THE BRO-MAGNET (28 page)

“Your – ”

“I know, I know, it’s crazy, right? But when the other four got married, because I’m the oldest, they each asked me to be their Best Man. And I’ve been sweating this for months. Who to ask? If I ask one of them, the other three’ll be all pissed and hurt. So I just figured, you and Hel do seem pretty close and you seem like the kind of guy who’d give a pretty good speech…” He turns to his sister. “Do you mind, Hel?”

“Don’t look at me.” She holds up her hands. “It’s your wedding and it’s entirely up to John.”

This is strange, but certainly less strange than that complete stranger at Billy and Alice’s wedding asking me if I’d be
his
Best Man.

“Sure, I’m up for it,” I say.

“Great,” Frankie says, backing away. “I’ll get your number from Helen, give you a ring when it’s time for tuxes and everything.”

For the first time that day, I kiss the girl.

Suddenly I’m up for anything.

Anything
is
possible.

It’s August, and it’s finally time for Helen to meet
my
cast of characters. If she can run this gauntlet without hating me…

It never occurred to me that August is the only month with no holidays or things to celebrate. Even June, lacking anything specific like Valentine’s Day or Christmas, at least has significant dates to build a celebration around: end of school, graduation, Summer Solstice. Oh yeah. How could I forget? June’s got Father’s Day too – duh-me. But August? It’s got nothing. Still, it’s time for Helen to meet my people and I don’t want to wait for September with its Labor Day, so I pick a date and invite everybody that matters to me and even a few who don’t. True, I could do this one at a time, which would maybe be more manageable – dinner with Billy and Alice, dinner with Sam and Lily, dinner with Big John and Aunt Alfresca etcetera – but that would also be like subjecting Helen to the drip-drip of Chinese water torture. Better get it all over with once, like ripping off a Band-Aid. This means that Helen will be meeting the aforementioned six, plus Drew and Stacy, plus Steve Miller and Katie; of course she already knows Steve, but that’s in a business context, not as my friend, which I guess he is now. It’ll be like when I met her family: full-body immersion. If we can just get through this one day, I tell myself, we’ll be in some kind of version of home free.

But before any of that can happen, I must brief everyone and swear them to secrecy.

“No sports talk,” I tell Billy. “If Helen asks what you and Drew and I do when we get together, you say we discuss politics and
General
Hospital
.”

“I can do that,” Billy says like he’s psyching himself up for a big game.

“I may need some help with the GH stuff,” Drew says. “Tell me why again that Nikolas’s grandmother is so obsessed with passing Lucky and Liz’s baby off as a Cassidine heir when there already is a real heir?”

“It barely makes sense to me,” I say. “Just let Billy do all the talking.”

I turn to Alice. “Please don’t let on that the only reason I ever got a cat was because you told me to or that the magazine rack and pretty much everything else in this place of a decorative nature was recommended by you or that I used to have a chandelier with hula girls on it in my basement.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Alice says. “There’s as much riding on this for me as there is for you.”

“Sam,” I say, “just be yourself.”

“Done,” she says.

“But don’t tell her about those books we bought,” I add.

“What books?” Lily asks.

OK, that’s Sam’s problem now.

“Steve,” I say, “remember: I am not obsessed with loopholes. I know
nothing
about loopholes. The things I like are ice holes, sinkholes, peepholes and blowholes. I’m also big on saving the whales.”

Steve scratches his head. “Gee, do you think you could write all that down for me? Is it OK to use crib notes for this thing?”

Katie punches her husband in the shoulder. Gee, I never would have pegged her as a shoulder puncher. “I’ll take care of it,” she assures me.

“Aunt Alfresca,” I say, “I know it goes against every fiber in your being, but please try to refrain from making comments in Helen’s presence that would indicate you think I’m a moron, imbecile, hopeless idiot, you get the picture.”

“Come on,” Big John says, “your aunt’s a lovely woman.”

A –

“You make it sound,” he continues, “like your aunt’s rude or something.”

Is he kidding me? Aunt Alfresca’s rude
and
something! I always thought he and I were on the same page about this.

