Bygones (27 page)

When he lifted his head she whispered, “Michael, we shouldn't.”

“Yeah, I know,” he replied, stepping away from her against all his basic instincts. “See you tomorrow.”

When he was gone she shut off the downstairs lights and climbed the stairs in the dark. Halfway up she paused, realizing he had offered to help her in the kitchen. She was smiling as she continued toward her bedroom.

* * *

At 1:30 P.M. the following day Randy found Bess in the kitchen. He was dressed in jeans and a distressed leather bomber jacket. She, dressed in green wool slacks with a matching sweater, was arranging cold turkey and raw vegetables on a two-tiered platter. The room smelled strongly of perking coffee.

“I don't think I can make it today, Mom.”

She glanced up sharply. “What do you mean, you can't?”

“I mean, I can't. I gotta meet some guys.”

“You're a member of the wedding party. What
guys
are more important than your sister on her wedding weekend?”

“Mom, I'd stay if I could, but—”

“You'll stay, mister, and call your
guys
and tell them you'll make it another time!”

“Mom, goddamnit, why do you have to pick today to become Mussolini?” He thumped a fist on the cabinet top.

“First of all, stop your cursing. Second, stop rapping your fist on the counter. And third, grow up! You're Lisa and Mark's best man. As such you have social obligations that aren't done yet. This gift-opening today is as much a part of the wedding festivities as last night was, and she'll expect you to be here.”

“She won't care,” he jeered. “Hell, she won't even miss me.”

“She won't, because you won't
be
missing!”

“What's got into you all of a sudden, Ma? Did the old man tell you you ought to get tougher on me?”

Bess flung a handful of raw cauliflower into a bowl of ice water. It splashed onto her sleeve as she spun to face him.

“I've had just about all the smart remarks about him I'm going to take from you, young man. He's making an effort, a real effort where you're concerned. And if he
did
tell me to get tough on you, and if that
were
the reason I am—which I'm not saying is true—maybe he'd be right! Now I want you back downstairs, out of that leather jacket and into some kind of respectable shirt. And when our guests get here I'd like you to answer the door, if that wouldn't be too much trouble,” she ended mordantly, turning back to the raw vegetables.

He went downstairs, leaving her facing the kitchen sink with her face burning and her pulse elevated.

Mothering! Whoever said it got easier as they got older was a damned liar! She hated the indecisiveness—should she have lashed out or not? Should she have given orders or not? He was an adult, so he deserved being treated like an adult. But he lived in her house, lived in it virtually scot-free at nineteen, when most boys his age were either attending college, paying rent or both. So she had a right to have expectations and make demands now and then. But did she have to take him on today of all days? Thirty minutes before a houseful of guests arrived?

She dried her hands, swiped the droplets of water off her sleeve and followed him downstairs. In his room the stereo was playing quietly and he was standing with his back to the door, facing the chain-and-metal bar that held his clothes, yanking off his shirt as if someone had called him a sissy. She went up behind him and touched his back. He got absolutely still, his wrists still caught in his inverted sleeves.

“I'm sorry I shouted. Please stay home this afternoon. You were wonderful on the drums last night. Dad and I were so proud of you.” She slipped her arms around his trunk, gave him a swift kiss between the shoulder blades and left him standing there, his chin on his chest, his shirt still dangling from one wrist.

* * *

When the doorbell rang for the first time, Randy was there to answer it, dressed in a pressed cotton shirt and creased pants. It was Aunt Joan, Uncle Clark and Grandma Dorner, probably the easiest person to hug of all Randy knew, because with Grandma Dorner nothing was calamitous. She had a way of bringing everything into perspective. She hugged him in passing, said, “Nice job with those drumsticks,” gave him her coat and continued toward the kitchen, asking what she could do to help.

Lisa and Mark came next, arriving at the same time as Michael, all of them swiftly followed by the Padgetts, who descended en masse. Randy's heart gave a little surge as he took Maryann's coat, but he might have been a hired doorman for all the truck she gave him. She handed him her coat, making sure it was off her shoulders so he need not touch her, turning away in conversation with her mother as they moved toward the family room, where a fire was burning in the fireplace and food was spread on the adjacent dining-room table.

He remained on the perimeter of the activity the entire afternoon, feeling like an outsider in his own home, standing back, watching and listening as gifts were opened and
oohed
over, studying Maryann, who never so much as glanced at him, watching his mother and dad, who remained carefully remote from each other at all times but whose eyes occasionally met and exchanged covert messages.

Damn weddings, he thought. If this is what they do to people, I'm never going to get married. Everybody goes crazy, they do things they wouldn't do for a thousand bucks on a normal day. Shit, who needs it?

When the giftwrap was shaped like a mountain and the table looked as though a grasshopper plague had just passed, the carry-through of weariness from three days of activity began to dull and slow everyone. Michael asked Lisa to play “The Homecoming” on the piano and she obliged. Half the guests left; half trailed into the formal living room while some of the women began repacking the gifts into their boxes and making neat stacks of them.

The music ended and the group thinned more. Randy caught Maryann just as she was about to leave and said, “Could I talk to you a minute?”

She found someplace to occupy her eyes: on her purse handle, untwisting it before threading it over her shoulder with a toss of her head. “No, I don't think so.”

“Maryann, please. Just come in the living room a minute.” He caught her sleeve and tugged.

Reluctantly she followed, refusing to meet his eyes. Outside, twilight had arrived. The room was dusky at the west end, where no lamps were lit. At the east end, the lamp on the abandoned piano made a small puddle of light. Randy led Maryann around a corner, away from the prying eyes of the departing guests, and stopped beside an upholstered wing chair with a matching ottomon.

