Slut Lullabies (7 page)

Miguel bolts. This is his job—husbands fetch cars while their wives wait under restaurant canopies in the rain, and so this will be his fate, too. He will go fetch Chad's socialite mother who, perhaps so offended by the port-a-potties, has swooned and is lying on the inclined hallway like a damsel. He'd like to kick her ass.

At the port-a-potties, he stands outside the row of shut doors, clearing his throat. “Elaine? We're ready to start, uh—are you—Chad wanted me to check and see if we should go ahead without you.”

No reply. Miguel begins to knock on plastic doors, and, when that fails, to fling them open. Empty. Paranoid, he runs toward the main entrance to glance outdoors and make sure she has not taken off—Cinderella amid the bums and club-goers on Broadway—having decided this was all a huge mistake after all. But once in the main lobby he glimpses, at the very top of the stairs next to the entrance for balcony seating, a door marked LADIES. Clearly Elaine—
being
Elaine—would have imagined that the port-a-potties would be
in
the ladies' room—that would be the only civilized thing! Taking off, he tackles two stairs at a time. But at the top of the grand stairway, the door to the ladies' room will not budge. Who knows what manner of rubble lies inside—like the crazy heaps of broken rocks and wood that obstruct the historic wood floors of Chad's buildings—who can guess what bones and flecks of old skin inhabit this place? Downstairs, Pacabel's Canon comes to an end. The pianist waits, a palpable pause, then begins Chopin's Etudes—thank God. Miguel sinks to the floor to clear his head.

He sees her shoes first. Under the curtain that closes off the balcony: a red, cigarette-burned velvet curtain that does not reach the floor.

Miguel hops to his feet and flings it back—shit, has Elaine signed up on the sex list?—and gapes, eyes traveling the bent bump of ass, beige tweed gathered, garter tops visible, as Elaine Please Merry lets loose a stream of steaming urine that scatters dust. Drizzles a mist upon his wing tips.

“This cannot be happening.”

In the shadows, the back of her tailored mother-of-the-bride blazer convulses. Sobs rise to greet him alongside wet dust and ammonia. Miguel approaches cautiously: she is of a different breed than he; will she attack? But that is what
he
does when cornered—suddenly her arms burst around him, clutching the back of his tux, nose buried into his shoulder. They are the same height. Miguel wills his hand from investigating what he is fairly certain is a piss stain on his arm—instead, that hand, soon to bear a plain gold band, rubs an invisible circle on the back of his mother-in-law. Instead his voice soothes, “It's OK. We didn't start without you—everyone's waiting downstairs.”

“It was horrible.” She has not yet looked up, speaks drippily into his collar. I had to . . . urinate so badly, and I couldn't find those port-a-contraptions anywhere. The door to the ladies' room was locked, or
barricaded
, and I started to—oh, after forty, the body falls apart, you just aren't the same. It's so humiliating . . . I've ruined my—”

“I can't see anything on your skirt,” he offers quickly. “The tweed's thick. Just get rid of your underpants—look, toss them here.” On impulse: “So many people are going to be having sex up here later, nobody will ever know it was you.”

Her eyes meet his: water and desperation staining blue irises. “But,” she says, her grip on his lapels suddenly hopeful, conspiratorial, “Darling, won't they all be men?”

“Oh,
lots
of them wear lingerie,” he promises, and with his lie feels the nausea of treason, the instant revocation of his queer-advocacy card. What do you call a fag who reinforces a stereotype he's spent his life fighting against, just to make his enemy feel better? Elaine beams, tickled. What do you call a man who
chooses
enmity over trust?

Backing away enough so the steam off their nervous bodies floats between them, his mother-in-law straightens his tie. “Chad is waiting.” Her voice has grown thick, huskier than her son's. “We mustn't disappoint him—chop chop, Miguel, let's go.”

Hand in hand, Miguel lets himself be led.

Now
, the procession begins.