“You killed my sister,” she says, “but I’ll do it for your father.”

“And,
everybody
,” I say, palms down as I spread my arms wide to encompass the whole group, “no one is to call me Johnny. It’s John. Dad, I swear to God if you forget…”

“I won’t forget! I won’t forget!”

OK, that’s done.

Now all that’s left is the residual nervousness.

Will they like Helen?

Of course they will.

Will she like them?

That remains to be seen.

* * *

At the cookout at Helen’s parents’ house last month, she trusted me enough to leave me alone with people occasionally, whenever she’d go into the family room to check on her brothers watching the game, and I realize I must extend the same courtesy to her here as well. I can’t just stand at her elbow all day, because eventually she’ll sense that I’m doing it because I’m nervous, anxious to tamp out any brushfires that may occur. I’ll just have to let the brushfires flame as they may. But, I tell myself, it shouldn’t be too bad. After all, I did brief these mokes.

So once the introductions have been made, I allow Helen the space to take it all in on her own terms. Me, I mingle, circling through the crowd as I offer people more drinks and etcetera, catching snippets of conversation as I circle.

“Actually,” I hear Helen telling Drew, “you’ll have to ask John what’s up with Helena and the falsifying of that paternity test. I don’t get to watch GH quite as frequently as he does.”

More circling.

“John told me about the ice holes,” I hear Helen telling Big John. “Are you still able to get out there together and fish?”

Oh shit. I never briefed Big John on this mythical past we supposedly shared, the one in which we went ice fishing together all the time in my youth.

Big John is silent so long before he answers, I wonder if he’s ever going to say anything at all, he’s so busy rubbing his chin with one hand, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“You know,” Big John says at last, “that’s funny you should ask. On good days, like today” – and here he lifts his cane a bit, the wheelchair out in the car in case it turns into a bad day – “it gets a little slippery out on the ice with this thing. And on bad days, what with the added weight of the wheelchair, there’s always the greater risk of falling through the ice. But sure, we still go ice fishing all the time. Every winter.”

Bless you, Dad
.

And then it hits me: If Helen and I are still together come winter – and we have to be; at the risk of sounding like Melanie Wilkes (Alice told me to watch
Gone with the Wind
, along with nine other movies she claimed were the top ten films women love), I’ll just die if we’re not – I’m going to have to take up ice fishing with Big John, if only to turn my lies into truths. 

 More circling, more circling, and things are going well, people are remembering their lines. Even Steve continues to do mostly OK. He’s telling Helen a story from the second time I painted their dining room at Katie’s request and he finishes up the anecdote with something Sam-like along the lines of, “Only Johnny.” But then immediately he catches himself, turning the final E sound of my name into, “Eee, this is good shrimp.” Just to make sure he’s really sold it, he reiterates, “Only John – eee, this is good shrimp.”

Helen no doubt thinks this is strange, that Steve is certainly strange. But since I’ve previously convinced her that her friendly adversary is a raging alcoholic, we’re probably good to go.

‘Course Drew, generally being the weakest link in any gathering of creatures that walk on two legs, nearly blows it when he clicks on the TV, saying, “Isn’t it time for the Jets? Pre-season,
baby
!”

Helen’s eyes move directly to the big-screen TV while everyone else looks at Drew like he just dropped his pants and laid a huge turd on the carpet.

“You know we don’t watch that stuff around here,” Big John says, like the program on the TV is some snuff film as opposed to CBS Sports.

“It’s OK,” I say magnanimously, “I understand that some of you actually like football. For those of you who do, feel free to leave the game on while the rest of us mingle.”

As the guys slowly drift toward the TV, like it has a magnet inside, and the girls head toward the kitchen, I think: Talk about your two birds with one stone. I’ve acquitted myself yet again as being a non-sports lover
and
I’ve managed to seem like a magnanimous host
plus
I can check out how Sanchez and the Jets are looking this year whenever I go to the living room to add more chips to the bowls and freshen everyone’s drinks.

OK, make that three birds.

That is some stone.

