Easily Amused (7 page)

I folded my arms and gave a glare that silenced her.

Hubert raised his hand like a fourth grader not quite sure of the answer. “I think,” he said, turning to Mindy, “that your heart is in the right place, but maybe if it makes Lola uncomfortable, you could work out a compromise. Maybe a cake, but no singing?” He looked from Mindy to me.

“I could still announce it’s her birthday, though,” she said. “And if everyone just starts singing, that’s up to them. I won’t even suggest it.” She brightened at the thought.

“How about this for a compromise,” I said. “If at any time during the wedding day I hear the words ‘Lola’s birthday’ coming from your mouth, I leave and never talk to you again.” It was all I could do to keep from shouting the words. “And if I hear the birthday song, preannounced or otherwise, someone’s getting hurt.” I stood up. “How’s that for a compromise?”

The three of them regarded me with wide eyes.

“Party pooper,” Mindy said. “No-fun Lola strikes again.”

“Whenever you don’t get your own way you resort to name-calling,” I said. “Grow up, Mindy.”

“Oh, I am grown up, thank you very much.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her ring finger so the light glinted off the diamond. “I’m the one getting married, remember?”

I’d heard enough. “I don’t want to be rude,” I said, grabbing her wedding brochures and stuffing them back into the bag, “but you really have to go now.”

“I’m not done with my wine yet,” Jessica protested, holding up a full glass. Somewhere during the cake debate she’d refilled it without me noticing.

I jerked the glass out of her hand and took a long swig of the Fat Bastard. It was surprisingly delicious: flavors of stone fruit like plums and cherries combined with cedar and toasty aromas. Kelly didn’t know squat about wine. I looked down to see Jessica staring at me, mouth agape.

Mindy stood up and looped the bag over her arm. “Come on, Jessica. When she gets like this, there’s no talking to her. We might as well go.”

“She drank my wine,” Jessica said, incredulous.

“I’m sorry you have to rush off,” said Hubert. “It was nice seeing you again. It’s been a long time.”

“Maybe now that you two are living together we’ll see each other more often,” Mindy said, helping Jessica to her feet.

“We’re not living together,” I said, setting the story straight.

Hubert smiled. “Oh no, I’m not going to be living here. Lola’s just letting me stay until I get things worked out.”

“Whatever,” Mindy said. “Staying. Living. Call it what you want. Either way, you’re both sleeping under the same roof.” She pulled Jessica’s arm in the direction of the door. “I think I better drive. You’ve had a little too much of that Fat Bastard.” I heard Jessica giggling even after the door was shut behind them.

“Well,” Hubert said. “That was interesting. Hard to believe Mindy’s getting married. I still think of her as that little kid who was always pestering us.”

“Hubert, would you excuse me for a little bit?” I said. “I need to make a phone call.”

I
brought the cordless phone upstairs with me and threw myself back onto my bed, the way I used to when I was a teenager. It was the closest thing to pole vaulting I’d ever done. During my high school years, my mom, hearing the frame bang against the wall, would shout up the stairs, “Whatever you’re doing, stop it. It sounds like the ceiling’s going to cave in.” But Mom wasn’t here to yell at me now. It was my house, and I could wreck it if I wanted to.

I dialed Piper’s cell, but only got voice mail. Drat. I was hoping to avoid calling her home phone. Mike usually answered, which was always a problem for me. But I had no choice. I called the landline and braced myself when Mike picked up after the second ring. “Hey, Lola, how are you?”

I hate it when people check caller ID and answer using my name. It seems both intrusive and know-it-all-ish at the same time. I was tempted to hang up and call back from someone else’s house just to throw him off. Instead I answered, “Great, Mike. And yourself?”

“Never better. Work’s keeping me busy, Brandon’s growing by leaps and bounds, and my lovely wife gets more beautiful every day.” Mike had a salesman’s enthusiasm for everything. I’d been hearing that line about Piper getting more beautiful ever since they’d started dating. Once Hubert and I had a lengthy debate about the plausibility of that statement. I thought it was ridiculous—Piper was exceptionally pretty, but come on, no one was infinitely beautiful. Clearly it was just more of Mike’s hyperbole. Hubert took a more philosophic view, that Piper became more beautiful to Mike the longer they were together. When you really love someone, he said, their flaws melt away. Clearly I’d never really been in love.

“Good to know, Mike,” I said. “Listen, is Piper around? I was hoping we could talk.”

“She’s giving Brandon a bath. If you hang on, I’ll see how far along they are.” He set down the phone, and I heard his footsteps click across the hardwood floor. He was going to check how far along they were? How about taking over so she could have an important conversation with an old friend?

Piper came to the phone a few minutes later. “Hey, Lola, what’s up?”

“Is this a good time?”

