Stay (28 page)

An hour before the party, I pulled the bagels out of the freezer, smacked each one on the counter until they split, and stuck both halves on the oven rack. I shoved the bags way down in the garbage can, even though I knew I wasn’t going to fool anyone.

When the bagels started browning, I turned the oven off but left them in to stay warm.

At forty-five minutes before the party, I realized I needed to shower. I ran upstairs full speed, tripped, and got rug burn on my knee. Joe had been passed out at the bottom of the stairs but ran to me when I fell, still in a confused sleepy haze. He tripped over my leg and landed on my stomach.

At thirty minutes before the party, I jumped in the shower, squirted shower gel everywhere, and turned around under the water a few times. There were still suds on me when I dried off. Joe licked at the bubbles on my calves while I gobbed mascara on my lashes and tried to dry my hair at the same time. I ended up with mascara in my hair, and for once was happy for hair the color of ink.

I should have had an outfit, a brunch outfit. Something suity, but not too formal. Maybe something pastel, or black crepe with white piping. I should have had shoes that matched perfectly. And I should have curled my hair with a curling iron and made sure it bounced.

But I barely even had clean clothes, and I didn’t have time to dry my hair all the way. So I pulled my least-coffee- stained jeans out of the bottom of the closet, and found the only clean shirt left in the whole place. I knotted my hair up around a rubber band high on my head and tried to make it look like I was going for wet and disheveled.

I ran downstairs and fussed with odds and ends like corralling pens, paper clips, and twist ties into the junk drawer and using my sleeve to sweep dust off the bookcase. I hated waiting on everyone to show up. I just wanted to get this whole thing over with as quickly as possible.

At fifteen minutes before the party, the doorbell rang. Joe barked and ran for the door. I looked through the peephole and saw Peter and Janie.

They stood on the front step like they were posing for a picture. Peter had his arm around Janie’s waist. She leaned in to him, with her hand placed gracefully over his heart. Peter looked smug. There was no trace of the desperation from our meeting in the driveway. He’d already fallen back into the perfect-husband role.

I sucked air in through my teeth and let it hiss out slowly. Joe jumped up and licked my chin. I opened the door, and he flew out at them.

Before I could even put on a big fake smile and pretend to be happy to see them, Joe jumped up on Janie and she screamed.

Peter yelled, “Down boy, down boy,” over and over.

I watched them trying to make sense of Joe for a moment, before calling him back in.

“Joe! Ku mne!” He came running over to me. “Sadni.” He sat. I scratched his head. “Good boy! Hodny.” I was showing off the Slovak commands. I liked that Peter and Janie didn’t know this about me.

“Va-an!” Janie whined. “What is that?” She was in a mood. I could see it on her face, by her furrowed brow and the intensity in her eyes. Sometimes she’d just get like that. Nothing anyone did would be good enough, and everything got on her nerves. Even when we were kids, some mornings she’d just wake up crabby and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Diane called her “Janie the Terrible” when she got like that. I hadn’t slept all night, and I didn’t want to be throwing this party to begin with. I was in no mood for her mood, and I was way too tired to worry if that made me a horrible friend.

“This is Joe. My dog.”

Peter smirked. I think he realized that the Joe I mentioned on the phone was not my hot new boyfriend.

“Your dog?” Janie said, leaning in to give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but keeping as much distance from Joe as possible. “You don’t have a dog.”

“I do now.” I hugged her back. She smelled like spring flowers and new leather. The black and silver purse hanging from her shoulder might have cost more than my car, and despite her bad-mood face, she looked gorgeous.

“But you’re not a dog person,” she insisted.

“Yes, I am. I just never had a dog.” I scratched Joe’s head and said, “Okay,” so he could get up. “Diane wouldn’t let me.”

“Oh,” Janie said. “I’m sure if you’d wanted a dog, Mom would have let you.”

“I did- ”

“Let’s go in and talk about what’s left to set up,” Peter said, raising his eyebrows, giving me a warning look.

I wished he hadn’t interrupted. I was feeling combative. I knew I was really more angry at Peter than Janie, but I was itching for an excuse to escalate everything to the point of storming out and leaving them stranded.

“Did you get bagels?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, they’re in the oven warming up,” I said, picking at a hangnail so I didn’t have to look at him.

“Okay,” Peter said. “Let’s get the cream cheese out and start making coffee.” We did have to get the cream cheese out and make coffee, but the fact that he was telling me what to do in my own home made me even angrier. But since I couldn’t say, “How dare you come to my house and tell me you love me because you don’t feel like buying hemorrhoid cream?” I choked it down and started a pot of coffee, feeling like a smoking volcano.

Janie just stood there and watched us. I don’t think she knew how to help.

I grabbed two small bowls and a spoon and handed them to Pete. He scooped the cream cheese into the bowls. I poured OJ into my plastic Kool-Aid pitcher.

Pete and I worked like a well-oiled machine, peeling the salmon off the cardboard and arranging it on plates. He avoided making eye contact. I did the same.

Janie stood in the doorway and tried to avoid Joe. She held her hands up at her sides like she was wading into cold water.

“Okay,” Pete said, wiping cream cheese off his hand with a dish towel I knew wasn’t clean. “I think we’re ready for the bagels.”

