CHAPTER NINE #3
“Come in,” Letty said in a strained tone.
The door opened, and Sana’s youngest sister Naila poked her head in, smiling and looking quite fine, her lips painted a deep red that matched her dress. “Hiii, guys. Letty, the photographer is looking for the rings?”
“I don’t have the fucking rings,” Letty snapped. “Everyone keeps asking me for stuff I don’t have, the coordinator has everything.”
“Okay, my b,” Naila said, remaining cheerful. “He just came over to the west wing to ask us, and we weren’t sure.”
“Yeah, sorry, it’s the coordinator. Sorry for snapping.”
“Girl, it’s whatever, I’m sure I’ll be even worse when I get married. Your hair looks gorgeous, by the way.” Naila opened the door a little more and looked Scott up and down. “And Scott, you look great,” she said. “You look like Hozier.”
Letty cracked out a laugh. “He hates Hozier.”
“I don’t — I don’t hate Hozier,” Scott said to Naila, who looked betrayed. “I’m a little tired of hearing about him, is all.”
“Hating Hozier would be crazy,” Naila said.
“I don’t!”
She shook her head. “By the way, the photographer’s second shooter said she knows your band,” she said. “She was really hype about it, actually.”
“Cool,” Scott said warily, knowing this could presage either a great interaction or an unsettling one.
“Okay, I’m gonna go tell the photographer to find the coordinator, then?”
“Sounds great,” Letty said with an exaggerated thumbs up.
After Naila pulled the door shut again, Scott said, “I’m serious that this has no lasting implications whatsoever.”
“That just doesn’t sound true to me,” Letty said, “because I sense Carver is on the verge of blowing up his life, and you’ve clearly never fully gotten over him —”
“— not true —”
“So why do you still ask me about him?”
“To be polite,” Scott spluttered. “I’m a nice guy, I’m polite.”
“Oh, yeah?” she said. “Do you ask me about my other cousins, ever? I have eight cousins, Scott.”
“I didn’t lose my virginity to any of those people!”
“You’re gonna get me in such shit with Aunt Nora. She’s gonna axe-murder me and make Sana a widow. She’s gonna ask for her wedding money back with interest.”
“Hey, speaking of your wedding, I’m gonna go downstairs and rehearse now, okay? Is that cool?”
Letty closed her eyes and massaged her forehead. “I do think that is what you should go do, yeah.”
“Sorry I stressed you out on your wedding day. I love you. You look beautiful.”
Letty snorted. “Go. I love you. Go fuck yourself. Go fuck my cousin.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. It’s fine, seriously. Let’s get on with the day’s program, okay?”
“Sounds good.” Scott pulled the door back open, letting in the loud chatter of the bridal suite. “If I don’t see you again before, uh — good luck out there.”
“You too,” Letty called after him as he slipped away.
Carver was the second in the house to finish getting ready, behind his dad, who had been waiting for the rest of them in the car since 1 p.m. He was fully groomed and dressed by 1:30, at which point everyone else was still milling around and calling to each other, “Where’s my —?”
Bailey was stomping around sulking because she had lost the flower girl position to Priscilla’s daughter Kimmy, who was younger and more closely related, and Carver somehow only made it worse when he reminded her that she’d been the flower girl at his wedding.
“I don’t even REMEMBER that,” she screamed as if demonically possessed, and Carver had no choice but to flee the foyer for higher ground.
He was attempting to avoid his wife, who was getting ready with Conway so they could both make use of Lillian’s absurdly expensive beauty products.
(“Maybe she’ll find a husband at this,” Lillian had told Carver earlier.
“She’s a pretty girl, she’s just got that tall, round-faced German milkmaid look that isn’t really in right now.
She’d probably do better with men in a recession, don’t you think?
”) So he made his way to his parents’ bedroom, which was otherwise not his first choice but currently felt like a demilitarized zone, and knocked.
“Come in,” Nora called, and Carver entered.
“Don’t,” protested Chip, who was sitting at Nora’s vanity while their mother daubed liquid concealer under his eyes with a beauty sponge. “I don’t need him in here while you’re putting makeup on me, Christ.”
“You look beautiful, man,” Carver said.
“Don’t forget this is your fault, you little prick.”
“Boys,” Nora interrupted. She looked over at Carver, peering at him through her reading glasses. “Oh, you look so handsome, sweetie.” (Chip rolled his eyes.) “That’s a great tux.”
Carver looked down at himself, fidgeting restlessly.
He’d barely slept the night before, and the earlier Xanax had almost sent him back to bed, so an hour ago he took a modafinil then crushed and snorted a second one.
It was doing its rocket fuel job and working politely with the benzo, but the excess physical energy always begged to spill out.
“Thanks,” he said, flattered. “It’s a good fit? ”
“Very good fit. Where’s it from?”
“Kiton,” Carver said.
Nora let out an impressed-sounding whistle as she continued to dab at Chip. Finally Chip twisted his head away, putting his hand up to block hers, and said, “This is stupid — you can tell I’m wearing makeup and you can tell there’s a bruise.”
“I’m layering it. You have to let me layer it. I know what I’m doing.”
“Wipe it off and just let me go with two black eyes. What’s the big deal? Shit happens. If people ask me, I’ll tell them the truth.”
