Getting Over Jack Wagner (11 page)

T
here are few things in my life right now I know I can count on: happily-ever-after on
Love Boat
reruns, moral lessons on
Brady Bunch
reruns, angst on
The Real World,
annual birthday checks from my Great-Aunt Leona with “Burger” written beside the word “Memo,” leftover cake and Diet Cokes in the fridge at Dreams Come True and, on the first Sunday of every month, dinner at Mom's.

Sunday dinners are a tradition that began after Camilla got married. The players: Camilla and Scott, Mom and Harv, Sue the cat, and me. Each month, Mom will call to suggest I bring my “friend” (i.e., the supposedly asexual person I'm currently dating and not sleeping with). I laugh—sometimes even throw in “ha!” for emphasis—and refuse. Then she suggests I bring Andrew. I shrug into the phone.

“I don't
understand,
Eliza. Andrew's a good-looking boy. You're a good-looking girl.”

For my mother, this is where the equation begins and ends.

Normally I won't bring Andrew, to prove to Mom he's my friend and not my “friend.” Besides, Andrew has never understood why she and I don't get along. “She tries hard,” he says. “She's so friendly.” At which point I remind him that my mother a) has had a crush on him since our freshman year at Wissahickon and b) is nicer to virtually everyone in the world than she is to me.

This Sunday, however, I don't have the strength to face my family alone. They'll ask about my love life. I'll tell them Karl and I broke up. They'll ask why, I'll mention ferreting, there will be frowns, furrowed brows, nervous looks exchanged over the charred meat. Dictionaries might come into play. From there on in, it can only get uglier. I'm still drained enough from the breakup conversation last night at The Blue Room.

Me: Hey.

Karl: Hey.

We were sitting at a table toward the back of the dance floor. I'd called Karl, asking him to meet me there; a subtle way, I thought, of indicating we'd need separate cars to leave in. But he seemed unfazed when he showed up at the table carrying two rum and Cokes, giving me an exhausting kiss and giving a short nod to the guys in the band (Crazy Ape) who were tuning up onstage. Objectively, Karl was looking pretty good, black-clad and stubbly around the edges. But I was now incapable of looking at him without thinking: hygiene.

Me: It's been a while since we talked, huh?

Karl: Yeah. I guess.

M: So what have you been up to this week?

K: The usual. Kickin' back.
^*
Washin'.
^**
Jammin' with the guys.
^***

M: (deep breath) Listen, Karl, this probably won't come as much of a shock but…I guess it doesn't really seem to be working out with us.

K: (incredulous) It doesn't?

M: (incredulous) Didn't you sort of get that impression?

K: When?

M: Last week?

K: When?

M: In the car? With the lasagna?

K: What lasagna?

M: Things felt, I don't know, weird between us. Didn't you think?

K: You mean that stuff you said about wanting to unwind?

Up to this point, our breakup had been fairly run-of-the-mill. But now I was beginning to realize that “unwind” might not have the same fatal undertones for Karl as it did for me. He obviously hadn't seen this coming. As I pondered my next move, the lights went down abruptly. The stage pooled electric red. A guy with dreadlocks and no shoes stepped up to the mike. “WE ARE CRAZY APE!” he screamed, followed by the violently loud opening bars of the Ape's first number, a loose approximation of Live's “I Alone.” When I spoke again, I was shouting.

M: I thought you knew what I meant!

K: What
did
you mean!

M: What?

K: What did you mean!

M: What did I mean when?

K: What?

I had a flash of those horrible telephone games from junior high slumber parties, the ones where a phrase begins as one thing (“Mindy likes to eat earthworms!”) and ends up something completely different (“Minibikes look like George Burns!”) and this strikes everyone as very funny.

M: What did I mean when?

K: When you said you wanted to unwind!

M: I guess I just wanted to be apart for a while! To see how things felt!

K: Why!

M: What?

K: Why!

M: Why?

