Thrill-Bent (25 page)

“And what a gorgeous song at the end of the ceremony!” she persists. “Didn’t the organist do a lovely job? Now, she’s not the regular gal at services, is she?”

I look down at my plate, hoping I will not be pressured to give my opinion of the substitute organist. Did I introduce myself as Seth’s daughter? No, I think I just said Jan.

Seth does look spiffy today, I’d have to agree. Of course, it’s hard for me to have any perspective, since I haven’t seen him for so long, and until I received Chantelle’s invitation in the mail, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of forgetting about him altogether.

I raise my eyebrows and smile at the husband—Bryce?—in what I hope is a polite but mildly disinterested manner. The other people at the table jump in to discuss exactly which Shania Twain song the organist did a lovely job with, and whether or not it was from the era of happily married Shania or bitterly divorced Shania. Rhonda’s husband wipes his mouth with his napkin, looks back and forth between Rhonda and me, and finally says, “Seth seemed darned happy to me!”

Is that it? He is simply happy? Simply content to be adored by his Shania Twain-loving, unnaturally high-nippled, prairie-dog-resembling, Titleist-swinging, thirty-something bride?

“Of course he’s happy, it’s his wedding day!” Rhonda snorts. “He looked even happier than I’ve seen him at any of our tennis games.” (Ah, it’s
tennis.)
“Even when he wins!”

As I uncross my legs, I feel all the coffee I’ve drunk today rush to fill my bladder. I widen my eyes and excuse myself, confident that Bryce, or whatever his name is, is not going to be any more forthcoming on the subject of the Condor’s palpable glee.

The two of them—Betty and the Condor—are lined up on oversized iron barstools alongside the partially concealed bar that flanks the edge of the patio next to the ladies’ room. A bottle of Herradura roosts in front of my dad, who stealthily refills Betty’s half-empty glass as I pass behind them. They are facing the bartender, engaged in witty dialogue, and I tuck myself into the bathroom’s portal so I can watch them without being seen—an outpost that provides exactly the view of my father that I’ve always wanted, perfectly protected and utterly one-sided. In fact, the late afternoon sunlight is slanting across the patio, leaving me in shadow and glazing the two of them with a lemony golden glow, as though either of them needed more heavenly favor. How did Betty corner him already? Across the terrace, Chantelle, now dressed in a tasteful off-white sheath, is hugging it out with some women at the head table.

The Condor has taken off his jacket, untied his bow tie, and rolled up his sleeves. He is casually resting his right hand on the back of Betty’s stool, tossing back tequila with his left. Betty laughs loudly at something the bartender says, and then leans closer to my dad and whispers in his ear. She is charming the ultimate charmer. As she turns away from him, she catches my eye. I instinctively put my finger to my mouth, indicating secrecy. This is not how I had planned to encounter my father after all these years, squeezing my legs together to avoid a urinary accident, hiding in the doorway of a public restroom, spying on him as he puts a tequila-fueled spell on my best friend.

The Condor dismounts his tall stool with the under-stated grace of a ballroom dancer and lands directly behind Betty’s chair, while I try awkwardly to maneuver further inside the hard lip of doorjamb, pressing myself against the cool, faux-adobe wall. I hear a faint screech, and then a series of shrill barks. I crane my neck to see my dad chivalrously pulling Betty’s stool out for her while she’s still in it. The stool’s rubber-stoppered feet are skidding on the slate floor, yelping in a bouncy, staccato rhythm like an overenthusiastic pug. I’m sure I am not imagining it, but it’s very subtle; if I’d blinked I would have missed this: my father’s hand lingers for just a moment on Betty’s knee as he helps her down from her throne.

“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got cute knees?” he asks in a deep voice, leaning into her hair. I’m standing three feet away from them.

“Sure, all the daddies tell me that,” Betty says matter-of-factly, and she reaches out toward the ladies’ room door to steady herself. “Bathroom,” she manages to add.

I perch on the fake-walnut varnished toilet seat and try, in vain, to pee while Betty reapplies her Chili Pepper lipstick. I’ve been clutching my pelvic muscles so compulsively that now I can’t manage to let go.

“Why didn’t you just come over and join us?” Betty asks, raising her voice above the rushing sound of a hand dryer. “Why the Columbo routine?”

“I thought you were getting me a glass of champagne, not seducing my dad,” I say, much too loudly. I hear her snort. A toilet next to me flushes.

