Catch My Fall

by Wright, Michaela

  I’m pretty sure I called her a whore, too.

  She wagged her finger at me. “Honey, I’m wearing no less than three pairs of Spanx right now. Beauty is pain.”

  Jackie joined me in the kitchen to start relocating platters to the table when I heard the front door open, coupled with a new male voice. I spotted Cole from the hallway, offering yet another bottle of wine to whoever would take it. He spotted me and grinned. I kissed his cheek and took his jacket, suddenly aware that I’d half expected him not to come. I introduced him to Kevin, and he gave a polite nod and a hand shake, despite Meghan’s greeting being a few muttered expletives that he surely could have made out if he tried.

  A new set of feet stomped away the snow on the porch. I hustled to the door and found Patty waiting in a white knee length wool trench coat, her hair hidden under a green knit hat.

  She looked fucking adorable.

  She smiled at me, and her nose crinkled as she handed me a brown paper box, tied with string.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  She shrugged off her coat, smiling. “It’s – um, goose liver pate, actually.”

  If I glared at the box, I swear I didn’t mean to.

  “No, I swear, it’s really good! You eat it on crackers or bread. You have to try it. And hey, what’s more Christmassy than goose, right?”

  A voice startled her from outside. “Fuckin A, right! That’s what I’ve been sayin for years.”

  Evan smiled at her when she turned.

  Evan and Stellan traipsed up the steps together. I should have heard their guffawing from up the street, but I was too busy trying to beam at Patty. This whole damn shindig was, in essence, for her. She’d never know that though. I’d never tell her.

  She almost hopped in place when she recognized him. “Evan Lambert? Oh my god!”

  Evan leaned into her and gave her a kiss on the cheek and a one arm embrace as he tried to hand me the bottle of Glennfiddich. “Hello Patricia. How are you doing, my dear?”

  She glanced at me, smiling. “I’m good. I’m good. How are you?”

  Evan gestured to Stellan coming up behind him. “Miserable. This fucker followed me here.”

  Stellan kicked his boots against the door jamb a few more times before entering. As expected, he had a case of Sam’s. I glared at it, shook my head and muttered, “predictable” loud enough for him to hear me.

  “What? It’s winter lager, woman! Drink up while you can!”

  He then shifted his weight and pulled a small six pack of Magners into view. This he handed to me with a grin. I smiled up at him. A good hard cider wasn’t the easiest thing to find around here. One had to hit a specialty shop or drive to east bum for Magners. Apparently, Stellan had taken the time. Magners was my favorite.

  Evan tried to hand me his coat, and I called him a jackass, pointing to the closet. He made comment about ‘being unable to find good help these days’ and walked his ass over to the closet himself, taking Patty’s coat as well.

  Patty mouthed her surprise when his back was turned. I smiled. I heard Meghan introducing herself by the coat closet and chose to distract myself in the kitchen. A quick glass of ice and I was sipping away at my Magners.

  The wine and whiskey was open and flowing. I listened to Patty delight over the Christmas cake, and Meghan flirting with Evan. Kevin filtered into the kitchen with Stellan, and I watched his body language as he gestured to the case of Sam Adams and gave Stellan a nod. “Mind horribly if I grab one of those?”

  Stellan hauled the case up onto the counter and ripped the top open. “Hell yeah, man. Dig in. It’s actually pretty damn cold, too.”

  Kevin grabbed a bottle and groaned his approval. Cole filtered in from the dining room and leaned against the counter. I settled with my back to the sink and searched for words to fill the silence.

  Kevin beat me to it. “What you drinking there, Faye?”

  I lifted my glass as though startled to find it in my hand. “Oh, it’s a Magners.”

  “What’s that?” He asked.

  Stellan coughed and looked at him. “Philistine!”

  I smiled. “It’s a hard cider. Guinness makes it.”

  He approached the center island and inspected the small Magners case. “Really?”

  “Yeah, feel free to try one,” I said.

  “Is it like Woodchuck?” Kevin asked.