* * *

I’m in the kitchen with the women and things are going pretty good. Alice seems really impressed with Helen. I mean, she
really
likes her. As I stand there with my arm around Helen while she and Alice jabber away, I’m thinking about the future, how maybe someday, maybe even soon, Billy and Alice and me and Helen can all do something together like dinner or a movie or maybe even dinner
and
a movie – the kind of simple couples’ night out that couples all over the world enjoy.

I’m basking in my future-oriented glow when Aunt Alfresca grabs my elbow. “Can I talk to you for a second?” she says.

When has Aunt Alfresca ever asked permission to have a conversation?

This is unprecedented.

“Sure,” I say. Then, “Wait a second, if this is about me killing your sister – ”

“It’s not about that. I’m over that. This is something else.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say again. “Where would you like to talk?”

“The basement?” she suggests. “Ever since you got rid of that old lamp” – and here she winks at me like we’re in on this deception together, which I guess we are – “I like it down there so much better.”

* * *

So we’re down in the basement and now I’m getting really nervous. This is the longest Helen’s been out of my sight all afternoon. I mean, sure, I let her mingle on her own, but except for trips to the bathroom, I could always see what she was doing, see what everyone
else
was doing in case someone slipped up. But now she’s out of sight, I hope I’m not out of mind, and Aunt Alfresca is…

Stalling.

“These are some nice cue sticks you got here, Johnny,” she says, fingering one of the sticks in the wall rack. “It’s OK if I still call you Johnny when Helen isn’t in the room, isn’t it?”

Is she
threatening
me? Because that sounds like something a gangster in a movie might say, a gangster who’s got the goods on the hero and is hoping to blackmail him.

When I don’t immediately say anything, Aunt Alfresca starts racking the balls. “Why don’t we shoot a game?” she says.

But then when she’s racking the balls, her hands shake and she doesn’t put the balls in the right position, which is totally fucked up because Aunt Alfresca was the one who taught
me
how to rack and shoot. And that’s when I realize…

“Aunt Alfresca, are you
nervous
?”

She gives up on trying to get the balls racked properly, letting the rack go entirely.

“Fine,” she says, “you wormed it out of me. Your father and me are getting married.”

* * *

“The pheasant died,” Big John says.

“The pheasant died?” I say. “That’s your big reason for marrying Aunt Alfresca – the pheasant died? What does that even mean?”

I’m still down in the basement only now it’s Big John who’s down here with me. After I went all pole-axed following the delivery of Aunt Alfresca’s news, she went to get him and then left us alone.

Big John sighs. “Let me tell you a story,” he says.

“The story of why you and Mom’s sister are getting married?”

“We’ll circle around to that. See, it all started when I began sitting out on my back porch every evening. When you have trouble getting around like I do now, sometimes all there is for you is to just sit and watch nature. Anyway, I began noticing these two pheasants. Every evening just around sundown, the same thing, this boy and girl pheasant walking across the back lawn side by side. I watched them for months. Well, not constantly. Obviously I did other things with my life. But then one evening I’m out there, waiting to watch them take their nightly stroll, only this time, it’s only one pheasant, the male. I realized then that the female must have died and now he was all alone in the world. For a few more nights he crossed that lawn alone. And then one night, he wasn’t there anymore. I waited a long time but he never came back. It was then I realized that he’d died too. The poor guy must have died of a broken heart. Without his mate to live for anymore…” Big John’s voice trails off.

“That’s all very touching,” I say. “I mean,
really
touching. But what does any of this have to do with you and Aunt Alfresca?”

“I don’t want to be alone anymore, Johnny.”

“OK, I get that. The pheasant and everything. But…
Aunt Alfresca
?”

“I know, right? I guess it would be a surprise to you. But your aunt and I have had…
feelings
for each other for years. Really, she’s just like your mother, only mean.”

“I thought you said earlier that she was, and I quote, a lovely woman.”

“Yeah, well…”

“So, when were you and she thinking of getting married?”

“She says she wants January.” He sighs. “I’ve got my issues with that, like what if there’s a blizzard and no one shows up? But she’s got her heart set on it. She says January is the perfect month to get married – new beginnings and all that, plus no one else wants that month so you’ve got your pick of reception halls.”