Chapter 13
WILLIAM
William’s shirt was wrinkled, marked with gouges like valleys on a map.
The iron in the hotel room had not been hot enough, and he hated being so expected: William, the youngest, the dishwasher with the unkempt shirt.
He felt like he should have foreseen this ineffective iron, gotten his shirts pressed and wrapped in paper, that this was something his father should have taught him: how to properly pack a suitcase, trim his eyebrows, balance a checkbook.
His father had been intelligent and charismatic, but also unreliable and self-involved, clearly unsure how to raise a boy, certain only that he didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of his own father.
William sometimes thought he’d have preferred that virile discipline, that it would have been better than such an absence.
His father was closer to Shay, though as he became more manic, she pulled further and further away from him. By seventh grade, she no longer asked to accompany him on assignments. By tenth, they did not even discuss the books she read.
Outside the hotel, Oscar insisted on finishing his cigarette after the man helming the golf cart told him he didn’t want Oscar smoking on the drive—he hated the smell of menthols.
Scott glared at his watch as Oscar burned his Newport down to the filter, Vivian swaying to a song no one could hear.
William nervously picked at his frayed cuticles, remembering what Aunt Eleanor said at Shay’s graduation party when his cousins argued over whether Ringo was a good drummer.
Look at those funny ducks. He thought of whether she’d be on one of those steel trays that slid in and out of what looked like a giant filing cabinet, if Lewis was waiting by the phone.
Of the envelope for Shay he had to decide whether or not to deliver.
When they finally arrived at the party, Vivian grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward the bar.
The lawn was so crowded it made the house look slight.
As they wound through the men in their linen, the women with gold barrettes and silk flowers pinned in their hair, he could not see Shay.
There were others he should say hello to: Mrs. Pruitt, small and thin as a matchbook, surreptitiously tightening one of the bows looped around a cocktail table, though after her words yesterday, he felt like he owed her nothing; his uncle Michael, who was goading his son Harry—who could not have been more than ten—into drinking a sip of beer.
There was Andrew on the porch, circled by men who looked like they’d tip poorly at the restaurant, though worse were the patrons who thanked William every time he picked up a dirty fork.
As if that would absolve them of their fifty-dollar bottle of wine and the dessert they barely touched, all of their excess, when men on talk shows kept warning that famine was imminent, that hundreds of millions would be dead of starvation in the next decade.
Sometimes it felt like William was the only one listening. Even Shay would dismiss his fears. Your heart is so big, she’d say. But sometimes, you just need to look out for yourself.
At the party, short threads of conversation caught his ears, overwhelming him. The bar was swarmed, Oscar and Vivian arguing over what would be the most expensive drink they could order: a glass of scotch, as the bottle’s font was in gold foil, or a highball filled with champagne.
“What do you want?” Vivian asked him.
“Just a Coke,” William said.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.”
“How could you forget about our William, patron saint of dishwashers and teetotalers?” Oscar said, scratching the top of William’s head as if he were a dog.
“Leave him alone,” Scott said. They had just arrived, and already Scott sounded exhausted. Though he was only four years older than them, the same age as Shay, the war seemed to have aged him decades.
William spotted his mother standing at the party’s outskirts, talking to her sister Nora, whom she both loved and hated, in equal measure, and some of Shay’s friends from high school.
He had friends when he was younger, little boys he’d spend afternoons with for no particular reason other than that they sat next to one another at Boy Scouts or stumbled into one another on a lonely stretch of grass at recess, floating together and apart with the aimless energy of stray balloons.
It was the same now: beer and soda with Alejandro from the restaurant or movies with his roommate.
Shay had been his best friend, and so he mostly felt alone.
The bartender gave him a tumbler of soda with an anemic wedge of lime. Limes and lemons are some of the dirtiest shit in the kitchen. We never bother washing the rind, one of their old sous-chefs had once told him. He picked out the wedge and folded it into a napkin.
“So, William,” Oscar began after taking a sip of his scotch. “Are you going to tell us what the actual deal is with Shay?”
“Looks like you can ask her yourself,” Vivian said, raising her glass over his shoulder.
They turned, and William found her.
Shay was being embraced by their aunt Pam, the most sentimental among them, mother to their youngest cousins and too many dogs.
Shay pulled away, resting her palm on Pam’s upper arm.
She wore a sleeveless white wrap dress, her throat and ears bare.
Her dark copper hair was shorn to no longer than an inch.
As if sensing him, she looked directly at William and smiled.
There was something different about her posture, but it was a smile he recognized—close-lipped and knowing—not the feral grin of the women in the newspaper.
He was overwhelmed with relief. It was habit; Shay calmed him, even when it had been nearly a year since he’d seen her.
