Someday, Someday, Maybe (33 page)

Jane smiles at me, as if it’s all been decided.

“But how will I explain it to James?”

“Just tell him the truth.”

“But don’t you think leaving my purse, plus a Metro-North strike, plus pinkeye, plus Dan happening to have a tuxedo seems, I don’t know, fishy?”

“No. I think, ‘I’m shooting in the desert and I don’t know when we’ll talk’ sounds fishy. He could’ve been your date if he’d wanted to.”

“Jane. He’s
working
,” I say, but she rolls her eyes.

“Okay, Dan, listen.” I turn and reach up to put my hands on Dan’s shoulders, looking him in the eye like a football coach giving a pep talk to a player who is on the verge of winning the big game. “Really. I’m fine if I don’t go. Are you sure you want to do this? You’re sure this is how you want to spend your Saturday night? With a bunch of crazy drunken Irish strangers?”

My coach move was meant to be mock-serious, to lighten the mood and make it easy for Dan to laugh and say no, sorry, on second thought I really don’t want to go. But with my hands on his shoulders, which are stronger than they seem under his slouchy T-shirt, my face tilted up to his, way up, because he’s so tall, making me feel almost dainty by comparison, his big brown eyes free of bangs for once, gazing steadily into mine, that night at Sardi’s comes tumbling back, and all this time I’ve spent convincing myself I never kissed Dan is wasted because I remember it all as if it happened five minutes ago.

I’m going to tell him he shouldn’t come with me to Katie’s wedding. I’m going to call my dad and say I’m sorry, that I’ll make it up to him another weekend. I’m going to take my hands off Dan’s shoulders and never, ever put them there again.

“Yes,” he says without blinking. “Let’s go.”

25
 

I’m telling you. We went to high school together. We did. I’m sure of it. Are you sure you didn’t go to Carver High? That’s so weird. You look so familiar. Well, then, where do I know you from? You’re a what? Really? You don’t look like an actress. No offense, I mean you’re pretty, but I thought they all had to be like anorexic or something. What show? You’re in a what? A commercial? Oh no, God no. It can’t be that. I don’t watch television. I mean, once in a while I flip through the channels, but, no. Especially not commercials. No offense. But seriously, where do I know you from? Maybe we went to the same summer camp?

Congratulations, Franny! How exciting! Remember at the last wedding when you said you were trying to be an actress? And I said How are the tips?’ Remember that? Hahahahaha! Because people who say they’re actors are usually just waiters? Get it?

But your father said you wanted to be a real actress. In the theater. What happened to that? He says you got an agent, right? So that’s something at least. What’s that? You had an agent but you don’t have one anymore? Oh, how terrible!

See Len, I told you she didn’t get her nose done. It just looks that funny way on the TV. Sort of squashed or something? Whatever it was, it made you look
so
much older. I told him, Franny. I said, Len, Franny would never get her nose done. And even if she did, why would she give herself a little, short, squashy nose that added years to her face? It’s the TV,’ I said. You’ve heard that thing about the camera adding twenty pounds. It must do something to the face, too. What? It’s just ten pounds the camera adds? Hmm, well, it looks more like twenty. Maybe it’s our television. We have a new one. Everything looks so much larger than life. Those lovely girls from
Still Nursing
look fine, though, those delicate figures! Maybe it’s just when commercials play …

A
unt Elaine is continuing on and on, hardly stopping for a breath, and, finally, I reach over and squeeze Dan’s forearm in an attempt to say “save me.”

“Will you excuse us?” he says to her politely, guiding me away with his hand on the small of my back. “Franny and I—we need to—we have to call the sitter.”

I’m afraid Aunt Elaine can hear the giggle I try to suppress, but she hardly seems to notice, not skipping a beat, turning her monologue seamlessly onto the next victim.

“Sorry, I wasn’t sure how to help you,” Dan says sheepishly. “That’s what my mother always used.”

“It’s okay,” I say, smiling, happy to have Dan by my side, like a giant tuxedoed security guard. “I hope we left enough food out for the baby.”

