Invisible Boy (48 page)
I
didn’t stop until I reached the rental car out in the parking lot, and then I just let my body go slack against the driver’s-side
door—head down, hands thrown loose across its cold blue roof.
I didn’t shut my eyes or anything, just lay there staring into the tweed-covered crook of my elbow.
I watched my steamy breath unfurl against the overcoat’s wrinkled warp and weft until the fuzz escaping its married threads
of black-and-white wool bowed down, burdened with tiny beads of exhaled moisture.
I didn’t move or even look up when someone sat on the hood beside me, making the car’s body dip beneath the added weight.
“Dude,” said Pagan, “that
sucked
.”
She insinuated the point of an elbow into my exposed rib cage.
I leaned over and threw up all over the asphalt.
February 13, 1991
S
o of course we showed up thirty minutes late to the rehearsal dinner, and I was dressed like shit besides.
That we’d only stopped twice to piss during nine otherwise-straight hours of incredibly fast driving didn’t count in our favor,
nor had I expected it to.
I looked around for Dean, hoping maybe he’d gunned the Porsche and created a rent in the fabric of the time-space continuum
in order to have beaten us there. No such luck.
It wasn’t like anyone had started sitting down already once we got to the party. The guests were still milling around a hunter-green-painted
clubhouse bar, swilling gin but disdaining the offered platters of shrimp, baked morsels of Brie
en croûte
, and bacon-wrapped water chestnuts.
“Slightly better food than I was expecting,” said Sue. “For a WASP wedding. I practically starved to death at yours, Madeline.”
“I don’t think we’re allowed to bitch about anything,” said Pagan, “when we show up this late.”
“Who’s bitching?” asked Sue.
At least I’d remembered to tuck Dean’s and my wedding gift into the rental car. It was a rather elegant Chinese-red lazy susan,
fitted out with a series of blue-and-white glazed bowls—the perfect delivery system for those garnishes with which one hoped
to enliven suppers of Minute Rice and indifferent Episcopalian curries.
“There’s Mom,” said Pagan, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go say hello.”
“I am sorely in need of some ice water,” I said.
“What, no gin?” she asked.
“Maybe later. Right now I’m just thirsty.”
“Call yourself a WASP?” Sue shook her head. “No pain, no gain.”
“Are you sure
you’re
not an Episcopalian?” I asked.
“I’m just good with the blending,” she said.
“
Big
smile, bitches,” said Pagan. “Time to make the proverbial effort.”
We snaked our way through the drinking crowd toward Mom, single file.
“Oh
fuck
me,” I said, halfway there. “Larry’s wearing a kilt.”
They’d split the three of us up at dinner, scattering our place cards around the room to ensure that we’d have no actual support
from one another.
“You’re the bride’s
daughter
?” The woman beside me pulled her head back, further exaggerating the cords of her tennis-leathery neck.
“The eldest child,” I said. “Yes.”
She peered at me, squinting with distaste at my outfit. Had there been a pince-nez handy, she’d have landed the part of “opera-bound
matron” in a
New Yorker
cartoon circa 1934, hands down.
“I had a court date this morning,” I explained. “In Queens.”
“You’re an attorney?” she asked.
“Witness,” I said. “Homicide.”
With that, she abandoned me for conversation with the dining partner on her right.
Fine.
Whatever.
Rescued from ignominy by the delivery of a paillard of chicken in taste-free cream sauce, I turned toward the tiny octogenarian
man seated to my left.
“I couldn’t help overhearing what you were just discussing,” he said.
“The sorry excuse for my appalling tardiness?” I asked.
“Just so,” he said, blue eyes twinkling beneath an unkempt white hedge of eyebrows. “I believe you mentioned a homicide.”
“I’m not sure it’s a topic you’d appreciate my going into, over
dinner.”
“Try me,” he said, patting my hand. “For an old coot, I’m surprisingly tough.”
“I first got involved last September.”
“Who’d been killed?”
“A little boy,” I said, “the day he turned three years old.”
“Did you see it?”
I shook my head. “I found his bones five months later, in a cemetery. That’s why I had to testify.”
“And who did it?”
“The mother’s boyfriend. I wanted to hear the verdict this morning. That’s why we got here late.”
“Did they get him?” my companion asked.
“Manslaughter,” I said. “I’ll miss the sentencing, I guess.”
“New York State?”
I nodded.
“Fifteen years,” he said. “Probably out in seven.”
I winced and took a sip of my water. “His mother as good as got off scot-free.”
“Fuckers,” he said.
I choked.
My new friend gave me a sturdy clap on the back.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “No doubt that editorial comment caught you rather by surprise.”
I laughed, eyes still watering.
“What are your thoughts concerning your own mother’s impending nuptials?” he asked.
I hedged. “Larry strikes us all as a very nice man.”
