Authors: Robin Antalek
By the staircase that led off the porch Sam saw Suzie walking down a long hall back toward the party. He was surprised that she was alone. She raised a hand for him to wait. While she continued toward Sam he couldn't help but stare. Her dress was a pale gold, sleeveless and fitted to her curves. She was smaller than she had ever been and around her tiny waist was a fragile-looking belt made of chain links. Her eyes were big and bright, and there were two spots of color high in her cheeks. As she got closer Sam looked for the constellation of freckles that formed an S on her cheek, and wondered if Michael had ever
noticed that about her, if he had ever traced it with his finger as Sam had.
“I'm so glad I caught you alone, Sam.” She was slightly out of breath, as if she had been running. Her breath was tangy, her voice soft and slow.
“I was just on my way out with Peter.” When Sam gestured behind him he noticed Peter was gone. He felt desperate to stop the pain in his head.
Suzie frowned. “It's the night before my wedding, so you have to do whatever I want.” She giggled, and then Sam knew she was drunk.
“Suzieâ”
She shook her head. “This is important, Sam. Please.” She adjusted her belt and rubbed her palms against her dress. “It's about Bella.” She looked around and so did Sam. They were alone, tucked in a triangle-shaped alcove before the staircase. “Tomorrow, please, tomorrow you have to act like you and Bella, well, that there isn't history.”
Sam stiffened. “What kind of person do you think I am? I'm not going to be the one to ruin your wedding. I think there are potentially plenty of other people here who could. Your father, my mother, my father, your mother.” He didn't add that he was upset that she was more worried he might hurt Bella than that he might be hurt she was marrying his brother.
Suzie bit her lip. “My father wasn't invited.”
“What?”
“He and I don't have much of a relationship. We hadn't ever, really, since . . .”
“Oh.” Sam had heard rumors, knew more stuff had gone down with her parents after they had moved.
She nodded and swallowed hard. “Anyway, I just wanted to
make sure that you and Bella could stand together for us tomorrow. Bella is totally fine with it. But I wasn't sure how you would, you know, feel.” She searched his face with her enormous eyes until he had to look down at his feet.
“Don't worry, okay? Just don't worry.”
Suzie reached out her hand as if she might touch Sam's arm and then retracted it fast. He could feel her fear, and he was sad that he was the cause. He motioned for her to step ahead of him into the room alone. He didn't want to give anyone a chance to think that the bride and he had any secrets.
Sam followed his
nose and found Peter at the sixteenth hole with two guys in khakis, striped ties, and navy blue blazers. They looked slightly familiar, but he didn't care enough to ask for their names and no one offered an introduction. The four of them shared a joint for a bit, and then the two strangers wandered off.
Peter and Sam sat down on the green and finished off the joint. They were far enough away from the porch that no one could see them, but close enough to hear voices and the string quartet. Sam fell back onto the grass and shut his eyes. His headache was still there, but it felt further away. “Tell me what happened the last year of your life,” he said.
Peter coughed. “Pretty much the same thing that happened the year before.”
“So the thing with Mindy is still going on?”
“There is no thing.”
“Um, you're at my brother's wedding with her.”
“How was France?”
“I cannot tell one more person how fucking beautiful it was.”
“Did I ask you that?” Sam heard the strike of a match and then
the sweet smell of a fresh joint. Peter floated it over his chest. “Was it worth it?”
Sam took a long hit, exhaled, and handed the joint back to Peter. “Was what worth it?”
“Running away?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Hey, here you assholes are . . . having all the fun without me.” Sam propped himself up on his elbows. Frankie Cole was heading across the green. “Turner,” he said when he reached them. “Long time.” They slapped hands in a misguided mid/high five.
Frankie reached over Sam and took the joint from Peter. “There are no single girls here except for the ones who already know me.” He took a hit off the joint.
Sam laughed. “Same old story, Cole, same old story.”
Frankie half snorted, half coughed as he tried to keep the smoke in. “Fuck, I've missed you guys.”
“Ruthie has a lover, by the way,” Peter said.
“Did you meet him?” Frankie asked.
