Club Sandwich (4 page)

So much for clean living. Maybe I should give his lifestyle a try.

“Anyway. There are chicken breasts in the fridge and some snow peas. I bought a nice bottle of Chardonnay, too. Do your magic.”

He runs his scarred fingers through his dirty blond hair. “Sure thing. Got some rice?”

I nod.

“Basmati?”

“Actually, yes. Just the Mahatma kind.”

“That’ll work.”

One time I left supper already cooked, and my brother, a trained chef who runs our restaurant, reamed me out—pulp, seeds, and pith—with such vigor I wouldn’t dare make
that
mistake again.

“If there’s any left, I’ll save it for you.”

“Thanks. You know reception food. I’ll probably be starving by the time I get home.”

He pulls a face as he slides past me at the doorway and into the house.

Certainly the same old buffet fare will unroll the length of the table, punctuated by curly endive and carrot curl garnish. Roast beef, baked chicken, some kind of dried-out fish with paprika on it. Green beans almondine, California medley, maybe an overcooked ratatouille. Tossed salad mostly consisting of iceberg lettuce, and some sort of confetti rice concoction complete with wrinkled peas and cubed canned-soup-worthy carrots. Buttered new potatoes with
rosemary and parsley? Your choice of carrot cake or chocolate torte for dessert. Some kind of pie. Iced tea, coffee. Cash bar. The flier warned us there’d be a cash bar.

I may just go straight for the dessert. After watching Glynn Spicer enter the room as though a red carpet supports her fabulous footwear, I’m sure my appetite will flee quicker than Rusty after the singing bug bit him.

Oh man. Tomorrow’s trash day.

I head out to the side of the house and wheel the can toward the street. The driveway needs a new coat of asphalt. Is that a pansy planted right smack in the middle? Persy did that. I know it.

“Ivy!”

My neighbor. Mr. Zachary Moore.

“Hi Mr. Moore!” He’s doing the same thing I am. But with his arthritis, it’ll take five times longer. I hurry over. “Let me.”

“Now, child. You don’t have to be doin those things for me.” His deep brown eyes crinkle in his deep brown face. I rub my hand along his sweatered arm. Hard bone under knit.

“Course I don’t have to. But I want to. Is that okay?”

“Well, I surely wouldn’t want to deprive you of a blessing.”

Mr. Moore loves Jesus.

I walk slowly, letting him keep pace. The reunion can definitely wait.

“Now where you headin’ all dressed up so fine?”

“My high-school reunion.”

“Lord bless you.”

“I know. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it much. Just curious, I guess.”

“You know what curiosity done for that cat.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

We chuckle together. I love Mr. Moore. He took care of his own mother for years and years and still found time to bring over soup and bread and whatever else he cooked up in his kitchen when my grandma got so sick. He’s an incredible bridge player. Had his master’s points by the time he was thirty.

“Well, you have yourself a good time anyway.”

“If it’s possible.”

He scratches his bushy eyebrow. “Oh, it’s always possible, Ivy. Just not probable. I guess we decide which way we want to go. As for me, two tables of bridge right here tonight would make me a happy camper. I do miss your grandparents. Fine card players. Shame the way life never stops changing.”

“All you can do is go with the flow.”

He chuckles. “I do believe we’ve just gone and contradicted each other!”

“Somehow it worked, Mr. Moore.”

I kiss his wrinkled cheek.

Oh really, why not?

I kiss the other one, too.

He raises his brows. “Child, you’re even more nervous than I thought.”

I start the engine of my Blazer, remembering when Rusty and I purchased it over three years ago. And why did we like brown? I mean, yeah, it was a loaner model, five thousand dollars off the bottom line, only two thousand miles on the engine. Who wouldn’t like brown?

Well, at least it matches my new dress and shoes.

Did I actually comfort myself with
that?

Rusty probably comforts himself with the fact that a reliable car sits in our driveway. But he also left me with car payments and baby Trixie on my hip. I couldn’t talk him out of leaving. He told me this was the opportunity of a barbershop quartet tenor’s lifetime, but where would Mom be? I mean really, she worked at that restaurant from dawn to dusk every day after my father left us, put my sister and me through college and my brother through culinary school. She only laid a finger on us when we sassed her. And even then it didn’t hurt. She wore the same five dresses for twenty years, simply classic, of course, resoled the same two pairs of high-heeled pumps for eternity. I’m telling you, my mother would have handled the depression with finesse. I know oldsters who say, “Shoot, I didn’t even realize we were poor.”

I didn’t either. Until my fifteenth year, when my mom said we couldn’t afford braces.

I still hate my teeth.

Fabulous. Just the thought I needed on my way to a class reunion. And I forgot to brush them too! I drag my tongue down the front of my teeth. Like that’s going to do a thing.

Glynn Spicer was blessed with pretty teeth, white and straight and on the large side. Sexy on her. There wasn’t anything less than sexy on Glynn Spicer.

Now if the dictionary needed an illustration for the word
unsexy
, my picture would fit the bill. No wonder Rusty refused to hang around. Who’d stay for this? I can’t believe he went without us. I can’t believe I didn’t give him an ultimatum.

At least we moved out of the city well before he left. We now abide in Grandma and Grandpa’s old house in east Towson, half a mile from the restaurant. Mom, who lives in the apartment over the
restaurant, rented it out after her parents passed on. But now we’re the lessees and free to decorate it how we please. Actually, we don’t pay much rent, just enough to cover the taxes. My brother and sister never let me forget how much I rely on the family largesse, even though they never wanted the place.

