Not missing a beat, Jericho dropped wide-legged into the seat beside me, his seventeen-year-old knees and forever legs pressing against my shorter, softer ones. He picked up the remains of my bouquet and sniffed, then dropped it again.
“I don’t know why they always throwing them flowers at you, Aunt Dana. You ain’t never getting married. Mama, neither.”
“Jericho!” Rochelle straightened in her chair. Her eyelids peeled back like only a mother’s can.
I bit back a smile. I loved that kid, but he had a habit of saying just what came to his mind.
Wonder who taught him that?
“It’s okay.” I turned toward Jericho, not quite face on, but at an angle. If I turned more, I’d laugh and he would, too. Then we’d both be in trouble. “You’re right. Marriage probably isn’t in my future.”
Why did just saying that bring me a strange comfort? A relief even? Maybe that’s why I was eating myself silly, so I wouldn’t have to deal with it at all. I took one of Jericho’s ball-palming hands into mine.
He smiled at me, ignoring his mother’s look that said he should apologize, that his comment had surely hurt me more than Tracey’s thorns. Jericho knew better. He knew, as I did, following his eyes to the pink satin behind he’d left at the punch bowl, that it was his future that concerned me, not my own. I pressed his knee with mine until his legs knocked together. He smiled once more, then tossed back a cup of punch. “Oooh. The pineapple stuff.” He squinted. “Y’all mad at each other about something?”
I kissed his fingers. Even at this age, he made me want to cry. “Something.”
He nodded. “Is it over, or do I get baklava, too?”
“It’s over.” His poor wife, I thought. He’s going to read her like a worn paperback. She’ll never see it coming.
Holding his hand, I stared up at the sky—blue, lazy and slipping on a thin coat of afternoon. The unspoiled haze reminded me of the treasure I’d lost, the gift I could never regain.
The gift only God could restore.
I smiled at the thought that God was restoring me, verse-by-verse, piece-by-piece, but oh, how it hurt. Why did rebuilding seem so much harder than building? Perhaps because now I knew it could all be knocked down again. And so easily.
A throng of girls waved in our direction. Jericho’s leg pressed against my knee. The look in his eyes as he took in each one of them iced my veins. I swallowed the rest of my punch. And my speech. He had a mother for that. Prayer was my job.
And pray I would, for Jericho and for myself. I usually skipped out on weddings long before this point and always limited myself to two cups of punch, even the nasty red kind they were serving now that Daddy’s stash was depleted. I was currently working on cup number four and the sugar was making me dizzy.
Random thoughts and pictures did enter my mind, slipping back to when Rochelle and I—well, really her, but I watched—founded the Sassy Sistahood, boasting over 2000 members, the largest group of African-American women on the Internet back then. Then one of the members befriended us in real life, met my best friend Adrian at my house and somehow convinced him to marry her. I’d dropped offline and out of sight for a long time after that and when I came back, Rochelle was Bible-thumping so hard people dropped out of the group like crazy. When I returned for good after my mess with Trevor, our fun little social group had morphed into a tribe of prayer warriors sharing daily thoughts about the Lord. We considered changing the title, but never got around to it. Besides, with everyone else married off, it was just the three of us and we liked to think we had a little sass left in us. I was beginning to wonder.
Already assuming his role as absent husband, Ryan disappeared across the green with his business partner. Tracey looked longingly in his direction, and then hugged me. I knew from her grip that she’d had enough and was going after him.
It begins.
Tracey tugged at her gown, which for some reason, she hadn’t changed out of. “All right then,” she said with finality. “I’ve got to get back to my huzz-band, but I thank you for coming. For understanding.” Her gaze rested on me. “It all happened so fast.”
Too fast if you asked me, but nobody did. Though I was the junior oracle of singleness—at seventeen years and counting, Rochelle held the senior position—once my friends had more than a conversation with a man, I became persona non grata.
No kids? No man? Know nothing. I ought to make bumper stickers.
Rochelle, at least, had experienced being abandoned while giving birth to Jericho. This memory was somehow considered valuable. Too bad I didn’t get credit for being in that hospital room, too. Or finding my sister in that bed with Trevor. Or watching my Adrian marry someone else. My pain, having no offspring or alimony to show for itself, didn’t seem to count.
I’ve caught all your tears in a bottle, marked them all in My book.
God had done that, hadn’t He? Oh, well. I hadn’t meant to get all soppy like this today anyway. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t.
“Aunt Dane, you’re squeezing the blood out of my arm.”
