Around eight o’clock, and four beers later, he heard his phone ring in the silverware drawer. Julie, calling to cancel? Abby, calling to see if he was on or off the wagon? Maggie, calling to say she wanted to see him? But no. It was a number he had not expected at all—his mother.
“Mom,” he said, clicking off the TV. He got up to get a fresh beer. “Is everything ok?”
“You tell me,” she said, her voice with an edge like a razor.
It wasn’t like her to call unless she needed something, and then she was either sweet and supplicant or whiny and helpless. Rarely was she snide or sarcastic. That had been his father’s specialty.
“Um,” Nathaniel said.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” she asked.
Nathaniel’s stomach lurched. So this was Abby’s strategy: Freeze Nathaniel out and get his mom on her side.
“Nice to hear I’m going to be a grandmother in the form of a baby shower invitation.”
This was the first he had heard of any baby shower. Abby was throwing herself a shower?
“Apparently you saw fit to tell Doreen, but why would you bother to tell your dear old mom?”
Doreen, Abby’s mother. Nathaniel rubbed a hand through his hair and sat at the kitchen table.
“So what’s the deal? You gonna explain?”
“I was going to tell you,” he said. I was going to tell you, but—how to finish that sentence? Why hadn’t he told her? I was going to tell you, but I’m a coward just like dad always said. I was going to tell you, but I couldn’t handle disappointing you again. I was going to tell you, but my life is a disaster and telling you means facing that.
“When? When my grandchild was graduating from high school?”
“Mom—”
“You know, I’m not surprised that you wouldn’t want to tell me, but I’m surprised that I haven’t heard from Abby. You know how I feel about that girl.”
He did know. She loved Abby. She believed Abby was the one for him, the only girlfriend he’d ever brought home that she’d actually liked. Not pretentious, not arrogant, not towering over her in two-hundred dollar high heels.
“So I can only assume this means you won’t be marrying her.”
“Mom—”
“Your father and I gave you everything we could, we let you play the musician and philosopher, but your father was right. I was too soft on you. I should have listened to him when he told me not to indulge you. I thought we taught you to be a better man than this.”
They let him be a musician and philosopher. Is that what she told herself? Living with his father’s scorn and ridicule, her silent condemnation. Anything he’d ever done had been in spite of them, not because they supported him. And when was his father advising her on how to raise him? When he was in a drunken rage, throwing a pot of soup across the kitchen because it was too salty? When he was dragging Nathaniel, at twelve years old, from bed in the middle of the night to tell him that if his son the theater-nerd turned out to be a fairy, he’d be as a good as dead?
“You want me to be more like dad? Is that really what you want?”
“Your father was an honest, hardworking—”
“My father was an abusive alcoholic.” His mother knew that better than anyone. She bore the scars to prove it. Still she insisted on defending him.
“He had a hard time, but he tried to make amends. You know he tried.”
Too little too late. So he’d been sober the last six or seven years of his life. Without a gut full of beer, he was less violent but no less angry, no less small-minded, no less stubborn. His sobriety didn’t help him see his son clearly or find a way to make peace. “How, mom? How did he try to make amends with me?”
“In his way, he—he did love you.”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
“You don’t know what he was like. You weren’t even here once he stopped drinking.”
“He never came to see me perform. Not once. Not as a child, not as an adult.” Nathaniel never understood why it was so offensive to his father that he loved music. For God’s sake, the Latecomers played rock music, not show tunes. When his father was singing along to “Thunder Road” while he worked on his truck, did he ever stop and think, Springsteen must be a fairy? No. But when his son got on stage with a band and played that song, he just might be. Some brilliant logic there.
“He didn’t think you wanted him there,” his mother said stiffly. “You didn’t invite him.”
Nathaniel would have rolled his eyes if there had been anyone there to see him. Of course he stopped inviting his father to his shows. How much rejection can one kid take?
“You know why the two of you never got along?” his mother asked. She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Because you’re too damn alike. You got every bad trait your father ever had and none of his good ones.”
“His good ones?”
“You father was a hard-working, Christian man. I cannot say the same of you.”
Nathaniel downed the last of his beer and then hefted the bottled. He would have liked nothing better than to throw it across the room, to watch it shatter as it hit the wall. But hadn’t his father always told him he threw like a girl? He probably couldn’t throw it hard enough to make it break.
“If you’re done, I have places to be,” he said, standing up and tossing the bottle in the recycling bin.
“I am not done. I need to know what the situation is here. Are you going to be a father to this child? Are you going to take care of that sweet girl? Am I going to get to know my grandchild?”
It didn’t surprise him that his mother was siding with Abby, but it did infuriate him. It wasn’t like this was entirely his fault. “That sweet girl? You know I didn’t sneak in in the night and inject a baby into her and then abandon her. It takes two to get into this situation. She was a willing participant, I assure you.”
“You led that girl on. You made promises you had no intention of keeping.”
But he hadn’t. He had always been honest with Abby. He certainly never promised marriage. If anything, he spent his time with her reminding her that he would never be able to give her what she wanted. But she wouldn’t leave him alone. She wouldn’t end it. “Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen with me and Abby. We’re not getting married, I can tell you that. But I am going to be part of the baby’s life, no matter what Abby thinks.”