“Sure. I have a few minutes.” She covered the mouthpiece and said something to Mike. How aggravating. “OK,” she said, “shoot.”

“It’s just,” I said and took a deep breath, “I mean, Mindy and Jessica stopped over to talk about the wedding.” I paused to swallow the lump in my throat. “You know how evil Mindy can be. It didn’t go well.”

“What did she do?”

“She wants to humiliate me at her wedding. She’s going to—” Suddenly I was at a loss for words. Despite my intention to play it cool, I felt tears come to my eyes. Then to make it worse, a sob escaped. Oh, why did I always cry when I was mad? Luckily Piper knew the score. Thank God for old friends.

“Oh no.” Her voice was sympathetic. “Just a minute. I want to go in the bedroom. It’s too distracting here.” I heard her say to Mike, “You’ll just have to watch him. I need to talk to Lola.” Maybe it
was
possible to get her attention after all.

“So,” she said when she returned to the phone, “tell me all about it.” I pictured her sprawled on her back on the bed, one knee raised and the phone clutched to her ear. There was a nice symmetry in the thought of each of us situated identically.

I told her about Mindy’s evil plan to shine the spotlight on my thirty-year-old unmarriedness at the wedding. Like the good friend she was, Piper responded with appropriate outraged gasps. “She is such a piece of work,” she said when I was done with the story. “This is almost as bad as the time she used your identity at the gynecologist’s.” I’d almost forgotten about that one—at age sixteen Mindy had gotten birth control pills from the family ob-gyn by using my name and social security number. Apparently, from the doctor’s gynecological vantage point, we looked remarkably the same. When the paperwork from the insurance company arrived at my folks’ house, I could tell from the look on Mindy’s face what had transpired, but of course she denied it. To this day I wasn’t sure my parents believed that it wasn’t me. I was in college at the time and used the clinic on campus for all my personal needs. Not that I’d told them that. “What a piece of work,” Piper repeated. “It never ends with her, does it?”

“She just loves to embarrass me in public. I threatened her, but I just know she’s going to do the cake thing anyway.” I pressed the phone tighter to my ear. Downstairs I heard Hubert vacuuming. “And then what am I going to do? If I walk out, I look like a bad sport. She wins no matter what.”

“She’s really got you in a tough spot.” Piper tsked sympathetically. “You can’t walk out, that’s for sure. But what if you do something unexpected and one-up her? Beat her at her own game?”

“Yeah, that’s a good thought,” I said bitterly. I had never attempted anything like that, mostly because Mindy was so underhanded I never got wind of her maneuvers until it was too late. I was always the one sitting on the metaphorical whoopee cushion, the one with the big fake smile on my face pretending that yes, a session at Glamour Shots was just what I wanted! A membership at your health club? Really, what a thoughtful gift! “Maybe someday I’ll figure out a way to top her.”

“Someday? How about now? No time like the present.” I recognized the edge in Piper’s voice. She had an idea.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Let’s think this through,” she said. “The reason Mindy wants to make a brouhaha about your birthday at the wedding is to point out that you’re thirty, unmarried, and growing older every day with no prospects on the horizon, right?”

Talk about depressing. “Right.”

“But what if,” and here Piper’s voice reached a crescendo, “you countered her measly little cake plan with a plan of your own? What if you stand up and make an announcement that just blows everyone away? And what if
your
announcement steals the show?”

A show-stealing announcement? I couldn’t imagine. “Like I say I’m dying of a brain tumor?”

Piper laughed. “No, no, no. See, that’s your problem. You have to step up your expectations for yourself. Try thinking positively for once.”

“Tell them I won the lottery?”

“Better than that. Make a speech announcing
your
engagement. Produce some gorgeous guy and an enormous diamond ring. Make it twice as big as Mindy’s. And have the guy be a knockout—a James Bond type.”

Above me a fly buzzed loopily in the corner of the ceiling. “Sure, I’ll just order one from the James Bond catalog, Piper. Good plan, except for the part where I have to meet some hot guy and get engaged in the next three weeks. Other than that, completely doable.”

“Oh, you have no imagination. You don’t actually have to be engaged. We’ll find someone who will play along. After the wedding, when it doesn’t matter anymore, you can say you broke up.”

Trust Piper to come up with an
I Love Lucy
scheme as a solution.

“Well,” I said, “even if I managed all that, I’m not sure I could pull it off. Lie to my parents and relatives? I’d never be convincing. Even if I could, there’s no way I could come up with a guy. How often do you
see
a really handsome guy, much less one who would do a favor for a complete stranger? The whole thing is just too dicey.”

“Are you kidding? I see good-looking guys all the time. They’re everywhere. And any guy who has family issues—and really, who doesn’t?—would be happy to help out. This is going to be great. Just think of the look on Mindy’s face. She’s going to die. And it will serve her right too, after everything she’s pulled.”

