“Well, congratulations,” he said rather loudly.
“Um . . . thanks.”
“Um . . . you’re welcome.”
“Ty . . . aren’t you happy for me?”
“
No
.” He was actually glaring at me now. So much for mellow.
“
Shit
, Grace!” he said violently.
“What is your problem?” I spoke sharply, but really I felt like crying. “Why can’t you just be nice?”
He laughed in a mean way and stood up and tossed his napkin on his plate. “Shut the fuck up.”
He walked away.
“Happy birthday!” I yelled after him.
Julia’s kitchen table was covered with Internet printouts and brochures. She handed me one of those telephone-directory-size bride’s magazines and asked me to look at the pages she’d flagged.
The wedding gowns she liked were crisp, spare, ankle-length sheaths. They looked like big calla lilies. I flipped through a few more pages. “Ooh.” I pointed at an A-line halter gown with a high, lacy ruffle around the neck.
“Oh, no,” Julia said. “Too frilly. You don’t want to cut yourself off at the neck like that.”
I flipped through some more pages and stopped at a breathtaking silk organza Empire gown with bare shoulders.
Julia took a long look. “The thing is, you’re short, so you don’t want to wear anything too voluminous, skirt-wise. It will absolutely swallow you. You don’t want to disappear on your wedding day, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“That’s why I bookmarked those dresses that have a close profile, not too much fabric, and show some chest.”
My inner storybook princess felt sad. She liked the gowns with big, flowing skirts.
“But it’s
your
wedding, of course, and you have to pick something
you
like.” It was amazing how Julia’s words could be generous and still sound slightly grudging. “Have you two decided on a date?”
“We were originally talking about December, but I think I’d rather wait until spring.”
“Good, spring is better. It should give us plenty of time to get the details just right.” She held up a brochure. “What do you think of an outdoor wedding at this winery upstate?”
“We had talked about getting married at that church where we volunteer.”
“All right,” Julia said slowly. “A church wedding, with an elegant reception somewhere else. The Four Seasons, possibly, or look at this.” A magazine photo of a gorgeous room: tables, candles, flowering trees, mellow light. “These people rented this loft space and brought in everything. Those are dogwood branches!”
“Ooh.” I took a closer look. I do like dogwood.
“Of course, you have to pick your color scheme. And make a guest list. And decide on attendants. And what the men will wear. And the menu. And invitations. And have you thought about your honeymoon?”
“Steven showed me a webpage for a resort on Fiji. The water there is really blue. And they have snorkeling and horseback riding and a library.”
“A library? People on their honeymoon don’t need a library.”
“I thought it was nice. And Steven said we could even get married there, if we want.”
My mom crossed her arms. “Do you want me going with you to Fiji? Because I
will
be at your wedding. And what about Steven’s parents?”
“He said they would be okay with not being there.”
“Well, I’m sure they were at his first wedding.” She looked at me and quickly backpedaled. “I’m not saying they don’t care.”
“Mom, can we save some of this for later?”
“Well, of course, we’re not going to do it all today.”
“Thank you.” I really did feel grateful. My head was swimming.
A couple of weeks later Ty called me about his music-industry showcase at Joe’s Pub. He said lots of important people would be there, and it would be recorded. Could I please try to come? He sounded nervous.
Then, same day, he called again. His lease was running out and he’d found a new roommate to move in with, a drummer who had done some work for him. But he’d just found out he couldn’t move in until August 3. Could he crash on our couch for a couple of nights?
I had to check with Steven, I said. I looked at the refrigerator calendar. Turned out, he would be in Munich that week.
Hmmm.
What might that be like—just me and Ty, roomies? We could order Chinese and watch Lifetime. Maybe play a few rounds of Sorry. I’d go to bed and wake up being spooned. Or wake to the sound of giggling women in my living room. Or a Tupperware party, hosted by Hugh Hefner.
I called him back. “Can you try one of your other musician friends?”
“Dude, their places are disgusting.”
“What about Dave, your manager?”
“He lives way the fuck out on Long Island.”
I asked him to try Peg and thought for sure that would be the solution. She was so soft where he was concerned.
Turned out Peg had cousins from Kentucky visiting that week.
“Well, what about Bogue and Allison?”
“And listen to them hump all night?”
“Wear earplugs!”
“Grace, come on. I swear I won’t make a big mess. I’ll be invisible.”
Yeah, right.
I called Peg. She agreed to sleep over those two nights. It would be nice to have a break from her cousins, an elderly married couple who were visiting for two whole weeks. The first night, a Monday, she’d be with us at the showcase. The second night she’d come over after work.
“You’ll have to sleep with me,” I said, “hope you don’t mind.”
“As long as you shave your legs.”
People were queuing up when Peg and I arrived at Joe’s Pub, but we were special. On the guest list. We joined Bogue and Allison at a table near the stage. This was a bigger deal than I had realized. I looked around at the other special people there.
“Is that Billy Joel?” I asked Peg.
“Yes, and that’s Alicia Keys.”
“David Bowie and Iman are over there,” Allison said.
I took a peek, confirmed the sighting, and shrank back behind Peg, though surely Mr. Bowie wouldn’t recognize Dan Barnum’s daughter, all grown up.
“Where’s Ty?” I asked Bogue.
He shrugged. “Last I saw, in the men’s room throwing up. I told him if he sucked tonight he could always go back to working at the funeral home and he told me to get the hell out of there.”