All the Finnegan weddings take place in a tent in the backyard of my aunt and uncle’s huge old house right on the shore in Madison, Connecticut. As a kid, I could never get over the excitement of their house being right on the beach. I thought they were so lucky to live like they were on vacation all year long. The house itself would be beautiful, if anyone ever painted over the peeling dove-gray paint, or repaired the formerly white shutters near the front door that hang crazily at opposing angles, or mowed the backyard more than twice a year. But as much as my father’s sister, Mary Ellen, tries to keep her house in some kind of order, with eight kids, there was always just “too much goddam fun to be had.” You were lucky if you could find a bed with an actual blanket on it, but I always went to sleep happy, even if I had to use my rolled-up sweatshirt as a pillow. At the Finnegans’, it wasn’t neat but it was comfortable, and there was always someone to play with and always something to do.

When we’d visit, my mom and Aunt Mary Ellen would usually stay up after us kids had gone to bed. They’d sit on beach chairs on the front lawn talking, and I’d fall asleep to the sound of their laughter and the Joni Mitchell albums playing through the open windows of the porch. I can’t help thinking about that now, as we stand gazing out over the water, and I look around for my dad, wondering if he’s remembering her too, but can’t find him in the crowd.

Even though the guests are encouraged to wear tuxedos and long dresses, it’s just for fun—the rest of the event is down-home casual. The “cocktail hour” (which mainly consists of a couple of coolers full of ice and some cans of beer) is held on the sand right in front of the house. There’s a crowd on the beach now, but Katie pushes through, squealing when she sees me. “You’re so
skinny
,” she says as she hugs me. “Well, hello,” she says to Dan, and gives me a wink. Then she peels off her shoes and veil, tosses them on the sand, and dives headfirst into the ocean, her fully clothed new husband by her side. “It’s a family tradition,” I explain to a visibly shocked Dan. “They have a special dress they all use for the ocean. She’ll put her real dress back on for the reception.”

Beers on the beach is usually my favorite part of a Finnegan wedding, but after tonight’s assault, I’m relieved to finally enter the tent and find our table. My dad has taken his seat already and has an expectant look that tugs at my heart.
He’s missed me
, I think to myself. He’s wearing the tuxedo I’ve seen him in a dozen times. The cut still fits him as it did when he was younger, but the lapels are shiny now from wear. He’s recently had a haircut, and something about him looks unexpectedly youthful. I give him a big hug.

“You look beautiful!” he says, still holding on tightly.

“Doesn’t she?” Dan agrees, and I blush and smile at him from over my father’s shoulder.

A ragged band of local musicians, regulars at all the Finnegan events, play an almost recognizable version of “Strangers in the Night” at varying tempos. The chair next to my dad is empty, and my cousin Tom and his wife, Beth, are seated across from us, struggling to keep their toddler from eating the centerpiece. Dan goes to find us another couple of beers and a scotch for my dad, who leans toward me once he’s gone.

“He seems like a smart fellow,” Dad says. “Very polite.”

“Yeah, he is. But he’s not my boyfriend.”

“You mentioned that.”

“Len and Elaine asked me if I got my nose done.”

“They don’t know what to say. They’re excited for you. People aren’t used to seeing someone from their television in person,” he says, giving my arm a little squeeze.

“I’m barely even on TV. I’ve done two dumb commercials in two and a half years, and now I’m getting stuck in these bizarre conversations with total strangers. I’ve hardly seen any of the cousins tonight. I’ve hardly seen
you
.”

“We’ve got the rest of the night. You know these things never end early. Now listen, I wish you’d called me back, because—”

“Dad, I call you. I call you lots. You just don’t know it because I can’t leave you a message because you don’t have an answering machine.”

“I don’t
want
an answering machine. A taped message is redundant information at best. I need so-and-so just letting me know that they called when I wasn’t home? Or I’m supposed to tell them on a recording that I’m not at home, or that I’m too busy to talk right now? I already know I’m not home, due to the fact that I’m the person who’s not home.”

