Joy and Tiers

by Mary Crawford

  See, Tara? Donda wanted him. Not all contact is bad. Pull it together, I mentally command myself.

  “Are you okay, Miss Tara?” queries Mindy anxiously. “You’re shaking. Should I go get Miss Kiera?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I insist. “Maybe I just need to eat something.”

  “Can we dance after we eat?” Mindy asks.

  I slowly look around at this amazing reception unfolding around me. I want this level of perfect for me and maybe, someday, I’ll be able to believe in perfect again. Sadly, today is not that day.

  I grasp Mindy’s hands and squeeze them lightly as I whisper hoarsely, “I’m sorry, Mindy Mouse. I’d love to dance, but I just can’t.”

  Movement at the edge at of the dance floor catches my eye, I look up to see a look of sadness cross the face of the man walking up to the piano. Astonishingly, he winks and signs, “Bullshit!” before he sits down at the piano and starts to play.

  Bullshit? Who is this guy and what did he mean by that? As I watch him play, I try to figure out if I know him. I’m pretty sure I don’t, but there is something oddly familiar about those moss-green eyes.

  Suddenly, I feel the urge to be anywhere but here. “Mindy, do you want to go get some more cake?” I ask, a little too brightly.

  “Sure thing!” Mindy exclaims. “I want some more of Miss Heather’s food, too. She cooks too good to make food on a truck. It’s silly. She should have a restaurant with fancy tablecloths and napkins.”

  As Mindy chatters on about her favorite foods and what kind of restaurant she would own if she were a grown-up, I can’t help but think about what that piano player said. How could he possibly know about my dancing ability? It’s a weird thing for a stranger to comment on. He acts like he knows me. There’s something oddly disconcerting yet thrilling about that.

  Mindy scampers off to play with her cousin, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I’m fighting a primal urge to simply escape out the back door. Weddings never get any easier for me. I was hoping this one might not be as hard. Kiera is one of my very best friends. Heather, my co-maid of honor, is equally close. Together, we’ve formed the Girlfriend Posse. Once you’re in, you’re in forever. We have each other’s backs at all times. This explains why I’m wearing a shiny new dress when I’d rather run naked in the snow. Admittedly, it’s a nice dress and Kiera and Mindy, her newly adopted daughter, tried very hard to choose one which minimizes my discomfort. There are some things that go beyond the cut of a dress.

  There are precisely two people on the planet that can convince me to wear a dress. Now that Mindy’s in my life, I guess there are now three people on the planet that have that honor. Since Kiera and Jeff expanded their family, mine has grown exponentially as well. I consider Mindy, or as I affectionately call her ‘Mouse’ to be my kindred spirit and honorary niece. Mindy is an exceptionally bright kid who has a very old soul. Someday, I’m certain I’ll be wearing a dress for her day too.

  Kiera’s husband, Jeff, has become the brother everyone wishes they could claim. We click surprisingly well because we share a tendency to be reserved and shy around strangers. But much to his credit, he hasn’t monopolized Kiera’s time to the exclusion of her friends. Instead, he has assimilated himself into our world, as bizarre as the shenanigans of the Girlfriend Posse can become. Even Jeff’s mom, Gwendolyn, and his sister, Donda, have become honorary members of our ever-growing group. So, it’s no surprise Jeff and Kiera’s circle of friends intersected to throw them this amazing wedding.

  As I look around Kiera and Jeff’s wedding reception, I see reminders of her fairytale love story. Every personal touch, no matter how innocuous, speaks to the incredible depth of their relationship. Every person involved in the wedding has contributed their own special touches that make this wedding incredibly personal to Kiera and Jeff. You would never guess that this wedding didn’t take a couple of years to plan.

  It seems everyone is intent on honoring as many small but meaningful traditions as possible. Even Mindy got in on the act by making hand drawn invitations to the wedding. Gwendolyn, who is an extraordinarily talented florist, made bouquets based on words that Kiera and Jeff used to describe each other. Denny, Kiera’s father, gave the couple a set of engagement rings that were family heirlooms.

