Bygones (20 page)

When the business at the church ended they all went to a restaurant called Finnegan's, where the Padgetts had reserved a private room for the groom's dinner. Randy drove alone, arrived before Maryann and waited for her in the lobby. The door opened and she stepped inside, speaking with her father and mother, a smile on her face.

She saw him and the smile thinned, her speech faltered.

“Hello again,” he said, feeling self-conscious waiting there with such obvious intent.

“Hello.”

“Do you mind if I sit with you?”

She looked straight at him and said, “You'd do better to sit with your father but I don't mind.”

He felt himself blushing—blushing, for Christ's sake—and said, “Here, I'll help you with that,” as she began removing her coat.

He hung it up along with his own and they followed her parents into the reserved room, where a long table waited to accommodate the entire wedding party. Walking behind her, he studied her round white collar, which reminded him of something a Mennonite would wear, and her hair, dark as ink and falling in tiers to her shoulders, the tips upturned like dry oak leaves. He thought about writing a song about her hair, something slow and evocative, with the drums quiet at the beginning and building toward a climax, then ending with sheepskin mallets doing a cymbal roll that faded into silence.

He pulled out her chair and sat down beside her, at the opposite end of the table from his parents.

While they ate, Maryann sometimes talked and laughed with her father, on her right. Sometimes she did the same with Lisa or Mark, across the table, or bent forward to say something to her mother or one of her sisters, down the line. She said nothing to Randy.

Finally he asked, “Would you please pass the salt?”

She did, and flashed him a polite smile that was worse than none at all.

“Good food, huh?” he said.

“Mm-hmm.” She had a mouthful of chicken and her lips were shiny. She wiped them with her napkin and said, “My folks wanted something fancier for the groom's dinner but this was all they could afford, and Mark said it was fine, as long as Mom didn't have to do all the cooking herself.”

“You all get along really well, I guess . . . your family, I mean.”

“Yes, we do.”

He tried to think of something more to say but nothing came to mind. He grinned and glanced at her plate.

“You like chicken, huh?” She had eaten all of it and little else.

She laughed and nodded while their eyes met again.

“Listen,” he said, his stomach in knots. “I was wondering if I could drive you home.”

“I'll have to ask my dad.”

He hadn't heard that answer since he was in the tenth grade and had just gotten his driver's license.

“You mean you want to?” he asked, amazed.

“I kind of suspected you'd ask me.” She turned to her father, sitting back in her chair so Randy could hear their exchange. “Daddy, Randy wants to drive me home, okay?”

Jake touched his hearing aid and asked, “What?”

“Randy wants to drive me home.”

Jake leaned forward, peered around Maryann to study Randy a moment and said, “I guess that would be all right but you have things to do early tomorrow, don't you?”

“Yes, Daddy, I'll get in early.” She turned to Randy and said, “Okay?”

He raised his right hand like a Boy Scout. “Straight home.”

When the meal was over there was a jumble of good-byes at the door. He held Maryann's coat, then the heavy plate-glass door, and they walked across the snowy parking lot together.

“This one's mine,” he said, reaching his Nova and walking around to open the passenger door for her, waiting until she was seated, then slamming it, feeling gallant and eager to extend every courtesy ever invented by men for women.

When he was sitting behind the wheel, putting his keys in the ignition, she remarked, “Boys don't do that much anymore . . . open car doors.”

He knew. He was one of them.

“Some girls don't want a guy to open doors for them. It's got something to do with women's lib hang-ups.” He started the engine.

“That's the silliest thing I ever heard. I love it.”

He felt all glowy inside and decided if she could be honest, so could he. “It felt good doing it, too, and you know what? Other than for my mother, I don't do it much, either, but I will from now on.”

She buckled her seat belt, something else he rarely did, but he fished around and found his buried buckle and engaged it. He adjusted the heater, stalling for time, judging he'd have her at her doorstep in less than ten minutes. The floor fan came on and twisted the blue Christmas tree around and around on its string.

“It smells good in here,” she said. “What is it?”

“This thing.” He poked the tree and put the car into reverse and headed toward White Bear Avenue. It would have been more direct to take I-95 to 61 and go around the west side of the lake but he headed around the east side instead, driving twenty miles an hour in the thirty-mile zone through the residential district.

When they were halfway to her house he said, “Could I ask you something?”

“What?”

“How old are you?”

“I'm a senior. Seventeen.”

“Are you going with anybody?”

“I don't have time. I'm in girls' basketball and track, and I work on the school paper and I spend a lot of time studying. I want to do something in either medicine or law, and I've applied to Hamline University. My folks can't afford to pay their tuition fees so I'll need a scholarship if I'm going to go there, which means I have to keep my grades up.”

If he told her how he'd skated through high school she'd ask him to stop the car and let her out right here.

“How about you?” she asked.

“Me? Nope, don't go with anybody.”

“College?”

“Nope, just high school.”

“But you want to be a drummer.”

“Yes.”

“In a rock band?”

“Yes.”

“And meanwhile?”

“Meanwhile, I work in a nut house.”

“A what!” She was already amused.

“It's a warehouse, actually. I package fresh roasted nuts—peanuts, pistachios, cashews—it's a big wholesale house. Custom orders that go out to places all over America. Christmas is our biggest season. It really gets crazy in a nut house at Christmas.”

