The Story of Us (25 page)

Grandpa Shine almost collided with a delivery truck as he backed out onto the road. I imagined the scene. Broken bones, comas. No wedding.

“Where’s your husband-to-be?” Gram asked Mom when we were finally underway. Our thighs were touching in that too-close way. I could smell Gram’s coffee breath.

“Never mind,” Mom said. “This is supposed to be fun.” She looked out the window at Bluff House, as if she were saying good-bye to something.

“Well, you can’t take it personally. No matter who he picked, they’d have had trouble. You could be the queen of England,” Gram said.

“She’s not Dan’s type,” Mom said.

“Still, you don’t want the same problem you had with Jon Jakes.”

The expression, about an elephant in the room? The great big obvious that no one speaks about? Gram not only talked about elephants, she’d go on to point out the destroyed furniture and the big piles of elephant shit. Maybe she didn’t believe elephants should be in rooms.

“You want in on the golf betting pool?” Grandpa Shine said over his shoulder as he drove. “I usually don’t have a handicap.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, mister,” Gram said.

I could see Grandpa Shine grin in the rearview mirror. All these years, he’d always been patient with the verbal sparring. “George has never played miniature golf, eh, George?”

“Never,” he said. “May I turn on a little music?” The back
of George’s head was serious-looking with his neatly combed hair. It made me think of boys in elementary school on picture day.

“You can do what
ever
you want,” Grandpa said. “My car is your car.”

Gram elbowed me in the ribs. All right, it did seem a little strange. George rolled the dial past Grandpa’s news radio station, settled on some pink pop candy music about La La Love. Gram did a little car dance beside me. “La la love,” she sang.

“I love this song,” George said. He rolled down his window a bit. Smelled the air, same as Jupiter. He had that same sweet look, come to think of it. “Is it too windy back there?” he asked.

“Nah, we’re fine,” Gram said. Even she had to be kind to George. He had a simplicity that felt like goodness. Gram’s carefully sprayed hair was blowing off her face, though, giving her a dueling look of carefree recklessness and alarm.

“What is it about the beach,” Mom said.

Out the window it stretched. In spite of all disasters small and large, there was that infinite curve of rock and sand meeting the edge of the sea. The sky was so big, bigger than it was at home, so much bigger than in the city. The haze had mostly cleared but was lingering lazily along rooftops. The smell of the sea pranced into the car from George’s open window. That smell made you want to greet something, or someone, with open arms.

“It is a beautiful dream,” George said. “It feels like you are
looking at a side of God. Something permanent.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Mom said.

Grandpa rolled his window down a bit too. Now Mom’s hair was rebelling cheerfully. I noticed the very same chin on either side of me. Gram and Mom both had it. I knew I had it too, that chin, and so did Ben. Whatever I had felt or wanted from Mom back at the house slipped away. The insistent force of genetics and generations—there it was, right on our faces. We all tried so hard to be as strong as we could, didn’t we? All of us, with our funny, vulnerable chins? When it came down to it, we were all trying to do the same impossible job of doing our best in a big world.

Grandpa Shine was grinning, and La La Love was all around now, and the point was—the point of the car ride, or of the beach itself, or of the whole nasty, glorious, uncertain, forever-not-foreverness of life—you could feel it. Love. You could keep feeling love no matter what. In spite of gnawing losses and the dark, gaping tunnel of change, love’s dewy, golden, bittersweet self kept appearing, same as the sun coming up every single day. The unexpected rise in my chest I felt—
that
was sometimes reason enough right there to face all the questions, to go forward and turn the next page. And these funny, infuriating people … Their stupid goodwill and stumbling intentions were the ways love showed up.

This was what I couldn’t bear to leave. This, this all. Right here.

“Ben was just telling us about the time you locked yourself in your parents’ bedroom and your mom had to get the hammer to pry open the door,” Dan said as they all piled out of the car.

“I was
two
,” I said.

“He said it happened last week,” Dan joked. He was slapping Ben on the back.