“No, but I met
her.
” Peter handed Sam the joint. “And I'm not making up the lover thing. She said, âPeter, meet my lover, Lucy.' ”
“Fucking women's studies,” Frankie added. “Worst boner-killer major ever. They put all these hot girls together, teach them to hate men, and so they turn to each other.”
“Did you mention that in your interview when they hired you at Rutgers?” Sam asked. Peter had told him that the philosophy department had offered Frankie a job after grad school and was allowing him to work toward a doctorate while he taught. Sam had no idea what being a philosophy professor entailed. Whatever it was, Frankie was supposedly brilliant at it.
They killed off the second joint. Sam listened while Peter and Frankie discussed the futility of mating with one person for life.
Finally Sam said, “What was going on inside when you left?” He was trying to figure out how much more time he was expected to stay. If he couldn't leave soon he was going to just spend the night on the golf course. The sprinklers could wake him in the morning.
“Toasts,” Frankie said. “Long, boring toasts given by crying people.” He paused. “What they don't understand is that love is an abstract idea. It is improbable as a long-termâ”
“SHIT.” Sam sat up, cutting off Frankie's tirade against love. He was pretty sure that at some point Michael had said the best man would have to give a toast. “I have to get in there.” Sam tried to stand and fell back down on one knee, hard. He clawed at the green and got enough momentum to push himself upright. As he walked toward the clubhouse he realized he was stoned. Possibly more stoned than he had ever been in his life. Which was entirely the reason everyone turned to look at him as he fumbled with the latch on the screen door.
His mother saved him. She took Sam by the elbow and closed the door softly. He felt her brush off his shoulders and back and press something cold into his hand. “Drink,” she commanded.
Sam did as he was told, grateful for the cold water. It was the best water he'd ever tasted in his life. He felt her hand on the back of his head, fishing something out of his hair, most likely grass. “Do I have to say something?” he whispered.
She shook her head and pointed to the front of the room, where Michael and Suzie stood arm in arm. Sam suddenly realized how quiet it was. The string quartet had finally stopped playing. Michael and Suzie shimmered, their affection for each other enviable, and yet they did it quietly, almost privately. They were standing in front of a hundred of their closest friends and family, but they might as well have been alone.
Sam shivered, and his mother reached up and massaged his shoulder. He wasn't sure how much she had been paying attention to him that summer she left, but he would be willing to guess she had known way more than he had given her credit for.
After the toasts
were over, Sam sat at the bar with Peter and Frankie, inhaling a burger and fries. He had noticed Bella in the crowd of people closest to Suzie and Michael. She was standing next to a guy who kept bending down to say something in her ear. She smiled and laughed and one time reached up and fixed the collar of his shirt. The guy brushed her hand off as if she was annoying, but Bella didn't seem to notice.
Sam thought about going over and offering a casual hello to get it out of the way. But then he reconsidered. He had the feeling that maybe he had been thinking about Bella way more than she ever thought about him. Sam still carried that scrap of a poem in his wallet; the paper was so thin from being folded that the fibers had broken down to nearly transparent in places. He wasn't sure if what he was feeling was nostalgia or sleep deprivation. Tomorrow would be soon enough.
Michael was standing
alone in the middle of the backyard when Sam finally got home. He had gone to Peter's with Frankie because Mindy was spending the night with Suzie and Ruthie in a bungalow at the club. When Sam finally headed toward home he was nearly catatonic with exhaustion. It struck him, as he walked the darkened streets of his childhood, that he had been taking this path forever. That his body would know how to find the way even if his mind wasn't cooperating.
Sam had been at the sink for some time when he noticed Michael. He had been looking at the framed photos of Hunt and
Marguerite on the marble countertop. In one his father was in the canoe at Paradox Lake waving at the camera, and in another he and Marguerite sat at a large round table surrounded by champagne flutes and flowers. There was also a photo of Michael and Suzie sitting together in the same lawn chair, and one of Sam frowning at the barbecue, his face nearly obscured by the smoke.