  Stellan and I shook our heads, but Cole answered. “Yeah, it’s the same thing.”

  “No way. Magners is the way to go,” I said.

  Stellan swallowed quickly. “Unless you can get Scrumpy.”

  I moaned. “Och, Scrumpy! Yes, please.”

  Cole swallowed quickly in order to speak. “Have you even had Woodchuck? It’s the same thing and a lot easier to get your hands on.”

  Before I could answer, Stellan did for me. “She hates Woodchuck.”

  Kevin gestured to Stellan who quickly produced a metal bottle opener from his pocket.

  Cole made a face. “I’m a bartender; I might know something about it. If you like Magners, Woodchuck is the same thing.”

  Stellan shook his head, but I answered. “I just really don’t care for Woodchuck.”

  “It’s fucking foul,” Stellan said.

  Cole scoffed. “They make more than one kind. Maybe you just need to try a different one.”

  I shrugged before taking a sip of my Magners. I didn’t want to continue the conversation. “Ok,” I said.

  “Faye! Oh my god, I love this painting!” Patty called from the living room.

  I bounded down the hall, happy to get out of the kitchen. “Yeah, about that. Seriously?”

  I delivered the words and the accompanying glare directly to Evan.

  He flashed me a grin. “Your mother is a wonderful lady.”

  I didn’t argue. Given that my mother had once cut a key to our front door for him because of the many nights we’d found him passed out on our front porch chairs because he was kicked out of the house or too afraid to go home, I knew exactly what inspired the generosity.

  Patty turned to Evan who was cornered on the couch by a puma – also known as Meghan. “Did you buy this?”

  It suddenly struck me that I hadn’t completed the set up for the party. I snuck over to the stereo and turned on the playlist of Christmas songs I’d collected for the night - Bing Crosby and Old Blue Eyes crooning away. I let the music play and slipped out the back door to grab firewood. When I snuck back in, Stellan lunged at me, demanding I let him take the burden. He made quick work of building the fire. Moments later, it was crackling away, and I was blissfully people watching in my own living room.

  I took in the space – Stellan and Kevin were chatting about Fallout 4, Jackie was by the office with Cole discussing the restaurant business, and both Patty and Meghan were hanging on Evan’s every word. It felt comfortable to be in this space, and not need to talk to anyone. I felt like the conductor of an impromptu orchestra. Kevin and Stellan glommed onto one another at get-togethers in the past, but seeing Cole and Patty settle into the dynamic was nice.

  I watched Patty from the fireplace. She was sitting at the edge of her chair, a glass of wine in her hand. She was smiling. She was laughing. I was glad, despite the ‘Patty is such a cock block’ conversation that would surely come from Meghan by the end of the night.

  I felt a hand graze my lower back and jumped. Cole smiled at me before pointing at the pieces of paper on the walls. “What’s this?”

  I beamed. “Everybody grab a piece of paper and a pen from the table. We’re gonna play a game.”

  “What kind of game?” Cole asked.

  “It’s a riddle game.”

  Jackie and Patty were heading for table.

  “And did I mention that the prize for winning is a batch of Grammy Jensen’s Chocolate Chip Cookies?”

  News of cookies sent Stellan and Evan surging past the others. Everyone else milled where they were, Meghan g
oing so far as to grumble. I explained the first game – there were six pieces of paper on the walls throughout the downstairs, each paper contained four riddles. The person with the most right answers, wins. Patty was ready to go, walking down the hallway toward the first piece of paper. Jackie headed into the kitchen. Evan and Stellan nearly tackled each other as they followed Patty, calling each other ‘ball bag’ and ‘homosexual,’ to which Meghan hollered her disapproval.

  I laughed, and beamed with love for both of them. I was sure it read on my face.

  Truth be told, this was not a fair game on my part. The first game was riddles, the second was a sheet of anagrams, all containing the first letter of each word in the title of a Christmas song. Despite some blatant cheating between the laypersons, Stellan and Evan both tied for first in each game. They were openly accused of cheating by Patty, given their ‘superior intellect.’ Evan said, “Why thank you,” and Stellan said, “Where’s my cookies?”

