Sarah Dessen (6 page)

Luckily, I had Lissa to deal with too. She’d spent the last week completely in denial, sure Adam would change his mind. It was all we could do to thwart her calling/driving by/going to his work impulse, which we all knew never led to any good in a dumping situation. If he wanted to see her, he’d find her. If he wanted to get back together, she should make him work for it. And so on.

And now, the wedding was here. I got off work early, at five, and drove home to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. As I walked up to the front door, I realized the house was just as I’d left it. In chaos.

“But there’s just no way they’ll get here in time!” my mother was shrieking as I walked in and dropped my keys on the table. “They’re supposed to be here in an hour or we won’t be able to make the dinner!”

“Mom,” I called out, instantly recognizing her close-to-meltdown voice. “Calm down.”

“I understand that,” she said, her voice still shrill. “But this is my wedding!”

I glanced into the living room, which was empty except for Jennifer Anne, already dressed for the dinner, sitting on the couch reading a book entitled
Making Plans, Making Dreams,
which had a picture of a woman looking pensive on its cover. She glanced up at me, turning a page.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“The limo service is having some problems.” She fluffed her hair. “It seems one of their cars was in an accident and the other is stuck in traffic.”

“That’s just not
acceptable!
” my mother yelled.

“Where’s Chris?”

She looked up at the ceiling. “In his room,” she said. “Apparently, there’s been some sort of hatching.” Then she made a face and went back to her book.

My brother bred lizards. Upstairs, next to his room in what had once been a walk-in closet, he kept a row of aquariums in which he raised monitor lizards. They were hard to describe: smaller than iguanas, bigger than geckos. They had snakelike tongues and ate tiny crickets that were forever getting loose in the house, bouncing down the stairs and chirping from where they hid in shoes in the closets. He even had an incubator, which he kept on the floor of his room. When he had eggs in it, it ran in cycles all day, softly clicking to maintain the temperature needed to bring the babies to maturity.

Jennifer Anne hated the lizards. They were, in fact, the one sticking point of her transformation of Chris, the one thing he would not give up for her. As a result, she refused to go anywhere near his room, instead spending her time at our house on the couch, or at the kitchen table, usually reading some motiva tional self-help book and sighing loud enough for everyone—except Chris, who was usually upstairs, tending to his animals—to hear her.

But now, I had bigger problems.

“I understand that,” my mother said, her voice now wavering close to tears, “but what you’re not hearing is that I have a hundred people that are going to be waiting for me at the Hilton and I will not
be
there!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, coming up behind her and gently closing my hand over the phone. “Mom. Let me talk to them.”

“It’s just ludicrous!” she sputtered, but she let me take it. “It’s—”

“Mom,” I said quietly, “go finish getting dressed. I’ll handle this. Okay?”

She just stood there for a second, blinking. She already had on her dress and was carrying her pantyhose in her hand. No makeup, no jewelry. Which meant another good twenty-five minutes if we were lucky.

“Well, okay,” she said, as if she were doing me a favor. “I’ll be upstairs.”

“Right.” I watched as she walked out of the room, brushing her fingers through her hair. When she was gone, I put the phone to my ear. “Is this Albert?”

“No,” the voice said, warily. “This is Thomas.”

“Is Albert there?”

“Hold on.” There was a muffled noise, someone’s hand covering the receiver. Then, “Hello, Albert speaking.”

“Albert, this is Remy Starr.”

“Hey, Remy! Look, this thing with the cars is just messed up, okay?”

“My mother is approaching meltdown, Albert.”

“I know, I know. But look, this is what Thomas was trying to tell her. What we’ll do is. . . .”

Five minutes later, I went up the stairs and knocked on my mother’s door. When I came in, she was sitting in front of her vanity. She looked no different except that she had changed her dress and now sat dabbing at her face with a makeup brush. Ah, progress.

“All fixed,” I told her. “A car will be here at six. It’s a Town Car, not a limo, but we’re set for tomorrow and that’s what really matters. Okay?”

She sighed, placing one hand over her chest, as if this, finally, calmed her racing heart. “Wonderful. Thank you.”

