The Grown Ups (20 page)

“It was your own secret, so you didn't promise anyone but yourself,” Celia pointed out.

“True,” Bella agreed. “But if you can't keep your own secrets, isn't that worse?”

“No,” Mindy said with a hint of authority in her voice. “It just means you changed your mind, dummy.”

“Oh,” Bella sighed. “I changed my mind; that sounds better, I guess.” She didn't really think so, but she wanted to get off the subject. “What about you, bride-to-be?”

“What, is this Truth or Dare?” Suzie asked slowly. The rest of the girls busted out laughing, but Bella could see she blushed deeply.

“Oh my God, remember playing that in Peter's basement?”
Ruthie said. She pointed over at Mindy. “You and Frankie Cole. I so remember you and Frankie.”

Mindy rolled her eyes. “Okay, you and Johnny Ross?”

“Lots of saliva.” Ruthie looked solemn. “I wonder if that ever improved.”

“It has,” Celia piped up. They all turned and looked at her. “What? He's cute. Have you seen him recently? He plays guitar.”

“Why can't we leave each other?” Mindy asked. “Is this normal?” She poked Suzie on the thigh. “You're the head doc.”

“Bella has Ted, he's not one of us,” Ruthie said.

“But she had Sam first,” Mindy said.

“Oh, did she ever.” Ruthie laughed. “For all of his awkwardness that boy is walking sex.”

“You think Sam is awkward?” Celia asked. “I think he's cute.”

“Well, compared to Michael, the handsome, handsome Michael, he is,” Ruthie said.

Mindy laughed as if she'd just processed what Ruthie had said. “Walking sex?”

Bella squirmed. Her dress was sticking to her body. She avoided looking over at Suzie. She had thought about Sam when she was lying next to Ted. She remembered in detail the night after her mother had died. She would never forget that.

Thankfully Suzie jumped in. “No one is normal, okay? Everyone is always worried about being normal, but we are all abnormal.” She pointed at each of them. “Every single one of you. And me.”

“I think you might want to work on that bedside manner,” Ruthie said.

Suzie held up her finger. “Duly noted.”

Bella sat up and waved her hands in front of her face. “I'm hot. Can we go swimming?”

“The pool is closed,” Celia said.

“All the better,” Mindy said. She stood and offered Bella her hand.

They straggled as a group off the path and cut over the tennis courts to the pool. The moon was low, the air was thick, and it was only a couple of hours before dawn. If the weather continued like that for the next twenty-four hours the wedding day was going to be brutal.

Bella got to the gate first and stood on her tiptoes to pump the release on the latch. As it swung open they skittered across the concrete deck to the edge. Suzie lifted her dress over her head and dove in first, hitting the water so seamlessly that it took a moment for Bella to realize she had gone in. When she popped up, her head was as dark and sleek as a seal.

One by one they shed their summer dresses and jumped into the pool. The water was warm, like the middle part of a perfect bath. Bella swam the length of the pool underwater, back and forth, and then floated on her back in the deep end. The only sound she heard was her own breath in her ears. She wished Ted were there with her. She wondered what he would think when he woke and she wasn't beside him. She was probably sober enough now to go home. But she couldn't bear the thought of leaving.

S
am should have left Paris three days earlier, but he missed
his original flight out of the South of France because of a string of storms and a lack of urgency, so all the connecting flights fell like dominoes. He finally arrived at JFK on the evening of the rehearsal dinner. He called the moment he landed, but his change of plans had left Marguerite and his father no other choice but to go on ahead without him. By the time Sam caught the shuttle and then a cab to the house, he had been without any decent sleep for thirty-six hours.

Sam stepped inside the front door and realized that while the outside remained the same, everything inside was different. If he hadn't been so tired he was sure he would have been sufficiently warned by the metaphor. He spent way too much time wandering through the downstairs, admiring the surfaces and the light, the marble countertops in the kitchen, and the carefully placed art. He took a beer from the refrigerator and went upstairs, peering in the open door of the impressive master suite. The bed was unmade, sheets and blankets forming a bridal train to the floor,
and a nightgown draped over a chair. On a sleek, low modern dresser stood framed high school graduation pictures of Sam and Michael that had once been on Hunt's old dresser.

Sam finished the beer in the master bathroom and studied his reflection in the wall of mirrors above the double sinks. He hadn't spent any time concerned with his appearance in the past months, so what he saw was a surprise. He was thinner but stronger, his arms and legs ropy and hard, his abdomen visibly muscled from swimming in the warm Mediterranean waters, which he did whenever he wasn't cooking. His skin was dark, nearly olive, and his hair a lighter shade of brown, nearing blond at the tips, and shaggy to the point of badly needing a haircut. His beard looked like a small animal and would have to go. He wondered how late that would make him, how much time he had before he really pissed everyone off. When Michael had asked Sam to be his best man, right after he was offered the job that would take him a continent away for nearly a year, Sam had imagined the wedding would never happen. He'd thought there was a possibility he would never have to stand by his brother and watch him marry Suzie Epstein. But now they were here, and Sam had already shirked most of what he imagined were traditional best-man activities. The least he could do was show up for the rehearsal.

