Always Something There to Remind Me (37 page)

“Can you send in some more fans?” I asked, watching the ice melt like the wicked witch in
The Wizard of Oz
. “As many as you can find?”

“Sure thing.”

The combination of the fans and open doors alleviated the problem somewhat, but not enough to make it what you’d call comfortable.

Jeremy got the band back in business, though, and once they started blasting Lady Gaga the party loosened back up some. Roxanne stopped crying over the sculpture and led a group of her friends like the Pied Piper back to the other end of the room, away from the smell of rapidly ripening food.

It felt like I just had a moment to lean against a fake palm tree and breathe when Roxanne approached from behind, crying, “Erin!”

I turned, finding it hard to muster the energy to deal with yet another tantrum. “Roxanne.”

“You know the date you set me up with for the evening?”

I looked at her uncertainly. I thought she was going to pass him off as a guy who was legitimately interested in her. “Your date … Troy?”

“Yes,
Troy
.” She didn’t seem to care that people were around who could hear her. That was a bad sign. “Do you know where I just found him?”

“N-nooo…? Where?” Please, God, not floating facedown in the mermaid tank outside.

“Making out with a
server
behind the Coke machine! A
male
server.”

Now I understood. She could either blame me or look like she was so unattractive she drove her boyfriend to other boys. “There must be some mistake,” I said.

Bill, behind the cameraman, shook his head. No mistake.

And they’d captured it on film.

“I am so sorry, Roxanne. I had no idea he was…” Gay? Of course I had. Unreliable? He was an actor. “… Behind the Coke machine with anyone.”

She turned on the waterworks then. “This is the worst Sweet Sixteen party
ever.
” But then her eyes alighted on someone coming in from the locker room area.

I turned to see who it was, expecting Brad Pitt or someone equally worthy of shutting her up, but there was just a skinny kid in a tracksuit, schlumping in and trying to look cool.

I realized who he was just as she said his name: “Justin!”

She ran over to him and tackled him, kissing him in a way I was pretty sure would be edited later for decency.

“Hold on, hold on,” Justin said, making some sort of splayed-finger rapper gesture with his hand. “I wanna say something.” He strutted over to the band and, right in the middle of a song, stepped between the lead singer and his microphone.

The band petered out the song and looked to Jeremy for an explanation, but he had no answer beyond a pale-faced, wide-eyed panic.

“Yo! Can everyone hear me?” Justin said over the mic. It buzzed and zinged with feedback. “I just wanna say, I’m here for Roxanne on her birthday. We’ve had some rough times, but I’m here for my girl.” He paused and there was a small smattering of applause.

“Happy birthday, babe!” he said, and there were more cheers.

She blushed and gave a little wave.

Her parents beamed.

“So now I’d just like to do something I haven’t done for a couple of weeks and I’ve missed it,” Justin went on. “Come here, Roxy.” He reached out a hand and drew her up to him, where they kissed sloppily and with loud, horrendous noises that bounced around the room courtesy of the speakers Jeremy had managed to score.

They left the stage, hands up like triumphant wrestlers, and Roxanne looked thrilled. “I can’t believe you did it!” she whispered to me as they stopped near me. “What a great surprise! You were so right about staying away so he’d miss me!”

I may have been right about that, but I realized now I’d been really wrong about something else.

For all the times I’d complained that Nate hadn’t made any grand gestures when we were Roxanne’s age, it had never occurred to me what the grand gesture truly was at that time.

Justin had made an ass of himself, as far as I was concerned, but what he’d done had completely made Roxanne’s day. No, probably her month. Maybe even her year. To her, this was
the
romantic gesture.

But I saw it for what it really was: a public masturbation of Justin’s own ego. He hadn’t done that for Roxanne. He hadn’t sacrificed anything to step up to that microphone; he knew before he walked into the place that she was desperate for him to be there.

He hadn’t laid his heart on the line in any way.

He’d just flexed what muscle he could, for a captive audience.

I couldn’t believe that after all this time it had taken that punk to show me that real love was quiet and steady, not showy and loud and self-congratulatory.