“Well played,” he said. “But don’t worry, I have no dog in this hunt. I’m only here because I’m old as hell and I don’t go
south for the winter.”
“In that case, I give him six months.”
“Generous,” he said, resting his gnarled hands on the white tablecloth so they bracketed his untouched plate of chicken.
“You’re not going to eat?” I asked.
“One gets tired of nursery food. Creamed chicken and peas, a dab of wild rice.”
“Innocuous, at least.”
“I’m saving up for dessert,” he said, as people started clinking their water glasses with random cutlery.
I lifted a miniature slice of rye bread from my butter plate. “A toast.”
“Witty girl.”
“Thank you,” I said.
A bunch of old Yalies started singing about losing their lambs.
My dinner partner flexed his fingers, and I noticed that he wore a gold crest ring on each pinkie. They didn’t match.
“Tell me about those,” I said, pointing.
“Sharp eyes.”
I shrugged. “They look interesting.”
“They are,” he said. “I inherited them, one from each grandfather.”
“Did you like your grandfathers?”
“Never met them,” he said. “Only their widows, both of whom I loved a great deal.”
“That’s quite a story,” I said.
“There’s more,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“My grandfathers went down with the
Titanic
,” he said. “Each of them took off his ring and gave it to his wife once he’d made sure of her place in a lifeboat.”
The Yalies sat down.
“I’m going to have to stand up and say something,” I said.
“You’re the daughter relied upon for a good toast?”
“Indeed,” I said.
“You look as though you’re about to ask me for a favor.”
I nodded. “Would you mind terribly if I mentioned your rings?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“Thank you,” I said. “By one’s mother’s fourth wedding, it’s tough coming up with fresh material.”
My new friend started dinging his water glass with a dessert spoon.
I downed a hopeful slug of water and stood up.
The room grew quiet, all eyes on me.
“I promised our mother that I would not mention the monogrammed towel we kids gave her last Christmas,” I said, “so I won’t.
Except for the part about how we had to put a hyphen at the end of her initials, so people would know they continued around
on the back.”
General laughter, with one hearty basso
Hear, hear
from across the room’s expanse
.
“We’re already tremendously fond of Larry,” I continued. “How can one help but admire a potential stepfather who introduces
himself over lunch at ‘Twenty-One’ by imploring his fiancée’s gathered children to join him in a shrimp cocktail?”
Someone called “Attaboy, Lawrence!” from the bar.
I nodded. “I’d like to offer two bits of advice to my dear mother, Constance, the first of which runs as follows: Mummie,
when that special time arrives, during the course of your wedding night, remember the advice Queen Victoria gave each of her
daughters: ‘Just close your eyes and think of England.’ ”
Brays of laughter, all around.
I dropped my eyes, waiting for quiet.
“My second bit of wisdom has more serious import,” I said, “though I learned it only this evening, from my charming companion
at dinner.”
I held my glass with both hands and looked across the room at my mother.
“A good marriage,” I said, “is when you know the other person will always make sure you have a place in the lifeboat.”
I dropped one hand, lifting my glass high. “My wish is that you and Larry will enjoy that loving confidence in one another,
throughout all the many-splendored years to come.”
I sipped my water, all those around me reached for their cocktails, and I sat down amidst a round of hearty applause.
“Or for the next six months,” said my new friend.
“Whichever comes first.”
The old man clinked my glass with his.
“Hear, hear,” he said. “Hear, hear indeed.”
I looked up and saw Dean across the room, standing in the doorway to the bar. He hadn’t caught sight of me yet.
I wondered which piece of news I should tell him first: that I’d killed a man, or that I was pregnant.
I got up and started walking toward him.
“You made amazing time,” I said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek back in the bar. “I thought you wouldn’t get here until
midnight. You must’ve broken the sound barrier in the Porsche.”
“Bunny, I didn’t drive.”
“You came straight from La Tuque after all?”
“No,” he said. “Look, let’s go sit down, okay?”
His face was ashen.
I felt cold, ominous fingers of angst twining like briars around my heart. “I don’t want to sit down. Tell me here.”
Tell me standing up, so it doesn’t hurt as much. So I can run.
He pulled me close, pressing my cheek gently to his chest. “Astrid’s dead.”
“No she’s not,” I said.
“She took the Porsche—stole the keys out of my desk. They think she was doing about a hundred and twenty when she hit the
concrete. She aimed straight for it—didn’t swerve, never hit the brakes.”
No she’s not. No she’s not.
P
agan pulled me out behind the church the following morning to savor a last bit of fresh air before the full catastrophe got
under way.
Our headbands were firmly in place, our plaid taffeta gowns pressed within an inch of their tartan lives—but we’d donned overcoats
and Bean duck boots before stepping outside to brave the cold.
I couldn’t feel anything.
“I’m sorry about Astrid. And that whole thing with the trial,” she said.