My own stomach was beginning to hurt. What if he messed up? What if he embarrassed himself in front of all of these famous people? Would the band be able to cover for him if he made a mistake?
They let the plebeians in, including the street team girls, all so aggressively sexy with their heels and cleavage and heavy makeup. They commandeered several tables back by the bar. The whole club quickly filled up.
“I feel so nervous for Ty,” Peg whispered.
“Me, too.”
There was an opening act, a girl singer, but I barely remember her. Then Ty’s band came onstage, along with a stand-up comic everyone seemed to know. He introduced Tyler. “The buzz about this guy is pretty huge,” the comic said. “I’ve never heard him, I don’t like music. I’m going to try to get out of here before he starts playing. Tyler Wilkie!” Big whoops and applause.
Ty came onstage looking a little sheepish and adorable in his wagon-wheel shirt and ripped jeans and scuffed boots. They put a spotlight on him and everyone hushed.
He started playing, then stopped.
My heart was in my throat.
He quietly thanked everyone for being there. Then he started over again, with a song that I hadn’t heard before. You couldn’t tell he was nervous at all.
I relaxed as he ran through his repertoire with even more creativity and spark than usual. He sank into it. He went into his zone. I wondered how it felt to him to look out and see those familiar faces, people he’d grown up listening to, now listening to him.
I felt like I could cry, imagining how he might be feeling. Peg looked watery, too. It made me feel even closer to her, that we both cared for him so much.
He moved to the piano and played the slow, sensual intro to something I knew, though I couldn’t quite identify it.
“My friend Grace turned me on to this song,” he said.
Then he started singing.
It was “Feel It,” my absolute favorite song from that Kate Bush album,
The Kick Inside
. An extraordinarily sexy, lush, tender song about going home with someone after a party and, well, having a shag. I’d never,
ever
imagined a man singing it, in this quiet, deliciously bluesy way.
I was beginning to feel awfully warm. I looked around the room. The women were leaning toward him. Even the men were paying close attention.
At the last note, pin-drop silence. Then spontaneous combustion. He’d burned up every woman in the place, and a few men, too. We were all ready to go home immediately and start feeling it.
Before starting the next song, he took a moment to drink most of a beer and hold the bottle to his face. “Excuse me, I’m feeling a little flushed.”
The street team girls screamed.
He played for another half hour, but it was icing. I was pretty sure that, for whatever industry executives were there, the deal must be done by now.
When he finished and they brought up the lights, he stepped off the stage and was swarmed by people getting up from their tables to congratulate him. We were going to have to wait awhile.
I headed for the ladies’ room, feeling so happy about Ty’s performance. On the way, a woman tripped me. I recovered and turned around and she smiled and winked. “Sorry, Grace.”
I had seen her at other gigs, but I didn’t know her name.
I got back to the table and told Peg, Bogue, and Allison I was leaving.
“Why?” Peg asked.
“There’s a psycho fan here who has it in for me. She tripped me on the way to the restroom.”
“Oh. Well, maybe it was an accident.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Well, you can’t go. You haven’t spoken to Ty yet.”
I looked across the room. You couldn’t even see him, the crowd around him was so thick.
“We’ll talk to him later.”
“This is his big night!” Peg said. “We should at least make sure he knows we’re here.”
Bogue and Allison had the good sense to leave, after a while. Peg and I stayed and watched the street team amazons slowly infiltrate the knot of people around Ty. There was no way I was going to try to compete with them for his attention; they were all a foot taller than me and probably packing heat. So we waited on the periphery for almost an hour before the place thinned out and I was able to make eye contact with him.
He came directly to me and slung a heavy arm across my shoulders. He reeked of booze. I grimaced at Peg and fanned the fumes he was emitting away from my face.
“Hey, I’m going home with you, right?” He was just barely holding on to all of his consonants.
“That’s the rumor.”
“Can we go now?”
Thank God.
We got a cab. He sat between Peg and me.
“So I think maybe I got a major-label record deal tonight.”
Peg and I both sat forward and looked at him. He smiled like the cat that drank the whiskey-laced cream.
“When will you know for sure?” Peg asked.
“They want to meet with me this week.”
“Ty, that is so great!” I said.
He squeezed me. “How’d you like the song? Is it your favorite?”
I de-suctioned his hand from my inner thigh and held it lightly in both of mine. “It is. How did you know?”
“I know you, babe.”
strawberry
Ty was in the bathroom a long time. I knocked on the door.
No answer. I opened the door and peeked in. He was lying on the floor on his back with my nightgown draped over his face.
“Ty! You can’t sleep here. Get up!”
He rolled over. Peg came in and we shook him till he slowly rose to his feet.
“Did he get sick?” Peg asked as we guided him to the couch.
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you’d better put a pan beside the couch. And a towel.”
“Yeah, and maybe we should make him lie down on his stomach, so he doesn’t aspirate his own vomit.”
“Ew,” Peg said.
“Think Jimi Hendrix,” I said.
“Well, hadn’t Jimi done heroin, or something like that?”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Ty said.
“You’re not all here,” I said.
“Some of me is.”
“Unfortunately, only the part that needs to go to Betty Ford.”
He thought that was funny. He put his arms around me and rubbed his scratchy face in my neck. “I love you, Gracie. Love you forever.”
I patted his shoulder. “Ohh-kay. I love you, too.” I looked at Peg and rolled my eyes.