"So maybe she's just unstable," said
Tyler
's Aunt Ma
rianne. "She had a really odd look in her eye."
Tyler
didn't think so!
His mother nodd
ed slowly. "She did, didn't she
?"
"Yeah—like that fan of David Letterman's," his dad said. "Wasn't she basically harmless but fixated?"
Again his mother nodded, but
Tyler
could see that something was bothering her. She said, "I mean, it was such a goofy ploy to try to pull off. To be married! The woman would need witnesses, friends, relatives
...
.
"
No one said anything.
Tyler
wondered whether they were thinking the same thing he was: that his own dad had no relatives. Which was so weird.
Tyler
had a million aunts and uncles that were related to his mom—and no one at all, not one single person, that was related to his dad. He used to ask his dad about that a lot, just to see what kind of funny answer his dad would give him. One time he said that aliens took them all in a spaceship. Another time he said, "They were all convicted as American spies; they're doing time in a Russian gulag."
But the last time
Tyler
had asked, just a week ago, his dad got really mad; so from now on he was letting it drop. Some people just didn't have relatives. Anyway, his mom had enough of them for two people.
Tyler
's dad looked around and suddenly slapped his hands together, which was surprising; he never did stuff like that. He said, "Hey, let's get this shindig back on track! We're not gonna let some mental case ruin our fun. Frank! Fire that grill back up and scrape it clean. I've still got half a side of beef in the fridge; we'll start over. I'll take the orders. Okay, who's having what?"
About that time,
Tyler
's mother noticed where he was sitting—with the grown-ups—and she shooed him away to the picnic tables where his cousins were stuck. He knew they'd been told they couldn't leave their places until they got permission; it was like they were all being made to sit in the corner at the same time.
Tyler
's cousin Emmy could hardly wait for him to get back. She was as far from the table as she could be and still be touching it: her toe was on the bench, and she was reaching out to
Tyler
, hurrying him up.
"Is she your mother—that lady who just left?" Emmy asked, making big,
dumb
google eyes at him.
"What a
stupid
question,"
Tyler
said. The thought had never occurred to him, but now it did, and he hated it. "My
mother
is my mother."
Tyler
's oldest cousin, Justin, who was twelve, smiled evilly and said, "Maybe she is, but your dad's not her husband."
"Yes he is!"
Tyler
argued.
"No he's not, weren't you listening?" Justin said, shaking his head from side to side. He looked exactly like one of those dashboard dogs, like his head was on a spring or something.
"I suppose I couldn't hear as good as you,"
Tyler
told him in a quavering voice. "My ears are only half as big as yours."
"Four eyes!"
"Fat ears!"
"Hey! Knock it off!" his Uncle David told them, but he was looking at Tyler, not Justin, when he said it. "Justin, come on; we're going home. Your mother feels one of her migraines coming on."
"What about the cake?" Justin demanded.
"Don't worry about the cake. You get plenty of cake."
Justin's mouth turned down. He got up from the table and, dragging his hands along the top, said, "We didn't even get to go sailing, hardly. This is the crummiest birthday I've ever been to."
"Yeah, well, you're not the only one who feels that way," said his father. "Lots of people are leaving. Let's go"
Tyler
couldn't resist saying to his cousin, "Don't worry, Justy; I'll eat your piece for you." He gave his older cousin his best, most evil smile, but inside, he felt pretty scared, even though he didn't know why.
****
Zack was on the next block when he saw Zina's yellow Civic roaring away from Wendy's rented beach house and headed in his direction. Almost immediately he saw her slam on the brakes: a Siamese cat had wandered out in the street directly in her way.
A woman rushed out into the lane from the nearest house and scooped up the cat. Even from where he was, Zack could hear her shriek at his sister, "That could have been a
child,
you fool!"
Zack parked his truck on the side of the lane—fully aware that it was going to end up towed—and ran to the driver's side of Zina's car. Zina took one look at him and started rolling up the window in a pathetically insufficient attempt to shut him out of her life.
Ignoring the neighbor still cradling her cat, Zack said, "Zee, Zee, I'm sorry. How could I tell you?"
He was in agony at her pain. The scene was playing out so much worse than anything he'd been able to dream up on his own—and the show still wasn't over.
Zina wouldn't look at him, wouldn't talk to him, couldn't do either if she tried: she was distraught. She tried to start her Civic, which had stalled when she braked, but she let the clutch out too fast and it stalled again.
He stuck his arm through the half-closed window and grabbed the wheel.
"Wait,
I said!"
"Go to hell!" she cried, and she burst into sobs.
"I'll drive you home," he said wearily.
Other neighbors had come out to gawk. One of them had his cell phone out, ready no doubt to punch 911. Zack turned to them and snarled, "Don't you have anything better to do?"
Gently shooing his sister over to the passenger side of the Civic, he adjusted the driver's seat all the way back for the long trek home. He had spent so much time and energy worrying about Zina finding out the truth that, now that the deed was done, his thoughts and emotions began racing on to the next innocent victim in the tragedy.
Wendy.
What must she be going through now? It was almost too brutal for Zack to imagine. For her to be shocked that way in front of everyone she held dear
... but maybe there was a good side to it. He wanted to believe it. She had a big family, people she loved, after all. They would support her.