  Yet, there was one riddle that stumped the brainiacs.

  My voice is Tender, my waist is slender, and I’m often invited to play. Yet wherever I go, I must take my bow, or else I have nothing to say. What am I?

  “A violin?” Patty said.

  Both Evan and Stellan threw their pens and groaned loudly.

  Patty just beamed.

  I gave her a small half tin of cookies for having shown up the genius twins, and she took the tin from me as though I’d just given her an Oscar. After the games, we broke into the desserts and the Porte. Patty followed me into the kitchen to offer help cleaning, and though I naturally refused, she began filling the dishwasher. Once she finished, we sat sipping Porte and talking. She was a couple drinks in and in a good mood. Geoffrey came up, a declaration that he would have hated the evening and made her go home early.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Oh, god yeah. He’s never gotten along with any of my – err – friends.”

  I nodded quickly to assure her that this word was applicable. She smiled and continued. “I mean, I wouldn’t have minded that so much – not all personality types get along, you know? But the past few months, he wasn’t even making an effort with me. We spent most of our evenings in silence.”

  “Well, that’s not always bad.”

  “True!” She said with such a bright flourish I began to wonder if I should cut her off from the wine. “But there’s a difference between being able to just be with someone and not talk, and silence being like another person in the room.”

  I frowned at her. I wasn’t sure why.

  “And, really – oh my god, Faye I’m going to be so honest with you!”

  I smiled as she leaned in toward me. “Yeah?”

  “We hadn’t had sex in almost a year.”

  I widened my eyes to offer an expression of surprise. I wasn’t surprised. Before Twat Shot, Cole and I were well on our way. “No!”

  “Right? A freakin year, Faye. I don’t care if my parents are in the house or not, you’ve got a penis; it works!”

  I laughed as her volume rose. “Preach, sister.”

  “I mean, what did I marry you for, anyway?”

  I raised my glass to that. “Damn straight! I’ll be honest right back, I’ve always been a little jealous of you.”

  She stopped dead, her eyes wide. “Really? Why on earth?”

  “You had my ideal life.”

  She scoffed and a tiny spray of red wine appeared between us. She blushed, covering her mouth. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Nope. School in Edinburgh, marry a huge cocked Scotsman, be gorgeous and adorable and perky.”

  She shook her head with a slow deliberation. “Oh honey, you had it all wrong.”

  “What do you mean? That accent -”

  Before I could finish my sentence she held her hand up with her thumb and forefinger a couple centimeters apart and hung her head low.

  I gasped. “Really?”

  “Such a shame. The accent really is so sexy at first, but then the main event was just, well - And that’s when he wasn’t too drunk to keep it up.”

  I grabbed her wrist and squeezed in a gesture of solidarity. Oh honey, how I knew. “Oh my god!”

  In the living room, there was a bit of ruckus. It had been going on a while before the sound traveled toward us. Kevin and Cole came into the kitchen followed by Stellan, a satisfied smile on his handsome face.

  “Honey, you drew this shit?” Cole asked, holding an iPhone in the air.

  I glared at Stellan. “Wait, they can see it, but I can’t?”

  He shook his head, gesturing to Cole to hand me the phone. Cole instead stood beside me and let me watch over his shoulder as he continued to play, doing his best to dodge and block various objects being thrown from the branches of a tree. I recognized the vines, the elephant trunks appearing over the walls, the bulgy eyed monkeys that appeared within the trees. I even recognized the various objects being thrown – after a moment, shit was included.

  Cole dodged poorly, took a splatter to the face and physically curled up in grossed out chagrin. Despite the gross out factor, he was laughing. The sound effects, the wacky crazed monkey sounds, the one liners of the brave zookeepers had all been added without my involvement, but everything came together.

  I felt almost overwhelmed. Those were my drawings, and they were alive.

  I stared at Stellan, speaking too softly to be heard. “You’re amazing.”