I sat down on her bed, kicking off my shoes, and glanced at the clock. It was five-fifteen. I could be ready in eighteen minutes flat, including drying my hair, so I lay back and closed my eyes. I could hear my mother making her getting-ready noises: perfume bottles clinking, brushes dabbing, small containers of face cream and eye gel being moved around on the mirrored tabletop in front of her. My mother was glamorous long before she had reason to be. She’d always been small and wiry, full of energy and prone to dramatic outbursts: she liked to wear lots of bangle bracelets that clanked as she waved her arms around, sweeping the air as she talked. Even when she taught at the community college and most of her students were half asleep after working full days, she dressed for class, with full makeup and perfume and her trademark swishy outfits in bright colors. She kept her hair dyed jet black now that it was graying, and wore it in a short, blunt cut with thick bangs cut straight across. With her long, flowing skirts and the hair she almost could have been a geisha, except that she was way too noisy.

“Remy, honey,” she said suddenly, and I jerked up, realizing I’d almost fallen asleep. “Can you come do my clasp?”

I stood up and walked over to where she was sitting, taking the necklace she handed to me. “You look beautiful,” I told her. It was true. Tonight, she was wearing a long red dress with a drop neckline, amethyst earrings, and the big diamond ring Don had given her. She smelled like L’Air du Temps, which, when I was little, I thought was the most wonderful scent in the world. The whole house reeked of it: it clung to the drapes and rugs the way cigarette smoke does, stubbornly and forever.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said as I did the clasp. Looking at us reflected in the mirror I was struck again by how little we resembled each other: me blond and thin, her darker and more voluptuous. I didn’t look like my father, either. I didn’t have many early pictures of him, but in the ones I had seen he always looked grizzled, in that 1960s rock kind of way, with a beard and long hair. He also looked permanently stoned, which my mother never disputed when I pointed it out.
Oh, but he had such a beautiful voice,
she’d say, now that he was gone.
One song, and I was a goner.

Now, she turned around and took my hands in hers. “Oh, Remy,” she said, smiling, “can you believe this? We’re going to be so
happy.
”

I nodded.

“I mean,” she said, turning around, “it’s not like this is my first time going down the aisle.”

“Nope,” I agreed, smoothing her hair down where it was poking up slightly in the back.

“But it just feels real this time. Permanent. Don’t you think?”

I knew what she wanted me to say, but still I hesitated. It seemed like a bad movie, this ritual we’d gone through twice already that I could remember. At this point, the other bridesmaids and myself considered the ceremonies more like class reunions, where we stood off to the side and discussed who had gotten fat or gone bald since my mother’s last wedding. I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn’t. People weren’t meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say. I would have been doing her a favor dragging forth the other wedding albums she kept stacked under her bed and pointing at the pictures, forcing her to take in the same things, the same people, the same cake/champagne toast/first dance poses we’d be seeing again in the next forty-eight hours. Maybe she could forget, push those husbands and memories out of sight and out of mind. But I couldn’t.

She was still smiling at me in the mirror. Sometimes I thought if she could read my mind it would kill her. Or both of us.

“Different,” she said, convincing herself. “It’s different this time.”

“Sure, Mom,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders. They felt small to me, somehow, from where I stood. “Sure it is.”

On my way down to my room, Chris jumped out at me.

“Remy! You’ve got to see this.”

I glanced at my watch—five-thirty—and then followed him into the lizard room. It was cramped, and he had to keep it hot all the time, which made being in there feel like a really long elevator ride to nowhere.

“Look,” he said, grabbing my hand and yanking me down beside him, next to the incubator. The top was off and inside there was a small Tupperware container, filled with what looked like moss. On top of it were three little eggs. One was broken open, one kind of mushed, and the other had a little hole in the top.

“Check it out,” Chris whispered, and pointed at the one with the hole.

“Chris,” I said, looking at my watch again. “I haven’t even taken a shower yet.”

“Just wait,” he told me, poking at the egg again. “This is worth it.”

We crouched there, together. My head was starting to hurt from the heat. And then, just as I was about to get up, the egg stirred. It wobbled a bit, and then something poked out of the hole. A tiny little head, and as the egg tore, it was followed by a body. It was slippery and slimy and so small it could have fit on the tip of my finger.

