Fifty
Clara had hoped to find Nina in a quiet moment when they might have a real talk, but Nina greeted her at the rehearsal dinner by saying, “Dune tells me the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated, on a cooking show no less.” Clara gave a feeble laugh. “I would like to explain,” she said.
“Not tonight,” Nina said, not seeming particularly perturbed, smiling and waving at someone Clara did not recognize across the room. “We’ll talk later. After the wedding.” Nina patted Clara’s arm.
The rehearsal dinner was at the father of the groom’s house, which, of course, was also the mother of the bride’s house.
A beautiful summer evening. Clara was surprised at how relatively easy everyone was with each other.
Bridie and Dune and their happiness set the tone, and it seemed to throw a wash over their respective families.
Bridie was glowing, just like a bride should.
Dune seemed a little inebriated, but what was a celebration without lubrication, and he’d picked all the wines and was happy to share details with anyone who would listen.
Bridie had tried to explain to Clara the contours of this Frankenstein family, telling her how a welcome ease had developed during all the wedding planning.
Clara hadn’t quite believed it, but Bridie was right.
Clara was genuinely happy to see Fern and her partner, Naomi.
She didn’t mind talking to Honey, who had turned from the chiseled blond wife of her youth into a slightly rounder and mellower older woman who wanted to know which Broadway musicals Clara had seen.
“None of them?” Honey said, clearly disappointed.
“Nope,” Clara said. “Not my thing.”
Then Honey spent the next twenty minutes rhapsodizing about Phantom. “You must go. The chandelier falls!”
Clara watched her mother move through the room gracefully, always the hostess. Philip was talking to Sam, who then gave a beautiful toast to Bridie. Finn gave one for Dune. It was all—nice?
“I can certainly understand why you’ve steered clear of those ogres,” Philip said, tugging off his tie in their hotel room after dinner. After changing into more casual clothes, they were going to meet Bridie and Dune and some of their friends at the hotel bar. “Truly horrible people.”
She felt prickly and annoyed and defensive. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t recognize those people.”
“That’s what happens with time, if you’re lucky.
People change. We change. Sometimes for the better.
” His voice was sincere but not reprimanding.
She hugged him but didn’t say anything. She felt a bit like a little girl who was being asked to give up her stuffed toy because she was too old. Who was she without her indignation?
By the time Dune and Bridie arrived at the hotel bar, everyone was a little tipsy, more than a little exuberant.
Pitchers of beer and a few trays of shots and many spins around the dance floor later, Clara sat down at a booth to catch her breath, and the room started spinning a little.
Maybe she should have some water. Instead, she went to the bar and ordered a Bloody Mary, her old tried-and-true strategy for eking a few more hours of drinking out of the night.
The opening beats of the B-52s’ “Love Shack” filled the room, and Clara watched Bridie in the middle of the dance floor jumping around with Philip.
She looked deliriously happy. Something dark and unpleasant started to bloom in Clara, and she tried to shake it off.
Maybe she just needed to urinate. She pushed her way into the ladies’ room, but it wasn’t the ladies’ room, because standing there washing his hands and visibly weaving back and forth was Dune.
“Whoops!” she said, covering her eyes.
“You’re okay. Twenty seconds earlier and this could have been very awkward,” he said, hitting the button on the wall-mounted dryer.
“I was hoping we’d have a minute to talk,” she said.
“You didn’t have to chase me into the men’s room.”
“I didn’t.” She waved him off and stumbled a little, braced herself on the edge of a sink.
Dune ran his slightly damp hands through his hair.
He’d drunk a little more than he’d intended but wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t realize he had to hustle Clara out of the men’s room quickly.
He and Bridie had had a tense moment in the car on the way to the hotel bar when Bridie’d accused Dune of dropping her hand when Clara walked in to dinner.
“That’s not true,” he objected. (Was it true?) “If I stopped holding your hand it was because I needed to do something, open wine or help your mom or maybe my dad waved me over? I didn’t even see Clara until she came over to us! ” Bridie seemed to believe him.
“You okay?” he said to Clara, ushering her outside to a small room adjacent to the larger bar.
Clara tried not to stare at Dune’s face.
It was Dune! She hadn’t fully taken him in that day at the apartment with Philip standing there, and she’d avoided him when she arrived in town because of that old Rochester feeling: eyes on her every move.
But this was good. Nobody else around observing.
“Philip seems like a great guy,” Dune said.
“He is. He’s a much nicer person than I am.”
“Low bar,” Dune said, only kind of joking.
“I agree.”
“I’m kidding. I do want to thank you for being here,” Dune said. “Bridie didn’t want to do any of this without you.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Did you want me here?”
“Of course. I want what Bridie wants.”
“But when you came to New York,” Clara said, feeling her way through a question she now realized had been a constant undertow of her last few weeks, “was it because you wanted to find me for Bridie? Or because you wanted to find me for you?”
Dune tried to focus on the question. How many drinks had he had? “I don’t think we should be having this conversation.”
“But the question needs to be asked, right? It’s not insane to wonder.”
“It’s a little bit insane,” Dune said, backing a few steps away from Clara until he was against a wall.
“If you’re going to marry my sister, don’t you want to be sure?
” She moved closer. Put her hand on his arm.
Dune didn’t move. “We never got to do anything but kiss,” she pressed.
“Don’t you think about that sometimes? What might have happened?
Where it might have led? What a wasted opportunity it all was? ”
“Not really.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He looked past her shoulder and said, “I haven’t thought about it in a very long time.”
“Ah, but you did think about it. Like I did. About what we missed.”
She moved her hand down and linked her pinkie with his.
Dune would never forgive himself for not pushing past her, batting her hand away, calling for Bridie, but what he’d eventually tell Bridie about that moment was the truth: he wanted to know something, to recognize kindness or vulnerability or forgiveness on Clara’s face.
Acceptance. He had desired her, and he’d regretted their ending for too many years, but he was also searching for a kind of understanding.
“Clara,” he said, trying to disentangle their hands—and then he saw it, the Clara he had once loved flickered across her face: beguiling and stubborn and selfish, exactly as he remembered.
And he knew then, down to his marrow, that she held no power over him and hadn’t for a long time.
Bridie was his home now. And his refuge.
Before he could step away, Clara moved in as if to kiss him, and between his surprise and sodden reflexes, he stood there, dumbly, as her face inched closer until he heard Bridie’s trembling voice.
“Dune?”