“No, last week she stuck that piece of—”

“Don’t even say it,” I said. “You’re dead.”

“She was a
kid
,” Mom said. “And we didn’t have to go to the emergency room or anything.”

“A toy. My nose. Don’t ask,” I said to Dan.

Ben cracked up. “Loser.”

“You ate a bathroom sponge shaped like a whale!” I shouted in the parking lot. It was mostly empty, save for a minivan and a big camper with a license plate that read
CAPTAIN ED
. We headed toward the merry archway with the words
PEE WEE GOLF!
curving overhead in rainbow letters. Nearby there was a waterfall spilling from a fake rock wall, and a huge fake elephant with his trunk curled in a frozen fake trumpet. When was the last time we’d done this? Maybe when we were kids, with Mom and Dad? I felt a silly thrill. The silly thrill some of us get at very large fake things and childish games. Amy and Hailey and Aunt Bailey were behind us. Aunt Bailey was trying to show them pictures of her cat, Missy, as she walked. I imagined the scene—a stray rock, a sprawling Aunt Bailey, broken hips, canceled weddings.

“He was always eating things,” Mom told Dan.

“And you cut his hair that one time and made him cry.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ben said.

“God, I still feel terrible about that. I’ll never touch a pair of scissors again,” Mom said. “Honey, I’m so
sorry.
” She’d probably still be apologizing for that when she was ninety and Ben was sixty-five.

Dan grabbed her hand, pulled her next to him. “Come here, wife-to-be.”

“I’m playing without a handicap,” Grandpa said again. I was surprised he didn’t bring his own clubs.

“I’m surprised you didn’t bring your own clubs,” Mom said.

George looked through the gate. “It is like a small wonderland,” he announced.

We gathered in a group as Mom and Dan pulled out their wallets. Grandpa Shine pulled out his, too, and so did Gram, and Aunt Bailey, and there was a small fight over who wanted to pay, as there always was in my family. You just had to expect it. It was one of our group rituals, the way some families pray before meals.

“I don’t want to wear the ugly shoes,” Amy said.

“That’s bowling,” Hailey said. She was skipping, throwing her arms around her father’s waist from behind. She, at least, was having a great time already. I had the thought, I did, so maybe it was my fault. I was the one who tempted fate, same as those people who wash their cars and cause it to rain.

Maybe everything will be fine.

There were score cards and short stubby pencils. Ben started getting competitive sometime after the pirate ship and the Brooklyn Bridge. It got worse as soon as we were at the giant frog, and it only pissed me off because I’d started getting competitive too.

“The frog’s mouth is the
other
way,” Ben said to me.

“Shut up. This isn’t the PGA, you know,” I said.

“Quit it, you guys,” Mom said. “Move aside. My turn.”

“Mom, you’re the purple ball,” Ben said.

“She hit my ball!” Grandpa Shine said. “Everybody see that? You can’t just hit the one in front because you like it the best.”

“It doesn’t matter,” George said. “Look, we are here in this tiny, beautiful place on a beautiful day.” My mother beamed at him, and he beamed back with his deep, dark eyes. Sure, she was ahead now.

“Amy’s turn,” Dan said. “Here, honey. You just put your hands around … A little higher.”

Amy’s hair dropped down to cover her face. The ball hit the wall surrounding the flat green in front of the frog, jumped the side, and rolled under a baby stroller of the people in front of us. “I can’t do it,” she said.

Dan fetched the ball, set it up in front near Grandpa’s. “Hey!” Grandpa said.

“My turn!” Hailey said. She gripped her club. She swung it high behind her, brought it forward, and whacked the hell out of the ball. It went soaring, landed with a crack on top of the
paddle boat a few holes over. “Let ’er rip!” she shouted. I stared at her hard, and then I saw it. Chocolate? Was that
chocolate
at the corners of her mouth?

“Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs,” Gram said. She arranged and rearranged her feet on either side of the ball. She put her hand up like a visor to see where Grandpa’s ball ended up.

“Who are they?” Amy said.