  Heather also seems to have missed nothing; she paid tribute to her best friend’s love with a beautiful lace and pearl encrusted wedding cake she made herself. She even made edible flowers out of sugar that mirrored the first bouquet of flowers Jeff ever gave Kiera.

  As a chef, Heather is meticulous when it comes to food. She insists on small peach slices and a dash of freshly grated cinnamon to grace each glass of ice tea, and the hors d’oeuvres must be at a precise temperature. Heather’s amazing culinary skills are on full display; everything I’ve tasted so far is amazing.

  Since cooking is not my thing, I made gift bags for all the guests. I started with personalized Dove chocolate bars. To honor the special places and memories involved in their courtship, I also included a gift certificate to Panera’s and two boxes of Tic-Tacs. I tied them all with hand-braided ribbon. Although I don’t have much experience in the craft department, I have to admit these didn’t turn out half bad.

  As I survey everyone’s hard work and hear Jeff and Kiera’s effusive praise, a profound sense of melancholy and loss settles over me like a thick fog on a rainy morning. Yes, this is all pretty much perfect. I step back into the shadows under the eaves and wrap my arms around myself as I try to remember the last time I believed in perfect. The sad thing is that even though it’s currently all around me, begging me to lap it up like a thirsty kitten licking cream, I just can’t let myself believe.

  A sense of utter isolation overtakes me as I watch Jeff cradle Kiera gently against his chest in an agonizingly sensual first dance to Bryan Adam’s Heaven. Couples seem to have broken out like a virus. Even Heather, who usually keeps men at a very polite distance with her good humor, is tucked in very neatly under Tyler’s chin, with her cheek resting on his broad chest. She seems oblivious to his large hand splayed across her lower back and hip, but then I notice Heather flush as Tyler murmurs something in her ear and gives her hip a squeeze—perhaps not as oblivious as I first thought.

  Denny and Gwendolyn are dancing a very traditional waltz. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that Denny has seen the inside of an Arthur Murray dance studio a day or two in his life. He is holding his own with the socialite and, interestingly, showing more than just a polite interest in the soon-to-be-former Mrs. Buckhold, who appears to be thriving under his attentive care.

  Jeff’s sister, Donda, is twirling a very contented, squealing Becca in her arms. Apparently, the key to keeping Princess Peanut happy is to have brightly colored hair and dangly earrings. Even Mindy has found herself a dance partner in Jeff’s nephew. As I study Gabriel’s body language, I am surprised to find that although he seems nervous, he is not an unwilling participant. He has the stiff, gangly movements of a preteen, but the affable, confident—, yet shy charm of his uncle. It is clear by the way that Mindy hangs on his every word that she is drawn to him like a hummingbird to nectar.

  As the newlywed’s first dance ends, they transition into the father-daughter dance. Denny walks behind Kiera and he puts his arms around her shoulders. When Heartland’s I Loved Her First begins to play, they begin to sway in time to the music, in their own adaptive dance. Jeff walks over to the sidelines and collects Mindy. He grins down at her and places her feet on the top of his, as he carefully navigates her through her first ever father-daughter dance.

  The sight is too much for me as vivid visions come clattering back into my consciousness of a time, a lifetime ago, where perfect once lived. The sudden assault on my system is overpowering and I end up pulling some weirdly complex yoga/dance hybrid move to plop my butt onto the deck, as quickly as I can, before I pass out. Memories play in my mind like a psychedelic slide show. My heart clutches as I remember standing on my Daddy’s feet as we danced, me in
my pink tights and purple tutu with silver sparkles, in the living room of our walk-up apartment. I still remember my mom putting up my long black hair in a small bun and securing them with my Hello Kitty barrettes. Those vignettes are my last memories of perfect. Shortly after that, perfect vanished from my life to be replaced by waves of unending pain that shredded my soul.

  I draw my knees up to my chest, fold my arms over my knees and bury my head with a heavy sigh, as tears slide down my cheeks. As I try to repair my wall of silence and polite distance from the world, I feel a butterfly-light touch on the top of my head. I jerk my head up, alarmed to be caught off guard.

