Chapter 14
JOEL
As the father of the groom spoke, Joel edited the man’s speech.
It was impossible for him not to—the mistakes were as obvious as the sun.
First, cut the joke about the man’s brother at the bar, as more than half the party did not know him, their laughter faint and pained.
Abandon the football metaphor, the rambling about marriage as a team, and say something more relevant to the setting.
Marriage as a fine wine. Marriage as a ship out at sea.
Be more specific. Stop saying, And, well.
Less about the firm where his son works; more about his future daughter-in-law, whom he said nothing about, except that she was beautiful, which everyone already knew.
“What are you saying?” Carmen whispered, and only then did he realize he had been mumbling some of this under his breath.
The moment after he saw Shay, she was enveloped by an older blond woman in a salmon-colored dress.
Then there were four others, including Shay’s brother, whom Joel had only met at the funeral.
He and Shay had the same skin, the same narrow nose and full upper lip, though both suited her face better.
On a man, they were too fine, making his stubble appear painted, his countenance that of a boy, even though he towered over six feet.
And then there was Andrew, who had escorted Shay to her current position on the porch hanging over the patio, his family looking down on the party like royalty surveying a parade in their honor.
To be heard, Andrew’s father had to yell so loudly his voice cracked.
Andrew’s arm was carelessly slung over Shay’s shoulder.
Her own were crossed, her hands empty of a glass, though a toast was inevitable.
Her hair had grown back a little since he’d seen her at the building on Riverside, and though he had loved the weight of it swinging down her back, he thought this cut made her even more striking.
The planes of her face were sharp as a silhouette.
“. . . and so let’s all raise a glass, or two, or three—it is an open bar, after all—to the lovely couple,” Mr. Pruitt concluded. He held his glass of red wine aloft, and everyone followed. Joel lifted his tumbler to his lips but did not take a sip. Seeing Shay had sobered him.
After the speech, the party found itself again. Conversations rekindled and waiters resumed their circuits. Muffled pops of champagne bottles punctuated the air. Everyone seemed looser, calmed by the absence of calamity.
“She’s very pretty,” Carmen said. She was plucking ice from her glass and crunching it between her teeth. The sound irritated him.
“Who?” he asked, though he knew the answer.
“Shay. She looks kind of like Mia Farrow.”
“I think that’s just the hair.”
“Maybe,” she said, looking around. “So, now that we’ve eaten our weight in hors d’oeuvres, what’s our next conquest?”
Joel watched as Shay and Andrew reemerged from the patio doors.
Her eyes searched the crowd, as if there was someone she was looking for, and his pulse quickened at the possibility it was him.
When she was on the balcony, his whole body had willed her to find him in the spill of faces, each shining up at her like a coin, but she had only looked at her future father-in-law, or, really, to the ocean beyond him, barely listening to a word coming out of his mouth.
Joel knew this face from particularly boring lectures and late nights at the Palms, when Ken would demonstrate sailing knots with someone’s shoelace.
A waiter offered Shay a flute of champagne, which she refused.
He remembered—in Synanon, you were not allowed to drink, though of course she would not have to follow those rules anymore.
“Any friends from Cornell we should look for?” Carmen asked in response to his silence. She angled her head, trying to hook his attention.
“Sorry,” he said, wincing at how obviously preoccupied he must appear.
“That’s okay.” She laughed. “So, college friends?”
“Yeah, I don’t really have any here. I wasn’t part of Shay’s circle. I’m still not.”
“Well, then, how did you—” Carmen began, but she was interrupted by a woman braying Joel’s name.
It was Betty McDonaugh in a ruffled ballerina-pink dress that would have better suited a flower girl. Her hair was exactly as she’d worn it in college, too long, her fine blond strands thinning to a wisp at her breast.
“Betty,” he said. “Hi.”
He was surprised to find her here. She was a part of Shay’s pack at school, but only because her father made an incomprehensible amount of money as the president of a pharmaceutical company.
They all go to stay at her house on Newport, Shay once told him.
Her family has someone on staff just to steer their boat.
He remembered seeing Betty’s father at graduation—somber and skeletal, a man who looked like his only pleasure in life came from giving orders.
Betty herself was needy, constantly pecking the others with questions about whether she looked all right, if she should have another drink, if what she said in class sounded stupid.
Eventually someone would erupt, Jesus, Betty, stop it, and she’d be chastened for a few days, and then it would all begin again, like a sickness, incurable and barely suppressed.
Last he heard, her fortune had opened the door to a minor accessories-editor position at Glamour.
“It’s been so long,” Betty said, pressing her hand against his chest, as if to steady herself. Her words melted at their edges, and there was an empty wineglass in her hand.
“It has,” he said, turning to Carmen, whose eyebrows were raised in amusement. “This is Carmen, my—”
“I love your dress,” Betty said, swaying in Carmen’s direction. “You look like a Spanish dancer. I always thought you were so pretty, ever since we had that seminar together in Warren.”
“Thank you,” Carmen said. “But I didn’t—”
Betty turned to him. “Ken told us you were here, and we were all saying that, that we couldn’t believe you came. I didn’t even know you still talked to Shay, that you were still—” She fluttered her hand.
“Friends?” he offered.
“Oh, come on, you and Shay were never friends. We all knew.” She smiled slyly at Carmen, as if she were part of the collective. “We all knew.”
A panic—which had begun to stir in his chest ever since Betty stumbled toward them—flared to full force.
Carmen’s mouth hovered open, a question she couldn’t really ask forming on her tongue.
Betty was complaining that she’d lost the others, that they must have gone inside when she decided she needed another pour of chardonnay.
“We were just—” he began, desperate to untangle from her.
“I’m going to find a bathroom,” Carmen said. Her smile was false and hard, but Betty did not notice.
“There’s one off the living room,” Betty said. “It was so good to see you, and don’t forget, we have to dance together at the wedding. My Spanish dancer.”
“I’ll come with you,” he offered.
“I don’t need a guide,” Carmen said. “You two keep catching up.”
She knocked her shoulder against his and slipped into the crowd. He could go after her. He could brush Betty aside and grab Carmen’s hand, escorting her to the party’s edge, to somewhere quiet enough to talk, but he did not know what he would say.