Authors: Robin Antalek
Marguerite turned out
to be an excellent sous chef. By the time Sam's father had risen from his nap they had a quinoa salad with roasted vegetables, black bean burgers on whole grain rolls, a green salad, and new potatoes with lemon laid out on the table in the backyard underneath the grape arbor. When they were all seated at the table Sam admired the age of the gnarled vine, in
some places as thick as his forearm. Marguerite said, “My grandfather and uncles used to make their own wine and sit at this very table drinking it out of jelly jars, eating shaved slices of Romano from a tremendous wheel they kept covered on the center of the table. They would be out here for hours at a time, and at night, sometimes when it's quiet, I can still hear their voices, a hybrid of English and Italian, even though all of them are long dead.”
Hunt smiled, as if he'd heard the story before and enjoyed it in the retelling. He lifted a fork of the salad, a thread of eggplant poised on the tines. “This is really good, Sam. Really.”
Sam smiled. “Dad, in all the years I've been cooking for you I can't remember a time when you ever told me something was awful.”
His father raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Hunt took another black bean burger. “Huh,” he said as he held it up and examined it before taking an enthusiastic bite.
Marguerite laughed and lifted her glass of club soda in Sam's direction. Sam toasted her back just as he heard tires crunch over the gravel in the driveway. It was only just dusk but the arc of headlights was obvious even in the backyard.
“Who's that?” Marguerite wondered aloud while Hunt, head down, continued to fork red potatoes into his mouth. “Tommy is still in Syracuse.” She looked as if she was about to get up and check when a car door slammed and then another.
Sam's father put down his fork and touched Marguerite's arm so she would sit back down. “I'll go.” Moments later he reappeared with Michael and Suzie.
Marguerite jumped up. “What a surprise! Sit! We have so much food. Healthy food!” She pulled out a chair next to hers and
motioned to the one next to Sam, then rushed into the house. Sam was relieved when Suzie chose the seat next to Marguerite.
Michael elbowed Sam in the ribs. “You don't answer your phone?”
Marguerite hurried out of the house, plates and silverware cradled to her chest. She set them on the table but neither Suzie nor Michael made a move to take any food. They looked at each other and smiled, almost shyly, and Michael reached across the table and grabbed Suzie's hand.
Marguerite looked from one to the other and then over at Hunt, who was smiling. “What gives, you two?”
Sam took a deep breath, louder than he intended, and Suzie glanced at him. He shook his head. He just wanted to know what was going on other than an impromptu family dinner.
“There's been a lot going on these past couple of months,” Michael said. He paused and cleared his throat, acknowledging his massive understatement. “Suzie's mom, and of course, Dad.” He gave a nod toward Hunt and smiled, with a shadow of relief. “It's given me more than enough reason to think about the things that are important in life, something I admit I usually don't do a lot, or even at all.” He hesitated and finally allowed a genuine toothy smile. “Oh shit, I'm horrible at this.” He looked like he was about to burst. “I asked Suzie to marry me.”
“OH!” Marguerite twisted in her seat and threw her arms around Suzie. “Oh, I am so happy for both of you! Congratulations.”
“Surprise!” Hunt called out, looking anything but surprised.
Michael got up and went around the table to Marguerite and then Hunt, allowing each of them to hug him before he stood behind Suzie and rested a hand on her shoulder. She reached up and stroked the inside of his arm. Sam had yet to say anything.
He knew what he was expected to say, but he was unsure of how to say it sincerely.
Michael looked over at him. “You should have answered your phone.”
“I'll never ignore it again.” Sam hesitated. “Congratulations, really.” He pushed his chair back and went into the kitchen. He knew there were champagne flutes in the pantry; he had noticed them earlier when he was getting a platter for the burgers. He dropped raspberries into the bottom of five flutes along with lemonade and sparkling water, then put them all on a tray and carried them back outside. Holding up one of the flutes, Sam said, “To true love.”
Over her champagne glass Sam caught Suzie staring at him. When they made eye contact she looked away and moved closer to his brother. Marguerite was asking about the details of the wedding; his father leaned in, listening to their answers. Sam heard nothing but the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears.