  “That’s just one level, dude,” Evan called from the living room.

  Kevin held his hands out to Cole who, by rule of the video game gods, needed to hand off now that he’d died.

  Cole forked over the phone reluctantly and chuckled again. “Is it done?”

  Stellan took a swig of his beer. “Not yet. Getting mighty close though.”

  I smiled at Stellan. He winked at me.

  Patty leaned in to the iPhone as Kevin played and turned to me with her mouth open. “You drew all of that?”

  I shook my head. “I sketched some stuff up -”

  “It’s all her. I compiled her stills and gave it sound effects, but everything you see was from her brain.”

  Patty got almost teary eyed when she spoke again. I knew then she’d had enough to drink. “That’s so wonderful, Faye. I always thought you were so talented when we were in school.”

  I started to react as I always did when receiving a compliment – attempt to deny it. Stellan cut me off. “She’s fucking brilliant.”

  “I had no idea you could draw, honey.”

  I turned to Cole and shrugged. “I don’t really do it anymore.”

  “It was what she went to college for.” Evan called.

  Cole raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Originally,” I said.

  Cole laughed. “Must have been a quick phase, then.”

  Stellan chuckled softly as he cracked another bottle of Sam.

  Kevin growled, then fist pumped the air in celebration. Apparently it was just a near death experience. He then started laughing and showed me the blackboard, shit trajectory panel. “Faye, this is you?”

  I nodded and chuckled to myself. There’s nothing quite like hearing people laugh at your work - at least when you were trying to be funny.

  Patty beamed at me. “I can’t believe you didn’t stay in art school. You’d be famous by now.”

  I attempted to scoff at such a notion, but was overshadowed by Cole doing it for me. “Who becomes famous for drawing?”

  “It’s animation,” Evan called again, followed by a softer, ‘you twat,’ quiet enough for only Stell and I to recognize. For someone in the next room, he was certainly paying close attention to our conversation.

  “Even so. I’d say it was a pretty sensible choice. Marketing you might actually make money at. Animators don’t make money.”

  It was Stellan’s turn to scoff. “Walt. Fucking. Disney.”

  Cole laughed, but before he could say an
ything, I spoke up. “Or what about Matt Groening? Stephen Hillenburg? Trey Parker?”

  Cole made a face. “My point exactly. Haven’t heard of a single one of them.”

  Stellan grumbled, and Evan hollered the animated series each had created – The Simpson, Spongebob Squarepants, South Park. He then added a few more expletives each of them growing louder. I suddenly noticed my hands were getting sweaty.

  I spoke to cover the sound. “Matt Groening is worth like $500 million or some crazy thing.”

  “If not more!” Evan yelled.

  “Who is Matt Groening?” Cole asked, half rolling his eyes in his bottle of Sam.

  Stellan stared at his beer. “Creator of the Simpsons.”

  Cole chuckled. “Well, it’s not like you created The Simpsons here, hon.”

  Evan exploded in the living room, and the front door slammed. I heard Meghan follow him out.

  I searched for words. “No, but Charles Schulz was worth like $35 million, and he was a comic strip artist.”

  Cole shook his head. “What? No comic strip artist is worth that much.”

  Stellan swallowed hard. “Bill Watterson is worth almost as much as Matt Groening.”

  “Who the hell is Bill Watterson? I swear you’re making these names up.”

  Again Stellan spoke, still not looking up from his beer. “Calvin and Hobbes.”

  “Oh please, there is no way in hell -”

  My turn. “It’s true!”

  Cole shook his head and made a duck face at me. “No way.”

  I frowned at him. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “Because it’s not possible. You’re blatantly making it up to try to prove some point, which I don’t understand why you feel the need. It’s not like you draw anymore, so what’s the point? It is a funny game, but trying to pretend that you know the bank accounts of all these obscure people is just nonsense. Seriously, why would you know that?”

  “Because it’s what I wanted to be.”

  Cole blinked at me. “Sure, when you were seventeen.”