He took a shower in the master bathroom and tracked water across the hardwood floors to the old part of the house, where his room remained intact. On his bed were a dark suit and a white shirt, below on the floor a pair of shoes. Sam guessed Hunt must have left everything out for him. He slipped on his clothes and glanced in the mirror, rubbing his smooth face. It had taken several passes with the scissors and another few with a razor until he got a close shave. His skin was pale where his beard and mustache had been, and he didn't know what looked worse, the beard
or the two-toned effect. He finger-combed his hair back off his face, but it was so long it brushed past the collar until the ends turned up.

His father had left the keys to Marguerite's Honda. On the way to the club Sam passed the strip mall where his mother used to take him and Michael to get haircuts before school started. There had been a glass jar full of baseball cards and candy on the counter. Sure enough, the jar was still there. Sam handed over all the money he had in his wallet with a request to make him look presentable. On the way out, he grabbed a lollipop from the jar and slipped it into his pocket. Everyone in the shop had mistaken his level of panic and thought he was the groom. They called after him with an avalanche of best wishes for a wonderful wedding—wishes Sam accepted without bothering to correct them, which probably damned him to a lifetime of bad luck.

At the end
of the long gravel drive Sam gave the Honda over to a jumpy kid in a white jacket and a crooked black tie, and then stood looking up at the grand clubhouse with its pearly white shingles and black shuttered windows. Everything, the rehearsal dinner and the wedding and a brunch on Sunday, was happening here for convenience's sake. Vines and flowers spilled from elaborate stone planters, and the air smelled sweet. People were gathered on the wide front porch, arranged in groups as artfully as the wicker; the sounds of their voices and the sudden swell of a string quartet made Sam want to run after the Honda and ask the kid if he had any weed. Instead, he jammed his fingers in his pocket and came up with the lollipop from the hair place. He ripped off the plastic and put it in his mouth: root beer.

Sam sucked on the lollipop as he walked through the lobby to the screened-in back porch that ran the length of the clubhouse
and overlooked the rolling hills of the aptly named Rolling Hills Golf Club. The porch was filled with white flowers, twinkling white lights, and candles that seemed to be the source of the sweet scent he had caught a whiff of before. The string quartet was at the far end of the porch in front of a massive stone fireplace. The cello player had an
I'm not really here
look that Sam envied. He hung back, looking for a familiar face before he took the plunge.

The first person he made eye contact with was his mother. Sam recognized the trapped look in her eyes only because it mirrored his own. She came toward him smiling, slim and tall, her hair now entirely silver. She was wearing a pale blue dress with a skirt that moved as she walked. Her face was clear of any makeup except for a gloss on her lips. She had never looked better.

“You look pretty,” Sam said as he moved into her open arms.

She pulled back, laughing softly, and held him at arm's length. “So do you, Sam. So do you.”

Tom appeared at her side holding drinks in his hands. He tipped his chin at Sam in greeting and handed a glass to Elizabeth. “How was the South of France?”

“Beautiful,” Sam nodded. “Good. Great, actually.”

“Great opportunity.”

“Absolutely.” Sam figured he didn't need to tell him that for the first six months he'd peeled carrots and potatoes and dressed salad greens and only got to really cook when the chef had had too much to drink, which as the year went on increased in frequency.

“What are you going to do now?”

Conversation with Tom was like playing volleyball. Sam knew he didn't think much of him, of the way Sam fell in and out of his mother's life. He wanted to say to him that she didn't exactly call
Sam every week either, that she left when he was fifteen years old, but he had a feeling that didn't matter to Tom.

Sam's mother saved him from answering Tom's question when she said, “The gardenias are overwhelming.”

“Is that what smells so sweet?” Sam could feel a headache forming behind his right eye. Jet lag was almost definitely to follow.

“SAM?”

Sam spun around at the sound of his father's voice and was immediately crushed against his chest. The force of Hunt's hug nearly lodged the lollipop stick deep into Sam's throat and Sam gagged. Hunt thumped him twice between the shoulder blades while Sam disengaged the stick. “Prodigal Sam, you made it.”

“I did,” Sam smiled. He accepted the cocktail napkin that had suddenly appeared before him from his mother and wadded it together with the stick into his pocket. “I did, finally. I'm sorry about the confusion, my flights.” His father looked thinner than when Sam left; Sam wondered if his heart felt bruised a year later.

“You're here now. Have you seen your brother?”

“No, I just got here and I ran into . . . Mom.” Sam pointed to his mother, who was looking at them over the rim of her glass. When was the last time they had been together? Sam's high school graduation?

Hunt smiled in her direction. “Elizabeth, doesn't our boy look great?”

Sam's mother returned her ex-husband's smile. “He does. It's good to see him.”

Sam wasn't sure if they had agreed before the wedding to act as if they were the most cordial divorced couple in the world, but it felt like it. He peered past his father for Marguerite, but he
couldn't find her. There were a lot of people on the porch but no one he immediately recognized.