The back wall of the house, once solid, was now made of glass, and tiny lights outlined a stone walkway to the new patio. Michael was off the path in the grass. He was still wearing his suit, his tie slung over his shoulder like a scarf. He was barefoot. Sam watched his brother. When he didn't move in the time it took Sam to down four glasses of water, he went out back to join him.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Michael answered without turning around.
“I'm sorry.”
“For what?”
“Being late, being born, take your pick,” Sam joked.
Michael laughed.
Sam craned his neck and made a show of looking around the yard. “Everything looks great here. I'd barely call it home.”
Michael nodded.
“You okay?”
Michael opened his mouth but didn't say anything right away. Sam felt himself getting nervous. Finally Michael looked over. “I'm just taking a moment, you know?”
“Sure, of course. Big day tomorrow.”
“Do you ever think you will do this?”
“What? Stand in the middle of the backyard contemplating the state of the universe?”
Michael grinned; he looked tired. “Get married, asshole. Suzie
thought you might come home with someone, that that was the reason you missed your flights.”
Sam thought of the nearly celibate year he'd spent in France. It had mostly been by choice, an attempt to change his ways of empty sex and strange beds. But in the end he was just frustrated, hardly changed, and lonely. “No, not this time.”
Michael gave Sam a funny look and ran a hand through his hair. “I should sleep, right? I should sleep because tomorrow is going to go by so fast. I want to be present, you know? I want to remember everything.”
“You will.”
Michael stared at him. “It's okay, right?” he whispered. “Me and Suzie?”
Sam was confused by his question. “She's crazy about you. Everyone can see it.”
“No.” Michael shook his head, clearly agitated that Sam wasn't following. “I thought . . .” He hesitated.
“What?”
“When I used to think about the future, about my life, I always thought I would be alone. I just couldn't imagine being with someone in this way.”
“And now?”
“Sometimes I still think it's not real.” He shook his head. “And then I see her, you know? I see her, and I can't see my life any other way.”
How could Sam tell his brother that at one time he knew exactly how Michael was feeling about his soon-to-be wife? “That's the way it should be,” he choked out. The words felt hard, unyielding, a lump in his chest somewhere in the vicinity of where his heart used to be. “I should go to bed. I can't even count the hours I've been awake.”
“Sure.”
“You okay?”
“Absolutely. Hey, you talk to Mom?”
“Yeah, and Tom. He hates me.”
Michael smirked. “Nah. Not once you get to know him.”
“And you do?”
“Well, at least I try.” He smirked again. “Go, get some sleep, write a toast, will you?” He yawned and gave Sam a sloppy grin.
“You coming in?”
“Soon.”
Sam started to walk back to the house. At the patio he turned to look one more time at Michael. In that moment Michael reminded him so much of their mother and her mercurial moods. He almost said something, but then he thought better of it.
The next afternoon
Bella came toward Sam in a halting step due to the uneven ground and the petals strewn in clumps on the walkway. Under a flower-draped arbor Sam stood to Michael's left in a suit and tie. The air was heavy like a late-summer afternoon at the beach. All morning Michael had been panicking about the impending storms. Hunt had the flat-screen televisions in the bedroom, living room, and kitchen tuned to the Weather Channel, where they could see the Peter Maxâlike radar screens shift and expand. There was a nearly 100 percent chance of rain. Michael had paced from room to room, his phone tucked near his chin, weaving alternate scenarios into the receiver until Suzie finally persuaded him to let go. She insisted on the wedding as it had been planned: the ceremony outside on the lawn, cocktails and dinner inside on the large wraparound porches.
The wind gusted, lifting the satin ribbons that tied the flowers to the folding chairs. The ribbon tails quivered gracefully as
Ruthie, Mindy, and Bella walked down the aisle. As the music changed the crowd turned in their chairs to see the bride. Sam glanced at Michael. He was smiling with abandon; any doubts he'd had the previous night were gone. Sam saw their father in the front row with Marguerite pressed against him, her hand held firmly in his lap. Before he even turned around to look at Suzie, his father's eyes were shiny with tears. Two seats away from Marguerite were Elizabeth and Tom. He had his hand on her shoulder, and she looked like she was trying hard to keep it together.