Michael and Patrick came back to the table fogged in cigar smoke. Patrick was in high spirits, Michael not so much, but no worse than he’d been earlier. I don’t know what I’d expected. Evidence of a fistfight? A black eye?
“So have you all bonded?” my mother asked.
“You smell like you have,” I said.
Patrick laughed. “Just like Krazy Glue,” he said. His cell phone rang then. “Oh, sorry, I thought I turned it off.” He checked the display and said, “Excuse me, I need to take this,” and wandered away speaking in low tones. Who was it? Who was so important that he had to answer the call in the middle of a wedding reception?
“Come on, Lib. Time to go,” Michael said. “Let’s go say our goodbyes.”
“Oh, let’s stay a bit longer,” I said. “There are people I haven’t even talked to yet.”
And I haven’t found out who Patrick’s talking to, I thought.
“Your mother’s tired,” he said, “I told her we’d take her home.” I looked at her.
“I’m fine if you want to stay a bit longer,” she said, but now I could see the weariness around her eyes. Still, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to dance with Patrick some more and laugh and reminisce about old times. I saw him now on the dance floor with Sophie and couldn’t take my eyes off them, heads together, talking earnestly. When they both threw back their heads to laugh at something I wanted to run out there and say, “What? What? What’s so funny?” And to find out who he’d been talking to.
“How about just half an hour?” I said.
“That’s fine,” my mother said.
“I want to go now,” Michael said.
It occurred to me that Michael could leave and take my mother with him and I could get a ride home later with Pete and Sophie. Or with Patrick. But Michael’s face was set, his arms were crossed and he stood looking at me as if ready for a fight. If not for my mother’s presence I might have pushed it. But I didn’t want to make a scene. I’d acted like a spoiled child enough for one night so I agreed to leave, though I wasn’t happy about it.
We said our goodbyes to the bride and groom, then to Tiffany, who said, “No, you can’t leave yet!” and Pete, who said, “Leaving so soon? The party’s just getting started.”
“Michael’s had enough,” I said.
Michael bristled. “Kathryn’s tired,” he said.
“It’s way past my bedtime,” my mother agreed, ever the peacemaker.
“Oh, I have a feeling you could out-party us all,” Pete told her. “Hey, are you all coming for brunch tomorrow?” I hadn’t planned on it—it was for the out-of-towners—but now that Patrick was here I perked up. “Absolutely,” I said.
“I’m not sure,” Michael said. “I might have a showing tomorrow.”
I was sure he had no showing but didn’t care if he did or not.
We stopped on the dance floor to say good night to Sophie, who was still dancing with Patrick. He shook Michael’s hand. “It was great meeting you,” he said.
“Yeah,” Michael said.
Patrick kissed my mother and told her it was good to see her looking so well after all these years. She hugged him warmly. Then he gave me a peck on the cheek and said, “It was wonderful to see you, Lib.” I glowed inside. I wanted to hug him but I didn’t.
“You’ll come to brunch tomorrow, right?” Sophie asked. “You, too, Kathryn.”
“We will,” I said at the same time Michael said, “We’ll see.” I felt Michael look at me. I said to Sophie, “Well, I’ll be there.”
“Good,” Patrick said.
I smiled at him and gave Sophie a hug. “It was a fabulous wedding,” I said, feeling happier now. “Really fabulous.”
Twenty-nine
When I walked my mother to the door she took both my hands and said, “I shouldn’t have said what I did about Daddy just wanting you to be married,” she said. “It sounded bad. He liked Michael very much. He thought he was a good man, that he made you happy. We both did.” Damage done, I thought. “Promise me you won’t do anything rash.”
“Rash? Like what?” I said.
“Like anything,” she said. “I can see what kind of mood you’re in. Just think things through before you make any decisions.”
“Should I pick you up for brunch tomorrow?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said. I laughed, and was still smiling when I got back in the car.
“What’s so funny?” Michael asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
He backed out of the driveway and headed for home.
“Do you really have a showing in the morning?”
“No,” he said. “I just don’t want to see any more of that guy.”
“Did something happen when you all were smoking your cigars?”
“No. I just think he’s an asshole.”
“Michael!”
“Well, he shows up out of the blue and stirs things up. I just think it was inappropriate,” he said.
“Oh, Michael, you sound like an old fart.”
We drove the rest of the way in resolute silence, exasperation simmering inside me. What had attracted me most about Michael in the beginning was how compatible we had been, how in step. There were times when we expressed the same thought simultaneously, or said, “I was just going to say that!” with such delight. Neither of us had been hesitant about what we wanted or what direction we were going, and we fell into our relationship easily, like sliding into a warm pond. We’d begun with the basics—attraction, chemistry, a shared sense of humor—and we kept adding our experiences and conversations and goals until we had a sturdy and familiar history.