“Qu’elle dramatique, mon ami!”
she says, smacking her lips. “I was going to the bar to get us drinks, but then the Condor offered me a shot of his fancy tequila, and what was I supposed to do, turn him down? How rude!”

Betty’s explanation makes me laugh, and when I involuntarily relax my pelvic muscles, pee flows out of me in a Euphratic gush. Betty, who is by now quite used to my inability to urologically let loose in times of stress, whirls around from her inspection in front of the mirror at the sound of my giant splash. I can hear her heels swivel.

“Oh my God,” she gasps, “It’s like a fucking
Perfect Storm
in here.” She turns back toward the mirror.

I sigh. Betty had been gone for a few minutes before I spied her with my dad at the bar. There’s definitely more to the story than she’s telling me. “Did you tell him you were here with me?” I ask. “I just want to know what I’m up against.”

Her face appears above me as she stands on her tiptoes to peer into my stall. She has a tart little lipsticked smile on her face. “It didn’t come up,” she says, in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Are you saying you don’t trust me? Because I know that you trust me.” She waggles her eyebrows at me to emphasize her point. “You just leave the alcoholic concerns to moi, and you worry about the bullshit patrimonial psychodrama of the moment.”

I scowl. “You mean bullshit patrimonial psychodrama like when my dad told you you had cute knees?” She nods briskly. “Or like when I bit my cuticle until it bled all over my dinner napkin while my dad’s tennis partners discussed his waxing and waning happiness quotient?”

“Zackly,” says Betty, emphatically.

The truth is, she does have attractive knees: tan, strong, not too knobby or scarred. My dad often used to flirt with friends of mine. He would train his Condor eye on their every move and make them feel like they were the most desired bit of prey scrambling around the playroom floor. He’d charm them, then break their hearts by forgetting their names.

I start to cry unexpectedly, with my skirt hiked up to my waist and my underwear stretched like a tightwire from knee to knee. I watch silently as tears plop onto the cotton crotch panel that is hovering between my thighs like a window with its white curtains drawn. A window to nowhere, an opaque swatch where a square of sky might once have been. Colorless blotches of salt water embed themselves in the gauze and flatten out like saucers, but I know they won’t make a lasting impression. I know they’ll just dry up and disappear, moving through the atmosphere again in some other sneaky incarnation. Betty reaches her arm out over the door but can’t quite touch my head. She makes some stroking motions anyway, pawing at the air a few feet above me like she’s caressing my halo. She whispers, “Fuck him, I like Cuervo better anyway.”

“Looks like Seth’s operation was successful,” a voice says cheerfully, as a body pushes through the squeaking entrance door. Our heads spin toward it.
Operation?
What operation?

“What operation?” another voice replies, as though reading our minds.

“Something where they implant electrodes in his brain, like a pacemaker for the nervous system. Chantelle’s sister is a neurologist, have you met her? Vivian, I think?”

As I emerge from my stall, a red-haired woman wearing large gold earrings prepares to enter after me. Our eyes meet for a brief monitoring moment before I head to an outlying sink. Her companion is washing her hands and blinking into the mirror. Again I try to look as though I haven’t been paying attention to the conversation taking place around me, as though I’m merely a dispassionate bystander. Betty actually starts whistling softly to herself. I think it is the Shania Twain tune.

“Is Vivian the one with the ponytail, at the head table?” the companion asks, turning back toward the stall where her red-haired friend is and shaking her hands to dry them. I am taking my time washing my hands, as though I am scrubbing off sins from past lives. My eyes are pink and damp.

“Ponytail, yeah. Linen blazer. She looks too young to be a neurosurgeon, but you know those sisters! I heard that Chantelle refused to marry him until he nixed the Tourette’s. She was worried about him launching into one of his ... fits ... in front of Pastor Barth. So she sent him to her sister for tests, and the rest is history.”

“Must have worked,” woman #2 says, inspecting her cuticles. “He’s as calm as a lake.”

A short walk downhill from the reception courtyard, I find a little clearing where the din of celebrating is muffled to a low murmur by the trees, and the view is conspicuously lacking in linen-clad wedding guests.

After we left the bathroom, I asked Betty to tell the Condor that I’m out here, half-expecting her to refuse or to insist on joining us with another bottle of tequila and a video camera, but she just nodded and said, “If you need me for anything, just whistle.”