“Do you think she’ll let you?”
“I haven’t talked to her in a week. Why don’t you call her and ask?”
“Maybe I should.”
Nathaniel didn’t care if she called Abby or not, but he did think it was a good sign that his mother was invited to the shower. If Abby really intended to keep him from his child, would she have done that?
“Nathaniel,” his mother said, her voice softer, “you shouldn’t feel like you can’t tell me things. I never wanted you to feel that way.”
Suddenly he felt like weeping. He remembered her wrapping him in her arms after one of his father’s tirades and whispering in his ear that she would always take care of him, that he would always be safe with her. What that had translated into was her taking the brunt of his father’s rage while he cowered behind her. “I know. I didn’t want to tell you, okay? It has nothing to do with you. It’s me. I was embarrassed. I want you to be proud of me, and not—not—”
“Have you been drinking?” she asked.
“A couple of beers.”
“You will be a good father, you know, but only if you stop drinking.”
“I’m not like dad,” he said. He burped and felt his stomach churn. He could taste bile in his throat. “I have to go.” He hung up the phone and ran to the bathroom, expelling the contents of his stomach. He stayed hunched there, pressing his face against the cold toilet seat when he was done.
He wasn’t like his father, he told
himself over and over, but it was no use. He was his father’s son. The sooner he faced it the better. He stood up, brushed his teeth, and washed his face. He let the cold water drip down onto his shirt as he stared into the mirror. He had his father’s blue eyes and receding hairline, his father’s jaw and mouth. If he had a picture of his father at thirty-four years old and held it beside his own face, anyone would think they were one in the same. He grabbed the ratty hand towel from the peg next to the sink and rubbed it over his face as if he could erase what he saw there and start fresh when he looked back in the mirror, but when he set the towel aside and looked again at his red-rimmed eyes, all he saw was his father, so drunk he could hardly stand, his eyes watery, his nose red, his lips drawn back in a snarl as he stood over Nathaniel with his hands balled into fists.
He lurched away from the mirror and sat on the edge of the bathtub, his own fists jammed into his eyes as he tried to stop himself from crying. What would his father say if he saw him weeping like a girl?
Sometimes, just after his father died, he’d get like this. Abby would find him curled up, tears on his cheeks, snot streaming from his nose, and put her arms around him. She would shush him like a child and wipe his face with a warm washcloth as his mother had done when he was small.
“He was wrong to treat you that way,” she would whisper. “You don’t need to worry about his approval anymore.”
But she didn’t understand how every time he looked in the mirror he was reminded of his father. She hadn’t known his father, hadn’t seen him before he was so shriveled from the cancer treatments that the resemblance between them was only in the blue of their eyes.
“I’m here,” she would say. “I love you.”
She should have believed me, he thought. She should have listened when I said I was like him. She should have listened and left me, like my mother should have left him.
Nathaniel didn’t know how long he had been sitting there when he heard his phone ring in the kitchen. He forced himself to stand and, with caution to avoid the mirror, went to answer it. Julie. He had forgotten about her. He couldn’t see her now. He couldn’t see her ever again. He let it ring. He couldn’t give her the option of refusing his refusal. He’d made that mistake before.
Abby
Abby walked up the steps of the Newbury Street address Breanna had given her for the dress shop. There was no sign out front, but in the window on the second floor, there was a display of three wedding gowns. Patrick’s mother had set up the appointment, but Abby wasn’t sure if she was joining them. She liked Pat’s mom, but she didn’t want to spend the day with her, for the selfish reason that her presence would mean Abby would have no chance to talk to Breanna alone. Of course this day—like so many over the course of the next few months—was Breanna’s, and Abby had no intention of turning it into another Abby pity-party, but she had hardly seen Breanna in the past week, and without Nathaniel to call, she hadn’t talked to anyone about her new job. She had checked in with her mom a few times, but she didn’t like to say anything to worry her mother. The job was good, she had said. Yes, I’m taking my vitamins, she had said. June fifteenth sounds great for the shower, she had agreed.
And the job was good. Or at least it was fine. She wasn’t crazy about wearing the unflattering uniform five days a week. Nothing like cheap polyester to make a girl feel pretty. On the plus side, though, she wouldn’t need to invest in much by way of maternity clothes. She had taken a large top to accommodate her rapidly expanding bust, and she had chosen pants two sizes too big. For now she could cinch them with a belt. She realized she would probably outgrow them soon, too—she wondered if she’d ever wear a size six again—but for now she’d make do.
After some minimal and perfunctory training, she’d been assigned to a small, storefront post office in Roxbury. Though she’d lived in the Boston metro-area for almost five years, she’d never been to Roxbury before. The office was sandwiched between a package store and a bodega. She and the other clerk worked behind bulletproof glass and there were security cameras at the door and over the counter. At lunch, they pulled a metal screen down over the glass and over the front door. Abby didn’t think the neighborhood was quite as bad as the bulletproof glass suggested, although it probably had been at some point. That whole side of town, she understood from what Nathaniel had told her, was undergoing gentrification. Still, it didn’t make her any less jittery about her new job to require such security measures.
