The Engagements (11 page)

“They get up early, I guess.”

A stupid phone call meant so much to her, and yet his asshole brother
could only manage it on her birthday and Christmas. James could hear the radio in the next room. He half wanted to stay, feeling now, as he sometimes did, the pull between his old family and his current one.

“I’m late getting home to the boys,” he said. “I should get a move on. Do you want to come over and watch them open their presents?”

“Now?” she asked. “Oh no, my hair’s a mess. Besides, that’s something you four should do on your own.”

He felt relieved. “Okay, if you’re sure.”

James picked up something wrapped in foil from the coffee table. It weighed a holy ton. He wondered if maybe Doris Mulcahey had stopped by after seeing him. It was only twenty-four hours earlier that he’d met her in her driveway, and yet it felt like months.

“The Oriental girl across the street brought that over,” his mother said. “Wasn’t that nice?”

James set the package down. “What is it? A cinder block?”

“Fruitcake, I think.”

“Ahh.” He kissed her cheek before heading back outside. “I’ll be back at eleven forty-five to pick you up for Mass.”

“Make it eleven-thirty,” she said. “I want to get a seat up front.”

“Okay. Merry Christmas, Ma.”

She stood in the doorway and watched as he quickly shoveled the steps and the path. His back felt like it might snap in two, but he was pure adrenaline, and the rhythm of the shoveling calmed him some. When he got in the car for home, he told himself to relax. He couldn’t have Sheila wondering what was up when this was supposed to be her day. He would pawn the ring first thing tomorrow, and explain the extra cash by telling her that he won some major sports pool at work. She’d be pissed that he was gambling again, but hopefully so happy about the money that she wouldn’t care.

By the time he got home, Connelly had already been by and plowed the driveway. As James pulled in, he could see Parker jumping up and down through the window. He laughed.

The ring he had gotten Sheila that looked s

From every corner, the house was blaring. In the downstairs bathroom, May ran the blow-d long time ago.” people. They Nicole ceilingryer at full blast. Her two sons sat on the staircase, fighting. In the shower, Dan sang a song from an old cartoon he once saw on
Pee-wee’s Playhouse
, which he sang whenever anyone got married. It was cloying and catchy, and it always stayed in her head for days:
Everybody’s getting! Ready for the wedding!

The worst of the noise sprang from Kate’s own daughter, who had been screaming for fifteen minutes straight. They were due at the ceremony location in ninety minutes and Ava had selected this moment to have the biggest fit of her life. Kate blamed May for giving her Pop-Tarts and, on the way home from the beauty parlor, Chicken McNuggets from McDonald’s with a strawberry shake.

Now her daughter was writhing on her bedroom floor in just a pair of star-printed underpants, refusing the dress, which was laid out flat on the bed, with the matching shoes on the rug directly below, as if whoever had been wearing the outfit had simply melted away.

“I don’t want to be the flower girl,” she said through tears.

“But you’ve been excited about it for weeks,” Kate said. “And you’re going to look so pretty in the dress.”

“I don’t want to!” Ava screamed. She rubbed her head violently against the carpet. Strands of her braid fanned out around her scalp so that she resembled a tiny Medusa.

Despite the fact that she was an aunt three times over by the time Ava was born, Kate had been surprised about so many aspects of motherhood, the parts you could learn only by experiencing them for yourself. The hardest of these was the crying, the hysterical sobs. When Ava was an infant, Kate would sometimes cry along with her, even as she tried to calm her down. She was scared the baby would suffocate if she didn’t take a breath, scared of so many things.

It had gotten easier now that Ava was a fully formed person, with words and the ability to reason. But at the moment, Kate didn’t know what to do. She had never seen her daughter quite so upset.

The effects of the whiskey she had shared with Toby earlier had worn off, leaving behind a slight headache. She wished she could take a nap.

Ava lay on her back, kicking her, practically foaming at the mouth. “I won’t be the flower girl! I won’t!”

Kate’s mother passed by in the hall, dressed in an eggplant skirt suit and heels, a cell phone pressed to her ear. She looked at Kate with the most judgmental eyes, as if Ava were having a tantrum in Mona’s office during a board meeting, instead of in her own room.

Kate stuck her tongue out, which made Ava pause. “Mama, did you just stick your tongue out at Grandma?”

“Yes, I did.”

Kate pulled Ava into her lap before she had a chance to start up again. Her daughter’s cheeks were red and hot from crying, and Kate pressed her cool fingers against them.

“Lovey, why don’t you want to be the flower girl?”

Kate imagined she might say something profound:
I don’t like the idea that girls have to wear puffy pink dresses, Mama
. Or
I’ve decided that weddings just aren’t my thing
.

But Ava sniffled, and said sadly, “Olivia said that’s for babies.”

“Oh. I see.” a pair of 94togethern

Kate had the urge to grab her niece, yank her up the stairs, and demand an apology. This was something that she’d never do to a child, though her sister May would, in a second. She took a deep breath, trying to feel calm.

“Olivia’s just jealous, sweetheart. I think she wanted to be the flower girl.”

Ava looked suspicious. “She did?”

“You can do whatever you want tonight, you don’t have to wear the dress. But I know Uncle Jeff was really excited, and if you cancel on him, you might hurt his feelings.”

She could tell she had her daughter’s attention now. Kate walked to the dresser and pulled out Ava’s favorite overalls. They were made of bright green corduroy, and Ava had torn a hole in the left knee, which Kate had patched over with a swatch of fabric covered in butterflies.

“You can just wear these if you want,” she said. “What do you think?”

Ava shook her head. She went to the bed, and picked up her flower girl dress. “I want to wear this.”

Kate took a deep breath. Crisis averted. Of course, there was still the business of the ring. She felt more certain than ever that Olivia had taken it. Was her niece trying to punish her? Would she put it back at the last minute? Or had she already done something crazy—swallowed it, or chucked it out into the woods?