A Catholic priest had referred to Mary as the Undoer of Knots, and William thought yes, that was Shay.
Scott was clapping him on the back, urging him forward.
He wanted to be alone with his sister, but they were all moving toward her in a pack.
“Where the hell have you dragged us, cousin?” Oscar said, pulling Shay into a hug. “Chicago not fancy enough for you?”
Shay laughed, though William could see her stiffen in Oscar’s embrace. There was a Band-Aid wrapped around her pointer finger and thumb. When they separated, Vivian took Shay’s hand in her own, appraising her engagement ring.
“Sapphires,” Vivian said, looking at the two stones kissing the diamond. “They’re beautiful. The stones of royalty. They bring protection.”
Shay slipped her hand out of Vivian’s grasp, a bit jerkily, like she did not want to be touched. It surprised William; she was always comfortable in her body, affectionate with those she loved. “Well, I’ll take all the help I can get,” she said, and turned to William.
“Brother,” she said.
“Sister,” he said.
This was what they always called each other in mock formality, but when they hugged, he felt it—some constraint in her body, a remove.
“Your shirt’s wrinkled,” she said faintly, pulling at his collar as she stepped back.
Shay was the only one who ever corrected his mistakes and shook him out of his stupors, rattling him back into his body.
She bought him his first canister of deodorant, told him he needed to buy his high school girlfriend, Brenda, a corsage for homecoming, always tethering him to the physical world.
“Oh, yeah, the hotel’s iron was broken,” he said.
“What a dump,” she said. “Who chose that place?”
“Not sure, but it could really use some fresh paint.”
She smiled again, but Oscar interrupted any brief spell of normalcy. “Scott was wondering if you were going to do any readings. At the ceremony.”
“Readings?” Shay asked.
“Yeah, you know, like Bible verses or—” Oscar continued.
“I’ve just been reading some poetry is all,” Scott said, suddenly bashful, his ears a warm pink. “I was just saying I bet you’d choose something good.”
“Oh, Andrew has done all of that. He arranged everything with the church, so I’m not sure.”
She had become distracted, no longer looking any of them in the eyes.
William was surprised. Shay was not one to surrender control.
As early as age seven, she’d given strict instructions for her own birthday parties.
Angel food cake. Green streamers. No magicians, no clowns.
For gifts, she always wanted her father to buy one of his favorite books from when he was a boy.
For their mother not to hide in the stairwell and smoke while guests were present.
“Shay.” Andrew had appeared, looking older than when William had seen him last. He gently cupped Shay’s elbow as if she were something frail, and she startled at his touch. “My parents want us with them when they make their speech.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.” Andrew looked away from her, noticing William for the first time. His eyes widened and he smiled. “William!”
William extended his hand, but Andrew had already stepped forward to embrace him. He smelled like beer and peppermint, a faint sour note of sweat.
“This is a nice house. Very big,” William said when they broke apart, instantly wishing he could swallow the words back into his throat. It was the first thought he had, and he could see Oscar grinning as he swirled his dregs of scotch.
“Thank you,” Andrew said. “I can’t remember when they built it, but we’ve had this land—my family has—since, well, before there was an America, really, if you can believe it.”
Oscar whistled, long and low, and Vivian backhanded his bicep to silence him.
Andrew looked at Shay, waiting to be introduced to these strangers—only William and his mother had flown out for the engagement party—but she was fixed on someone in the distance, her face suddenly vulnerable.
Her teeth were pressed to her bottom lip in excitement or fear, he could not tell, unable to follow her line of sight through the crowd.
He tried to suppress an image of the figure on the golf cart, their arm thin and white as bone.
“I don’t think we’ve—” Andrew began.
“We should go now, yes?” Shay said.
“Yes, yes, we should,” Andrew agreed, smiling apologetically at them all. “I’m sorry to pull her away. I hope you’re having a good night.”
“We are,” Vivian said. “It’s a lovely party.”
“Exceptional alcohol,” Oscar said, raising his empty glass and shaking it.
Andrew smiled, guiding Shay away by the small of her back.
She did not even say a word of goodbye or look to William before being consumed by the party’s din.
The relief he’d felt at the sight of her drained from his body, and the sugar from the Coke made it feel like his marrow was fizzing and popping.
He needed to eat, but for the first time in months, he wanted a drink.
His cousins had been talking to one another, and he caught something about Andrew, how he looked like a baseball player from their high school they all hated.
Nearby, someone was speaking in a low tone about one of the waiters—if his hair was actually that short because he’d served in Vietnam, like he’d claimed.
“Time for another round,” Scott said.
“I think I’ll join you.” William abandoned his watery Coke on a nearby table.
Oscar whooped. “The party’s just begun!”