Though make no mistake, that showy, loud, self-congratulatory performance had done some heavy lifting as far as salvaging the night. Everything that went wrong, and there was a lot, was a source of giggles for Roxanne once Justin arrived. Ultimately, her review of us for the VTV cameras had been glowing, intoxicated by her infatuation.

Worked for me.

And, for now at least, it clearly worked for her.

Chapter 24

June 1993

Apart from the fact that it was
hers
, Erin Edwards had found the baby shower to be really fun.

She saw friends she hadn’t seen in ages, laughed at the old stories of their decadent pasts together as well as the foibles of being grown-ups now when no one really felt like one, and got presents. That was always fun, even though they weren’t for her, really, and most of the tiny shirts and outfits served more to make her feel like a big fat whale—at seven months pregnant—than a joyful Madonna figure.

But that was probably normal, right? Get pregnant accidentally at twenty-two and you’re not necessarily going to be feeling all that naturally maternal and benevolent.

There she was: twenty-three, a year out of college, still unsure of what she wanted to do with her life, faced with an uncertain future involving a small dependent being she’d never met and had no real sense of as a person. A small being that, up to and including now, felt more like a medical condition than someone she was going to bond with and love and know for the rest of her life.

Also, she was unmarried. A fact her mother was not thrilled about. Erin had been raised better than this—it was unbecoming for someone like her to get knocked up. And stupid—she and Jake had split up already. She’d stopped taking the pill because it made her feel like crap and there was no point in continuing it. Once they’d split up, that didn’t seem to matter.

Until that night, one bored night, when she had a lot of mescal and a little mistake with Jake, and the next thing she knew … six positive pregnancy sticks lined up along the sink.

It was the easiest test she’d ever passed.

There followed several months of vomiting, losing weight then gaining it, and telling a seemingly relieved Jake that she didn’t see the point in making one mistake into two by getting married.

That was followed by more vomiting and two hospitalizations for dehydration
from
the vomiting.

It was not the best time in Erin’s life.

So when her friends Theresa and Jordan suggested a baby shower once she felt better, it really didn’t feel like much of a reason for a party. Also, it didn’t happen until she was seven months along and had gone from feeling half dead and constantly sick to feeling sick only some of the time and huge and awkward all of the time.

But she was also broke, so the baby shower was genuinely helpful and she appreciated her friends coming together for her that way.

“So you guys aren’t getting married?” her cousin Susannah asked after Erin opened a gift from her, a box of onesies for the baby and a filmy negligee for Erin, who couldn’t imagine ever fitting into it. Or wanting to.

“No,” Erin said quickly. She’d been waiting for this question, and the judgmental raise of the eyebrow that accompanied it. “We’re just … going to coparent. It will be fine. Good. It will be good.” Their attraction had been short-lived, and had burned itself out fairly quickly. However, the basis of the attraction—their friendship—was solid. Had been, ever since Erin had met him when they were on a white-water rafting trip near Harpers Ferry. The good news was that, even if it weren’t for the baby, she and Jake would probably still be friends.

Maybe not super-close friends, but at least stay-in-touch friends.

“But aren’t you in love with him?” Susannah pressed, crinkling her nose and appearing to
try
and understand the hedonistic creature she was apparently related to. “You must have been at one point!”

Susannah was from the more religious side of the family. It was bad enough that Erin had had sex before marriage, but they would never understand how she could have done it without being in love.

It was just easier to say, “Yes, of course.”

But for her part, Erin didn’t believe in being
in love
anymore. She’d given Jordan a long diatribe about that very thing, upon being questioned, but the upshot was that
in love
was—in Erin’s theory—a form of infatuation that was as highly unpredictable and flammable as stibine gas.

Lives couldn’t be built on chemistry, they had to be built on logic: compatibility and similar goals.

She and Jake had neither of those. And frankly they didn’t have even a little bit of the chemistry anymore either.

“Whoa, let me help you carry those,” Jordan said, seeing Erin piling the shower gifts on top of each other in order to make fewer trips to the car at the end of the party.