Kate’s mother popped her head into the room. “I just spoke to Carmen, and she said we’ll find the ring at the schoolhouse.”

“Who’s Carmen?”

“My psychic in Newark,” her mother responded, as if it should be obvious.

“What schoolhouse?” Kate said.

“I don’t know. Ava’s, I assume.”

The only school Ava attended was a Mommy and Me class that met two mornings a week in the basement of a Mason hall.

“Oh, well, if Carmen said so, then let me just run right over there and have them open the place on Saturday night.”

“Don’t mock, she’s usually very accurate,” Mona said. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

Kate looked down at her jeans and t-shirt. “Yes, I’m wearing jeans to the wedding.”

“Well, you better get going!”

“It takes me five minutes to get ready.”

“Hmm.”

That
hmm
conveyed so much. It said,
Yes, it takes you five minutes to get ready, and it shows
. Kate remembered watching her mother put on her makeup as a child—standing in front of the bathroom mirror, or sitting in traffic, carefully applying layer upon layer, on top of her perfectly fine skin. The whole routine lasted thirty minutes or so. She couldn’t imagine taking that much time every day to add something you were only going to rinse off eight hours later.

Kate helped Ava into her dress, and gently combed her curls, which looked prettier natural than they had in that stupid hairstyle anyway. Ava’s hair felt stiff in places where the spray had made it clump together. Kate couldn’t wait to give her a bath and watch it all swirl down the drain.

“Do
Ava nodded. Kate took her by the hand.

“The tree out back is blooming,” she said. “Come on.”

On the way, they passed the boys, still fighting on the staircase, wearing their dark suits.

“Give it to me!” Leo shouted.

“No, it’s mine!” Max said.

“Fart head!”

“Puss face.”

“Be careful, you two, don’t fall,” she said.

Boys were trouble. She’d been so lucky with what she got. She hoped
Dan could hear them too, so that he might be cured of his desire for another child.

Olivia sat out on the deck in a floral party dress, playing with her Barbies. Despite what she had said to Ava, Kate felt sorry for her. Maybe she should have asked Jeff if they could have two flower girls. She was a mother; she ought to be more thoughtful. It would break her heart if Ava were the one to feel left out.

Kate sat down beside her niece on the wooden slats, and Ava plunked down too.

“What are these?” Ava said.

Olivia looked aghast at her ignorance. “Barbies!” she said.

Ava picked one up, and stroked its plastic hair.

“Will I get Barbies when I’m bigger?” she asked.

“You can borrow Olivia’s whenever she comes over,” Kate said, in lieu of
Hell no, you will never have a Barbie as long as I breathe air
.

It wasn’t just Olivia, she realized. Soon enough, Ava would be in school with all sorts of kids whose parents let them do and say and eat all sorts of things. The time Kate had left to shelter her was slipping away. Sometimes she wished she could put her daughter back in the womb, protect her from every bit of harm.

Kate had been scared of pregnancy, but hers was easy, as those things went. She opted for a home birth with a doula, after watching a documentary about the corporatization of hospital births. The midwife brought in an inflatable pool, which she filled with water and wedged between the TV and the sofa. Kate didn’t like the sensation of her belly floating there, so they moved her to the bed.

Sixteen hours later, just after sunrise, as she stared out her bedroom window at the familiar brownstones and the blue awning of the bar across the street, Ava came into the world. Yes, it was painful, but afterward there was this rush of joy that they said you never got with an epidural. The doula placed Kate’s daughter on her bare chest, and Kate felt overcome with gratitude. It was the same bed where Ava had been conceived, and something about this felt profound. Kate had discussed it with plenty of her friends in Brooklyn, and they all understood. Her sister and mother thought she was nuts.

“Giving birth at home with no drugs is like rubbing two sticks together every night so you can boil water for dinner, while meanwhile there’s a Viking range in the next room,” said May, who had gone three for three on the C-sections.

“Hey Olivia,” Kate said now. “Speaking of borrowing stuff, I was
wondering if you might have borrowed the ring from the windowsill in the kitchen. It’s fine if you did. I’d just like it all the way back to Massachusetts.f l mothern back for the wedding.”

“I didn’t take it!” Olivia said, indignant. Clearly, she had already been questioned by May, and possibly Mona, too.

“Okay,” Kate said, lifting her hand. “I believe you.”

There was only one possibility she could fathom at this point.

“Hold on, girls, I’ll be back.”

She went inside and found the jeweler’s card at the bottom of the red bag. Kate was almost positive she hadn’t left the ring at the store, but she figured a phone call couldn’t hurt. What if it was all as simple as that—he’d pick up and say that yes, he was holding it for her, come on out and get it.

When he answered, Kate introduced herself.

“I met you a few days ago,” she said. “Jeff and Toby’s cousin.”

She wished now that she had been more friendly at the time, but he seemed happy enough to hear from her.

“What can I do for ya?” he said.

“One of the rings isn’t here,” she said.

“It wasn’t in the box?”

“No. I mean, the box isn’t here either.”

“But you had two boxes when you left.”

“Did I? Okay. So I guess it’s lost then.”

He paused. She could picture him debating whether she was a thief or just crazy.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Isn’t the wedding tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I hope it turns up,” he said. “It’s kind of strange, actually. That ring’s been lost before.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well. Everything in my store is an estate piece. I collect from estate sales and private collections, sometimes police auctions. Your cousin’s ring came from one of those.”

Kate had no idea why he was telling her this.

“Don’t worry,” he continued. “I don’t buy anything that comes from a horrible crime scene or anything. That one just got left in a cab and was never claimed. On second thought, don’t be telling your cousin I said that. It might ruin the magic.”