“Varanus tristis orientalis,”
Chris said, as if he was casting a spell. “Freckled monitor. He’s the only one that survived.”

The little lizard still seemed a bit dazed, blinking its eyes and moving in a stuttered kind of way, jerkily. Chris was beaming, as if he’d just single-handedly created the universe.

“Pretty cool, huh?” he said as the lizard moved again on his tiny webbed feet. “We’re the first thing he’s ever seen.”

The lizard stared up at us, and we stared back, taking each other in. He was little and defenseless, I felt sorry for him already. This was a screwed-up place he’d just come into. But he didn’t have to know that. Not yet, anyway. There in that room, where it was hot and cramped, the world probably still seemed small enough to manage.

“And now,” my mother said, smiling at Don, who hadn’t stopped grinning since the organist had started the “Prelude” for the ceremony two hours earlier, “please, enjoy yourselves!”

The string quartet began playing, my mother and Don kissed, and finally I let out a breath. The salads had been served, everyone seated. Cake: check. Table centerpieces: check. Bartender and liquor: check. This and a million other details completed meant that now, after six months, two days, and approximately four hours, I could relax. At least for a few minutes.

“Okay,” I said to Chloe, “
now
I will have some champagne.”

“Finally!” she said, pushing a glass at me. She and Lissa were past tipsy, red faced and giggly enough to have attracted attention to our table more than once already. Jennifer Anne, who was sitting on my left with Chris, was drinking seltzer water and watching us, a pinched look on her face.

“Great job, Remy,” Chris said, spearing a tomato from his salad and stuffing it in his mouth. “You really made this a good day for Mom.”

“After this,” I told him, “she’s on her own. Next time, she can go to Vegas and get married by an Elvis impersonator. I’m out.”

Jennifer Anne let her mouth drop open. “Next time?” she said, shocked. Then she looked over at my mother and Don, who were now at the head table, managing to eat and hold hands concurrently. “Remy, this is
marriage.
In front of God. It’s forever.”

Chris and I just looked at her. Across the table, Lissa burped.

“Oh my God,” she said as Chloe began snorting with laughter. “Excuse me.”

Jennifer Anne rolled her eyes, clearly offended at sharing a table with a bunch of peons and cynics. “Christopher,” she said, and she was the only one who ever called him that, “let’s get some air.”

“But I’m eating my salad,” Chris said. He had dressing on his chin.

Jennifer Anne just picked up her napkin, folding it delicately. She’d finished her salad already and left her utensils in that neat cross in the middle, signaling to the server that she was done.

“Sure,” Chris said, standing up. “Air. Let’s go.”

Once they were gone, Chloe hopped over two seats, with Lissa following along behind her clumsily. Jess was missing, having had to stay home with her little brother when he came down with a sudden case of strep throat. Quiet as she was, I always felt things were out of balance when she wasn’t around, as if Lissa and Chloe were too much for me to handle alone.

“Man,” Lissa said as Jennifer Anne led Chris out into the lobby, talking the whole way, “she hates us.”

“No,” I said, taking another gulp of my champagne, “she just hates me.”

“Oh, stop,” Chloe said, picking through her salad.

“Why would she hate you?” Lissa asked as she tipped up her glass again. Her lipstick was smudged, but in a cute way.

“Because she thinks I’m a bad person,” I told her. “I go against everything she believes in.”

“But that’s not true!” she said, offended. “You’re a
wonderful
person, Remy.”

Chloe snorted. “Now, let’s not get crazy.”

“She is!” Lissa said, loud enough so that a couple of people at the next table—Don’s dealership coworkers—glanced over at us.

“I’m not wonderful,” I said, squeezing Lissa’s arm. “But I am a bit better than I used to be.”

“That,” Chloe said, tossing her napkin down on her plate, “I can agree with. I mean, you don’t smoke anymore.”

“Right,” I agreed. “And I hardly get falling down drunk at all.”

Lissa nodded. “That’s true too.”

“And finally,” I said, finishing my drink, “I don’t sleep around
nearly
as much as I used to.”

“Here, here,” Chloe said, lifting up her glass so I could tap mine against it. “Watch out Stanford,” she said, smiling at me. “Remy’s practically a saint now.”

“St. Remy,” I said, trying it out. “I think I like that.”