Whatever, as Lyra says.

No traffic snarls braid the beltway today, and every light dips its green at me in the wind. While not wanting to be late, I didn’t want to be one of the early losers either. So I park the car at the Hunt Valley Marriott and head for the bar.

At a small corner table, I lay my purse on the bench, fold my wrap, and place it on top. This feels weird. I haven’t soloed in a lounge in years. An older couple sits a few tables away. The ice in their drinks makes more noise than they do as they while away the minutes before heading off to someplace more official. Or maybe not. Honestly, right now I don’t possess enough energy or goodwill to lob into their court. I begin imagining the evening ahead. Lots of artificial laughter and perfectly manicured fingers fiddling with expensive necklaces. Darn, I forgot jewelry. And I haven’t put on the lipstick either. Could I appear more bland?

A throat clears.

A cocktail waiter stands before me, a young guy with too many gold chains, including an odd crucifix with Jesus suffering on an anchor instead of a cross. What’s that about?

“What can I get for you, ma’am?”

Ma’am? Go soak your head.

“Red wine.”

“Merlot? Cabernet?”

“Shiraz.” So there.

“Great. I’ll be right back.”

Wonder what everybody will be like now? I remember the kids from the clubs I joined. Drama, chorus, debate. Oh yes, Ivy Starling, all-American girl. Salvation Army trendsetter. Popular but kind, down to earth. The girl sophomores went to for advice. And now? I can’t even remember to put on lipstick.

Could I have regressed any further?

Count your blessings, Ive. Think about your great kids, the restaurant (though unglamorous and not at all akin to the life Michelle Pfeiffer led in
Tequila Sunrise
). You know how it is in movies, how the owners always sit at the end of the bar in the morning with the newspaper, a cup of coffee, and a cigarette, and it’s quiet and comforting with the soft clink of cutlery and china emanating from the kitchen, murmuring voices and a transistor radio eking a soft burble from somewhere in the back.

Ha!

Here I go again. Lemonade out of lemons? Who am I kidding?

The wine arrives as well as the tab.

Five fifty?

I sip. Not even that good. I probably paid for the entire bottle.

A group files in. Tut-tut. Bling-bling. Flutter-flutter. Chuckle-chuckle. Must be reunion bound. One man looks like Will Stanton, but without hair. Oh wow, yeah. I imagine we’ll notice big changes in hairlines this time.

Two women spark no recognition. Must be wives. That’s nice. Mates to cling to during this dark hour and all that.

One of the men points toward me and a discussion ensues. He breaks free, and as he approaches I recognize him. I can’t remember his name, but he was on the basketball team, varsity, for three years. Man, that guy could jump. He also would bark at the ugly girls. I’m glad he’s going bald. Working on a nice paunch there too, slick.

“Excuse me. Miss Stein?”

Miss Stein? Miss Stein?

The science teacher?!

“No. I’m sorry. I’m Mrs. Schneider.”

“Oh, what did you teach?”

Teach?

I want to toss the wine in his face. I mean, he’s not looking any younger either. This proves the vast difference between men and women as they view themselves in the mirror.

Men:
Dang, you still got it!

Women:
I’m fat
.

Men:
Lookin’ good
.

Women:
I’m old
.

Men:
Knock ’em dead today, dude!

Women:
I’m fat and old
.

I shake my head, going for confused instead.

He apologizes. “We’re here for a reunion, and I thought you were one of our teachers.”

I bestow a tight-lipped smile on him. “No problem.”

“Sorry again.”

He turns away and joins the others.

What a dummy. Miss Stein must be seventy years old by now.

I leave the wine, the bar, and the reunion to sit in my car and cry.

I’m a crier. I admit it. Whenever Lyra and I sit down to a movie after the others go to bed, I see her eyes steal over in my direction when something poignant occurs. I almost never disappoint, and sometimes I cry even when she doesn’t suspect it.

She doesn’t always know why. She doesn’t see the loneliness I see in the eyes of the actor, for sometimes even when someone plays out a comedic scene, craziness alight on the screen, something deeper in the player betrays him. I see emptiness and solitude, a gaping hole that even Hollywood fame and money failed to fill. I see quiet desperation. I see joy flown. (Unless of course it’s Jeff Bridges, who just looks like a nice, dependable, happy guy no matter what movie he’s in.) I see the beginnings of a really good story that only I can write!

If only someone would give me a contract. Man, some of the drivel I read out there today! And here I sit, with no connections to a publishing house. Well, and nobody knows this, I did send off a proposal to my agent, though no one knows I have one. See, I
have
written a novel, a short one, I admit, but it’s got all the earmarks of a hit. It really does. Drama, emotion, intensity, a great premise—high concept. I sent it off a month ago and haven’t heard word one. But I hear it takes time, that publishers and glaciers move at about the same speed. I’m giving the agent, Candace Frost, another month, and then I’ll buzz off an e-mail. I’ve told no one. I mean, you expose enough of yourself on the pages of the work without having to let other people in on the true torture of it all. What if I have no luck? I’d hate enduring all the well-meaning condolences.

And why do these thoughts ramble around as I sit here ruined by the reunion wrecking ball? At least I spared myself the humiliation of talking to Glynn Spicer. Thank You, God, for that! You know, she probably didn’t even come. I mean really. The highly successful, busy people don’t take time out for a stupid high-school reunion at the Marriott. Not at all. The only success stories that show are the unpopular ones. They hope to rub everyone’s nose in their achievements, and I don’t blame them one bit.