Angelina and Becky march first. Arms linked like a shiny couple on a wedding cake, they saunter up the stairs. Becky wears black pleated pants; from behind, Miguel notes the breadth of her derriere as suitable for her future as a dyke. They should have included a more significant lesbian contingent among the guests—maybe Becky would get lucky. Or perhaps he is only wishing for the demise of a marriage the world is more supportive of than his own—how many guests are out there whispering,
Well, I've seen everything now
, into each other's wrinkled ears? How many are here out of curiosity—a freak show—secretly laughing down the sleeves of their Carlisle and Armani suits at the Merrys and their absurd circus? As though three quarters of these guests don't know they voted for George W.! Miguel feels a pang of pity, and though he is not sure who its recipient is, he puts his arm around Elaine's disarmingly narrow shoulders and gives her an awkward squeeze. She brushes him off: “Don't get nervous now! You're next!”

Dignified by cummerbunds and bow ties, Miguel and Chad join arms and begin the arduous stairs. They have to time their steps together: a four-legged beast for life. Chad's smile is blinding; Miguel glances at him, attempts eye contact, but in age-old bridal tradition, he is not even sure Chad sees him now. Lumps of bile push their way up Miguel's throat as though he may begin to bawl—the sensation is almost foreign: panic grips him; his armpits prickle; his thighs slicken against his tux. Up front, Angelina is already weeping openly, her skinny face contorted, sage's eyes squinty and childlike. Miguel recalls her as a baby—how Miriam would not kiss her good-bye, would not hold her.
This
, he remembers abruptly, so disorienting it reels him and he trips against Chad, is why they left. Heroic Miriam, who had sacrificed herself for them, could not even look at her own child, so Mami thought it best if they took the baby to Chicago. Miriam has grown good at giving people up, good at being a martyr—now she will be God's. Some history he can never access; some secrets lie outside the orderly moral universe of blame. Perhaps good-byes mean little to her anymore; perhaps a higher law, the possibility of redemption later, is all that can keep her from dying
now
. He will be her casualty, and her sacrifice will give her no peace, this he knows, but for a moment he truly wishes it would.

And then, Angelina is waving. From alongside the podium set up for the (flaming) Unitarian minister who will perform the ceremony, his Best Woman raises her black-gloved hand and beckons—and against his will, Miguel spins, almost knocking Chad down. He turns, and he expects to see her, his older sister, there in the last hour—she would not let him down. But instead Angelina is beckoning to
Carlos
. Chad spins, too, and squeezes Miguel's elbow, whispers, “What's he doing here all alone?”

But scurrying self-consciously over the stockinged legs of Winnetka WASPs, Carlos is heading toward a row of dark heads. Mami, Norma with her husband and son—and Abuela, a confused expression set into her wrinkled brow, too short to see above the head in front of her. The space next to Mami is empty; Carlos fills it. Miriam is nowhere to be seen. They are, all six of them, dressed in their very best, in the dresses and suits they do not even wear to church except perhaps on Christmas or Easter.

Mami is beautiful. In this sea of white she glows like the Black Virgin on a Barcelona mountaintop; dignity radiates from her polished skin, new epidermis covering layers of war wounds. Who can tell why she allowed one child to sacrifice herself for the others—weren't mothers supposed to sacrifice themselves instead? Who can tell what brought her here, she and her tribe who will, once again after tonight, sink back into basement bingo games and prayer meetings and huddling around the Spanish soaps in the tiny house's constant orange glow, the smell of beans and rice thick in the cheaply-constructed walls. Has he ever assured her that he would be proud to have her at his wedding—that she would not shame him? Did she need him to? Who can guess at the secrets of the human heart, ever capable of perilous renewal, ever susceptible to dangerous beauty, however scarred? Has he ever wished, amid the hideous gleam of his disgust for the Merrys, that they were his parents instead?

I am a bride, I am a groom, I am loved
. But the thought will not stick. In the next instant:
Winnetka WASP Urinates in Historic Building Preservationist Son Strives to Save. Health Hazard Declared, Uptown Bulldozed to Ground
. Somewhere, his older sister kneels, praying to a pitiless god of absolutes. Somewhere, somewhere, not here.

An Intelligent Woman and a Beautiful Woman go on vacation together with their Husbands. They go on a cruise, to Greece. The Intelligent Woman worries that her husband will like the Beautiful Woman's breasts when they take off their bathing suit tops on the beach. Yet to refuse to remove her own top in hopes of forcing the Beautiful Woman to remain clothed in solidarity, the Intelligent Woman would have to be willing to portray herself as Conservative, Modest, and Unworldly. Someone who does not understand that in Greece breasts are No Big Deal. She is uncertain what to do.