Y
ou look so beautiful.”
Bella caught Suzie's eye in the mirror and made a face. She was sitting on a rose-colored velvet tufted stool with her knees to her chest, watching Suzie get her final gown fitting. The seamstress worked down around the hem, a wide bracelet of pins circling her wrist. Bella was definitely not feeling very beautiful in cutoff denim shorts, one of Ted's V-neck T-shirts, and sandals that showcased unpolished toenails. Her hair, which had never gone back to waves, was pulled back into a messy bun. She had been traveling for what felt like days to get there from Montana.
Suzie made a face back and laughed. “Seriously, whatever it is: Ted, mountain air, clean living, good sex. You look amazing.”
Bella shook her head and caught the eye of the seamstress, who smiled. “Enough about me,” Bella said. “You are the princess today, tomorrow, the next day . . .”
“Ugh,” Suzie said. “You know I never went in for any of that crap.”
“
Spoken like a true anti-bride.” Bella laughed.
“Seriously, though, I'm so glad you're here.” The seamstress stood and stepped back and Suzie turned around to look at Bella. “It's okay?” She picked at the material that gently hugged the curve of her hips. The dress was simple and elegant, and the color, neither cream nor white, made Suzie's skin shimmer, turning it a flattering shade of rose.
Bella nodded. Her eyes filled with tears. Suzie was getting married. It was no longer an abstract idea dissected during their weekly calls.
Suzie shook her head when she saw the waterworks. “Bella, don't.”
Bella swiped at the corners of her eyes with the hem of Ted's T-shirt. She shook her head. “I'm not a real grown-up person yet and here you are getting married. How did that happen?”
“Do you really believe that?”
“You're going to be a doctor. You will have a husband who is also a doctor. You have a real home.” Bella smiled, thinking of the apartment Suzie had so proudly showed off, so new the couch and mattress were still wrapped in the delivery plastic and bore stickers from Macy's. “These are all really good things.”
“It sounds scary when you list them like that.”
“Good scary, though, right? Like you never ever believed that this would happen?”
“Yeah,” Suzie whispered. “But what about you?”
Bella smiled. “I'm happy,” she insisted. “But I don't quite feel there, where you are, you know?”
Bella hadn't thought
Ted would come with her to Suzie's wedding. His writing was going well, so well that he had been living alone in the cabin while Bella had gone back to Iowa City for
work. She was the only one with a job, a temporary teaching gig, a last-minute replacement for a famous writer who had just had a baby. There was disappointment on all sides, students and Ted alike, when she showed up for her first day. The students were disappointed because she was no one who could further their careers. Ted was disappointed because he had lost his daily reader/editor.
Bella took the job because she wasn't doing any of her own writing anyway, and she was tired of her father's supporting her and Ted. Her work on turning her thesis into a publishable book had stalled, even more so after she found out that three people in her graduating class already had agents and book deals. Even Ted had an agent. Bella lost all enthusiasm for editing her own work and instead pored over Ted's pages as if they were her own.
Ted's cabin, which he had built with his own hands, was so remote that the only way Bella could communicate with him was to send a letter to the post office in the town where he kept a PO box. Once a week Ted trekked into town for supplies. If it was an emergency, Bella could call the general store/post office and they would leave a message tacked up on the bulletin board in the store. But Bella hadn't considered Suzie's wedding an emergency, so she had written Ted a letter with the dates and what she hoped sounded like a no-pressure invitation. He had called her collect from the pay phone in the store and told her to come back. He said he missed her and he couldn't sleep at night. He promised they would leave in time for the wedding. Through the receiver she heard the sound of paper crinkling. She imagined her words crumpled in the palm of his hand. She was so surprised that she did as he asked without thinking.
After the dress
fitting Bella dropped Suzie off at the country club in Rye where the wedding and reception were being held. Suzie and Michael had rented all of the quaint clapboard guest cottages that circled the golf course for their out-of-town relatives, and that was also where Suzie was staying with her mother and brothers. Suzie wanted to check on Sarah, six weeks out of Silver Hill, and take a nap before Bella met back up with her for drinks with Mindy, Ruthie, and Celia.