“Maryann, I'm sorry about last night,” Randy said.

She ran a thumbnail along the welting on the high back of the chair. “Last night was a mistake, all right? I never should have gone outside with you in the first place.”

“But you did.”

She gave up her preoccupation with the chair and flung him a reprimanding glare. “You're a talented person. It's obvious you come from a home with a lot of love, in spite of the fact that your parents are divorced. I mean, look at this!” She waved a hand at the room. “Look at them, and how they've made a solid show of support throughout this wedding. I know a lot more about you than you think I do—from Lisa. What are you fighting against?” When he made no reply she said, “I don't want to see you, Randy, so please don't call or anything.”

She left to join her parents on their way out the door. He dropped onto the ottoman and sat staring at the bookshelves in the far corner, where the gloaming was so deep he could not discern the spines of the volumes.

People were making trips out to Mark's van, carrying the wedding gifts. Lisa and Mark were leaving. He heard her ask, “Where's Randy? I haven't said good-bye to him.” He hid silently, waiting out the moments until she gave up calling down to his room and left the house without a good-bye. He heard Grandma Dorner say, “Joan and I will help you clean up this mess, Bess.” And his father, “I'll help her, Stella. I've got nothing waiting at home but an empty condo.” And Stella again, “All right, Michael, I'll take you up on that. It's just about time for
Murder, She Wrote
and that's one show I don't like to miss.” There were more sounds of farewell, and cold air circling Randy's ankles, then the door closed a last time and he listened.

His mother said, “You didn't have to stay.”

“I wanted to.”

“What's this, a new side to Michael Curran, volunteering for KP?”

“You said it yourself. She's my daughter, too. What do you want me to do?”

“Well, you can carry in the dishes from the dining room, then burn the wrapping paper in the fireplace.”

Dishes clinked and footsteps moved between the kitchen and dining room. The water ran, and the dishwasher door opened, something was put away in the refrigerator.

Michael called, “What do you want me to do with this tablecloth?”

“Shake it out and drop it down the clothes chute.”

The sliding glass door rolled open and, a few seconds later, shut. Other sounds continued—Michael whistling softly, more footsteps, more running water, then the sound of the fire screen sliding open, the rustle of paper and the roar of it catching flame; in the kitchen the clink of glassware.

“Hey, Bess, this carpet is a mess. Scraps of paper everywhere. You want me to vacuum it?”

“If you want to.”

“Is the vacuum cleaner still in the same place?”

“Yup.”

Randy heard his father's footsteps head toward the back closet, the door opening, and in moments, the whine of the machine. While the two of them were distracted and the place was noisy, he retreated from his hiding spot and slipped down to his bedroom, where he put on his headphones and flopped onto his water bed to try to decide what to do about his life.

* * *

Michael finished vacuuming, put away the machine, went into the living room to turn off the piano light and, returning through the dining room, called, “Bess, how about this table? You want to take a leaf out of it?”

She came from the kitchen with one dishtowel tied backwards around her waist, drying her hands on another.

“I guess so. The catch is at that end.”

He found the catch and together they pulled the table apart.

“Same table, I see.”

“It was too good to get rid of.”

“I'm glad you didn't. I always liked it.” He swung a leaf into the air, narrowly missing the chandelier.

“Ooo, luck-y,” she said, low-voiced, waiting while he braced the leaf against the wall.

“Not lucky at all, just careful.” He grinned while they put their thighs against the table and clacked it back together.

“Oh, sure. And who used to break bulbs in the chandelier at least once a year?”

“I seem to remember you broke a couple yourself.” He hefted the table leaf.

She was grinning as she headed back to the kitchen. “Under the family-room sofa, same place as always.”

He put the table leaf away, snapped off the dining-room light and returned to her side by the kitchen sink. She had kicked off her shoes someplace and wore only nylons on her feet; he'd always liked the air-brushed appearance of a woman's feet in nylons. He took the dishtowel from her shoulder and began wiping an oversized salad bowl.

“It feels good to be back here,” he said. “Like I never left.”

“Don't go getting ideas,” she said.

“Just an innocent remark, Bess. Can't a man make an innocent remark?”

“That depends.” She squeezed out the dishcloth and began energetically wiping off the countertop while he watched her spine—decorated by the knotted white dishtowel—bob in rhythm with each swipe she made.

“On what?”

“What went on the night before.”

“Oh, that.” She turned and he shifted his gaze to the bowl he was supposed to be drying.

“That was Jose Cuervo talking, I think.” She rinsed out her cloth and wiped off the top of the stove. “People do dumb things at weddings.”

“Yeah, I know. Wasn't this bowl one of our wedding gifts?” He studied it while she went to the sink to release the water.

“Yes.” She began spraying the suds down the drain. “From Jerry and Holly Shipman.”

“Jerry and Holly . . .” He stared at the bowl. “I haven't thought about them in years. Do you ever see them anymore?”

“I think they live in Sacramento now. Last time I heard from them they'd opened a nursery.”

“Still married, though?”

“As far as I know. Here, I'll take that.” While she carried the bowl away to the dark dining room he took a stab at a cupboard door, opened the right one and began putting away some glasses. She returned, took off her dishtowel and began polishing the kitchen faucet with it. He finished putting away the glasses; she hung up her towel, dispensed some hand lotion into her palm and they both turned at the same time, relaxing against the kitchen cupboards while she massaged the lotion into her hands.