Bygones (19 page)

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“It's not a disappointment at all. We drank a lot of beer together over the years. It's familiar.”

“Mmm . . . yeah, a lot of hot summer evenings when we'd sit on the deck and watch the boats on the river.”

Their beers arrived and after a skirmish about who would pay, they each paid for their own, then eschewed glasses in favor of drinking straight from the bottle.

When they'd each taken a deep swallow, Michael fixed his eyes on her and asked, “What do you do now on hot summer evenings, Bess?”

“I'm usually busy doing design work at home. What do you do?”

He thought awhile. “With Darla, nothing memorable. We both worked long hours and afterwards just sort of occupied the same lodge. She'd be gone, grocery shopping or having her hair done. Sometimes, when Mom was still alive, I'd go over to her house and mow her lawn. It's funny, because I had a yard service that took care of my own but after she had her stroke she couldn't handle the mower anymore, so I'd go over once a week or so and do it.”

“Didn't Darla go with you?”

Michael scratched the edge of his beer label with a thumbnail. He worked up a little flap that was sticky on the backside. “It's a funny thing about second wives. That extended family bonding never seems to happen.”

He took another swig of beer and met her eyes over the bottle. She dropped her gaze while he studied the way her lipstick held a tiny circle of wetness after she drank from her own bottle. Beneath the table she had one high heel hooked over the brass ring on the bar stool and her knees crossed. It made a pleasant shadow in her lap where her skirt dipped. Man-oh-man, she looked good.

“You know how it is,” Michael continued. “A good Catholic mother doesn't believe in divorce so she never actually recognized my second marriage. She treated Darla civilly but even that took an effort.”

Bess lifted her eyes. Michael was still studying her.

“I imagine that was hard for Darla.”

“Yup,” he said, and snapped out of his regardful pose as if nudged on the shoulder by an elder. “Aw, hell . . . water over the dam, right?”

The hostess came and said, “We have a booth ready for you now, Mr. Curran.”

The backs of the booths went clear up to the ceiling, sealing them into a three-sided box which was lit by a single hanging fixture. While Bess spent some time perusing the oversized menu, Michael only flipped his open, glanced for five seconds and closed it again. She sat across from him, feeling his eyes come and go while he finished his beer and waited.

She closed her menu and looked up.

“What?” she said.

“You look good.”

“Oh, Michael, cut it out.” She felt a blush start.

“All right, you look bad.”

She laughed self-consciously and said, “You've been staring at me ever since we came in here.”

“Sorry,” he said but went on staring. “At least you didn't get mad this time when I told you.”

“I will if you don't stop it.”

A waitress came to take their orders.

Michael said, “I'll have a grilled chicken sandwich and a bowl of seafood chowder.”

Bess's eyes flashed up: she'd decided on the same thing. This used to happen often when they were married, and they would laugh at how their tastes had become so alike, then speculate on when they might start looking alike, the way people said old married couples did. For a moment Bess considered changing her choice but in the end stubbornly refused to be cowed by the coincidence.

“I'll have the same thing.”

Michael looked at her suspiciously.

“You won't believe it but I'd made up my mind before you ordered.”

“Oh,” he replied.

Their seafood chowder came and they dipped into it in unison, then Michael said, “I saw Randy last Saturday. I asked if I could take him to lunch but he said no.”

“Yes, he told me.”

“I just wanted you to know I'm trying.”

She finished her chowder and pushed the bowl back with two thumbs. He finished his and the waitress came and took away their bowls. When she was gone Michael said, “I've been doing some thinking since the last time we talked.”

Bess was afraid to ask. This was too intimate already.

“About fault—both of ours. I suppose you were right about me helping around the house. After you started college I should have done more to help you. I can see now that it wasn't fair to expect you to do it all.”

She waited for him to add
but,
and offer excuses. When he didn't she was pleasantly surprised.

“May I ask you something, Michael?”

“Of course.”

“If I'm out of line just say so. Did you ever help Darla with the housework?”

“No.”