When Bella arrived home she found Ted on the deck outside of her room. He was sitting in a green webbed lounge chair, the cat wedged between his splayed legs. On the floor around the chair were Bella's laptop, the charger, two empty beer bottles, and a plate with a gelatinous smear of tomato innards and a lone saltshaker.
As Bella wrenched open the sliding glass door, Ted, whose back was to her, twisted around and offered up a lazy half smile. Bella noticed the yellow legal pad shoved beneath his thigh and wondered if he was trying to get some work done. She hesitated, not really wanting to interrupt him, but he held out his hand and said, “Baby, where have you been?”
The cat jumped down off the chair and disappeared into the backyard as Bella approached and leaned over Ted. She kissed him on the lips. He tugged on her belt loop and she fell on top of him.
He laughed as he nuzzled her neck. “Just what I was dreaming about.”
Ted's three days' growth of stubble tickled as he moved his mouth down past Bella's throat and into the deep V of her T-shirt. Bella could feel the sun beating down on her head and shoulders and she relaxed under Ted's hands. The old chair creaked beneath them and Bella heard something pop just as the
footrest collapsed, tipping the chair forward. Bella laughed and Ted groaned. His fingers tugged on a nipple and Bella shivered.
They managed to get off the chair and into Bella's bedroom, the glass door protesting loudly on the uneven tracks. For all the words Ted put on paper, he was quiet in his pursuit. Before they even made it to the bed he had stripped off Bella's shirt and shorts so that she stood before him in a lacy bra and underpants, her only nod to femininity lately. Their breathing was shallow and labored in the closed, stuffy room as Ted pushed Bella down onto the bed. She heard his shorts drop to the floor and her eyes flew open in time to see him kneel down at the edge of the bed between her legs. He ran his hands up and down inside her thighs and Bella closed her eyes, enjoying the familiarity in knowing what came next, where the only unknown was how long it would take.
Ted had fallen
asleep when Bella got out of bed in search of a fan. She picked the inside-out T-shirt of Ted's off the floor, pulled it over her head, and left the room. Ted swore he could survive without modern conveniences, but Bella knew her limits. Even though she had made it sound to Suzie that being in a remote cabin in Montana was pure bliss, it wasn't. Right now, she was hot and thirsty and in no mood for roughing it. At least here she had a choice.
When she got to the kitchen her father was standing at the island mixing a martini. He was as surprised to see her as she was him, and so she had no time to back out of the room. She tugged at the hem of the T-shirt and he looked down at his drink. “I'm meeting Hunt and Michael for golf,” he said quickly, his eyes trained on a point past the kitchen. “I asked Ted, but he said he doesn't play.” He paused. “He said he has work to do.”
Bella nodded. She heard the slight way her father emphasized the word
work.
She knew he wouldn't say what he thought: that writing with no guarantee of money seemed more like a hobby than a job. She imagined Ted sharing his feelings about the environmental hazards of golf courses with her father. When she told him that Suzie and Michael's wedding was at the country club he had shaken his head in profound disappointment in their lack of ecological awareness.
“So I'm leaving now,” Bella's father added. The ice cubes tinkled against the sides of the glass as he drained the drink and turned away from her to place the glass in the sink.
“Okay,” Bella said quickly. She spun around and ran back down the hall and into the bathroom, where she pressed her face up against the cool tile wall and waited until she heard the door to the garage open and close. Why was she hiding as if Ted were her sixteen-year-old boyfriend? She was old enough to have sex. Certainly her father knew she was having sex. But she didn't want to have a conversation with him while standing in his kitchen wearing nothing but her boyfriend's T-shirt just after having sex. Especially since she had an idea of what her father thought of Ted, and it wasn't great.
Mindy, Ruthie, Celia
, and Suzie were already at the bar in their summer dresses when Bella arrived. They smelled of cocoa butter and roses, the scent of girls who do not live in a cabin in the mountains. Bella inhaled as she hugged them and remembered when she used to smell like that too.