The dinner was good. No one else seemed to think the chicken was a little rubbery besides me, but then I’d lobbied hard for the beef and lost, so I might have just been sore. Jennifer Anne and Chris never returned to our table; later, on my way to the rest room, I saw they’d defected to one where I’d put several of the local bigwigs Don was friendly with from the chamber of commerce. Jennifer Anne was talking away to the town manager, waving her fork as she made a point, while Chris sat beside her, a stain now on his tie, shoveling food in his mouth. When he saw me he smiled, apologetically, and just shrugged, as if this, like so many other things, was completely out of his hands.

Meanwhile, at our table, the champagne was flowing. One of Don’s nephews, who went to Princeton, was busy hitting on Chloe, while Lissa, in the ten minutes I’d been gone, had crossed over from happily buzzing to completely maudlin, and was now well on her way to flat-out weepy drunk.

“The thing is,” she said, leaning into me, “I really thought that Adam and I would get married. I mean, I did.”

“I know,” I said, feeling relieved as I saw Jess, in one of her few dresses, heading toward us. She looked uncomfortable, as she always did in anything but jeans, and as she sat down she made a face.

“Pantyhose,” she grumbled. “Stupid things cost me four bucks and feel like freaking sandpaper.”

“Well, if it isn’t Jessica,” Chloe said, her voice high and giggly. “Don’t you own any dresses from this decade?”

“Bite me,” Jess told her, and Don’s nephew raised his eyebrows. Chloe, hardly bothered, went back to her champagne and some long story she’d been telling about herself.

“Jess,” Lissa whispered, falling off my shoulder and onto hers, her head nudging Jess’s ear, “I’m drunk.”

“I see that,” Jess said flatly, pushing her back to me. “Gosh,” she said brightly, “I’m so glad I came!”

“Don’t be like that,” I told her. “Are you hungry?”

“I had some tuna fish at home,” she said, squinting at the cen terpiece.

“Stay here.” I stood up, easing Lissa back against her own chair. “I’ll be right back.”

I was just on my way back to the table, plate of chicken and asparagus and pilaf in hand, when I heard the microphone up front crackle, a few guitar chords jangling behind it.

“Hi everyone,” a voice said as I ducked between two tables, sidestepping a server clearing plates, “we’re the G Flats, and we’d like to wish Don and Barbara the best of happiness together!”

As everyone applauded this, I stopped where I was standing, then turned my head. Don had insisted on handling the band, claiming he knew someone who owed him a favor. But now, I wished more than anything that I’d just hired the local Motown group, even if they had played two of my mother’s previous receptions.

Because of course it was Dexter, the musician boy, standing in front of the microphone in a black suit that looked a size too big. He said, “What do you say, folks? Let’s get this party going!”

“Oh, my God,” I said, as the band—a guitar player, someone on keyboards, and in the back, the red-haired Ringo I’d met the day before—burst into a rousing rendition of “Get Ready.” They were all wearing thrift shop suits, Ringo in the same clip-on tie. But already people were crowding onto the dance floor, shuffling and shimmying, my mother and Don in the middle of it all, whooping it up.

I went back to the table and gave Jess her plate, then flopped down into my seat. Lissa, as I’d expected, was now teary-eyed, dabbing at her face with a napkin while Jess patted her leg, mechanically. Chloe and the nephew were gone.

“I don’t believe this,” I said.

“Believe what?” Jess asked, picking up her fork. “Man, this smells
great.
”

“The band—” I began, but that was as far as I got before Jennifer Anne appeared beside me, Chris in tow.

“Mom’s asking for you,” Chris said.

“What?”

“You’re supposed to be dancing,” Jennifer Anne, queen of etiquette, informed me, gently nudging me out of my seat. “The rest of the wedding party is already up there.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, looking at the dance floor, where of course my mother was now staring right at me, smiling beatifi cally and waggling her fingers in that come-here-now kind of way. So I grabbed Lissa up with one arm—damned if I was going out there alone—and dragged her with me, through the maze of tables, and into the crowd.

“I don’t feel like dancing,” she sniffled.

“Neither do I,” I snapped.

