Chapter 18
chapter
eighteen
I have avoided Eitan for a month. Which is about the time it has taken to stop cringing every time I relive the moment of his lips going completely slack beneath mine. Like kissing a dead fish.
Which is just the same, because it’s been a month of nonstop talking Penelope off the ledge.
It’s late August and we have sailed past the two month mark for the wedding.
The photos Pen posts on Instagram show a gleeful author on her mega book tour, but our text string is full of midnight update requests and long rants, always about varying combinations of three topics: Louise and Calliope plotting against her, Josh’s family being simultaneously demanding and exclusionary, and Miri’s somehow continued sabotage of the wedding (despite being fired two months ago).
Between chipping away at the cursive transcription of every guest’s name onto an escort card, and inscribing two hundred copies of Penelope’s new poetry collection with a rubber-stamp signature to give out as party favors, I attempt to quell her concerns.
Louise and Calliope are doing a lot to help, and are happy to be involved, I assure her.
Calliope sent out invitations and is wrangling the seating chart.
Whether or not she complains, she’s doing a heck of a lot more than Penelope right now.
I’m sure Josh’s family is just a little overwhelmed by the big day.
They’re very excited to have you as a part of the family.
Penelope has also taken to complaining to me about her conversion class, which she’s been delayed graduating due to lack of attendance.
I rake my hands through my hair every time, wondering if I should remind her that converting is a choice, and if she doesn’t want to be Jewish, she doesn’t have to be.
She’s in the unique position of opting in, a choice my genetics don’t really leave room for.
On one of the few phone calls we’ve had—always to talk about the wedding—Pen says things like, “Maybe they will be nicer to me once I can say the prayers,” and proceeds to imitate the rabbi in a wobbling, priestly voice.
While the imitation is reasonably accurate, something about it feels derisive.
I’ve started a countdown clock until the big day and my relinquishment of all things wedding related.
(And the assurance that Eitan will be in another state, or country, if I’m lucky.) Ironic to go from pitifully underbooked to grossly overworked in one summer.
At least there’s no way to exit Pen’s graces after this.
I think I’ve secured my spot in that friend group for two lifetimes.
I stare at Louise’s contact in my phone.
I’ve been dreading the Call Louise to check in bullet on Pen’s to-do list. I don’t understand why it’s on my list, but things stopped making sense about three bullets prior when Penelope asked me to create a mood board for wedding nails.
(Champagne? Silver chrome? Baby blue ombre? How am I supposed to know!)
Part of my hesitation is that I am deeply intimidated by Louise.
The other part, though, is hesitant because I know I need to ask how she’s doing, cancer-wise.
It’s not that I don’t want to know, or don’t care, it’s just hard being smacked in the face with a reminder of what recurrence can look like.
A lifetime of treatments. Pain that’s strong enough to need home infusions. Loss of mobility.
I shake off my reticence. I can’t be scared of talking to someone with cancer—that’s the battle I’m constantly waging with everyone who tip-toes around me.
I press the button to dial and hold my breath.
“Hello?” Louise hollers into her receiver.
I yank the phone away from my ear to recover. “Hi, Louise. It’s Ruby.”
“Who?”
I sigh. “Gem.”
“Oh. Hello, Gem.”
I wait, my stomach plummeting in the silence. I shouldn’t have called—
“Well, what is it?” Louise asks with her signature bluntness.
“Nothing! I just wanted to see how you’re doing…and give you some updates on the wedding.”
“Oh.” She coughs. “I’m fine.”
There’s a faint rhythmic sound in the background. “Is that beeping I hear?”
“I’m visiting a friend in the hospital,” Louise says.
“Oh, do you need to get back to them? I can call another time—”
“No, no, Gem. They’re asleep. Talk to me.” The last sentence she says without any of her usual chutzpah. If her friend is in the hospital, she probably needs a pick-me-up.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “They’re not doing well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s hard getting old. Watching your friends die. In my head, I’m still twenty-five. Then I look in the mirror and I get a jump scare. I can’t walk without my entire body aching. And these drugs they make me take—Lord.”
“That—sucks,” I say, for lack of anything better to offer.
“Is it bad that I considered opting out of treatment when they first diagnosed the recurrence?” Louise pauses. By the time I realize she’s looking for me to say something, she speaks again. “I didn’t go through with it. I take the drugs, I do the scans. But sometimes, I still wonder.”
I think about Eitan’s dad, and how hard it was for Eitan to watch him give up on treatment. “I’m glad you did the treatment. Are doing the treatment. I—” I clear the emotion from my throat. “I think it’s worth fighting for.”