Though not an unprecedented move in my rock star experience, this was definitely rare. Breaking up doesn't usually require too much in the way of explanation. Rock stars are familiar with breaking up. As the songs say, it “hurts.” It “stinks.” It's “hard to do.” It prompts the musical question: “where do broken hearts go?” It's like an occupational hazard, the stuff good lyrics are made of.

But Karl just sat there, waiting for my fumbled response.

M: There wasn't any one reason, I guess! It was lots of little reasons! It wasn't one specific reason at all!

It's difficult to be nonchalant when you're shouting. It's even more difficult to lie well. If this had been a movie, there would be a moment when the music stopped and I was caught screaming something about wanting sex or being gay in front of a roomful of dropped jaws. But it wasn't a movie, and my vocal cords—and conscience—were starting to ache.

M: I mean, don't you think it's weird we haven't talked for almost a week!

K: (shrug).

Right. Probably he wouldn't have. Most of his life was, after all, spent inside his head. I gazed toward the stage, an attempt to end the conversation, to shift the focus somewhere else, but all I managed to do was emphasize the difference between what was happening in our corner of the room versus the rest of the room, a thick, sweaty pit of gyrating arms and heads and hips, one of which knocked unapologetically into our table and sent my drink sloshing over the lip of my glass.

The Ape's first song ended with a whine of feedback and a big cheer of approval from The Blue Room. I stared at the brown, rummy rivulet sidling across the table, heading straight for my lap.

M: I'm sorry, Karl. I'll return your…

But as I was about to catalogue all the CDs Karl had left scattered around my car and apartment, he stood up so angrily his chair tipped over backward. His face had turned deep red. “Forget it,” he said, fumbling to right the chair. To my amazement, his hands were shaking. “Keep them.”

Sunday morning, I called Andrew.

He answered, “Eliza Simon, I presume?”

But I was too tired to mock the Caller ID trick. “I really need you this month,” I said, staring into the sugary dregs of my cereal. “I can't handle this dinner. I can't handle my mother. I need someone there who's on my side. Kimberley's a lawyer. She'll understand.”

 

Andrew and I arrive late. Arriving late to Sunday dinners is essential strategy if you want to avoid the predinner chatting. The mid-dinner and post-dinner chatting are painful enough, but at least there are props available (meat to chew, ice to crunch, drinks to refill, damp vegetables to spell things with on your plate). If you're ambitious, you can be drunk by dessert. But during predinner chatting, everyone is on their own. Sober. Propless. A lot of flat jokes and flesh and elbows and miles of empty lap.

When Mom opens the door, her mouth is already open to criticize my lateness. Then she looks over my shoulder and I am instantly absolved. “Andrew!” she screeches, reaching past me to molest him. “Eliza finally brought you along!”

“Good to see you, Mrs. Mackey.” Andrew returns her hug.

“Everybody!” Mom shouts, tugging him by the elbow into the foyer, which is air-conditioned down to about fifteen degrees. “Look who's here!”

“Everybody” encompasses all of two people: my sister's husband, Scott, and my mother's husband, Harv. They are standing in the living room, neither one willing to be the first man to buckle and sit down. Both are gripping beer bottles by the neck with one hand, the other hand thrust deep in a pants pocket. A Rod Stewart CD, probably
Greatest Hits
(more than half of Harv's CDs are
Greatest Hits)
rasps on the stereo.

Scott covers the entire room in one crisp, loafered step. He rattles when he moves, as if he's actually made of money. “Andy! Good to see you, bud!” he says, and leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek. “Hi there, Eliza.”

“Hey, Scott.” I'm engulfed in a wave of tangy aftershave as Scott reaches around me to clap “Andy” on the back. It has always puzzled me what my sister sees in this guy. He has a sycophantic quality not unlike Eddie Haskell's from
Leave It to Beaver.
His blond hair sits on his head in stiff waves and looks perpetually wet. Strange how you can find yourself suddenly, helplessly, related to people like this.