“Tennis players. A big man-versus-woman battle in the seventies,” Mom said.

“Whatever,” Amy said.

“Feminists do it with balls,” Gram said, and knocked it straight into the frog’s mouth. The frog closed his mechanical jaw, swallowed, and spit the ball to the other side.

“Ehaw!” Gram said.

“Beginner’s luck,” Grandpa said.

“Like hell,” Gram said. “Why was it you never took me golfing? Probably because of the floozies.” From where we stood, Gram’s peach pants and peach shirt looked like her skin.

“Gram’s outfit looks like her skin,” I whispered to Ben.

“I know,” he said. “Are you watching Grandpa watching George?”

“You’re crazy,” I said. “You’re making stuff up in your head.”

“You don’t believe me.”

I snickered.

“Keep your eye on the ball!” Grandpa shouted to Aunt Bailey.

“Don’t listen to him! I’m the one in first place,” Gram shouted too. I think she was flirting.

“If you people would be quiet, I’m trying to concentrate,” Aunt Bailey said. She swung, but the ball sat where it was. Fifteen minutes later Aunt Bailey was still on the wrong side of the frog, which was the same thing that happened to her at every hole. She chased the ball around the green, tapping it and sending it sailing in a mad, forever circle. We waited. My phone rang. I checked. Oscar. Shit. Ever since that note, I was trying to avoid him. It rang again. Ben poked me on my arm.

“Who
is
it,” he teased.

“Lover boy calling,” Mom teased.

“It’s Oscar,” I said, and they both wiggled their eyebrows at each other.

“God, you guys,” I said.

I was getting that feeling you have on a long car ride, where the wait starts to feel endless, and you start poking each other and teasing, and then the teasing becomes irritating because you want the hell out of that car. We sat down on a bench by the hole.

“Maybe we could order a pizza while we wait,” Ben said.

“This is kind of how she parallel parks,” Mom said.

“Can’t we just move on?” Amy said.

“Just one more!” Aunt Bailey called to us. She tried again, but the ball rolled with slow taunting back to its starting position. “Oh, I give up.”

“Let me help,” Ben said. He picked up Aunt Bailey’s orange
ball and gave a sidearm throw toward the frog, who opened his mouth and swallowed gratefully.

“Finally,”
Amy said. Mom tried to catch Dan’s eye, but he was looking somewhere else. Mom’s face cinched up tight. And this time I knew that look because it was my own, too. I felt annoyance circling around overhead, looking for a place to land.

Grandpa was already at the windmill, teeing up. He popped the ball neatly through the spinning blades, and then George did the same.

Hailey’s ball sailed through the air. You felt it more than you saw it, the sudden whoosh of air flying past your cheek. It was a defense missile shot toward enemy territory; it soared high in the sky and then vanished. “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … superball!”

“Hey, it was my turn,” Ben said, but Hailey only shook her arms in victory over her head.

“Whoo hee!” she shouted.

“I’ll have to find that,” Dan said.

“Remember which ball is yours?” Ben said to Mom.

“Never mind, smarty-pants.”

Ben and I hit, and then Mom went, tapping her ball neatly through the windmill blades. Amy did better this time, scooting the ball through on the second try, and Grandma’s beginner’s luck held, but then Aunt Bailey set her ball on the fake grass and placed her feet on either side of it.

Amy was next to me. She crossed her arms. She sighed
dramatically. Rolled her eyes. “Here we go,” she said to me.

The thing was, I felt impatient too, I did—we still had a lot of holes to go before we got to the castle, the big Cinderella payoff, with the actual moat. At this rate we’d have to sleep here overnight, two nights, miss the wedding altogether, as Aunt Bailey tried over and over again to get the damn ball through the upcoming clown’s mouth and past the log cabin and from one side of the lighthouse to the other. Sure, I was feeling a little tense anyway. I was ready for my hot dog. I was ready to get the whole “family” expedition over with so I could be alone, and so that “family” could lose the tense step interplays of quotation marks.