“Thanks.” Erin handed over a pack of diapers and Jordan took the pile of clothes Erin was wrestling with as well.

They walked out side by side to Erin’s Camry and Jordan opened the back door of the car for her to put the gifts in.

“So I’m leaving for school again tomorrow,” Jordan said, leaning against the passenger door of Erin’s car. The late afternoon light slanted down and cast them both in amber, but the mid-June breeze was unusually cold. “I won’t be back until it’s time for the baby to come.”

The baby’s due date was two months away. Now it was Jordan’s school break. Their old friend Theresa had planned the shower now on purpose because she knew it would be important to Erin to have Jordan there. Theresa had never been as close to Erin and Jordan as they were to each other, but she’d been there through a lot nevertheless and she knew how important it was that Jordan be part of this.

“I wish you didn’t have to go.” Erin sighed, then smiled, hoping to disguise just how badly she wished Jordan weren’t leaving. “Why couldn’t you just stop at a BA like everyone else?”

“Just contrary, I guess.” Jordan laughed. She was going for her Ph.D. so she could be a counselor, so this school thing was going to go on for quite a while.

Erin knew it was selfish and unrealistic to wish things could be more like they were in high school, when the two of them could gab all night on the phone, see each other all day in school, and then hang out afterward, but it didn’t stop her from missing those days sometimes. Things were so much easier then.

But she knew things would never be like they used to be.

Erin went to her and hugged her, holding on tight for a long time despite the belly bulge that kept them at a slight distance. “I’ll miss you so much!”

“I’ll miss you too!”

Erin let go reluctantly. “Call. Often.”

“I will,” Jordan reassured. “But remember, you can call me anytime. Absolutely anytime. I can be here in a flash.”

“Thanks.” Erin smiled, but she was suddenly overcome by emotion. She was tired, and lost, and didn’t want to be playing this role she’d found herself in. It felt like she was on the slow part of a roller coaster, climbing the tracks, and it was about to get fast and crazy and completely out of control.

There was no stopping it.

“Erin,” Jordan began, then bit her lower lip.

“What?”

There was a long moment before Jordan let out a pent-up breath and said, “I don’t want you to get mad at me for asking this, but it’s my job as your best friend to ask if you’re sure you don’t want to look into adoption before you commit completely to the idea of single motherhood.”

Erin closed her eyes for a moment, wishing it could be so simple. “I did. I can’t do it. I would always wonder, every single time I saw a child about the same age.…” A lump formed in her throat.

“But are you
ready
to change your life like this?”

Erin didn’t necessarily want to give the
true
answer to that, because she hadn’t allowed herself to dive too deeply into it, but she did have the
correct
answer at the ready. “Yes, Jordan.” Her voice sounded confident, even to her own ears. “I’m ready. I’m sure.”

Jordan smiled, and it almost completely disguised the doubt in her eyes. “Good.” She started to go, then turned back. “I’ll help however I can. You know that.”

Erin raised an eyebrow. “Cool. So you’re moving in? Which diaper shift do you want?”

“You think you’re joking.”

“I
am
joking.”

Jordan looked at her for a long moment. “Call me if you need me. I don’t care what time it is.”

“I always need you, you know that. But thanks.”

They said good-bye and Erin went back into her mother’s house, where the shower had taken place, to get the last of her things and help with any residual cleanup.

“You just got a call,” her mother said from the kitchen after the storm door slammed shut.

“Yeah?” Erin asked absently. God, she had to pee
again
. She never thought a catheter would seem like a luxury. “Who?”

Her mother kept putting utensils in the dishwasher, the clanking sound so loud it almost obscured the answer. “Nate.”

Erin froze.

“I thought you’d left,” her mother went on, as if she were just relating the news that a telemarketer had called about her
People
magazine subscription. “So I told him I’d let you know he called.”

Nate.

Nate
.

Erin’s first thought was that something had to be terribly wrong for him to call her, but her second thought was that she couldn’t imagine what could possibly go so wrong that she was the only one who could help him with it.