And my balls are about to take the kinetic hit.
Andrew cocks an eyebrow and looks exactly like pictures of Dad thirty years ago. “Why the secrecy?”
“He doesn’t want Marie to know when and where,” Dad says with a wistful tone. Among the stranger aspects of my relationship with Shannon I have to include this fact: Dad and Marie dated many years ago, before he met my mom. Which means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still a little disturbing.
The rehearsal dinner is going to be so much fun.
Andrew snorts. “Smart man,” he says to me. “I can understand why. What’s her deal? She have a head injury in her past?”
“No. That’s just how Marie is.”
“You must love Shannon very much to accept that kind of mother-in-law,” Andrew adds with a smirk.
Dad’s looking ill at ease. The fact that he and Marie have a past is a vulnerability he’d rather not possess.
A sudden wave of nerves hits me. I don’t do nervous, so it’s doubly disturbing. Andrew swallows half his drink and gives me a speculative look.
“What? Spit it out?”
“You’ll be my best man?” Those words: Best Man. Holy shit. This is real. Really real. Not that getting the ring, having it secretly sized for Shannon, calling Greg and arranging a fake mystery shop, and calling Le Portmanteau to have the perfect proposal setting in place wasn’t real.
But those words. Best and Man. Best Man.
I’m getting married.
Married.
Is the room spinning suddenly? Perhaps Boston is experiencing an earthquake. Maybe someone slipped a roofie in my drink. Because one minute I’m upright and the next I’m on the ground, head between my knees, with Dad mumbling, “Jesus Christ” far above me.
I’ve died and gone to hell, haven’t I?
“Dude, you are going to be the worst groom ever if you’re passing out at the simple thought of proposing,” Andrew says from five miles out into space. “We’ll need an oxygen mask and a defibrillator to get you through the ceremony.” Andrew helps pull me up on my chair. “And yes, of course I’ll be your best man.” He smirks. “Take that, Terry.”
See? Competitive.
“You don’t have to marry her if you don’t want to,” Dad grouses.
That makes me sit up more.
“What? No.” I snap, still feeling a bit off. “Of course I want to marry her. What the hell’s wrong with you, Dad?” I spit out.
“I, unlike you, am upright and conscious.”
“Two more drinks and that won’t be true, Dad.”
He just shrugs, drains his glass, and signals the server for another round. He’s a walking self-fulfilling prophecy with a bank account big enough to make himself immune to consequences.
Suddenly, I can’t be here. Can’t keep doing this. Watching Dad be a lech, talking with Andrew about my future wedding like it’s a cage, I just...I’m done. I need someone who can listen to me without judgment. Without sarcasm.
Without looking at everything in the room that has a vagina like it’s eye candy.
I stand up, head clear now. “Gotta go.”
“Where?” Dad asks, but he’s not really paying attention. His eyes are using x-ray vision to see through the server’s skirt.
“An appointment with someone very important.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The drive from Dad’s hotel out into the suburbs is frustrating, filled with a traffic jam caused by the flood of college students going back to school. Car after car overloaded with suitcases, pillows, household goods and lamps clutters the route I normally take.
Finally, the off-ramp clears and I am on the side road, winding through a small town center to get to my destination. At a red light, a car to my right honks, a light tap that indicates someone’s trying to get your attention. I look.
It’s Marie.
She waves wildly, a big smile on her face. It’s infectious. I smile back and wave, wondering if this means I really have forgiven her. What’s she doing in this town? It’s not one of her normal haunts.
A flurry of hard honks follows. I look up and realize my light’s turned green. Gunning the engine, I take off, feeling a bit foolish, but the smile lingers.
The long, twisting country road outside of Concord always fills me with a sense of foreboding. A sick chunk of concrete settles into my stomach, and it’s not because the New Zealand project looks like it’s one of my few failures.
It’s because I remember driving down this very road eleven years ago to bury my mother. Tree-lined and lush with the bloom of late August, the memorial park could be a town center with wide walking paths, save for the gravestones sprinkled everywhere. My throat tightens as I maneuver the SUV through the iron gates to the sprawling cemetery where my mother’s family is buried.
I park and walk to a small hill, an enormous beech tree covering half of it, the tree like an elephant’s foot, only ten times greater in diameter. Mom’s stone is under the shade of the tree, though not directly under it.
Grey marble. A simple message. Her name, her birth and death dates, and an inscription:
Loving wife to James, mother to Terrance, Declan and Andrew
More than ten years ago I rode in a black limousine behind an oversized black hearse that carried my mother’s body. Dad had delayed the funeral until Andrew was out of the hospital, and Terry had come home from college.
You couldn’t talk to Dad. His secretary fielded questions from the three of us. An impenetrable fortress closed around our father, and he was all surface, no depths. At the time, he seemed so shallow, so insincere, like he was playing the part of the wealthy, grieving widower and we were just props. The three boys. Elena’s beloved sons.