“Hey! Andy!” Harv jumps in, a little too energetically. Harv is not as smooth as Scott, which I guess is something to be thankful for. He's a thick, hairy, heavy specimen of a man who hides behind his body: a sturdy gut that strains at his shirt buttons, a bristly gray beard that totally conceals his mouth. Harv avoids the backslap and goes in for the handshake, then raises his beer as exuberantly as a pack of Mentos. “What can I get you there? Beer? Wine?” He pauses. “Shot of JD?”

This provokes a snort of laughter from all three males, as if they are all remembering some long-ago, drunken escapade that never took place.

“A beer sounds great, Harv,” Andrew says. “Thanks.”

Harv gives him a salute and charges off, happy to have a job to do. Mom promptly appears at Andrew's left elbow, hooks his arm in hers, and guides him toward the fireplace. “It's so nice having you here, Andrew,” she bubbles. She is wearing an annoying yellow sundress that ties in the back, the kind I wore as a little girl. “I always tell Eliza, ‘why don't you bring Andrew along?' But you know her, she usually comes alone…”

Andrew listens to her go, nodding and smiling in all the right places, while my mother asks delighted questions about his mother and father and promising legal future. He is the one spot of hope my family clings to: the possibility that if I can be good friends with a nice, L.L. Bean-clad boy like Andrew Callahan, there is still a chance I might one day settle down, have babies, wear pastels, and live a normal life.

Having seen enough, I head to the dining room, where I deposit my tuna casserole on the table. Sunday dinners are a potluck, kind of. Mom cooks most of it; Camilla and I each bring a dish. Actually, Camilla brings a dish and I bring a tuna casserole. For the record, there is nothing lame about bringing a tuna casserole. Tuna is familiar, reliable, comfort food. Soft under the teeth. Easy on the heart.

Camilla, on the other hand, would never bring the same dish twice. Her creation this month appears to be made of glaze only: brown and thick, swimming with pineapples and cashews and celery, with no apparent foundation underneath. I am not a fan of glazes. Or condiments, salad dressings, sauces on pasta. I like to see what's in front of me. I like to know exactly what I'm getting.

“Someone needs to set a place for Andrew!” Mom yelps.

“I'll do it,” Camilla says, appearing in the kitchen doorway as if by magic, dinner plate in hand. My sister has been a wife for almost three years, and still excels in her first-bornedness. She is always responsible, always helpful, always meticulous in the details. I think she was born knowing how to iron a pleated skirt. Naturally, her wedding day was perfect: sunny 75-degree weather, a clean cake exchange, a flawless bride-and-groom Spotlight Dance.

I follow Camilla into the kitchen, where she's plucking silverware out of a drawer and humming something I know but can't place, something with a perky Broadway quality. In her wraparound lavender skirt and matching sleeveless sweater, she is as impeccably dressed as Mom.

“Hey, Liza.” I hate this nickname but allow it, from my sister. It's one of the concessions of having shared a childhood; we let each other get away with these things. “Good idea bringing Andrew. I haven't seen Mom this happy since they put
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
back on the air.”

“It's a ploy,” I confide, leaning against the dishwasher. “With him here, she might stay off my back.”

“What do you mean?” Camilla says. She is serious.

“Sorry, but are you
present
at these dinners? Do you
hear
our conversations? This whole tradition is just a front for grilling me about my life.”

“You're exaggerating,” she says, quoting Andrew. She fishes in the drawer for a dessert spoon, still humming what I now realize is “You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” from
Annie.
“They're not that bad.”

I roll my eyes elaborately, a move I perfected when I was ten, gave up when I was fourteen, but somehow find myself reverting to whenever I'm back inside this house. Camilla's positivity amazes me sometimes. She has always been determinedly happy, selective in what she notices, particular about what she remembers. She and Scott are constantly commemorating something: first phone call, first date, first kiss (first “you know,” she whispered once, blushing furiously), and now, of course, the engagement and wedding. With Camilla, though, it always seems the commemoration matters more than the thing it is commemorating. More important is the hard fact of it, the check-mark-in-the-box of it. If her life with Scott wasn't perfect, I doubt we'd ever know.