American Fraternity Man (8 page)

7:00 PM melted into 8:00,
but the alcohol was easing minds, bringing us together without worry. Maybe this was reassuring. Maybe this was the modern fraternity. A happy family gathering, no one hanging from windows or chugging vodka. Maybe this is all the Send-Off needed to be.

But soon
my own parents—after making the rounds and saying hello to the few brothers they knew, then introducing themselves to a few other parents—were standing before me, my father with a cup of ice water and my mother with a glass of red wine.

“
Everyone drinking on an empty stomach,” my father said. “This could get ugly.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “The food will be here any minute.”

“We could order take-out,” my mother suggested.

“Please, no. Just enjoy the wine, and in no time—”

“Better be soon,” my father said. He tapped his watch. “You’re dealing with an older crowd, Charles. We don’t drink like you college kids. We don’t do 10:00 dinners.”

“No time,” I repeated.

But “no time” turned out to be the end of the “window.”

*

I never actually saw her arrive, but Jenn had come back at some point, camera in hand.

And while I rushed around making phone calls and running my hands through my hair, she
spent the evening sliding in and out of the different clumps, introducing herself to this set of parents, that set, to the Smiths, to the Gordons, one hand on Mr. Young’s chest—“Would you like to pose for a picture?”—snapping photos for the NKE online photo album. She didn’t need me to make the introductions. She was
Jenn
. She was the life of any party, dancing wherever she went, any crowd; if I was busy, she’d make her own way. Besides, she was a fiend with the camera, so focused on the task of artful documentation that nothing could detract her.

She wore a black cocktail dress
that night, sexier than she needed to be, but I’m not even sure she was trying: it was the sort of dress that seemed both tight and loose, that clung to her body in all the right spots, that floated off in all the other right spots, so effortless that you figured she just woke up like this every morning. No one was complaining. All night long, as she navigated the room and appeared from nowhere, a lightning bolt of youthful energy and beauty suddenly striking directly next to you, camera in hand, face aglow and ready to make
you
the subject of her next picture, it must have seemed to these parents that they’d been singled out for some special honor.
Us? You picked
us
for your picture?

Occasionally,
in that long cocktail haze before dinner, she found me to relay some bit of round-the-house gossip from the evening (“Darrell’s father just knocked into the trophy case” or “I found an empty vodka bottle in one of the planters on the back patio…”), but then she was gone just as quickly, always ending each exchange with a hug and a kiss and a “This turned out well, Charles. You should be proud.”

T
he lavalier was upstairs. In hindsight, maybe I could have presented it to her then, while everyone waited for food and had nothing else to occupy their attention. Maybe it would have been productive, even, to unite 150 drunk-hungry people in a common task that pulled them momentarily from the bar and made them forget about their hunger. But there was still a full night ahead, a full awards ceremony, and who wants to be hog-tied before the food even arrived?

*

At some point there was a brief lapse in the noise and chaos of the cocktail hour, and I slunk outside to find my mother in the back courtyard. My father had disappeared somewhere else, likely to make phone calls or check his email on his Blackberry.

“If I didn’t know better,” I said and sipped my vodka-tonic, “I’d think you and Dad were avoiding one another.”

My mother took too long to answer, and I realized in that moment that I shouldn’t have made the joke. They’d arrived together, after all, but he hadn’t had his arm around her, hadn’t poured her a drink or said a word to her, and they never seemed to get close enough that their skin might touch even accidentally. They’d never been a giddy touchy-feely high-school couple, but it seemed strange to see my father speaking with another set of parents without even bothering to introduce his wife.

“That’s crazy,” my mother said
eventually, then swirled her wine glass and finished off the last few ounces of red.

“Enjoy your massage?” I asked.

“I always enjoy my massages.”

“I’m just glad you’re enjoying yourself. That’s all I want, really.”

“Don’t worry,” my mother said and held up her empty cup. “Your father might be joyless, but I’ll enjoy myself.”

“That’s the spirit!”
I put my arm around her. She’d never had any problem with the fraternity, had never lectured me about it as my father had, never found newspaper articles about hazing accidents or alcohol deaths. Hell, she’d never even pulled her circumnavigation stunts with me: canceling payments to the fraternity so that I’d get kicked out. Three years before, she’d enjoyed herself at our Family Weekend, and tonight, she was sitting out in the courtyard with a glass of wine, striking up conversation with a crew of other women spread across the outdoor lawn chairs. “Let me get back to the bar, then,” I told her, “and get you another drink. All that alcohol isn’t going to drink itself.”

My mother craned her neck, searched this way and that. “Get me something stronger,” she said. “Vodka, maybe. Your father wouldn’t want
to hear this, but if I have more wine, I’ll fall asleep.”

*

Sometime after I took the first heavy-duty trash bag of liquor bottles and beer cans from behind the bar and out the back door, the van for Old Smoky BBQ finally arrived. I’d already sent Edwin to the local 7-Eleven to pick up Doritos and pretzels so that the mothers—some of them three-deep on Edwin’s chocolate martinis—would have something in their stomachs to absorb all the alcohol. “This is not acceptable,” I said to the driver after the food had been unloaded. I said it loud enough for the entire house to hear me; I wanted to make sure the parents knew it wasn’t my fault, that the fraternity and the Senior Send-Off were both still flawless.

“Huh?” the driver said.

“Tell your manager that we won’t be using Old Smoky again,” I said. “Tell him.”

“Is something wrong?
Is something missing?”

“It’s…
the time frame is
not
acceptable
.”

“Um,” he said. “I got here as quick as I could. There were speed limits.”