  “It’s okay, Miss Tara,” assures Mindy as she meets my startled expression with a somber look. “I just came over to see what broked your heart today. You look really bummed again. I still think you should dance with Mr. Jeff.”

  Her uncannily accurate reading of my current mood gives me a taste of what people always say after they’ve had an encounter with me. It makes me wonder if Mindy and I share more than just a tragic past. “Thanks for checking on me, Mindy Mouse,” I reply, wiping my face carefully with a cocktail napkin, trying not to lay waste to any more of my artfully applied makeup. “I’m sure your daddy’s a great dancer, but I’m fine. Weddings just make me sad.”

  I glance across the dance floor on the patio and I notice the piano player studying me with great interest. Hmm, maybe weddings aren’t so bad after all.

  I watch the expressions flit across her face as she tries to put what I’ve just signed to her into some kind of context. I’m more than a little disappointed when I don’t see any signs of recognition, then I mentally kick myself for my own arrogance. I’m not sure why I thought she would even remember me. It has probably been at least a decade since she’s seen me, and just because I once thought the sun rose and set at the command of this ethereal creature doesn’t mean she knows me from Adam. Once again, I am reminded that it really sucks to be the marginally gifted little brother of a super-star. I know without a doubt that she not only remembers Rory, but also, most likely, still secretly carries a torch for him. Almost every woman I’ve ever met, young or old, seems to—much to the amusement and occasional chagrin of his wife, Renee.

  I guess my expectations were a bit lofty. I was hoping for something closer to a cheesy music video. The kind where the girl finds the hunk at the class reunion is really the skinny nerd with acne who used to offer to carry her books in junior high. I was that kid. I had glasses, braces, and acne. I was the trifecta of nerdiness. If you add the fact that I had the build of a dancer—without the grace—paired with a fondness for Broadway musicals and big band music, well...I was pretty much a lost cause. It didn’t help that my brother was everything I wasn’t. In a family of dark, suave Irishmen with jet-black hair and bright blue eyes, my red hair is so light that most people consider it blond and my eyes are a nondescript murky green. As I’ve grown up, the playing fields have leveled out some. At six-foot-two and one hundred and ninety, I’m actually bigger than Rory now, and my rock-climbing keeps me in great shape. It’s a blow to my ego that she doesn’t recognize me, but hardly surprising since nearly everything about me—both inside and out—has changed in the last decade.

  I scrutinize Tara while she talks to the little flower girl and it is clear that she has undergone some changes in the last dozen years or so as well. The Tara I remember attacked life with irrepressible energy and optimism—with a work ethic that would make a Navy Seal scream for mercy. Whatever happened seems to not only have dimmed her inner light and taken the wind out of her sails, but also made her jumpy around any type of male attention. I don’t even want to contemplate the blows she has suffered to bring her to this point. She seems like a fragile shell of her former self. It’s so sad because—when she occupied Rory’s world—Tara was a masterful sight to behold. She was beauty and light, emotion and pain. Most of all, she was poetry and art in motion. I fell for her hard when I was about six. I remember telling my mom when I grew big and strong, I was going to marry her. Of course, that was before my own life was knocked off course by a series of blows. I’m a far different person than I was as an idealistic six-year-old.

  For me, the first blow started innocently enough. I was a few weeks shy of my eleventh birthday and I had just returned from music camp when I woke up covered in an itchy rash. At first my parents didn’t think much of it, figuring I had been exposed to poison oak or ivy during camp. However, the next day, I got a splitting headache, I became extremely lethargic, and my neck and joints became stiff. My life became a big, scary blur filled with doctors, nurses, needles, medicines, tests, and machines. It all seemed never-ending.

  After a very painful lumbar puncture, they determined I had meningitis. Of course, I was too young to understand the ramifications and much too sick to care. All I knew was that a couple days ago, I was busy playing my piano, riding my bike, and pestering my big brother, but now I was in the hospital hooked up to half a dozen different machines. As my body fought off the bacteria, it became increasingly more difficult for me to remain conscious, and I floated in a strange dreamland between life and death. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did.