My headache is gone, and I feel strangely hollowed out and serene, ready for anything. This spot is relentlessly beautiful. The water laps at the black rocky shore in blue and green ribbons, and the enormous turquoise sky rests on a glowing white stroke of cloud that is turning gold around its edges like a curling magnolia petal. From under the shade of a cypress tree, I watch a pelican fly low over the ocean, back and forth across a half-mile stretch, sometimes plunging suddenly straight down, long beak first. The bird emerges again and drains on the fly, mouth open as it glides, water cascading from the pendulous throat-pouch like from a sheet on a clothesline in a rainstorm. The circling gulls don’t seem to bother it as they dive to rescue any extras that plummet back to the sea. I like to think about how many years this has been going on. Before people were here, birds ate fish, and waves lapped the shore. Everything essential is provided; all we have to do is exercise our own unique talents. That’s the hard part.

On my way down here, I passed Pastor Barth, who introduced himself with a enthusiastic handshake and a searching smile. Oh, Pastor Barth—garrulous, Lord’s-name-dropping Pastor Barth, with another smooth ceremony under his belt. I wonder how the good pastor would have reacted if there had been some expletive-hollering, testicle-jabbing action at the pulpit? I swallow a smile, picturing the pastor trying to drown out my father’s “fit” with even more vociferous references to God and Jesus. It could have been like a cage match between good and evil. In my mind I repopulate the chapel with alternate wedding guests: instead of buttoned-down country club types like Rhonda and Bryce, I seat Buffy and her friends in the front pew—the blue spear of mohawk, Marie Antoinette wig, and lace headdresses block everyone else’s view of the nuptials. But that’s okay—in a middle pew Furry and his gang, all dressed of course in their rabbit suits, groom one another and feverishly nosebonk. Ralph and his buddies from the Snake Ranch Social Club are across the aisle, drinking from flasks and betting on greyhounds under the shade of their hymnals. Shirley is tucked in the rear in his Armani suit (whose crotch-level stain is almost dry), and Kelly is there, sexy in his Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, serenely watching while his baby son races the length of the pew. Johnny the Ring clutches a bouquet with his bejeweled hands, and Braxo stands with raised eyebrows by the wooden double doors, smoking a fat spliff. The smoke curls and spirals in a lazy line over to Jackson, who is humming to himself and looking glumly out the window.

A glass of champagne (vintage Duetz—maybe Chantelle’s neurosurgeon sister is footing the bill for the wedding?) has fortified my nerves, and when I turn to see my dad’s shiny black shoes coming down the path toward me, I don’t even feel the urge to throw myself off the cliff. He leans down to me and says, “Jan.”

I start to rise, since he’s extending his arms in what appears to be an offer of a hug, but as I do he is already squatting down beside me, so instead of hugging him I essentially use his outstretched arms as a counterweight for balancing myself as I get up. Now I am standing and he is sitting. We both laugh and he pulls me back down beside him, and then we actually do hug. His torso is firm and warm, just as I remember, and his stiff shirt is a little damp from sweat. The dense hair on his brown arms is as soft as grass, and I will my hand to release him before I start unconsciously stroking it. I scooch over a little on the coat I’ve laid down to sit on.

“I’m so glad you made it down here for the wedding,” he says.

Oh, we’re being polite. “Me too,” I say.

“It’s been too long,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. We sit for a few moments in silence and watch the pelican.

“Dad,” I manage to start, “what happened to your Tourette’s?”

He looks at me, bemused, like I am playing some kind of Gordian guessing game. Still no tics, not even a quiver.

“I heard some women talking in the bathroom, saying that you got an operation. Is that true?”

He shifts his weight and looks back out at the ocean, squinting a little against the setting sun. I was right; he is more handsome now than ever. “Well, it’s a new treatment. Yes, there was an operation, just to implant a small device that regulates things.”

I hear a slight slur in his voice, and the left side of his mouth seems to be drooping. Maybe it’s the tequila. “And this device was implanted in your … brain?” I’m kind of horrified. To me, this sounds antiquated and barbaric, like shock therapy or bloodletting.

“Yes, a tiny electrode is planted in the brain, and a little box that controls the impulse is implanted here.” He takes my hand and puts it over his collarbone. Through the fabric of his shirt just below his clavicle I can feel a hard, convex surface like a skipping stone or a stopwatch. “It’s called a neurostimulator. An insulated wire that runs up the back of my neck connects it to the electrode. Deep brain stimulation: DBS. The name is a little misleading, since what it really does is block abnormal nerve signals, not stimulate them.” His words seem rote, like he’s done this little teach-in a hundred times. There is a droning slowness to his speech, a lack of emphasis anywhere that makes it difficult to follow what he’s saying.