Those good feelings were still there, somewhere in the background, but the memories were like puffs of smoke. I wanted to feel that way again. Oh, I knew I would eventually—I know all about the tides of relationships—but that knowledge was of no comfort. The arguments we’d been having recently weighed on me. I thought they probably weren’t all that unusual for people like us, who’d been self-contained for so long and were now adjusting to this impending collaborative reality. But couldn’t Michael see that I was still reeling from losing my father, that I just needed him to wrap his arms around me and kiss the top of my head and be sweet to me? Don’t people sometimes set their own grievances aside, if only for a short time, just because the other person needs them to?
We were getting ready for bed when Michael said, “I’m not going to that brunch tomorrow.”
“Big surprise,” I said.
“And I don’t want you to go either.”
I turned to him. His chest was bare and vulnerable in the low bedroom light. My fingers paused at the button on my blouse. “Well, I’m going.”
His eyes darkened. “I wish you wouldn’t, Libby.”
“I’m sorry if it bothers you,” I said, “but I’m going.”
Michael pulled on his pajama top, buttoned it slowly, watching me. “Do you care how I feel?” he asked.
“I care, Michael, but it’s irrational.” A flush crept up his neck. “It’s your problem, not mine. It’s a few hours with Pete and Sophie—”
“—and Patrick.”
“And Patrick.”
“Your former boyfriend.”
“It’s a few hours and then he’s going back to Florida. And everything here will be just the same as it was before.”
“Will it, Libby?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I asked.
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Just let me be, I thought. Tell me to go and have fun, that you’re just worried, even if it’s irrational, but that our life together means so much to you and you don’t want anything to jeopardize that.
“Oh, Michael, stop this. Please. I’m tired. I don’t want to play this game. Don’t go tomorrow if you don’t want to, for whatever reason. Go show a house. Or not. Go play racquetball. Sit here and brood. Do whatever you want to do but don’t make it my issue. I’m going to pick up my mom in the morn
ing and go to Sophie and Pete’s.”
He clenched his jaw but said nothing. He looked at his feet, at the bed and then back up at my face. He took a deep breath and then he turned and walked away.
Thirty
The house was buzzing when my mother and I arrived. All the out-of-town guests were there, about twenty of them, along with immediate family. Sophie waved from the kitchen and carried a casserole dish to the dining room table, which was laden with food and flowers and coffee urns and wine bottles. Pete walked around pouring champagne. Soft jazz played; people talked and laughed. It was a festival of activity.
Patrick was bringing pitchers of orange juice to the table when he saw me. His face shone and that made me very happy I’d come. He wore the turtleneck we’d bought together when he came to Chicago for lunch. It was soft heather-gray cashmere and looked gorgeous with charcoal gray pants, and the black loafers that shone within an inch of their lives. He shined them for me, I thought, and grinned at him. He grinned back. “No Michael?” he asked.
“He had a showing.”
Patrick hid his disappointment well.
“That boy works too hard,” my mother said, although on the way over I’d told her the reason for his brunch boycott.
“Hmmmph…” was all she’d said.
“So nice to see you this morning,” Patrick said, and kissed my cheek and then my mother’s. “You both look beautiful.”
“So do you,” I said. “Nice sweater.”
“Thanks. I can’t take all the credit. I had help picking it out.”
“Come on, everybody,” Sophie called. “Plates are on the buffet. Fill them and find a seat wherever. Holler if you need anything.”
Patrick ushered my mother to a seat on the sofa and said he’d make her a plate if she saved us seats. She said she would if he made her a mimosa.
“She’s great,” Patrick said as we walked away. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet your dad.”
Patrick’s closeness sent electric currents up my spine as we walked to the dining room.
“Where’d you stay last night?” I asked.
“Here,” he said. “On the foldout couch in the den. We were up till three this morning.” He laughed. “I haven’t done that since high school.” I thought of New Year’s Eve thirty years ago. “It was fun. Danielle and Chris were here until two-thirty and then had to boogie to grab their bags for a flight at six to Honolulu. They’re really fun. It’s been a kick getting to know Pete and Sophie’s girls.”
Sophie had made caramel-apple French toast for the brunch, and several casseroles were filled with her famous egg strata. There was crisp bacon, sausage, fruit salad and mimosas. Iris centerpieces from the wedding were scattered around the dining room.
“Jesus,” I said, “when did she have time to do all this?”
“Last night. She was like Rachael Ray on steroids, ordering us around like we were her sous-chefs.”
I was jealous that I hadn’t been part of the fun.
As we ate, my mother grilled Patrick about his life in Florida: what did he do, where did he live, how many kids did he have, did he exercise, did he cook, did he read the newspaper. I tried giving her a look to get her to let up but she ignored me. Patrick answered easily, not seeming to mind, or even to notice, really. He threw questions back at her when she left a millisecond of silence. “What’s your favorite movie?” “How’d you meet your husband?”
When he and I reached for the syrup at the same time, fingers touching, nearly spilling it, I felt my mother’s eyes on me, on us. She paused for a moment and then she said to him, “Did you ever think about getting married again?”
I slugged down the rest of my mimosa.