Ruthie ordered gin and tonics for all of them as they settled at a black iron table on the wide front porch. The breeze lifted Bella's ponytail off the nape of her neck and she flicked her hair back over her shoulder. Her mind wandered as her friends
talked. Bella was still unnerved from the run-in with her father. She wondered what her mother would have thought of Ted, if somehow she would have made things easier. She thought about how Ted had asked her to look over his work before she went out, and how she had forgotten to go outside to retrieve the pad off the deck. She hadn't meant to, but she wondered what Ted would make of that. If he would think she didn't care. It had been so long since they had even talked about her work. But that was her fault. She had shut him down the last few times he tried to bring it up.
She took a sip of her gin and tonic and looked across the table. Mindy had handed Suzie a small shopping bag and Suzie was sifting through the layers of tissue paper. Finally she revealed a pewter-colored silk slip, the delicate edges rolled and hand stitched, shoulder straps as thin as threads. “It's beautiful,” Suzie said, unable to hide the surprise in her voice.
Mindy smiled. “It's definitely you, darling.”
Everyone at the table murmured in agreement. The waiter arrived and they ordered another round. They talked about their lives since they had last seen one another, what they had imagined for themselves all those years ago, and they marveled that Suzie was the first among them to be married. By the third round of drinks, when the solar lights hidden in the landscaping had begun to glow in the dusky gray evening light, Bella caught sight of her father, Sam's father, Peter Chang, and Michael heading down the cart path toward the clubhouse. Peter Chang was an odd addition to the threesome. Bella wished that Ted had accepted her father's invitation despite his moral opposition on behalf of the environment.
Michael greeted everyone but was looking only at Suzie and she at him. Suzie looked up at Michael, her eyes shiny, her lips
swollen from the heat, her cheeks flushed from the gin. “Are you leaving soon to get Sam?” Bella felt a twinge in her belly.
Michael nodded. He tucked a tendril of Suzie's hair that had escaped her bun back behind her ear. Everyone seemed to avoid looking at Bella, or maybe that was just three gin and tonics and Bella's own paranoia.
Hunt offered, “I'll go, if you want.”
Michael frowned. “I'm fine, Dad, enjoy yourself.”
Bella's father slapped Hunt on the shoulder. “You know what that means. We can have martinis with our steaks, Hunt.” He laughed, and Bella laughed with him. What would they have done if Bella said she wanted to go with Michael? What if she met Sam head-on at the airport full of gin and tonics?
“Loser buys,” Hunt said, laughing back.
Peter, who had been hanging back from the table, tapped Mindy on top of the head, and she pushed back her chair and they disappeared inside the club, hand in hand. Ruthie looked over at Bella with a raised eyebrow and Bella laughed. They all might have aged, but they hadn't grown up.
There came a
time later in the night when they lost their shoes somewhere on the golf course. They had been on their way to Suzie's cottage and then somehow collapsed onto the green, unable to go any farther.
Bella burped softly. “Does anyone else have a splitting headache?” Her head already hurt and she was still a little drunk.
Ruthie and Celia moaned. They were on their backs on the green, arms thrown over their faces. Bella looked at Suzie. “You are a doctor. Why does my head hurt?”
Suzie shrugged and laughed.
“Thanks,” Bella said. “I have to pee.”
“Me too,” added Ruthie.
“Same,” Celia echoed.
“I had sex with Peter in the bathroom at the club,” Mindy said.
Suzie and Bella laughed. Ruthie groaned again. Celia was quiet.
“What?” Mindy shrugged. “Friends with benefits, it's the best sex.” She must have thought they looked unconvinced, because she felt the need to add, “We knocked over the basket of potpourri. I didn't pick it up.”
“I had sex with Ted this afternoon, and my father surprised me,” Bella said.
“What?” Suzie and Mindy said in unison.
Bella shook her head. “Well, I mean it was after. I went into the kitchen wearing Ted's T-shirt and he was standing there.”
“Awkward,” Ruthie said.
“Did he say anything?” Mindy asked.
“About me having sex? No.” Bella made a face. “God, no. I wasn't going to tell you guys that and now I did, so obviously I am an unreliable keeper of secrets.”