Chapter 7
HALLIE
"Can I say something," Theo said, which in my family is never a question.
We were walking the seawall before breakfast, because my brother believes in walks the way other men believe in church, and the morning was doing that island thing where the light comes off the water twice.
I'd been up since five, jet-lagged sideways by kitchen hours, and I'd said yes to the walk because you say yes to the groom, and because for as long as I can remember the whole project has been yes, everything's lovely, more juice?
"You're going to say it either way," I said. "Go."
"It means a lot. You and E doing the cake.
" He had his hands in his pockets and his face aimed out at the water, which is how men in my family deliver feelings, broadside, at a horizon.
"I know it's…I know you two were a thing a hundred years ago, and it went sideways, and everybody tiptoes around it like it's a load-bearing wall.
But watching you two in that kitchen last night through the window—" he grinned "—it was like the old days. The riot years."
"You watched us through a window?"
"Lauren watched. I was carrying her shoes." He shrugged. "She said you looked like a documentary about competence."
"That's the nicest thing she's ever said about me."
"Don't tell her I told you the shoes part."
The seawall ran out ahead of us, white stone, pelicans conducting their grim business off the end of it. I thought we'd landed the plane. I had my breakfast face halfway on. And then my brother, who loves me, who has never in his life swung at anything on purpose, said:
"He never got over you, you know."
The water kept doing its two-lights thing. I counted a pelican.
"Theo."
"I'm just saying it because nobody says it.
" He said it gently, God, that was the worst part, he said it the way you'd hand someone something fragile.
"Six years. He works, he sits on boards, he leaves every party by ten, alone.
Every party, Hal. I used to think he'd snap out of it, and then I stopped thinking that, and now I just—" He blew out a breath.
"You broke his heart. I know that's not a crime.
Feelings change, you were young, whatever it was.
But you broke him, and he came anyway, every Christmas, every funeral, and he never made it your problem, and I guess I think that's—I think that's kind of remarkable, is all.
That's the whole speech. Lauren said not to give it. "
Here is an itemized list of what it costs to stand on a seawall while your brother tells you, tenderly, that you broke the heart of the man you found inside another woman at your own rehearsal dinner:
One smile, held. One pelican, counted twice.
One breakfast face, fully installed. One sentence, he was inside Celeste while our mother was toasting the salmon, assembled, loaded, safety on, holstered, the way it has been assembled and holstered every few months since, because firing it costs him this walk, this wall, this wedding, thirty years of best-friendship and a business besides, and the target's already down the hall laughing at something with my father.
"Poor him," I said. That makes two of us. He left every party by ten. I left my own wedding rehearsal. We are not the same. "Are we done? The tide's coming in."
"Be normal with him this week," Theo said. "That's all I'm asking. Not for him. For Lauren. For me a little."
"Theo. Look at me. I am a machine of normal."
"You're a lunatic of normal."
"It's the family style."
He laughed and put his arm around me, and we walked back with the tide coming in under us, and he felt better, I could tell, lighter, a man who'd finally said the hard true thing. That's the tax code of my silence: everyone else gets the deduction.
I made it until eleven, and then I walked into Jenna's cottage without knocking, closed the door, leaned on it, and said, "He gave me the speech."
Jenna was on the bed with a paperback and airline pretzels. She put both down.
"Which speech?"
"The he-never-got-over-you speech. On the seawall. Before I'd eaten anything, Jen. On an empty stomach."
"Oh, the seawall speech." She sat up. "What's our count on the pretzels-to-rage ratio here? Do I need actual food."
"He said—" and I did Theo's voice, which is a hittable pitch, "—he never made it your problem.
Never made it my problem. The leaving alone thing.
The leaves-every-party-by-ten thing. Like it's—like it's character, like the man's a monk with a portfolio, and I'm standing there like—" I ran out.
I do run out, eventually; it surprises people. "I counted a pelican."
"How many times."
"Twice."
"Okay." Jenna got off the bed and did the thing she does, which is stand in front of me with her arms crossed, not touching me, like a spotter. She's been my spotter since the fourth grade. "Give me the rest of it."
"There's no rest of it."
"Hallie."
"He asked me to be normal with him. For Lauren." I laughed, and it came out with a corner on it. "I'm baking a wedding cake in a locked room every night with the man, at his elbow, passing him bowls. I invented normal. I am the distributor."
Jenna watched me for a second. The scan, part line to keys.
"You know what I notice," she said. "Six years, and the story where you're the villain has gotten so comfortable in this family that your own brother gives you a speech about that man's heart on a seawall, unprompted, before breakfast. And you took it.
Again. You'll take it all week. And I have to watch, and needlepoint my little death-themed needlepoints, and keep my enormous mouth shut, because you asked me to, once, in a voice I never want to hear again, and I'll do it, Hal, I'll do it forever, you know I will.
" She picked her sunglasses up off the nightstand and folded them shut, click, like a gavel.
"But one word. That's all it would take. One word, Hal. One."
"I know," is what I said. "Pass the pretzels."