Tiffany wandered through the house snapping pictures, posing everyone in little groups. She tried to take a picture of my mother, Patrick and me but my mother said, “Oh, just take one of the two of them. I don’t like pictures of myself at my age,” and she got up and moved off. Patrick put his arm over my shoulder and we leaned our heads close. “Oh, that’s cute,” Tiffany said, looking at the display, then showing it to me. It was.
Tiffany’s hair was spiked today and her piercings were in their full glory, filled with shiny hoops and studs. Later she cornered me in the kitchen to tell me that Ryan had asked her to go steady.
“Oh, cool,” I said. “Did he give you a ring?” I remembered wearing Patrick’s class ring on a chain around my neck.
“A ring? No. But he changed his Facebook page to ‘In a relationship,’” she said, grinning. “He asked me to go to his prom.”
“Fun. You can wear your bridesmaid dress,” I said.
She made a face. “Or not,” she said. “I’m done with that thing.” Then her face softened and she touched my arm. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“I love Patrick,” Tiffany said. “We all had so much fun last night.”
“I heard. He likes you, too.”
“He likes you, too,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“He talked about you all night. Asked all kinds of questions about you.”
“He did not,” I said, pleased.
“Did, too,” Sophie said, coming up behind me with a stack of dirty dishes and giving me a bump with her hip. She raised her eyebrows, Groucho Marx style. Tiffany snapped our picture as we laughed.
“Help me with the desserts, would you, Lib?” Sophie said, bringing out large, flat pastry boxes. I unwrapped the goodies—tiny zucchini muffins, chocolate squares with satiny frosting, cookies—and put them on plates, and Tiffany snapped another picture as I stuffed a muffin into my mouth. Then she went off in search of other photographic subjects, or maybe her “steady.”
Sophie said, “He was asking a lot of questions.”
“About what?”
“Oh, just about what you’d been up to all these years. What you liked to do. If you were going to marry Michael.”
“What’d you say to that one?”
“I told him to ask you.” She got small plates from the cupboard and the “Danielle and Christopher”–embossed napkins. “Are you?” she asked.
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” I said. “Hey, did something happen last night when the guys were smoking their cigars?”
“Pete said there was a little tension but it wasn’t a big deal. Michael apparently made it clear he wasn’t about to bond with Patrick.”
“I suppose that’s to be expected,” I said.
“Kind of childish,” she said.
“He’s jealous. How would you feel if you were in his place?”
“Depends on if I had anything to worry about.” She piled silverware on a big black-lacquered tray. “Does he?”
“I guess he thinks he does.”
Sophie leaned on the granite countertop and looked me in the eye. “But does he?”
Sometimes when I look at Sophie’s face my heart swells with the familiarity of every angle, every line, how dear it is to me, how it holds all of our history. “I don’t know, Soph,” I said. “I really don’t know.”
Thirty-one
All the guests had gone. My mother hitched a ride home with Sophie’s parents, which left Sophie, Pete, Tiffany, Patrick and me on clean-up duty. Pete put on some seventies music and we danced around the kitchen, tossing towels to each other, wrapping food, washing dishes, singing to the music.
When “Cat’s in the Cradle” came on, the four adults sang along.
Tiffany hooted when we got to the “little boy blue, man in the moon” part. “What the heck is this?” she asked.
“Harry Chapin!” we said in unison.
“Remember when we went to Purdue to see him in concert?” Patrick said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I told my parents I was staying at Sophie’s that night.”
“And I told my parents I was staying at your house,” Sophie said.
“And we stayed in Purdue at that guest house where that lady had four dogs an
d a big, honking mole on her eyelid.”
Our laughter bounced off the oak cabinets, wrapping us all in memories.
“The four of you stayed at a guest house?” the forgotten Tiffany asked, sitting on the counter watching us as if we were a double feature.
Oops.
“Patrick and me in one room, the girls in another,” Pete lied. “And don’t you try that staying-at-your-girlfriend’s story on us. Don’t think we won’t be checking. We know all the tricks, sweet pea.”
Tiffany was smart enough not to answer.
“You sound just like your father,” Sophie told him, and he swatted her on the butt.
“Didn’t Denny Cavanaugh and Jess Silver meet us there?” Patrick said. “Remember them?”
“Yeah. I still play poker with Denny,” Pete said.
“No kidding,” Patrick said. “What’s he up to these days? Wait. Let me guess. He’s an auto mechanic.”
“Nope.”
“A roofer?”
“Nope.”
“A drug dealer?”
Pete laughed. “No, he’s an English teacher.”
Patrick could barely contain his laughter. “Cavanaugh, an English teacher? That’s a good one.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “He was such a burnout. What about Jess? Do you know what happened to her?”
“They got married after college and had three kids,” Sophie said. “Got divorced about eight years later, married other people, had a few more kids. Then they both got divorced again and about ten years ago they married each other again and had another kid.”
“So between the two of them,” Pete said, “they have eight kids. The oldest is close to thirty and the youngest is nine.”
“Whew! More power to them with all those kids. But that’s cool that they got back together again after all those years. Very cool.” Patrick shook his head. “I sure wouldn’t want to raise kids today.”
“Why not?” Tiffany asked.
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