I pointed to the oven. He opened the door, and grabbed for one, tapping it with his index finger first to make sure it wouldn’t burn his hand. He pulled out one of the halves and held it up. He tapped it with his finger again, then he knocked it on the stove top.

“Van, these are rocks!”

“No!” I grabbed the half bagel from him and curled my finger into the hole. It felt like a hunk of concrete on a hot day.

“The party’s ruined!” Janie rested her forehead on her fingertips and took deep breaths.

When we were kids, if we argued, my mother would step in to settle it by telling me I was wrong. “Now, Van, you be a good sport and tell Janie you’re sorry,” she’d say, bustling around nervously, rounding up tissues for Janie’s ever-dripping nose. I was so tired of being a good sport. Get through this and move on, I said to myself in my head like a mantra.

Janie let out a little sob like a hiccup and I tried to remember if I even had tissues. Joe went over to her and leaned up against her.

“Geez!” She sidestepped away from him, but he leaned in again. “Go! Get away from me!” She tried to wave him away with her hand. “Van, get him off me.”

I took a deep breath. “Joe, ku mne,” I called. Joe came over and leaned against me. I ran my hand along his side. “He was trying to comfort you.”

“No he’s not. He’s a dog, Van.”

“So?”

“So, he’s not comforting me.”

“Well, he’s trying, Janie.” I wanted to say that we were all trying. I wanted to say that it was her own damn fault if she wasn’t happy with it, but I thought about how she’d feel if she’d known I was one of the stops on her husband’s quest for Preparation H. It made it easier to hold my tongue.

“He got fur all over me,” Janie said, picking black hairs off her cream-colored skirt.

I felt Pete’s eyes on me. When I finally looked at him, he raised his eyebrows and shrugged. It was infuriating.

“Why don’t you two go get bagels?” I said. They’d been in my kitchen for less than ten minutes and already I desperately needed a breather.

Janie sniffed. It was her way of saying, “What do you mean, I have to go get food for my own party?”

“It’ll give you a chance to make a big entrance,” I said.

“Oh, that sounds like a good idea,” Pete said, walking over to Janie and putting his arm around her. “Doesn’t it, Jane? Everyone will be here and we’ll make our grand entrance.”

Janie sighed. “Fine.”

As they walked back to the door, Pete looked over his shoulder and had the nerve to wink at me. He closed the door behind them. I threw the bagel at the door as soon as it clicked shut. I felt ridiculous as soon as I did it, but Joe grabbed it when it fell and jumped on the couch to gnaw on it like I’d just intended to give him a treat.

I
went for the bottle of Stoli I kept under the kitchen sink. I thought about the limeade and OJ I’d bought, but drank straight from the bottle to save time.

I took a swig and then the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Van!” It was Alex.

Joe dropped his bagel and sat up to look out the window. I ran over and jumped up next to him. A black Town Car was pulling into the driveway.

“Hello?” Alex said.

“Um, hi.” With my free hand, I dropped Joe’s bagel behind the couch and brushed crumbs into the crack between the cushions.

Charles got out of the car and started walking around to the passenger side.

“Not feeling so hot, huh?” Alex said.

Charles opened the passenger door and Diane slipped a black pump out onto the asphalt.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk right now.” I took a big swig out of the bottle.

Diane was out of the car and smoothing out her suit.

“I can call back later. I just wanted to see if you needed anything. Is there anything I can get you? Ginger ale? Crackers?”

Diane and Charles were walking up the path. Diane looked up at the condo. She clearly saw us-Joe and I peeking out of the window-and curled her lips into a slow, cool smile.

“Van?”

“Oh, no. I don’t need anything. I wouldn’t want you to catch it.” I faked a cough, and I felt horribly guilty about it. He was being so nice. “I should go. But thanks for calling. I’ll talk to you soon,” I said, quickly, desperate to finish the conversation before Diane and Charles got to the door. I hung up as soon as Alex said good-bye, and dropped the phone on the couch.

I ran over to the door to get it before they rang the doorbell and Joe started barking.

When I opened the door, Joe ran out to greet them.

“Savannah, you get this thing away from me,” Diane said calmly through her smile. I’d been so nervous about how Diane would react to me when she arrived. She’d paid me to stay away from Peter and here I was throwing him a party. I should have known she’d just play it cool.

“Joe, ku mne.”

Joe ran back over to me and sat down.

Diane and Charles walked in, slipped out of their coats, and handed them to me. I still had the bottle of Stoli in my hand. I grabbed the coats with my other arm and threw them over the side of the couch.

Diane pursed her lips.

“Once everyone comes, I’ll take all the coats upstairs,” I said.

“Shouldn’t you have a paper bag over that?” Diane gestured to the bottle.

Had it been just Diane and me, I would have said something like “Tip your head back. I’ll pour,” but not with Charles around. He always looked like he was about to pull a pair of white leather gloves out of his pocket and smack me across the face. So I just said, “I thought you might want screwdrivers.”

“Charles?” Diane asked.

“Please,” he mumbled to Diane. Charles never spoke directly to me if he could help it. I wasn’t even hired help. I was the extension of hired help.

Diane followed me into the kitchen. Joe followed too, walking next to Diane and licking her hand.

“Oh! Oh!” Diane looked at her hand like it might turn black and fall off. “Tell me about this beast you have here.”