But no, of course he wasn’t responsible. He’d probably delivered ten other orders that evening, all at the times noted on whatever paperwork his boss had given him. And now everyone was looking at the two of us, angry Charles Washington with a vodka-tonic in his hand, and perplexed 16-year-old delivery boy wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon pig on the front. All of the parents staring, even as the twelve disposable aluminum tubs, each covered in foil and arranged on the long tables of our dining room, waited to be opened and served. Fathers, mothers, and sons all inching closer to the food, but with marked restraint, no one wanting to jump the gun and dig in first. Twelve aluminum tubs, and several stacks of styrofoam to-go containers filled with Texas Toast and fried okra. Everyone staring, first at the two of us, then at the food.
What is he arguing about
?
Give us the motherfucking barbecue
!

“Here,” I told the driver, and handed him his tip. “Just get out of here.”

And I walked back inside. Edwin was just now bringing from his upstairs mini-fridge the small glass bowls of barbecue sauce and hot mustard and mayonnaise, balancing each precariously on his palms and forearms, arranging them around the carefully designed stacks of napkins. The food had been a long time coming, but our presentation was flawless.

“Barbecue?” my father asked. “Interesting choice.”

I hadn’t even noticed him approach me. “Thought it would be easiest for a large group.”

“Couldn’t just grill o
ut yourselves?”

“You know about our kitchen,” I said.

“Right. You guys can’t use your own kitchen. House full of fraternity guys, and no one has a grill?”

So
my father wasn’t impressed with our catered meal…fine…I’d draw his attention back to the single element of the party that I knew was a hit. “You like the bar selection?” I asked, motioning toward the far end of the room, where—even with the food just delivered—a crowd still remained, a tall man in gray slacks holding the bottle of Grey Goose high, turning it around and examining it in the same way that a Revolutionary War musket or a piece of Confederate cash might be inspected on
Antique Roadshow
, before eventually nodding satisfactorily and pouring himself a drink.

“Y
our mother appreciates the wine,” he said.

“Yeah. She told me.”

He swirled the ice in his cup. “She’ll drink too much and have a headache.”

“She’s fine.”

“You’re not the one who has to drive her,” he said.

I pointed to his cup.
“What are you drinking?”

“
Water.”

“There’s a lot of
stuff over there. You like martinis.”

He crept toward the foil-covered metal tubs. Everyone else was still keeping their distance while I arranged the plates and plastic silverware, but there was an energy pulsing in that room: if I didn’t get out of the way in the next minute, I would be stampeded. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” he asked.

“No. Of course not. I just…” I flung my arms out desperately, knocked over one of the napkin stacks. “I just want you to enjoy yourself,” I said, and bent to gather the mess I’d created, smacked my hand on the side of the table.

“Well,” he said and pinched the foil lightly
; seeing that it wasn’t too hot, he lifted the corner to peer inside. He’d found the tub of pulled pork, and we both stared at the tall piles of meat as if beholding an ancient wonder of the world. “I’d have a much better time if I had a plate full of barbecue,” he said. “Want to get this party started, Charles?”

And finally it seemed as if the two of us were in agree
ment; it was just pulled pork, sure, but in that moment it became something more important: it was my choice of which university to attend, my choice to join the fraternity; it was the house, my brand-new career, my ability to save the world, all inside those steaming metal pans. And so I lifted the foil covers, curling them back on themselves to protect and keep warm as much of the meat as possible. Proud of the pulled pork. The baked beans. The roasted quarter-chickens. The mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese! Cornbread! Green beans and almonds, sliced smoked ham, smoked sausages, dry-rub ribs! The entire menu of Old Smoky BBQ, ready to be consumed, ready to feed the appetites of all these parents, ready to assuage concerns, to give final confirmation that their sons had made the right choice when they’d joined this fraternity. Here it was!

Except—

“Serving spoons?” my father asked, and he had a sesame-seed bun opened on his plate. “Tongs?”

“Sure,” I said. “Do you see a plastic bag around here anywhere?”

I fumbled, hit my hand again.

“I don’t see anything,” my father said, and behind him, other parents had formed a line, some grabbing plates and buns and napkins the same as he had
, their moods and spirits high, men and women who were previously strangers now chatting and joking with one another, some holding full martini glasses, others with whiskey on the rocks. A woman in white pants was laughing so hard that it almost looked painful, and her husband was slapping her back. Another couple was clinking wine glasses, and Jenn stood at the bar with a group of her sorority sisters, girls who were dating Nikes; she topped off with a healthy pour of cranberry juice a set of glasses half-filled with vodka and ice. This was what a cocktail party was supposed to looked like. This was polished adulthood. Everything I’d wanted. But somehow I’d missed the smallest of details.

“I can’t find any serving equipment,” I said, madly searching beneath the table, under the trash bags we’d hung to colle
ct dirty paper plates. “Edwin? See them anywhere?”

“I don’t see anything,” Edwin
said from the bar. He was searching through cabinets as if—for whatever reason—the delivery man might have stashed a set of tongs up there.

“Something wrong, Charles?” Jenn called out, finishing her final pour.

“No, no!” I said. Crawling on the floor now, searching searching.

“Charles,” my father said, and he looked back over his shoulder at the long line, where parents were taking notice of this situation. Standing in clumps of brand-new friends. Turning to one another, all of them asking the sa
me questions. “What’s wrong?” “Why won’t he let us eat?” “What’s the hold-up?” “Who’s in charge, here?” The woman in the white pants had stopped laughing, face sucked of its humor.

And now my mother was wedging herself into the line, grabbing a plate. Cocktail cup in hand. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Charles, what are you doing?”