“It would be great.” In theory, anyway. I smiled at the thought.

“And we’ll make sure your guy is really tall, since Chad is short. Oh man, would that burn!” Piper was just getting started. “And you can have some of those ‘reserve the day’ cards printed up with your wedding date on them and pass them out. We can totally pull this off, I’m sure of it.”

“It does sound good.” I wasn’t completely convinced though. Daydreaming about revenge was fun, but no one actually did these kinds of things except in movies. Did they?

“Now, who could we get to play the fiancé?” she said, as if casting a play. “Not Hubert. You know I love him to pieces, but he’s a bit goofy looking and lacks that ‘wow’ factor. And you’ve known him since seventh grade, so that would just be pathetic. Are there any guys where you work?”

“Just Drew.” Piper knew all about Drew. His shortcomings were the source of most of my work rants.

“Is he good looking?”

“Eh. Average.” I felt a little guilty saying it. Who was I to cast judgment? I was pretty average looking myself.

“How about in the other departments?”

“I don’t mix with the other areas. I work in the basement.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot you’re the Phantom of the Opera over there. Well, don’t worry about it. I’m on the case. I’ll think of something.”

As usual, talking to Piper was the right thing to do. She always came up with the right sympathetic response, whether that meant letting me vent, giving me a different outlook, or dreaming up a ridiculously outlandish plan for revenge. This time around she’d managed all three. By the time I’d hung up the phone, I felt much better.

W
hen I got downstairs, Hubert was squatting next to the vacuum cleaner winding up the cord. “The guys tracked in some dirt when we moved the boxes,” he said apologetically. “I wanted to get it before it got ground in. Hope you don’t mind.” He stood up and brushed off the front of his jeans.

“Why would I mind?”

“Because I’m using your stuff without asking?”

“Feel free.
Mi casa es su casa
.” It was practically the only Spanish I knew. I’d waited my whole life to use that line.

“OK, good.” He rested a hand on the handle of the vacuum. “Hey, that Mindy’s really something, isn’t she? When she gets an idea in her head, she just doesn’t let go. Kelly’s kind of like that too. They feel so strongly about things they don’t always realize how they affect other people.”

“Mindy’s a little bitch.” I blurted it out without thinking; Hubert looked shocked. “She’s happiest when she’s making me look bad.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said slowly. “I mean, you two have never gotten along well, but it’s not like she hates you or anything.”

“You don’t understand, Hubert. It’s a sister thing. Life is a competition for her.” His only-child status made the concept impossible to grasp. Anything I said was apt to sound petty. “The whole birthday cake at her wedding thing was supposed to look nice but actually point out to everyone there that I’m five years older than she is and still not married. It’s her way of showing that she won.”

“No.” His face scrunched in disbelief. “I can’t believe that.”

“I’m telling you, Hubert, I know how she operates, and that’s exactly why she’s doing it.”

“But that’s just so mean. And plus, who cares if you’re not married? You’re smart and pretty and kind. You have a terrific job and a great sense of humor. And you’re a good friend.”

“Thanks. Write that down and when I’m forty and desperately filling out my profile for Match.com, I’ll give you a call and you can help me with the wording.”

We stood silently for a moment, facing each other as if about to pace off for a duel. Hubert gave the vac a little push with one finger and then grinned. “Are you as hungry as I am? Because I’m starving.”

Half an hour later Hubert returned from the Chinese place with six times the amount of food I usually got for myself. I guess that’s what I got for opting not to go with him and telling him anything he picked up would be fine. “It all sounded so good—I couldn’t decide,” he said, pulling the white containers out of the bags and lining them up on the kitchen table. “I figured this way we could try it all.”

“It smells wonderful.” It had been hours since the bagels and cream cheese. I could feel my stomach rumble.

I poured water into glasses; we piled food on our plates and sat down to eat.

“I ran into Belinda when I was picking up the food.” Hubert opened a packet of soy sauce and doused his rice.

“Belinda?”

“Your nice neighbor with all the pups?”

Oh, that Belinda.

“She was leaving as I was walking in. I almost invited her to join us, but we haven’t done anything together in a long time, and I thought it would be more fun just the two of us.”

We ate quietly for a few moments, until Hubert said, “While I was sitting waiting for the food order, I called Kelly’s sister.” The statement hung in the air for a second until he cleared his throat and continued. “Kelly’s not taking my calls, and I thought Rachel might know something.”

“What did she have to say?”

“Not much. Mostly that she was sorry it didn’t work out, that she always liked me. She thought it sucked that Kelly hired a moving company to move me out without giving me any notice.”

“Notice? Did you tell her that she locked you out with bare feet and no wallet?” He looked so pained I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth.

He sighed. “Anyway, Rachel seemed to think this is permanent.”

You think?
I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t say the words out loud.