She laughed, as people always did, but the comparison between their ambitions was pointed enough to sound ludicrous, even to him.

They rode in silence awhile before Randy said, “Jesus, I really sound like a loser, don't I?”

“Randy, I need to say something right up front.”

“Say it.”

“I'd just as soon you didn't say ‘Jesus' that way. It offends me.”

That was the last thing he'd expected. He hadn't even realized he'd said it. “Okay,” he replied, “you got it.”

“And as far as being a loser—well, that's all just a state of mind. I guess I've always thought if a person feels like a loser he ought to do something about it. Go to school, get a different job, do something to boost your self-esteem. That's the first step.”

They reached her house and he parked on the street, leaving the engine running. There was a bunch of cars in the driveway—her parents', Lisa's, Mark's. The lights were on throughout the house. The living-room draperies were open and they could see people moving through the room.

Randy hunched his shoulders toward the steering wheel, joined his hands between his knees and looked straight out the windshield at a streetlight twenty feet away.

“Listen, I know you think I'm a jerk because I don't get along with my dad but maybe you'd like to hear why.”

“Sure. I'm a good listener.”

“When I was thirteen he had an affair and divorced my mother and married somebody else. Everything just sort of fell apart after that. Home, school. Especially school. I kind of drifted through.”

“And you're still feeling sorry for yourself.”

He turned his head, studied her awhile and said, “He screwed up our whole family.”

“You think so?” He waited, eyeing her warily. “You aren't going to like what I have to say but the truth is, each of us is responsible for ourself. If you started sloughing off in school, you can't blame him for that. It's just easier if you do, that's all.”

“Jesus, aren't we smug?” he replied.

“You said ‘Jesus' again. Do it once more and I'm leaving.”

“All right, I'm sorry!”

“I said you weren't going to like what I had to say. Your sister made it through. Your mother seems to have done all right. Why didn't you?”

He threw himself back into the corner of the seat and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Christ, I don't know!”

She was out of the car like a shot, slamming the door, leaping over the snowbank onto the sidewalk and heading for the house before he realized what he'd said. He opened his door and shouted, “Maryann, I'm sorry! It just slipped out!” When the house door slammed, he slugged the car roof with both fists and railed aloud, “Jesus Christ, Curran, what are you doing chasing this uptight broad!”

He flung his body behind the wheel, gunned the engine with the ear-splitting thunder of an Indy-500 ignition, peeled down the street fishtailing for a quarter of a block, rolled down the window, yanked the smelly Christmas tree off the radio knob, cutting his finger before the string broke, and hurled the thing into the street, cursing a blue streak.

He slewed around a corner at twenty-five miles an hour, came within inches of wiping out a fire hydrant, ran two stop signs and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Well, fuck you, Maryann Padgett! Get that? Fuck you!” He braked beside some strange house, got out his marijuana, had a couple good hits and waited for the euphoria to drift in and calm him.

He was smiling the last time he either said or didn't say, Yeah, fuck you, Maryann Padgett . . .

* * *

While Randy was escorting Maryann from the restaurant, Lisa was saying good night to her mother and father.

She gave Michael a hug first.

“See you tomorrow, Dad.”

“Absolutely.” He felt unusually sentimental and held her extra long, one of the last times he'd do so before she took another man's name. “I understand you're staying at the house tonight with Mom.”

“Uh-huh. We moved all my stuff over to Mark's today.”

“I'm glad. I like to think of you there with her tonight.”

“Hey, Dad?” At his ear she whispered, “Keep up the good work. I think you're makin' points with Mom.” She broke away and smiled. “See you at home, Mom. Good night, everyone!”

Michael hid his surprise while Lisa went out the door with Mark, leaving various stragglers behind. While helping Bess with her coat he remarked, “Lisa seems absolutely happy.”

“I believe she is.”

The rest of the Padgetts said good night and left. Michael and Bess were the last two in the place, standing near the plate-glass door, dawdling, putting on their gloves, buttoning their coats.

“It looks to me like something is cooking between Randy and Maryann,” Michael remarked.

“They were together all night.”

“I noticed.”

“She's a pretty girl, isn't she?”

“I'll say.”

“Why do mothers always make that remark first?” Bess said.

“Because they want pretty girls for their handsome sons, I guess. Fathers are no different. Hell, I'd just as soon see my kids end up with foxes instead of dogs.”

Bess chuckled, meeting Michael's eyes while an unsettling quiet fell between them. They should go, should follow the others outside and say good night.

“She's very young, still in high school,” Bess said.

“I noticed she asked her father's permission to go with Randy.”

“Nice old-fashioned thing to see, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is.”

A soft expression came into Bess's eyes. “They're a wonderful family, aren't they?”

“I thought it bothered you to be around wonderful families.”

“Not as much as it used to.”

“Why's that?”

She gave no answer. The restaurant was closing up. Someone was running a vacuum cleaner and their waitress came through, dressed in her winter coat, on her way home. They should walk out, too, sensibly, and end this cat-and-mouse game they were playing with their own emotions. Still, they stayed.

“You know what?” Michael said.

“What?” Bess said the word so softly it could scarcely be heard above the whining vacuum cleaner.

He'd intended to say, I wish I was going home with you, too, but thought better of it.