Chapter 62
JOEL
There was another hand at Joel’s elbow, followed by a mumbled apology.
Everyone was grasping for purchase in the dark.
He knocked down the hallway, pressing his palms against the plaster, but when he came to the room he thought he’d seen Shay enter, there was only the outline of a large desk and an armchair, the faint spines of books.
Rain painted the window glass. The floor creaked, and when he turned around, he found Ken in the doorway.
“Did you see Shay?” Joel asked.
“No,” Ken said. “Someone said she was lying down upstairs.”
Joel rubbed his eyes. He should have had less to drink. It felt like the house had become the inside of his skull, or perhaps it was the other way around: everything was slips and shadows, whispers and cracks of light. He tried to find something stable, to remember why he was still there.
“What about Andrew? I need to talk to him.”
“I don’t think now is the time.”
“You said that before. And then it was dinner, and then the first dance. And now we’re in a pitch-black house, there’s no cake cutting, there’s no anything, so yes, I think now is the fucking time.”
Ken rolled his jaw. Their old antagonism had resurfaced, and in this, Joel found some small satisfaction. He flexed his fingers, the hum in his arms and chest returning.
“Fine. You want to talk to him? You can talk to him.”
Joel followed Ken down a hallway on the eastern side of the house, where fewer people had wandered.
With each step, he felt the humming intensify until he could almost hear it, the sound of an orchestra playing the same tight chord.
No candles were lit, and the rooms were all shut.
Ken knocked on one of the doors, softly calling Andrew’s name.
“I just need a few more minutes.” The voice was muffled, pained.
“It’s me,” Ken said, turning the handle.
There was a flashlight propped up on the sink next to a silver bowl of seashell-shaped soaps, its beam pointing to the ceiling, so the bathroom was cut into light and shadow.
Andrew was hunched over the toilet bowl.
Joel stood in the doorway as Ken waved his hand toward the sad, small shape of him, acting like a ma?tre d’ welcoming a guest to take a seat at a table.
“What’s he doing here?” Andrew had craned his neck, frowning at Joel’s figure. His words were viscous with spit.
Ken looked at Joel, folding his arms across his chest, making it apparent he would do nothing else to help him. The room smelled like alcohol and bile.
“I—” Joel began, but Andrew had already returned his attention to the toilet bowl, his stomach seizing with another convulsion. His hands gripped the porcelain, a ring winking at his knuckle, but nothing came. The only sound was a strained retching.
Joel did not know what to do. The adrenaline he’d felt walking down the hallway still lit up his muscles, but Andrew was not the opponent he’d expected.
His jacket was folded over the lip of the claw-foot tub, his shoes lined up in front of the sink.
His stockinged feet vulnerable. Joel could kick him in the stomach, but it would be briefer than his sickness, likely less painful than his shame at Joel being witness to his vomiting.
On the white ceiling, the flashlight projected a circle, an unblinking eye watching, waiting to see what Joel would do.
“Usually hair of the dog helps, but I guess not this time,” Ken said, patting Andrew on the shoulder. “Sorry.”
Andrew moaned. Ken filled an empty water glass in the sink, but when he offered it to Andrew, he waved it away.
Joel had been here many times with his friends, with his brothers.
The first time Joel’s youngest brother had gotten ill from alcohol—his baseball teammates had lifted a case of warm beer from the A&P—he’d asked Joel to sing him the lullaby their mother had serenaded them to sleep with when they were very young.
Joel had refused, but his brother insisted, rolling his sweaty forehead against the tile, and so Joel had sung softly to him, surprised that he knew every word.
Illness made everyone a child. Joel too had been a child under the roof of that house, desperate to pummel and batter.
But he couldn’t be one any longer, and he couldn’t be the one to soothe either, to sing on the bathroom floor.
This was not his family. These were not his friends.
“William is trying to find you,” Joel said. “When you’re done here, you need to talk to him.”
Andrew spat into the toilet bowl. “Okay.”
Ken watched Joel as he stepped into the hallway, his expression puzzled and searching, but Joel had nothing left to say to him.
The mood of the house had lightened, candles lifting each room with a calm glow.
A group of children and one of Shay’s aunts huddled in a corner of the entryway, petting a small terrier.
Someone had decided—even with no bride and no groom—to serve the cake.
A waiter came up to offer Joel a plate, but he refused it.
Stiff, sugared roses bloomed on the frosting.
A vein of strawberry jam cut through the yellow chiffon.
In the sitting room, someone was playing the piano, guests gathered around, singing a song Joel knew but could not name.
“I think they snuck upstairs,” he overheard someone loudly whisper, and it took him a moment to realize they were speaking of Shay and Andrew.
That everyone assumed they were together.
Joel felt as if he were looking down at it all from a great height, so tired he could have dropped to his knees. He should never have come here. With Shay was always where he’d felt most at home, but he had simply followed her to another massive, drafty house where he did not belong.
The front door was open, and he could see the rain had ceased.