Dana Dane. My nickname. Adrian had given me that, too. Gave so much and took away even more.
“Sorry,” I muttered, turning Jericho loose, remembering the last time I felt like this. Two months ago, the end of July. Sarah from human resources. A tangerine satin gown that actually fit. Overcooked chicken. Decent music. Escorted down the aisle by her eighty-year-old uncle.
Wedding party number nine.
S
he got him. I don’t know how, but Tracey managed to get Ryan back to the table and keep him there. After a few minutes, we were all laughing and I wondered why I’d ever been worried. Things would be fine. Tracey was a big girl—well, not physically anymore—and could take care of herself.
And if not, there was always Rochelle. She’d try and take care of us all. A slip of humidity, orphaned by Fall, thickened the air. Afternoon, now fully clothed, burned away any memory of morning. I swiped my forehead as Rochelle held a piece of wedding cake up to her mouth, surveying the white icing, white cake and red filling. Strawberry or cherry, I couldn’t tell, but that stuff looked seriously nasty.
Tracey’s cake remained uneaten on her plate. “I’m full from that piece I shared with Ryan.”
Yeah, right. I shook my head. My mother would have perished at the sight of this cake, if she weren’t already dead. As it was, Mama had reminded me about how much sage to add to the Thanksgiving stuffing on her deathbed. She didn’t do things fancy, but she did them right.
Jericho arrived with two pieces on his plate. “It looks good to me.” With youthful abandon, the boy bit into a mammoth slice, pausing only to give a thumbs-up and shove more into his mouth.
Rochelle shrugged. “Remember that black fruitcake with the white icing a few years ago?”
Boy, did I. “How could I forget?” Wedding number four. Institutional green dress. Nice jazz. Horrible cake. Nightmare bad. I winced at the thought of it.
Tracey did, too. “Come on, ladies. Stop fronting on the cake. It’s good. Right, Jericho?”
He nodded, licking his fingers.
As if a teenager’s opinion about food could be trusted. I frowned. “That boy would eat the paint off my car.”
Jericho paused, considering the possibility. “Not your car. Maybe Adrian’s…”
Everyone except Ryan and Jericho froze.
Adrian. The taboo was broken. Someone had mentioned his name.
“Hush, Jericho.” Rochelle looked away. Tracey’s eyes avoided mine, too. I’d made it all day without saying it, though his name was ready on my lips. I didn’t dare speak it any more than I dared open the letters and e-mails he’d sent me over the past year. I hoped I was being selfish and silly, denying him because of what he’d denied me, but I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that Adrian meant trouble. Good-looking, good-smelling trouble, but trouble all the same.
Jericho smiled, oblivious to my pain. “Adrian’s Benz-o. Now, that thing is pretty enough to eat.”
And so is he.
I pressed my eyes shut. “I’ll have some cake after all.” Rochelle’s mouth was already white with icing.
My fork picked between the layers.
Tracey elbowed me. “It’s good. His mother made it.”
His mother? All that money and his mother made the cake? How could Tracey be so bourgeoisie and so cheap at the same time? I was no wedding planner, but you didn’t drop twenty grand on a wedding just to let the mother of the groom whip up the cake in the church basement. I could see the telltale grooves from our fellowship hall baking pans now that I looked closer. “The swirls are pretty—”
“Eat it!” The cry was collective.
I jumped, banging my knees against the table legs. “All right, already.”
Please don’t let this taste as nasty as it looks, I prayed, then shut my eyes and slid the fork into my mouth. Strawberry filling, cherry icing and light-as-air white cake melted on my tongue. “Wow.” Both hands flew to my mouth, a crazy thing I do when something tastes extraordinary. The food swing, as Rochelle calls it.
I moved a little too fast, evidently, but not fast enough for anyone to miss the hum of satin ripping up my sides. My chest tightened. Further inspection revealed two inch-high slits, hardly identifiable if I kept my arms down, but humiliating nonetheless.
“Now that was funny,” Jericho said, choking down the rest of his second piece of cake.
Rochelle crossed her arms, trying to look serious. I sighed. Those quiet ones. They keep their emotions corked and when they blow, it’s a total explosion of stupidity.
“Don’t even start,” I said, smashing my arms against me like sausage casings.
