and upstanding. He loves me despite the fact that I am who I am. And as scared as I am to reveal the worst parts of me—that I’m broke, that I’ve now put our house at risk, and that I’ve lied to him for so long—I know at my core that he will still love me, despite it all. He may still leave me, but he will always love me.

  We have had down years, I tell myself. The adjustment to living together was wonderful but difficult, in all of the usual ways. I hate things about him. He can’t ever remember a birthday. He doesn’t stand up to his mother, who mostly stays out of our lives but occasionally gets pushy about our choices. He never takes me out on dates. He also has his list of grievances. I was never around in the bakery’s first year. When I was, I was not the fun, up-for-whatever girlfriend I’d been before. I was too tired. Preoccupied. Both.

  I rarely touch him just because I want to. He asks me—actually asks me—to hug him more often. And I don’t. I forget.

  Do you know what I would give to hug one of my parents? Do you know what I’d give up for ten seconds of that?

  I realize that taking each other for granted after being together a long time is hardly unusual. But shouldn’t it be? Shouldn’t we be more demonstrative now that we’ve developed a history, when our life together has not just been long, but wide? Full of dreams realized and disappointments, deaths and births, monotony and unexpected joy? Shouldn’t we look at each other and marvel? Just look at what we’ve done! Just look at how we’ve held up, despite everything!

  I am so sorry.

  It shouldn’t be this difficult to say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It’s ten a.m., and Randy and I are just starting to concentrate on today’s lunch dishes. Nearly three-quarters of the tables in the bakery are full, and most of my customers are busy jamming away on their laptops. There’s a steady, productive hum in the air, like all of us are collectively on our second cup of coffee after ten hours of sleep. I have spent the morning tick-tick-ticking things off my list at a steady pace, and I feel efficient and capable, which
is nice for a change. A week has gone by since my friends’ bombshells dropped, and while I’m constantly plagued by my worry for them, and the fact that I need to come up with the money to get caught up on my loan, I have to confess that it feels good to be focusing on myself.

  A few hours ago, we got a massive order of early spring strawberries, and we’ve been brainstorming menu ideas ever since—shortcakes, smoothies, strawberry pies, strawberry salads. I’m telling Randy about this strawberry vinaigrette I used to make—it had poppy seeds and red onion—while I make a cappuccino for a sweaty, spandexed customer who’s come in postworkout. I’ve just finished pouring the foam when I hear the bell over the door. I look up and my stomach drops. Brendan is here.

  He smiles and gives me a little salute, which is weird, but I suppose anything he did right now would seem odd. When you’re embroiled in a national scandal because you cheated on your wife, how are you supposed to greet her best friend when you stop in to her place of business? Do you smile and wave like it’s just your average Tuesday and you’ve come in because you have a hankering for a scone? Brendan apparently doesn’t know the answer to this question either, because for the first time since I’ve known him, he appears unsure of himself. He steps carefully toward the counter, walking unsteadily, as if his body and brain are engaged in a tug-of-war over which direction to move. I notice that the bruise under his eye has faded to yellow. I don’t quite know how to act. I’d like to throw this cappuccino at him. Instead, I hand it to the customer and then wait for Brendan to approach me.