She studied him quizzically awhile, then said, “Statistics show that most second marriages don't last as long as first ones, primarily because people go into them making the same mistakes.”

Michael's cheeks turned ruddy. He made no remark but they both thought about their conversation throughout the rest of the dinner.

Afterward they divided the check.

When they reached the door of the restaurant, Michael pushed it open and held it while Bess passed before him into the cold. To her back he said, “I've decided to give you the job decorating my condo.”

She came up short and turned to face him while behind him the door swung shut.

“Why?” she said.

“Because you're the best woman for the job. What do I do, sign a contract or something like that?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“Then let's do it.”

“Tonight?”

“Judging from how you handle yourself as a businesswoman, you've got a contract all made up back at the shop, right?”

“Actually, I do.”

“Then let's go.” He took her arm quite commandingly and they headed up the street. At the corner, when they turned into the wind it whistled in their ears and almost knocked them off their feet.

“Why are you doing this?” she shouted.

“Maybe I like having you poke around my house,” he shouted back.

She balked. “Michael, if that's the only reason . . .”

He forced her to keep walking. “Just a joke, Bess.”

As she unlocked the door of the Blue Iris, she hoped it was.

 

FEBRUARY SPED ALONG. Lisa's wedding was fast approaching. The telephone calls from her to Bess came daily.

“Mom, do you have one of those pens with a feather at your store? You know . . . the kind for the guest book?”

“Mom, where do I buy a garter?”

“Mom, do you think I have to get plain white cake or can I have marzipan?”

“Mom, they need the money for the flowers before they make them up.”

“Mom, I gained another two pounds! What if I can't get into the dress?”

“Mom, I bought the most beautiful unity candle!”

“Mom, Mark thinks we should have special champagne glasses engraved with our name and date but I think it's silly since I'm pregnant and can't even drink champagne anyway!”

“Mom, have you bought your dress yet?”

Since she hadn't, Bess set aside an afternoon on her calendar and called Stella to say, “The wedding is only two weeks away and Lisa threw a fit when she found out I don't have a dress yet. How about you? Have you got one?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you want to go shopping?”

“I guess we'd better.”

They drove into downtown Minneapolis, browsing their way from the Conservatory to Dayton's to Gavidae Commons, where they struck it lucky at Lillie Rubin. Stella, turning up her nose at the grandma image, found a hot little silvery white number with a three-tiered gathered skirt and perky sleeves to match, while Bess chose a much more sedate raw silk sarong suit in palest peach with a flattering tulip-shaped skirt. When they stepped out of their adjacent dressing rooms Bess gave Stella the once-over and said, “Wait a minute, who's the grandma here?”

“You,” Stella replied, “I'm the great-grandma.” Perusing her reflection in the mirror, she went on, “I'll be darned if I've ever been able to understand why the mothers of brides go to such great lengths to add fifteen years onto their age by buying those god-awful dowdy dresses that look like Mamie Eisenhower's curtains. Now
this
is how I feel!”

“It's very jaunty.”

“Y' darned right it is. I'm bringing Gil Harwood along.”

“Gil Harwood?”

“Do I look like a dancing girl?”

“Who's Gil Harwood?”

“A man who makes my nipples stand at attention.”

“Mother!”

“I'm thinking of having an affair with him. What do you think?”

“Mother!”

“I haven't done any of that sort of thing since your father died, and I think I should before all my ports dry up. I did a little experimenting the last time Gil took me out, and it's definitely not his arteries that are hardening.”

Bess released a gust of laughter. “Mother, you're outrageous.”

“Better outrageous than senile. Do you think I'd have to worry about AIDS?”

“You're the outrageous one. Ask him.”

“Good idea. How are things between you and Michael?”

Bess was saved from answering by the clerk, who approached and inquired, “How are you doing, ladies?” But she felt a flurry of reaction at the mention of his name and caught Stella's sly glance that said very clearly she knew something was stirring.

They bought the dresses and went on to search out matching shoes. When they were in Bess's car, heading east toward home, Stella resumed their interrupted conversation.

“You never answered me. How are things between you and Michael?”