Tracey sputtered on the other side of me, making the sound my car does on winter mornings. I rolled my eyes, knowing that once the bride let that laugh go, it’d be at least ten minutes of uncontrollable giggling. Considering the stress of the day, she might go longer. That was a real concern. Rochelle’s busting a gut was one thing, but Tracey rolling on the ground in her wedding dress was more humiliation than even I could bear. Not that I
thought she’d go that far, but there was that time she’d giggled herself into the salsa at the junior prom.
“You people are sad, you know that?” I shook my head.
As if that had been the punch line for a sitcom, Rochelle reached across the table, yanked up one of my arms and then collapsed in her chair, her body contorting like James Brown. Her mouth opened and closed in the this-is-so-funny-no-sound-will-come-out laughter. Not one of her spritzed hairs dared leave its place.
“This is what happens when people don’t get out much. Too easily amused.” I secured my arms at my sides again.
My attempt to diffuse the humor had no effect. Rochelle turned from the table, holding her stomach. One look at Tracey, with both hands clasped over her mouth, told me this could get ugly. Ryan sat stunned for a second and then…escaped. No surprise there. Jericho reached for Tracey’s cake. He’d seen all this before. And more. That left me to save Tracey from baying like a wolf at the moon. I lifted my cup of punch and extended it to the cackling newlywed. “Drink this. Now.”
Tracey shook her head, waving me off with a pained expression.
Jericho smiled at a girl a few tables away, as if a trio of satin-clad crazy women was an everyday occurrence. It was, for us, of course, but he wasn’t supposed to act like it. He turned back to me and pointed at Tracey. “She’s gonna blow.”
I agreed. “No doubt.” A laughing fit was imminent and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it…but drink punch. With a shrug, I lifted the cup to my lips, and then frowned at the lukewarm taste. How hard would it be to break a fin off Daddy’s dolphin? No sense in me not having any fun.
“Dana?”
It was a man’s voice. The voice of a man I’d once loved.
A man I still loved.
Suddenly, shaving the ice sculptures looked very inviting.
Maybe it wasn’t him. “Adrian?” I turned, hoping I wasn’t purple due to the oxygen that had sudden left my body. It couldn’t be him, but it was. How could this be?
I was going to put Tracey out of her skinny misery.
The flower thing was negotiable, but Adrian’s absence from anywhere that I am is an unspoken, understood request. I’d have to put these things in writing in the future. “How are you?”
“Fine.” He took my hand and pulled me up from the chair.
A little too fine. He touched the corner of my eye. I drew back in pain.
“Bouquet?”
“You know it.” My head started to throb. How silly must I look with this scratch and my melted makeup and chewed off lipstick?
He didn’t seem to notice as he pulled me close. Too close. His signature scent, a pineapple coconut blend cut with orange essential oil, overtook me. I melted in his arms like a Hershey bar on a car hood.
Adrian pulled me back for another look at my face, by now negating all standards of beauty. “Man, it’s good to see you. I’d planned to slip in and out, but I saw Tracey jerking around over here and I knew she was about to go into her act—”
As if on cue, laughter howled behind us.
The plastic cup in my hand cracked, spurting red liquid down the seam between us. I jumped back. Adrian’s glasses hit the ground. I reached behind me, grabbed some napkins and wiped his chest, which was much more muscular than I remembered. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He rescued his tortoiseshell frames and shoved them on his face.
Clark Kent, move over.
He took off his suit jacket and shook it, smiling as rivers of red punch drained off it onto my feet. That same gorgeous smile, a little crooked from where I’d jumped over him at the skating rink in the fourth grade. Punch continued to rain from the edges
of his suit jacket, a perfect fit over his broad body just moments before. I dabbed at my own front with what remained of my napkin pile, wondering if I’d end up with “Tracey and Ryan, The Real Thing” imprinted on the front of me. It would be an improvement.
Adrian tossed his jacket over a chair, knowing he’d be able to have what remained of the stain removed at the dry cleaners. He’d get rid of the shirt. That much I knew for sure and I hated that I knew it. He’d been so polite about my crazy appearance. Now I had him looking half as bad. I dropped my eyes to the ground.
Ugh. Ugly shoes.
He grabbed my chin in that mind-numbing way of his and lifted it. “Don’t worry about it. Seriously.” Then he kissed my forehead. Any remaining oxygen left my brain for good.
I rocked over onto one heel. “Well, I’ll let you talk to Tracey now. That was nice of you to come all the way from Chicago.”
He crossed his arms. “I came from across town. I’m back in Leverhill now. Didn’t Tracey tell you?”
I pressed my lips tighter so the scream wouldn’t escape. “Tell me what?”