“I’m finding it hard to understand.” He looked weary and sad.

“I’m really sorry, Hubert.” What else was there to say?

“If only I knew where this came from. Not knowing is the hardest part.”

“I’m sure it’s not anything you did.” I reached across the table and patted his arm. “She’s just not the one, Hubert. You’ll get through this.”

He opened his mouth as if to contradict me, but then he seemed to think better of it. To change the subject, I asked about his job.

“Don’t you ever get tired of having twenty-six kids looking at you?” I asked. “You always have to be in charge, always one step ahead.”

He looked startled at the question. “Gosh no, I don’t get tired of it. I love it. The kids are great. I love their enthusiasm and hearing their take on things. I love knowing I’m making a difference in someone’s life. It’s never boring. Sure, some of the job sucks—the lesson plans, making sure I’ve covered everything that will be on the standardized testing. And I’m on the curriculum committee, which is a pain, but if I’m not involved, other people make decisions about my job. Overall though, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” He clicked his chopsticks together and then picked up a chunk of sesame chicken and skillfully maneuvered it into his mouth.

“Wouldn’t it be more fun to teach high school kids?” I asked.

“No way,” he said. “Elementary, my dear Lola, that’s where I belong.”

“I give you a lot of credit. I couldn’t do it.”

“How about you?” he asked. “You still like your job?”

Hubert was the only one who ever expressed interest in my work. “Most of the time,” I said. “I get a lot of satisfaction in putting together the magazine from scratch every month. I try to balance it so there’s a good mix of information and entertaining articles. My boss wants the ads featured prominently, but I try to keep them from overriding the content.” I stabbed at a chunk of chicken with my fork; unlike Hubert, I’d never mastered chopsticks. I was too modest to tell him my favorite part of the job—the periodic e-mails of praise from readers. The general consensus seemed to be that the magazine had improved since I took over. One article I wrote on toxic toys even won an award. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.”

“So, life is good,” he said.

“I guess so.” I didn’t have a husband or even a boyfriend, but I had my house, my health, my job, my friends. I couldn’t quibble. Much.

By the time I pushed my plate away, I’d consumed more than I’d thought possible. “I can’t eat another bite.”

“Oh, but you have to,” Hubert said. He reached into the bag, and I heard the crinkle of cellophane. “Fortune cookies!” He presented them on outstretched palms. “You pick first.”

I chose one and waited while he opened his. His eyebrows furrowed. “Mine says, ‘Out with the old, in with the new.’ What kind of fortune is that?” He looked up, and I shrugged. “Now it’s your turn.”

I tore the clear wrapper, split the cookie in two, and smoothed the piece of paper on the table. “You’ll find treasure where you least expect it.” I gave him a quizzical look. “That doesn’t tell me much. I don’t expect treasure anywhere. Ever.”

“Except in your nightstand drawer,” Hubert said. He leaned back in his chair and balanced on the back legs for a few seconds, and then he came down with a thud. “Hey, that’s what we should do tonight. We should start going through your aunt’s stuff. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

I gave him an exasperated look. “Cleaning is never fun, Hubert.”

“Don’t think of it as cleaning, think of it as exploring. Did anyone go through any of her stuff before you moved in?”

I shook my head. “Her attorney gave me the key, and when I went through the house, everything was exactly as it was the day she died. She was having coffee with Brother Jasper on a Sunday afternoon when she felt some pains in her chest. He called 911, and the paramedics came right away. They said her heart gave out in the ambulance. They tried to revive her, but weren’t able to. She was old—in her late eighties, eighty-seven, I think.”

“Wow,” Hubert said. “You never told me that story.”

I resisted the urge to remind him that he hadn’t really been around much the last year or so. “The coffee cups and the sugar were still on the table when I first walked through the house.”

“That’s kind of creepy.” He looked around the kitchen. “Did you ever find out why she left it to you? Instead of your folks or the other relatives?”

There was that question again. “No. I barely knew her. I only saw her at family functions maybe once a year or so, and we didn’t talk much.” The memory made me feel guilty. I never used to know what to say to Aunt May. She was fairly pleasant to talk to, but her oldness made me feel uncomfortable. In retrospect, I wished I had taken an interest in her life. “But the neighbors said Aunt May talked about me all the time. She told them when I graduated from college and when I got the job at the magazine. Kind of weird to think about it now.”

“Maybe she just admired you.”

“Yes, of course. Because I’m smart and pretty and kind, with a good sense of humor.”

Hubert grinned. “Don’t forget the part about how you’re such a good friend.”

“I have so much going for me, it’s amazing more people aren’t leaving me houses.”

“There’s the right attitude.” He looked amused. “So, do you want to go through the bedrooms first, or the downstairs?”

“We really have to do this?”

“Gosh yes, this is going to be fun.”