Hunt put a hand on Sam's shoulder. “Let's get you over to Michael. He'll be glad to know you finally showed up.” He hesitated, and then said as if he were asking permission, “Elizabeth?”

“Go, go on. Make your brother calm down.” Elizabeth ignored Sam's father and smiled at Sam as if this night, all of them together and his brother marrying Suzie Epstein, was entirely normal. “I'll catch up to you later.”

Sam's father barreled through the crowd, pumping hands and introducing Sam like a politician at a fund-raiser. “Who are all these people?” Sam asked as soon as there was a pocket of air. He gulped frantically, like a goldfish breaking the smooth surface. Everyone was drinking and his hands were empty. The bones in his skull felt tight. He needed a damn drink.

His father looked over his shoulder but, like a shark, kept moving forward. “Friends, business associates, neighbors. You name it, they are here.”

“I'm never doing this,” Sam said to his father's back.

“What?”

“I said: it's great that they are doing this, having so many people and all.”

His father finally stopped and turned to smirk at Sam. “Absolutely.”

“What?” Sam feigned innocence.

“I've missed you.” Hunt laughed. “It's really good to see you, Sammy, really good.” He paused and then pointed. “Come on, there he is.”

Sam followed his father's finger. Michael and Suzie stood surrounded by a group. Suzie's arm was slipped through Michael's,
and she was leaning forward at the waist as she listened to someone standing to the left of Michael. She wasn't doing a thing to get attention, yet she had Sam's. Fully. He took a deep breath.

“Here he is!” Hunt presented Sam to the group in a booming, cheerful voice, as if he had just been released from the asylum or born again.

As the group parted to let him in, Sam said, “Hey,” and raised his hands in surrender. “I'm sorry I'm so late.”

Michael reached out a hand as if they were going to shake and then pulled Sam in for a half hug. Sam smiled at Suzie and then turned back to his brother. Jokingly he asked, “Is there anything important I need to know for tomorrow?”

Michael shook his head as if this was typical of Sam, making a big joke out of everything. He pulled Suzie tighter to his side. She buried her face in his jacket and then peered up at him through a mass of wavy black hair as if no one else were present. From the back of the group came the unmistakable ring of fork tines hitting crystal, quickly multiplying. Michael and Suzie obliged the crowd with a kiss.

Slowly, Sam backed away from the happy couple and made his way toward the bar. He seriously didn't know how he was going to get through the next few hours, let alone the entire following day.

Sam wedged himself
into a corner of the bar and ordered a beer. His headache was in full-force vise-grip mode. To his left was a platter of stuffed endive leaves; he rapidly ate three, even though the endive was bitter and the cheese was overprocessed and salted.

“So, it's fucking true. You're back.”

“Peter?” Sam twisted around and made room at the bar.

Peter put a hand up to the bartender and signaled that he would have what Sam was drinking. “How long have you been gone, asshole? A year?”

“I just got here.” Sam squinted at the clock over the register. “U.S. soil, that is, not even two hours ago. Two hours. I missed the rehearsal. And the dinner.”

“I know, I was here.”

“Why?”

Peter took a swallow of his beer. “Mindy's in the wedding. I'm her plus one.”

“Mindy? In the wedding.”

“What did you expect from Suzie? Mindy, Ruthie, and Bella.” Peter craned his head around to scan the room. “Frankie Cole is here somewhere.” He paused. “She invited the rest of them too—Stephen, Johnny, Celia. We'll probably see them tomorrow.”

Sam dropped his forehead to the bar. He felt weak in the knees at the mention of Bella. Oh, why the fuck was he so stupid? Of course Bella was there.

“You okay?”

He lifted his aching head. “Jet lag.”

Peter nodded solemnly. “I might have a little something that will help.”

“I would be eternally grateful.”

“I wouldn't expect any less from you, shithead.”

They drained their beers and Peter motioned for Sam to follow him. They were cutting back through the porch again on their way out to the golf course when he finally saw Marguerite, in a conversation with Mr. Spade. As much as he wanted to say hello to her, he did not want to talk to Bella's father, but it was too late. She had seen him and waved him over.

“Sam, I am so glad to finally see you here!”

Sam hugged her, then looked over at Bella's father and extended his hand. Mr. Spade took it, but he didn't look entirely pleased to be doing so. “Sam,” he said. “How's the cooking?” The way he emphasized the word
cooking
made Sam feel like he was the short-order fry guy at Burger King.

“Good, great.”

“Good to hear it.”

Marguerite smiled widely, looking back and forth between the two. “I was just bragging about your year in the South of France.”

Sam nodded. “It is a beautiful place.”

“Did you have a lot of time for sightseeing?”

“No, I worked pretty much all day and into the night. Because it was a charter boat nothing was ever really the same day to day. Lots of interesting people, though.” Sam smiled stiffly. Marguerite brushed something off one of his lapels. “Well, we were heading out to catch up with some of the guys.”

Mr. Spade narrowed his eyes at Sam and then Peter. Sam was sure he was wondering if Sam was including Bella under the umbrella term
guys
. Peter tapped him on the shoulder because he lacked the social skills to pretend he still wanted to be standing there, and for once Sam was grateful.