“But me leaving a message is a way of letting you know I called.”

“If you call and I don’t answer, you already know I was busy and couldn’t have a conversation. I get the same information when I get your machine—it lets me know you’re absent or too busy to have a conversation. If we both had machines this could go on forever, this never actually speaking. I’m saving you a step by not having a machine. If the phone rings—”

I’m distracted by the presence of a strange woman who has appeared just over my father’s right shoulder. She’s wearing a soft blue dress, and she’s swaying slightly, as though she’s deciding whether to sit down in the empty chair beside him. Or maybe she’s just had a few too many. She must be another drunken Finnegan, but it’s odd because I don’t recognize her from any of the other weddings. Is she my aunt’s cousin Maureen from Ithaca? She puts her hand on my father’s shoulder, obviously confusing him for someone else, since if I don’t know this random Finnegan, he certainly doesn’t either. I should warn him that he’s being approached from behind by a drunken woman who thinks he’s someone else, and who—eerily—looks like she might be about to kiss him.

“Dad, um—”

“Eddie?”

She says his name, so I guess she isn’t a stranger, not to him at least. In fact, the look on my father’s face as he turns and then springs to his feet to greet her tells me she isn’t a stranger to him at all.

“Franny,” my father says to me, beaming. “I’d like you to meet someone.”

Her name is Dr. Mary Compton, and she’s some sort of eye surgeon my father met when he had “that thing with his cornea,” which he apparently told me about but I don’t remember. She’s divorced and has a daughter “about your age,” which immediately makes me fatigued as I imagine a future where Mary Compton’s daughter and I are forced to go shopping and have lunch and pretend to enjoy ourselves because our parents are dating. “I’ve always wanted a sister!” I imagine Mary’s daughter saying to me, as we lunch in a brightly lit department store café.

My father and Mary don’t seem to notice the cloud that settles over me while they chat away together easily. “Dr. Mary had to perform an emergency surgery tonight,” Dad says, beaming at her. “We’re so lucky she could make it at all.”

I nod in what I hope is convincing agreement.

When Dan returns to the table with our drinks, I slump down in my chair and take too many gulps of my beer all at once. As Dad introduces him to Mary, I watch as if from a great distance, unsure why I feel so strange. I truly want to be excited to meet this new person my father likes. I want to ask her questions and make her laugh and show her how well he raised me. But instead, I’m strangely quiet, inexplicably unable to think of a single thing to say.

Thankfully, Dan takes over, engaging her easily, learning about her recent promotion, and the fact that she lived in London for ten years, and hearing stories of her daughter’s time at Oxford, and how she met my dad. I try to nod and smile in the right places, but I’m finding it hard to focus.

Numbly, I watch my father behave in a way I’ve seldom seen. I’m riveted by how unfamiliar he seems to me and I can’t look away, even though his loopy expression makes me feel a little queasy. He’s grinning so wide, he looks positively goofy. He calls her “Dr. Mary,” as in “Dr. Mary and I both loved the New Haven Symphony’s season,” and in response she laughs and rolls her eyes.

“It’s so embarrassing when he calls me that, isn’t it, Frances?” she says, winking at me conspiratorially from across the candlelit table. “Like I’m one of those radio call-in hosts who isn’t really a doctor?”

“Actually, it’s just Franny,” I say, and my voice sounds strangely cold.

“Of course! So sorry. I knew that. I guess I’m a little nervous to finally meet you,” she admits shyly, and my father gazes at her, delighted.

Dinner arrives, and I finally manage to sputter out a few sentences as I pick at my burger. The Finnegans always have a barbecue instead of a caterer, and usually I love how homey and informal and comforting the food is, but tonight I’ve lost my appetite.

“Would you like to dance with me?” Dan asks, once the dinner plates are cleared and the cake has been served, and though normally I wouldn’t want to dance, at least not to this slow song, I’m relieved to have an excuse to get up from the table.