Her days began with a bus ride to the T-stop and one train transfer, all of which took nearly forty-five minutes. She’d never had a job with more than a ten-minute commute before, and she’d never worked in the morning. She hadn’t woken up so early for so many consecutive days since high school, and even then she hadn’t had to rise at five-thirty. Good training for motherhood, she supposed. Still, it had been heavenly to sleep until nine-thirty that morning. She almost felt well rested for her day of wedding and bridesmaid dress shopping.
She entered the boutique and found herself at a reception desk rather than in a store. The only dresses in evidence were in the window.
“You must be the maid of honor,” said the woman behind the desk. Abby took in her trim black suit, sleek black hair, and thick eyeliner. She wondered if she would like a job where she got to wear a suit. She’d never even owned a blazer.
The woman came around the desk and opened a door to the left. Abby followed in the footsteps of the woman’s patent-leather, peep-toe heels down a hallway to another door. Inside Breanna sat on a cream-colored sofa with a glass of champagne in one hand and a catalog in her lap. The woman knocked lightly and stepped aside for Abby to enter.
“Hey,” Breanna said, grinning. “I was starting to wonder if you’d gotten lost.”
I’m hardly five minutes late, Abby thought.
“Katrina will be back in a minute,” the woman said. Then she turned to Abby. “What can I get you? Champagne? Tea? Coffee?”
Abby asked for an herbal tea and shrugged off her jacket.
The woman nodded and turned. Her heels clicked down the hallway. Abby could not even imagine wearing heels to work. At the bar, however cute she might have dressed, she had to wear sensible shoes with nonslip soles. At the post office, she needed something simple and comfortable enough to stand all day.
“Isn’t Pat’s mom coming?” Abby asked, sitting beside Breanna.
“Not today,” Breanna said, flipping the pages of the catalog. “They’re heading to Florida tomorrow so she had too much to do.”
Abby was glad, but now she thought perhaps it would have been best if Pat’s mom was joining them. If she came, too, then Abby could just sit back and let her control the conversation. Now she’d have to restrain herself from bombarding Breanna with her woes. Today is not about me, she told herself. She would have to make that her mantra for the day. As a mother, it’ll be my mantra for at least the next eighteen years, she thought. Might as well get used to it.
Katrina, the saleswoman who would be helping them, arrived with Abby’s tea and sat across from Breanna in a white wing chair. Like the woman from reception, she wore a fitted black suit and heels. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, accentuating her sharp features and dramatic makeup. Abby wondered if she was a model as well as a dress saleswoman.
“So Breanna and I thought we’d start with you, Abby,” she said, crossing her legs and clasping her hands on her knee.
Abby had been hoping they’d spend so much time on Breanna that they wouldn’t get to her at all today. She’d been instructed in the appointment confirmation Email from the shop to wear her “foundational garments,” but in her current condition that was impossible. Her strapless bra was a lost cause, and control top panty hose are not intended for smooshing a baby-bump.
Katrina must have noticed the look on her face, because she said, “No worries. Breanna explained. We just need to see what colors and cuts you like, and w
e’ll go from there.”
Of course Breanna had explained. Breanna always took care of her and thought of everything.
“We were thinking something fun and flirty,” Katrina said, “a real party dress, to suit the occasion and the date.”
“The date?” Abby asked. Last time she talked to Breanna the date hadn’t been nailed down yet. Breanna wanted a winter wedding. She dreamed of snow-covered trees and the soft pink color of the sky when the street lights are trapped by clouds over a white landscape. Pat kept reminding her that a winter wedding wouldn’t guarantee a snow and ran the risk of a snowstorm that made it impossible for guests to get there, and he didn’t want to wait that long, either. He wanted to get married before the end of 2012 because twelve was his lucky number. He was lobbying for a date in December, which offered as good a chance of snow as January or February.
“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you,” Breanna said. “New Year’s Eve.”
“Really?” They had had their engagement party on Valentine’s Day and their wedding would be on New Year’s Eve? Well, at least they made it easy for their friends to make plans for those usually anticlimactic holidays.
“I know, it’s nuts. Everyone’s going to hate us. Pat’s parents had their hearts set on having it at the country club, but all the dates in December were totally full, and the club closes for January and February. We thought it was a lost cause, but then the manager said, ‘What about New Year’s Eve?’ and without even waiting for me to answer, Pat’s mom said we’d take it. It’s nuts, right?” She bit her lip and waited for Abby’s reaction.
Abby thought about last New Year’s Eve. “It’s perfect,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“No one ever has anything fun to do on New Year’s. Now we will.”
Breanna smiled and nodded. “That’s what Pat’s mom said. And Pat’s thrilled because we’ll be officially married before the end of the 2012.”
“So, the dresses need to be spectacular,” Katrina said, bringing them back to the task at hand. “I took the liberty of pulling out a few things for you to see what you think.” She walked to a changing screen next to a platform with a three-way mirror on it. She folded back one panel of the screen and produced three dresses: a satiny red halter, a silver strapless mini-dress, and a simple black gown.
The Latecomers Fan Club Page 16