“Very businesslike.”

“Oh, what a disappointment.”

“I told you, Mother, I'm not interested in getting tangled up with him again, but we did straighten out some leftover feelings that have been lingering since before we got the divorce.”

“Such as . . .”

“We both admitted we could have worked a little harder at holding things together.”

“He's a good man, Bess.”

“Yes, I know.”

* * *

Bess had little occasion to run into the good man between then and the wedding. The paper was hung in Michael's condo and though Bess went over to check it when the paperhangers were just finishing up, Michael wasn't there. She called him the next day to ask if he was satisfied.

“More than satisfied. It looks perfect.”

“Ah, good.”

“Smells like squaw piss, though.”

Bess burst out laughing and even across the telephone wire felt a thrill of attraction that she'd been staving off ever since her last meeting with him. She had forgotten how genuinely funny Michael could be and how effortlessly he'd always been able to make her laugh.

“But you like it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. Listen, the invoices are starting to come in now on your furniture. So far it looks as though most things will be arriving in mid-May. No word yet on the Natuzzi from Italy but I'm sure that'll take longer. I'll let you know as soon as I hear.”

“All right.”

Bess paused before changing the subject. “Michael, I need to talk to you about the bills for Lisa's wedding. Some of them have already been paid and others are coming in, so how do you want to handle it? I've paid out eight hundred dollars already, so why don't you match it and add two thousand, and I'll add the same and Lisa can put it into her savings account and draw on it as she needs it? Then what's left over—if any is—we can split.”

“Fine.”

“I have the receipts for everything, and I'll be more than happy to send them to you if—”

“Heaven's sake, Bess, I trust you.”

“Oh . . . well . . . thanks, Michael. Just send the check to Lisa, then.”

“You really think we'll see any leftover money?”

Bess chuckled. “Probably not.”

“Now you're thinking like a realist.”

“But I don't mind spending it, do you?”

“Not at all. She's our only daughter.”

The chance remark left the phone line silent while they reached back to their beginnings, wishing they could undo the negative part of their past and recapture what they'd once had. Bess felt an undeniable stirring, the urge to ask him what he'd been doing, where he was, what he was wearing, the kind of questions that signal infatuation. She quelled her foolhardiness and said instead, “I guess I'll see you at the rehearsal, then.”

Michael cleared his throat and said in a curiously flat voice, “Yeah . . . sure.”

When Bess hung up she tipped her desk chair back to its limit, drove both hands into her hair and blew an enormous breath at her loft ceiling.

* * *

Randy kept his car like the bottom of a bird cage. Whatever fell, stayed. The day of the groom's dinner and rehearsal he took the battered '84 Chevy Nova to the car wash and mucked 'er out. Fast-food containers, dirty sweat socks, empty condom packages, crumpled
Twin Cities' Reader
s, unopened mail, unmailed mail, parking-lot receipts, a dried-up doughnut, empty pop cans, a curled-up Adidas, unpaid parking tickets—all got relegated to the bottom of a fifty-gallon garbage drum.

He vacuumed the floor, ran the mats through the washer, Armor Alled the vinyl, emptied the ashtrays, washed the windows, washed and dried the outside and bought a blue Christmas tree to hang from the dash and make the inside smell like a girl's neck.

Then he drove to Maplewood Mall and bought a new pair of trousers at Hal's, and a sweater at The Gap, and went home to put on his headset and play Foreigner's “I Want to Know What Love Is” and beat his drums and dream about Maryann Padgett.

The rehearsal was scheduled for six o'clock. At quarter to, when his mother asked if he wanted to ride to the church with her, he answered, “Sorry, Mom, but I've got plans for afterwards.” His plan was to ask Maryann Padgett if he could drive her home.

When he walked into St. Mary's and saw Maryann, the oxygen supply in the vestibule seemed to disappear. He felt the way he had when he was nine years old and used to hang upside down on the monkey bars for five minutes, then try to walk straight. She was wearing a prim little navy-blue coat, and prim little navy-blue shoes with short, prim heels, and probably a prim little Sunday dress with a prim little collar, and talking to Lisa in prim, proper terms. She probably went to Bible camp in the summer and edited the school newspaper in the winter.

