5
It wasn’t till we were driving home that my mother asked what was bothering me. “Bothering me!”
I said. “Nothing’s bothering me.”
“Very well,”
she said, and she looked pointedly out her side window.
By this time it was dark, and the rain was still in retreat, although Max did turn his wipers on just to whisk the occasional drop away. “Did you enjoy the rehearsal?”
he asked Mom.
“Yes, thank you,” she said.
“I kind of wish that had been it,”
he said. “Seems like the wedding tomorrow will just be the same thing all over again.”
“But with fewer et ceteras,”
she suggested.
“Let’s hope.”
“And fancier clothes.”
“?’Fraid you’re right.”
“Although that uncle of theirs was quite dressed-up even tonight,”
she said musingly.
“The uncle and Gail here used to be an item,”
Max told her.
“They did?”
Mom said. “Really?”
she asked me.
“We went out a few times,” I said.
“I did notice he was all over you.”
“He wasn’t all over me!”
“Why else would he be so quick to tell you he was no longer married?”
she asked. “And then when he practically mowed me down trying to sit next to you at dinner! I had to stick out my pointy elbows in order to make him back off.”
Max laughed.
“Now, the maid of honor,”
she went on. “Elizabeth? Was that her name? Goodness, she certainly doesn’t have her mother’s sense of style.”
“Well, let’s see what she looks like tomorrow,” I said.
“I doubt she’ll do much better,”
Mom told me.
This was sort of a satisfaction. I still held Elizabeth to blame for making Debbie unhappy.
I wished I could give Debbie a magic amnesia pill. I wished I had an amnesia pill myself.
* * *
After we had dropped Mom off and were heading back to my house, I slumped in the passenger seat like a sack of flour. “That was work,”
I told Max.
“Which part of it?” he asked.
“All of it! So many people, so many nice-to-meet-yous!”
But we always had this discussion. I don’t think I’d ever come home from a social event without feeling drained and exhausted. Max, on the other hand…Max was oblivious. Really he was no more adept than I was, but he just muddled through anyhow.
Back when the two of us were married, we were notorious for leaving parties before anybody else. “Oops! There go the Baineses!”
our host would cry, and one of the guests might say, dryly, “What a surprise.”
I kind of missed those days, I mean just in that one respect. It’s hard to leave early when there’s only one person doing it. So now when Max said, “I have to say, that mother of Kenneth’s is a lot to deal with,” I perked right up and said, “Tell me about it.”
“Do you think she’ll take over the marriage the way she’s taking over the wedding?”
“Well, bear in mind—” I began.
Bear in mind that Debbie’s no weakling, I was about to tell him. But then I rethought that. I wasn’t so sure anymore, so I didn’t finish my sentence. I merely shrugged.
We rode the rest of the way in silence. When we reached Ripken Street, Max pulled into the parking space behind my Corolla, once again closer than need be, and turned off the ignition but went on sitting there. I looked over at him. He was staring straight ahead. It was so quiet that I could hear the whiskery sound of his breathing. “Gail,”
he said finally, “when you said that Debbie had to trust Kenneth completely, she had to feel she could rely on every single word he said till the end of their days, did you mean that literally?”
“Of course,” I said.
“You meant without a single lapse. Without the slightest slip-up. Zero mistakes allowed.”
“We’re talking about our very own daughter’s marriage, Max,”
I said. “There’s no off-and-on about it. No, ‘Oh, well, whatever.’?”
“Right,” he said.
Then he let out an extra-long breath and said, “I realize I’m not going to win this one.”
It was so typical. We’d be getting along just fine and then he’d say something that reminded me he was this totally other, totally opposite kind of person from me. I yanked my door open and got out of the car. I was halfway up the front steps before I heard him open his own door.
In the living room, a single lamp was glowing on a side table. I could barely make out the shapes of the furniture in the dimness, but I saw little white bits of something scattered across the rug, and more bits on the couch, and more leading off toward the kitchen. “What on earth,”
I said. I switched on the overhead light. The bits were paper, the translucent kind like toilet paper; and sure enough, next to the rug I saw a naked cardboard tube. “Oh, boy,”
Max said. He called, “Kitty-kitty?”
“Here she is,”
I said. She was curled up in the armchair she’d occupied before, wearing a frowsy, confused look as if we’d wakened her from a nap. I tut-tutted at her and she blinked, all innocence.
Max stooped to begin plucking the bits one by one from the rug, and I went to fetch the vacuum cleaner. “This is not what I would call being a good guest,”
he was telling the cat when I got back. I plugged in the vacuum cleaner and turned it on, and she grew more alert but she didn’t run away. “I guess she felt we’d left her alone too long,”
Max told me.
“Evidently,”
I said. The vacuum cleaner was an upright, but I was able to heave it onto the couch to tackle the cushions. When I moved on to the chairs, the cat rose from hers in a leisurely fashion and dropped to the floor and left, tail high in the air.
“Was that really just one single roll?”
Max asked. He had picked up the cardboard tube from the floor and was studying it. “How did she make such a mess?”
“I imagine it was quite a project,”
I told him.
Max went off to the kitchen to dispose of the tube, and I unplugged the vacuum cleaner and returned it to the coat closet.
When I came out to the kitchen, Max was standing in front of the fridge and surveying the contents. “Thinking of getting myself a beer,”
he told me. “How about you?”
“No, thanks.”
I paused a moment.
“I was wondering if Debbie might call,”
I said finally.
“She won’t call.”
“Just to rehash the rehearsal, I mean.”
“Not going to happen,” he said.
He chose a can of Old Dundalk and closed the fridge door. You would think the man lived here.
“Well,”
I told him. “Maybe I’ll head off to bed.”
“What—now? It’s barely nine o’clock!”
“It’s been a long day. Feel free to stay up yourself, though.”
“Oh. Okay. So, good night, I guess.”
As I left the room, he was settling into the chair that reclined. He tipped it back as far as it would go and said, “Aah, me.”
It was half a yawn and half a sigh.
I climbed the stairs and went into my room, where I switched a lamp on, closed the door—but then just plunked myself down on the edge of my bed and stared into space.
Max was right: she wasn’t going to call. Why should she call? She had her own separate life now. She always had.
Eventually, I rose and got ready for bed. Then I slipped between the sheets and turned off the lamp. A pale, glowing arc swung across my ceiling from a passing car, and I heard faint music in the distance.
After a moment I threw my blanket aside so I was lying under just a sheet. I sat up again to puff my pillow and I lay back down.
A few minutes later my door made an unlatching sound, and the vertical line of light at its edge grew wider and the cat padded in. Her footsteps were clearly audible; that was how heavy she was. I felt her dent my mattress as she sprang onto it.
But here’s what was weird: for one split second there, I’d thought it was Max at the door. I had felt this stab of outrage: Was there no escaping the man?
Anger feels so much better than sadness. Cleaner, somehow, and more definite. But then when the anger fades, the sadness comes right back again the same as ever.