Still, as Zack could personally, bitterly attest just then, family could be completely useless when the chips were down.
He ripped his thoughts away from Wendy and turned back to his sister, who had stopped sobbing and was resigned to being driven home. Her head was leaning back on the headrest; her eyes were closed. Zack saw trickles of tears crossing her cheekbones and getting lost in her hair. She was absolutely silent.
Zack would so much rather she raged.
Odd, how Zack was able to see himself in a whole new light. Forget Machiavellian schemer; he had been giving himself too much credit for having a brilliant blackmail strategy. In retrospect, he was more like a cartoon character, wandering around holding a grenade with the pin pulled out—except that, unlike in a cartoon, there was nothing very funny about the emotional carnage he'd caused when the thing went off.
"I'm sorry, Zee," he said, glancing back at her again. "More than you'll ever know."
She didn't bother responding. She didn't even bother to open her eyes.
****
They had the cake but skipped the candles.
Gracie Ferro went into the pantry and personally pulled out all sixty-five of them, leaving them in a heap on a saucer. The kids who remained at the party were devastated; what good was a cake with sixty-five holes in the frosting?
Wendy was having a hard time figuring out who was responsible for the total failure of her first big family gathering; there were so many worthy contenders. The mysterious Zina? Even now, Wendy couldn't believe she hadn't been hired by someone as a joke; it would be just like one of her idiot brothers—or all of them, working together—to do something like that.
Her mother? Gracie Ferro had treated the day from first to last more as a wake than a celebration. Anyone would think that she had just dipped one toe into the grave. Why had she wanted the damn birthday party in the first place, if she hadn't wanted to celebrate? That was Wendy's exact question to her as they argued in the kitchen.
'To keep some control over the event," was her mother's not-so-surprising answer. "I didn't want you kids renting a hall and inviting every Tom, Dick, and Harry I've ever known."
"Baloney," Wendy had said to that. "You just didn't want us inviting all the women from church because you've lied about your age to them, haven't you?"
"I haven't lied about
anything.
But I don't see why I have to broadcast my old age to the entire congregation," her mother conceded angrily, so obviously Wendy had touched a nerve. Right after that, her mother had left.
And then there was Jim. Always Jim. Jim with the checkered history of easy lies and convenient evasions. Jim, who could never stand to hurt anyone and got around it by telling the person whatever the person wanted to hear. Jim, who had never yet simply stepped up to the plate and said, "Yup. I did it and I'm sorry."
Jim.
"I don't know why you're taking this out on
me,"
he muttered as he dumped the last of the paper plates into a black lawn bag and began compressing the air out of it. "I'm minding my own business, getting our guests—
your
family—some beer, and suddenly I'm face to face with some looney tune who claims to have been my wife in some parallel universe. And immediately you get this
I
-knew
-
it
look on your face!
God
, you're a piece of work. You have the most suspicious, paranoid, jealous mind of anyone I've ever known."
"Will
you keep your voice down?" Wendy said. "We still have company, in case you haven't noticed."
"So why the hell didn't you take them up on their offer to sleep at some of the others' houses?"
"Because I promised them a good time, and they're going to have a good time if it kills me," she said in a low hiss, looking at the beach where the out-of-towners were keeping a polite distance from them.
"Bullshit. You just want to show them all up because we've never had squat and now we do."
"I'm
not the show-off in this marriage! I was perfectly happy to stay in the old house.
You're
the one who can't spend it fast enough. You have every toy conceivable
,
and you're not done yet!"
"Oh, yeah, every toy. One boat. Big deal. I guess I should have come crawling to you first for permission. Sorr-ree. Oh, yeah, I'm a big spender, all right."
"This is not about
spending.
This is about
... this is about
... I don't know
what
this is about," Wendy said in frustration. "This is about how that woman made me feel."
"Yeah: jealous and paranoid. What I said."
"Right," said Wendy. "You know everything, don't you? If you're so smart, then tell me why she showed up here today. Tell me that!"
Her husband dumped the bag by the door and she heard the rattle of glass; he hadn't separated out the recyclables. He scowled as she re-opened the bag and fished out the beer bottles, then began to tie it shut again.
He said, "I can't believe that you're letting some wacko come between us this way!"
She looked up at him from her task. "Who are you, Jim? I don't even know you. We've been married for twelve years, and all I know about your past is that you're an only child, your father left you when you were three, and your mother died of an aneurysm when you were a senior in high school."
"
Isn't
that enough?" he asked.
"No. It's not. I know you had a hard childhood and that you don't remember much of it—but come on! You can tease Ty all you want about aliens abducting your family, but sometimes I think that
you're
the only alien around here. I have nothing to go on, Jim—nothing!"
He said stiffly, "It was enough for you to have a son by me. And to raise him with me. And to have your family accept me as one of their own. It was enough for me to open my door and my wallet to each and all of your relatives." Obviously wounded, he said, "What more do you want from me?"
Words. They were just words. Wendy didn't hear any of them. "Is Zina the big secret you were trying to tell me about?" she said, making a valiant effort to steady the quaver in her voice. "Look me in the eye, Jim. Answer me yes or no. And God help you if you lie to me."
Her husband looked her straight in the eye and said, "No. The answer to your question is no."