“They won’t ask you,” Nora said. “They’ll be polite and then talk about it behind our backs.”
“No, if we don’t cover it, it’ll be fair game and they’ll ask what happened,” Chip said. “If we cover it, they’ll think I’m trying to hide something, like Maggie’s been beating my ass.”
Carver couldn’t help laughing at this. Nora sighed.
“It’s my face,” Chip said, watching his mother in the mirror.
“Fine.” Nora threw her hands in the air. “Fine. Do what you want. I’m going to go round people up.”
She swept out of the room in a flash of green floral fabric.
As she ducked to pull her gauzy shawl up around her shoulders, Carver got a look at the crown of her head, where he could see two weeks’ worth of graying mousy roots starting to bloom beneath the salon blonde.
Every time he spotted his mother’s roots he got the deranged impulse to point at them and shout, A-ha!
Carver went and sat on his parents’ neatly-made California king, then picked up a New Yorker from the bedside table so he could look at the cover illustration.
Chip dabbed at his face with makeup wipes for a minute or two before turning to him, swiveling on the vanity’s stool.
While Carver was worried about the few pounds he’d lost since he was fitted for his tux, he could tell Chip had put on a few since buying his.
Like Doug, weight gain and graying hair seemed to distinguish rather than diminish him.
In a tux, Chip looked like he was about to receive an award at a Chamber of Commerce dinner.
“It’s hilarious how much this is pissing Mom off,” Chip said. “And somehow she doesn’t blame you for the bruising, only the initial incident. Like she thinks I should have toughened up and just sucked the blood back into my face.”
Carver laughed. “That’s the British in her, I guess.”
“No kidding, she’s always been like that. Every hard hit in football, she was like, walk it off, kid. The only time I really saw her worried was when you fucked your shoulder.”
“She was worried?”
“Yeah,” Chip said. “We all were, they took you off the field on a stretcher, we didn’t know if it was cervical or your head or what. Drama queen.”
“I didn’t ask for the stretcher. I couldn’t even talk, I was trying not to throw up.”
Chip shrugged. “It was a hard hit. Fietz was probably worried about your neck, too.”
Carver realized that in his own bizarre way, Chip was trying to apologize for the comments that had led to his black eye.
“When they came to see me in the hospital, they didn’t seem worried,” Carver said. “They were like — ‘Tough luck, kid, maybe throw the ball next time, you got surgery on Thursday and physical therapy starts the week after.’”
“Yeah, well. I think they had this idea that…” Chip scratched the back of his head.
“I get it a little better now that I have kids. Like, when they fall, you’re not supposed to make a big deal at first, because they take their cues from you.
So if you freak out, they’ll start flopping at every little thing, and they won’t be as resilient. ”
“Flopping? Like in the NBA?”
“You know what I mean, man.”
“But when they get old enough to tell you how bad it was,” Carver said, “maybe it’s better to take them seriously.”
Chip shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t have faith that they made us resilient.” He laughed. “Actually, I know they don’t.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, for one, I can tell, and for another, Dad’s basically told me as much. He actually thinks you have the most grit out of the three of us, but then you explode in hysteria —”
“I don’t have hysteria —”
“— he thinks you’re a pillhead with an eating disorder —”
“Why?” he spluttered unconvincingly.
“— so he’s worried something needs to change if you have kids, like you’d need to get a different job or leave the city, otherwise you guys will end up making your kids nuts —”
“I might not have kids,” Carver interrupted.
Chip’s eyebrows went up. “No?”
“Yeah. I told him that yesterday. It might not be in the cards. It’s not even something I’m particularly interested in other than as, like, a duty.” It was a relief to admit this to someone other than his dad.
“Shit. Okay.”
“Are you gonna try to argue me out of that?”
“Fuck no,” Chip said. “No, I, uh —” He laughed.
“I love my kids, but, like, I did it out of duty too, and I guess I had this romantic idea of being a dad and teaching them stuff and them thinking I’m the shit.
And that is part of it, but mostly it’s, like, never getting to be selfish.
And I’m a selfish guy, I realized. Oops.
When Maggie told me she was pregnant with Aaron, I had this, like — I was waking up in cold sweats, getting bad road rage, going out for fast food at two a.m., I had that thing with that girl from work.
” He shrugged. “You don’t want kids? Don’t have kids.
Easy. Don’t listen to Mom and Dad. They’re running their own game, you have to focus on yours. ”
Carver sat there somewhat stunned. It wasn’t a secret that Chip had stepped out on Maggie a few times, but he’d never heard him speak with such self-awareness. “Okay,” he said.
“I fell on the sword so you don’t have to,” Chip said. “You or Connie. Grandkids are secured, legacy is secured. You’re fucking welcome.” He slapped his thighs and got to his feet. “Just enjoy that smokeshow Viking wife of yours in peace.”
“Enough about my wife.”
“I’m trying to pay you a compliment,” Chip said, adjusting his left cufflink, “one which you are too gay and mentally unsound to appreciate —”
“— fuck you —”
“But seriously, congratulations as always —”
“— go fuck yourself —”
“And she’s a pistol, too, a little bit mental in her own way, so she must be incredible in bed.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Carver snapped, “before I break your nose for real.”
Chip grinned at him. “Shall we?” he said, gesturing toward the door.