“I do too,” she says quietly. “But enough about that. Talk to me about you. What do you want?”
“Want? Like, right now?”
“What do you want? Cosmically speaking.”
“Cosmically?” I knead into my forehead. “I’m not sure…to feel like myself again?”
“What do you feel like now?”
“Some broken, damaged version of myself.”
“But that’s who you are. You have to take it all or nothing. You don’t get any second chances.”
I yank at a lock of hair. “Yeah,” I mutter.
“What about your bucket list? Have you made any progress on that?”
“I thought bucket lists were for chumps.”
Louise pffts. “You caught me on an off day. I still believe in bucket lists. It’s about wanting. If you don’t dream of anything, you’re truly dead. If I keep dreaming, I keep living.”
My mind veers, unavoidably, to Eitan. His body in Lake Michigan. His hands twirling me. His palm on my cheek.
“I want to be kissed. I want someone who takes care of me. I want an orgasm not made of silicone.”
Louise wheezes with laughter on the other end of the line.
“Was that too much?” I wince.
“No, that was perfect.”
“What about you? Northern lights, right?” I ask.
Louise tuts. “I’m accepting that one might be out of reach. But this wedding is a bucket list item.”
“Really? Why?”
“It’s silly, but I thought spending time with Penelope and Calliope would help me feel closer to Alfie.”
There’s so much hanging in her words, so much love and longing.
“He was always a softie when it came to his nieces, and when they had kids he was smitten. You might find it hard to believe now, but Penelope was a really cute kid.”
“No, that—” I laugh, imagining Penelope getting away with just about anything thanks to her heart-shaped face. “That I can definitely picture.”
“I thought planning the wedding together would make it feel like Alfie was doing it with us.”
The disappointment on the other end of the phone is a heavy silence, save for the heart rate machine’s steady beeping.
“But you’ve seen how that’s gone.” Louise sighs. “You want to know the craziest thing? When Pen told me that our top-of-the-line wedding planner—oh, what was her name?—had quit, I had the crazy thought that I would see more of her.” She laughs, which turns into a cough.
I’m turning her words over, a rather large nail snagging my thoughts. “Wait, Pen said she fired Miri.”
“No, no. Miri sent me a very polite email saying that she could no longer support the wedding and offered a referral to a planner she thought would be a better fit.”
The ground is unsteady. I lean against the wall, my thoughts racing. “Why…why?”
“Miri kept it very cordial, but I suspect my niece said something, or several somethings, that were—shall we say—untoward.”
“Why didn’t you hire another planner?”
The other end of the phone is quiet, save for Louise’s breathing. Finally, Louise speaks. “She said that she had a friend who would do the same thing for free.”
The phone drops away from my ear. Frustration wells in my throat. It’s not the most earth-shattering news, but having someone else say so plainly what I suspected heats up a heady cocktail of anger and embarrassment.
“Gem?” Louise’s voice is faint, sitting against my thigh.
“I’m—” I suck the emotion out of my voice. “I’m here.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that, dear.”
I don’t want consolation. I’m so sick of people feeling sorry for me. Something hardens inside me. The door to Sangrias and Syntax slams shut.
I shake my head. “It’s okay,” I say evenly, feeling far from myself.
“Pen and I have a deal.” A deal I’m even more bent on honoring.
If we have an agreement, then I’m not being used.
I am in control. “Speaking of, let’s talk about the wedding.
” My words are formal, curt. “There’s only one thing I need to talk to you about. The florals.”
Louise exhales a tired sigh. “I told her—”
“Forget Penelope,” I say sharply. “For my sake, will you say yes to both?” I clutch the phone. “I need to accomplish this.”
I need to hold onto the thread Penelope is tugging toward a writing career.
I need to find an agent.
I need to make everything I’ve gone through mean something.
Louise must hear the desperation. “It’s that important to you, dear?” she asks softly.
“Yes,” I whisper, not sure exactly what we’re talking about anymore.
“Say no more, then.” Her words are tinged with sadness. “It’s done.”
“Thank you,” I say, waiting for the wash of relief to come. It doesn’t.
“Louise—” a muffled voice calls somewhere far away.
“That’s my cue. Thanks for calling, Gem.”
Louise hangs up, and I’m left alone, feeling sick.
It’s the same residue that coated the inside of my mouth when Pen and I first made the agreement.
I slide down the wall right there, my body deciding it’s an appropriate time for a hot flash.
Instead of sticking my head in the freezer or sucking on frozen mango, I sit in it, wondering who I am becoming.