  As I recall that day, in an instant, I become my eleven-year-old self. Everything comes back as vividly as the day it happened. I can still smell the strange musky smell of hospital food and feel the scratchiness of the strange blankets with the basket-weave pattern. On my ninth day in the hospital, I discover my world is completely silent. At first, I think maybe Rory is playing a practical joke on me. I search for earplugs, cotton balls or Q-tips. I’m desperate for any explanation of why I can’t hear. When I can’t find one, I start to cry. Yet that makes matters infinitely worse, because I can longer hear the sound of my own sobs. I start to panic, choking on my own tears.

  Finally, a nurse comes to check in on me. She begins talking to me, presumably to ask what’s wrong. To my horror, I understand nothing. I’m all by myself in a world where nothing makes sense. Even my parents are gone. Rory has an important audition he can’t miss, so family emergency or no, they are at his side. The nurse becomes more and more agitated as I fail to respond to her. Another nurse comes in and has the idea to write me a note. She takes an old yellow legal pad and writes something down. I look at it and reluctantly admit, “I’m not very good at reading cursive.”

  The nurse takes the tablet and scratches out the cursive and prints in nice neat print, “Hello, my name is Delores. What’s wrong?”

  I look up at her and throw up my hands in a helpless gesture as I screech, “I can’t hear anything!”

  The “mean” nurse just rolls her eyes as she scribbles angrily, “That’s not funny young man. Where are your hearing aids?”

  My eyes widen as I read the words. There is a kid in our school who uses hearing aids. They attach to a box and his mom has to sew special pockets in his clothes. The bigger kids are always using the cord to pull them out of his ears. I am tall and skinny with glasses; I don’t need one more reason for the kids to pick on me. I frantically argue, “I don’t have hearing aids! I could hear yesterday.”

  Delores steps up and places her hand on my shoulder, and she begins calmly and methodically taking my vitals, examining my head and neck carefully. After she finishes, she sits down on the edge of my bed and starts with a fresh sheet of paper as she composes a long note. I wait impatiently for her to finish. “Aidan, you have been very, very sick. Your body has been so busy fighting the meningitis that you were in coma for about three days. Sometimes deafness is a side effect of meningitis, but they’ll need to run some tests to make sure. Don’t panic yet. Sometimes, the side effects of meningitis are temporary.”

  I take the note from her. I read it several times. I keep stumbling over the big word. I point to it and ask, “What’s this?”

  She writes an explanation, “Men-in-gi-tis: it’s an infection that attacks the lining of your brain and spinal cord. It’s pretty rare, but it can be caught through
coughing or sneezing.”

  Alarm courses through my body. Oh no! If Rory got it, he couldn’t dance. I form a question, dreading the answer. If I have been out of it for so many days, Mom and Dad should be back from Rory’s audition by now. So he must be sick too. My parents are going to kill me. Rory is going to be part of the American Ballet Company in New York someday. That’s why we move all the time to follow his teachers. I tug on Delores’s lab coat to get her attention as I ask, “Did I make my brother sick? Is that why no one is here?”

  Delores hugs my shoulders and smiles. I breathe a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t be smiling if he’s sick, right? She picks up the tablet and writes, being careful to print even though I can tell she wants to write in cursive, “No, everyone is fine. The doctor gave everyone medicine when you first got sick, Rory just got a call back and then they got a freak snow storm in Boston and they couldn’t leave.”

  Boston? I thought I’d get a vote this time and we would stay on the West coast. I like my piano teacher and I am learning lots. Icicles surround my heart. Was. I was learning a lot. I can’t learn piano anymore. I was pretty good. Not Rory good. I mean, people don’t go around whispering words like prodigy, genius, and phenomenon around me like they do with him. I hear words like musically inclined, very talented, and inspired—or at least I used to. Now, I hear nothing. How will I live in a world of silence when music feeds my soul and makes me who I am? I wonder where I am going to fit in my very talented family, now that I don’t have talent. Tears stream down my face as I try to bury my head in my pillow.