“Oh, Remy, Lissa!” my mother shrieked as we came closer, reaching out her arms to pull us both in close. Her skin was warm, the fabric of her dress slippery and smooth as she brushed against me. “Isn’t this just so
fun
?”

We were right in the middle of the crowd, people dancing all around us. The band segued cleanly into “Shout,” accompanied by a whoop from someone behind me. Don, who had been dipping my mother wildly, now grabbed my arm and spun me out, hurling me into a couple doing the bump. I almost felt my arm disconnect from my body before he yanked me back, gyrating his pelvis wildly.

“Oh, Lord,” Lissa said from behind me, having seen this. But then I was flying out again, this time in the opposite direction. Don danced with such vigor I feared for the rest of us. I kept trying to send him back to my mother, but she was distracted dancing with one of Don’s little nephews.

“Help me,” I hissed at Lissa as I whizzed past her, Don’s hand still clamping my wrist. Then he pulled me close for a weird, jitterbug kind of hopping that made my teeth knock together, but not enough to distract me from seeing Chloe, who was standing off to the side of the dance floor, laughing hysterically.

“You’re a great dancer!” Don said, pulling me in close and dipping me wildly. I was sure my cleavage would bust out of my dress—the fittings, while many, had not quite done the trick—but then he pulled me back up, lickety-split, and I got a mean head rush. “I love to dance,” Don yelled at me, throwing me out into another spin. “I don’t get to do it enough!”

“I think you do,” I grumbled, as the song finally began to wind down.

“What’s that?” he said, cupping his hand over his ear.

“I said,” I told him, “that you really can move.”

He laughed, wiping his face. “You too,” he said, as the band finished up with a crashing of cymbals. “You too.”

I escaped as everyone was applauding, pushing my way to the bar, where my brother was standing nibbling on a piece of bread, alone for once.

“What was that?” he said, laughing. “God, it looked like some wild tribal ritual.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“And now, folks,” I heard Dexter say from the stage as the lights dimmed a bit, “for your listening pleasure . . . a little slow song.”

The opening strains of “Our Love Is Here to Stay” began, a bit clumsily, and people who’d been avoiding the dance floor during the faster numbers started getting up from their chairs and pairing off. Jennifer Anne appeared next to me, smelling of hand soap, and slid her fingers over Chris’s, dislodging the bread he was holding.

“Come on,” she murmured, tactfully dropping the bread onto a nearby table. Whatever I felt for her personally, I had to admire her technique.
Nothing
stopped this girl. “Let’s dance.”

“Absolutely,” Chris agreed, and wiped his mouth as he followed her, glancing back at me as they reached the floor. “You okay?”

I nodded. “Fine,” I said. The room had grown quieter as the music did, people’s voices more hushed as they moved together, cheek to cheek. Onstage, Dexter sang on while the keyboardist looked bored, glancing at his watch. I could relate.

What was it about slow dancing, anyway? Even in junior high I’d hated the moment the music stalled, screeching to a halt so that someone could press their sweaty body to yours. At least with real dancing you weren’t trapped, forced to rock back and forth with a total stranger who now, simply because of proximity, felt it was perfectly all right to grab your ass and anything else within reach. What a bunch of crap.

And it was crap. Totally. Because all slow dancing was really only about getting close to someone you wanted close or being forced to be close to someone you wished was far, far away. Okay, so my brother and Jennifer Anne looked totally smitten, and yeah, okay, the words to the song were nice and romantic. I mean, it wasn’t a bad song or anything. It just wasn’t my thing.

I grabbed a glass of champagne off a passing tray, taking a sip and wincing as the bubbles worked their way up my nose. I was fighting off a coughing fit when I felt someone come up beside me. I glanced over to see a girl who worked with Don—her name was Marty, or Patty, something with a middle
t.
She had long, permed hair, big bangs, and was wearing too much perfume. She smiled at me.

“I love this song,” she said, taking a sip of her drink and sighing. “Don’t you?”

I shrugged. “I guess,” I said as Dexter leaned into the microphone, closing his eyes.

“They look so happy,” she went on, and I followed her gaze to my mother and Don, who were laughing and doing dips as the song wound down. She sniffled, and I realized she was near tears. How weird that weddings do that to some people. “He’s really happy, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I said, “he is.”