He'd never wanted to impress anyone so badly in his life.

Lisa saw him and said, “Oh, hi, Randy.”

“Hi, Lisa.” He nodded to Maryann, hoping his eyes wouldn't pop out of their sockets and bounce on the vestibule floor.

“Where's Mom?” Lisa asked.

“She's coming. We drove in separate cars.”

“You and Maryann are going to be first up the aisle.”

“Yeah? Oh, well, hey . . . how about that.”
Bravo, Curran, you glib rascal, you. Really knocked her prim little socks off with that one.

Maryann said, “I was just telling Lisa that I've never been in a wedding before.”

“Me either.”

“It's exciting, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is.”

Inside his new acrylic sweater he was warm and quivering. She had this little pixie face with blue eyes about the size of Lake Superior; and pretty puffed lips and the teeniest, tiniest mole above the upper one but close enough that if you kissed her properly you'd kiss it, too; and not a fleck of makeup ruining any of it.

“Dressing up for first Communion is about as close as I've come to this,” she remarked. The vestibule was crowded, and Lisa spied someone else she needed to talk to.

Left in a lull, Randy searched for something to talk about. “Have you always lived in White Bear Lake?”

“Born and raised there.”

“I used to go to the street dances there in the summer during Manitou Days. They'd get some good bands.”

“You like music?”

“Music is what drives me. I want to play in a band.”

“Play what?”

“Drums.”

“Oh.” She thought awhile and said, “It's kind of a tough life-style, isn't it?”

“I don't know. I never had the chance to find out.”

Father Moore came in and started getting things organized, and they all went inside the church and laid their coats in the rear pews, and sure enough, Maryann Padgett was wearing her Marion-the-librarian dress, some little dark-colored thing with a dinky white collar made of lace. Without mousse or squiggly waves in her hair, she was a throwback, and he was captivated.

Randy was standing in the aisle continuing to be dumbstruck by her when someone rested a hand on his shoulder blade.

“Hi, Randy, how's it going?”

Randy turned to encounter his father. He removed all expression from his face and said, “Okay.”

Michael dropped his hand and nodded to the girl. “Hello, Maryann.”

She smiled. “Hi. I was just saying, this is the first wedding I've ever been in, and Randy said it is for him, too.”

“I guess it is for me, too, other than my own.” Michael waited, letting his eyes shift to Randy but when no response came, he drifted away, saying, “Well . . . I'll be seeing you.”

As Randy's expressionless gaze followed Michael, he repeated sarcastically, “Except for his own . . . both of them.”

Maryann whispered, “Randy, that was your father!”

“Don't remind me.”

“How could you treat him that way?”

“The old man and I don't talk.”

“Don't talk! Why, that's awful! How can you not talk to your father?”

“I haven't talked to him since I was thirteen.”

She stared at Randy as if he'd just tripped an old lady.

Father Moore asked for silence and the practice began. Randy remained put out with Michael for intruding on what had begun as a conversation with some possibilities. After the whole day of thinking about Maryann Padgett, cleaning up his car for her, dressing in new clothes for her, wanting to impress her, the whole thing had been shot by the old man's appearance.

Why can't he just lay off me? Why does he have to touch me, talk to me, make me look like a jerk in front of this girl when he's the one who's a jerk? I walked in here, I was ready to show Maryann I could be a gentleman, make small talk with her, get to know her a little and lead up to asking her out. The old man comes over and screws up the whole deal.

During the practice Randy was forced to observe his mother and father walking down the aisle on either side of Lisa, then sitting together in the front pew. There were times when he himself had to stand up front and face the congregation and could hardly avoid seeing them, side-by-side, as if everything was just peachy. Well, that was bullshit! How could she sit there beside him as if they'd never split up, as if it wasn't his fault the family broke up? She might say she had faults, too, but they were minor compared to his, and nobody was going to convince Randy differently.