But wait. Is it important to know that the Intelligent Woman's Husband is more attractive (and also more successful) than the Beautiful Woman's Husband? I think it is. You see, without that knowledge you might assume (rightly, you'd think) that the Intelligent Woman has grounds to be threatened by the Beautiful Woman. You might reckon that Beautiful People have better lives. Don't they? Well, sometimes they do. But in this case, the Intelligent Woman has the Husband that all the Friends she and the Beautiful Woman share agree is the better of the two Husbands. Incidentally, all the Friends prefer the Intelligent Woman to the Beautiful Woman, too. Maybe they are jealous of the Beautiful Woman. But, to the Intelligent Woman, each other, and themselves, they simply claim to find the Beautiful Woman “nice but boring.”

The Intelligent Woman and the Beautiful Woman have been on vacation together before. They have been Friends for a long time (they are now thirty-one), and when they were eighteen, they went together to Ft. Lauderdale on spring break. Afterward, they did not speak for nearly a year. Then the Beautiful Woman's Boyfriend broke up with her, and the Beautiful Woman was rumored to be suicidal. She had been witnessed causing a scene at the top of Bascom Hill on the way to class. The Beautiful Woman ripped the Boyfriend's shirt while screaming. What she screamed had something to do with the Boyfriend thinking the Models in
Vogue
were prettier than the Beautiful Woman. The Intelligent Woman did not particularly desire to renew her friendship with the Beautiful Woman (they had never been
that
close), but to refuse would have seemed heartless, given what the Beautiful Woman was going through, and as the Beautiful Woman was now considered Unstable. So the friendship was renewed.

The Intelligent Woman's Husband is, of course, an Intelligent Man. They are, in fact, Academics, which verifies their intelligence to the world, along with raising all kinds of assumptions about their sex life, some of which are true and some of which are not. One might assume, for example, that they have very cerebral sex, which is not the case. One might assume their lovemaking to be on the prudish side—also untrue. In the ten years they've been together, their sex has consisted prominently of the Intelligent Man tying up and spanking the Intelligent Woman, and the Intelligent Woman giving her Husband head. For variation, anal penetration occurs. Escapades outdoors and in cars and in the bathrooms of parties. Once, when abstaining from intercourse for a month before their wedding, the Intelligent Woman and the Intelligent Man hurled pornographic threats at one another for an hour while masturbating each other on the Best Man's sofa. The year following the wedding, they fucked a minimum of five times a week.

The Beautiful Woman's Husband is a Macho Man. The cruise was his idea. For all the reasons you might assume—yes, you would be right about all of that.

In Ft. Lauderdale, the Intelligent Woman and the Beautiful Woman had another traveling companion, the Aggressive Woman. On their very first night at the neon-signed bars, which the Intelligent Woman found embarrassingly contrary to the Bohemian image she wanted to project (though there was, as of yet, nobody to appreciate this projection, so the minimal lure of cheesy bars won out), the Aggressive Woman met a man. A boy, really, they were all only eighteen. He and the Aggressive Woman made out on the dance floor to a song that went: Boom Boom Boom, Let's Go Back to My Room. Afterward, he walked the Aggressive Woman to the hotel, where she did not invite him to her room because she, the Beautiful Woman, and the Intelligent Woman were sharing quarters. That, and because she was a Virgin, though this was as embarrassing to her as attendance at cheesy bars was to the Intelligent Woman, and so she used her roommates (really straight girls who need their sleep), not virginity, as an excuse.

The Aggressive Woman may also be referred to as: the Smoking Woman, the Skinny Woman, the Foul-Mouthed Skank, the Special-Education Teacher, the Adopted Daughter, the World Traveler, and the Survivor of Childhood Hodgkin's Disease.

On the cruise, the Beautiful Woman doubles her dose of Levsinex. The motion of the boat and all the exotic food is certain to make her Irritable Bowel Syndrome act up, which will annoy the Macho Man, who believes her illness is all in her mind and takes the opportunity of her diarrhea exoduses to mock her to any friends remaining around the dinner table, revealing her various unfounded anxieties while imitating her excitable voice until everyone howls even louder than she does when home sick on the toilet alone.