Adrian squinted at me, despite his glasses, something he did when very nervous. More useless data I wish I didn’t know.
Surprise plus embarrassment blurred Adrian’s features. “So you didn’t know anything? Not even that I’d be here today?”
I looked over at my two friends, who’d long since stopped laughing. “They wouldn’t have told me about this wedding if they could’ve gotten away with it.” My voice trembled, trying to conceal the truth of the statement.
Adrian didn’t speak. Instead, he gave me what I needed. Another hug. “It’ll be okay. I prom…” He let the word drift away, along with the pain that must have rimmed my eyes at his mention of promises. “It’ll work out.”
I dared look up at him, dared feel his embrace around me, knowing all that had gone between us, all that had been broken.
There was something still there, a shadow of a time when his face alone had been a promise. When his hugs had been a vow. How I’d missed those times.
Missed him.
I reached up to hug him back, only to hear that terrible sound of fabric going wrong again, this time not so softly.
As a swatch of animal print emerged from the pink satin, I suddenly questioned Lane Bryant’s decision to sell cheetah girdles. And my decision to buy one. Adrian pulled me into his pineapple-orange chest as Tracey and Rochelle’s laughter resumed behind us. He didn’t laugh. He knew me too well. “I am sorry,” he whispered into my hair.
“It’s not your fault.” I took a deep breath, knowing it wasn’t my dress he was apologizing for.
“Where’s your car?” he whispered.
I nodded to a gravel lot about a hundred feet away from the tent.
“Don’t worry. We can do this.” With that, Adrian swept me into his arms and calmly passed my table, where Rochelle sat on the edge of her seat, now devoid of mirth and ready to spring to my aid. I reached back for the bouquet and gave both Rochelle and Tracey a don’t-move-don’t-say-a-word look. I needn’t have bothered. They both knew better.
Jericho obviously did not.
“You riding in the Benz-o, Aunt Dane? Save me a seat!” He cupped his hands around his mouth for volume. No one missed the message or its implication.
To think that I diapered that child.
Adrian squeezed me closer and set off for my Mercury Cougar. Adrian somehow managed to get me into the passenger’s seat. He tossed his jacket across me before shutting me in. He rounded the car and got in.
I considered crying, but this was so far beyond that. “Now what?”
He reached in the ashtray for my keys. My mind reeled. He
remembered. “Now, I take you home, Miss.” The salutation hung in the air. The ignition revved. Adrian looked over his shoulder and backed out slowly. “Or is it Mrs.?”
The sun glinted off his wedding band as he spun the steering wheel.
I turned to the window. A rose petal Rochelle had somehow missed slid into my lap. “I’m still Miss. Miss Dana Rose.”
He carried me upstairs. I tried to protest, but Adrian wouldn’t hear it. By the time we topped the first landing, sweat trickled of his bald head and onto my shoulder.
“I can walk,” I whispered, suddenly feeling worse than before.
Adrian kept climbing. “You don’t have to.”
I slipped through his grasp and stood. “I know. Thank you.” I gathered my skirts, careful not to scratch him with the thorny bouquet I’d snatched off the table as we went by. Why I’d kept it, I had no clue.
“Just like old times, huh?” I said, as we topped the landing of the stairs to my apartment. The apartment I’d stayed up nights in dreaming of this very moment. Only in my dreams, I wasn’t dressed as an animal trainer/ballerina in need of a Band-Aid and Adrian wasn’t wearing another woman’s wedding band.
She’s gone.
That was true. But where did that leave him and me?
Adrian nodded toward the door across the hall from mine, the place where he’d spent a few minutes of his childhood. The rest of the time, he’d been at my house. His grin faded into a pained expression. I knew he was thinking of his mother. I was, too.
“Your mother’s funeral was beautiful. I loved that song you sang. She would have loved that.” The service was a year ago, the last time we’d seen each other.
Adrian nodded. “I thought she would have liked it. Nothing else seemed appropriate. Thank you for coming, Dane.”
I leaned back against my door, happy for the thorns pricking
my hand. Their pricks muted the tearing of my heart. “If I’d known about it, I would have come to Sandy’s funeral, too. Really.” How long had I waited to say that? Two, three years?
He stiffened at the mention of his late wife, then fingered his ring, probably out of habit. “Sorry for not inviting you.” He pulled off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I needed some time.”
Me, too. Still do.
I tried not to imagine what a mess we might have made of things if I’d responded to his phone call after his wife died. Without looking at the caller ID, I’d known it was him. Felt that it was.