Things I can’t Explain (28 page)

I'm teasing the shaggy curls at the back of Nick's neck with my fingertips and every so often, he lets his lips brush against my jawline. Things are so dreamy that it's easy for me to forget how the man dancing on the parquet floor a few feet away used to scrape plaque off the inside of my lower teeth with a dental scaler.

“I'm glad you were open to negotiation,” Nick whispers in my ear.

I answer by snuggling closer.

As the lead singer croons his way to the big finish, Nick slips his thumb beneath my chin and I lift my face to his. He hesitates, his lips a scant millimeter from mine. In a flash it's like we're back under the bridge and my heart flutters, hoping he won't abandon this kiss like he did the last one. But there's no girlfriend waiting on the tarmac now, there's nothing to hold him back or make him stop. Here's crossing fingers that the tragic spilling curse has passed.

As the song fades, we kiss and I'm swept away … away from Genelle's wedding, the preppy country club setting, the perfect brightly dressed little children, and the tacky ice sculptures, away from my recurrently perturbed mom and away from my dad still wearing the suit that he wore for the clients he no longer has.

We're alone in a place that is lush and warm where the gentle friction of our lips makes me tremble deep down inside. Promises hang in a haze around us but our kisses seem to be an investigation without end. My entire body shivers and I'm lost. I breathe him in, kiss him again and I'm found. I don't ever want to leave.

When I hear the sound of rumbling, I honestly think it might be my stomach from the salmon and cream cheese hors d'oeuvres we just ate, but I realize the approaching rumble is a guttural growling, both aural and physical. I look at Nick, but it isn't coming from him. It's originating from outside our respective tummies. I try to contemplate its meaning, this low distant roar, but I come up blank. I find it impossible to leave the enclosed safe place in Nick's arms, but looking over his shoulder, I see the bottles at the bar rattle.

Earthquake? Not likely in Westchester County. Hugh and I reported years ago about fracking in counties north of here, and there's even more hydro-fracturing in neighboring Pennsylvania. But apparently that's not it.

So what is it?

Wait … make that, who is it?

Genelle is recoiling in horror by the champagne fountain as a banged-up Harley Davidson crashes through the chairs that surround the dance floor, turning the rental furniture into kindling. At first, I'm wondering how the valet could let someone steal Nick's Harley, but I remember his motorcycle is pristine, shiny, and perfect. This one's not.

Genelle lets out a blood-curdling scream as the rider pops a wheelie and then clutches and brakes, putting the bike into a tire-shrieking circle burn. Oily exhaust smoke fills the tent as the back tire draws a perfect circular black mark on the hand-finished chestnut parquet dance deck, leaving everyone coughing and gasping for air.

I have a fleeting, ridiculous thought that maybe this is part of the entertainment. But I suspect I'm wrong.

Wedding guests scatter and run for cover behind the gift table.

I'm still in a partial love-coma from dancing with Nick, my body snug and warm against his hips. Like a couple of idiots, we keep standing there in the center of the floor. The biker cuts the ignition, drops the bike, and stumbles sideways, almost falling, wobbling in a drunken gait right up to Genelle, who is holding her chest as if to protect those recently purchased assets. She's scanning everywhere for Wendell but he's nowhere to be seen. In fact, everyone is clearing away from her as the driver approaches, leaving Genelle alone and helpless.

The biker rips off his opaque motorcycle helmet and big woven dreadlocks spill out.

“Oh, shit,” I hear Nick say beneath his breath. I look at him, wondering what he knows that I don't know.

“Don't hurt me,” Genelle pleads almost in tears, looking as if she's going to soil her wedding dress. Nick lets go of me, heads toward the intruder, and it finally dawns on me who has crashed the wedding. There, in all her punk and leather glory, with a nest of wild hair and a whole shitload of eyeliner, is Roxie Buggles.

“You prissy little fashion princess,” I hear her say in a drunken slur as she strides toward Genelle as if she's ready to rip her apart.

“Me?” Genelle squeals timidly. I can't blame her, but so much for passing herself off as a mean girl. I guess it's kind of hard to keep up the facade in the face of a true bunny burner.

“How dare you steal … Wait a second.” She belches big and loud enough to stagger herself. “You're wearing a wedding dress … What the fuck?”

Nick puts his hand on her shoulder to turn her around. “Roxie. You have no business being here,” he says.

“There you are, stud bucket!” Roxie exclaims with an incongruous smile and lurches to kiss him. He ducks back.

“Roxie, stop this.”

“Where is she? Are you hiding her?”

“Cut it out. I told you.”

“Yeah and you told me you loved me.”

“We're not together.”

Roxie scans the crowd and even in her condition, it doesn't take more than a second for her to zero in on me. I'm literally standing a few yards away. “You must be Crasissa!” she slurs and walks right up to me, swaying a bit. She's so drunk her eyes close, confused.

“Now, what was I going to say?” she mumbles. “Oh yeah.” Roxie starts again. “You prissy little fashion princess!” she adds as if it's a speech she's memorized for English class. Her breath smells like tequila and Slim Jims; it practically keels me over and she notices.

“Sorry, princess, I should have sucked on a mint before I got here so I wouldn't offend your royal ass. I know I've got one here somewhere.” She's so smashed she actually starts digging through the pockets of her leather jacket for a Mentos, I suppose. As intimidating as she may be, she's so daft that this verges on the ridiculous. That is, if she hadn't just destroyed a hundred-thousand dollar wedding. Nick steps between us.

“Roxie, get a grip.” Roxie looks up and forgets about the breath mint.

“I did, lover boy, that's why I'm here,” she says, and then yells over his shoulder at me, “Hey, Barbie, did you think you could steal my boyfriend and get away with it? You and your uppity Hannah Montana fashions and your little newspaper byline and your stupid brown sugar cubes?”

How the hell does she know about the sugar cubes? And what's wrong with brown sugar cubes? Aren't they better than refined sugar?

“Roxie,” Nick says in a low voice, “this is over the top. Even for you.”

Roxie flutters her lashes and puts on a ridiculously drunken innocent face.

“But Nicky, baby,” she coos, “you like it when I'm over the top.” Then laughs. “Oh, wait … I mean you like it when I'm
on
top.”

I hear a gasp from behind the gift table. Pretty sure it's Marshall Darling.

I look at Nick. He looks back at me, but I don't see what I was hoping to see in his face—not even a crazy laugh or a go-figure kind of expression. That, I could handle. But I see a deep worry, like he's already crossed back over to the Land of On-Again. Like somehow he doesn't know what he wants. Or who. In his eyes I see the last thing I want to see—someone giving up.

“I'm sorry. Denny must have told her, he didn't know not to,” Nick says, dragging Roxie away. “I … I gotta go.” He grabs Roxie's Harley off the ground and pulls her on board. She doesn't fight him. Instead, she throws me a triumphant look, a satisfied little smirk on those dark sangria-colored lips.

I can't believe my eyes. I realize that even in my most paranoid fears, this was a scenario I could never have imagined. At Genelle's wedding, in front of everyone, including Janet and Marshall and Dartmoor, after our dance and that kiss, the kiss I dreamed of, I could never have believed that this could happen to me.

“You have to hold on,” I hear Nick say darkly to Roxie, just as he once said to me. He kicks up the Harley and speeds out the way Roxie came.

Before they disappear, Roxie turns back to look at me.

Even from the distance I can see her smiling.

She holds up her hand and gives me the finger.

 

CHAPTER
30

Driving back to the city cramped in the jump seat of Rupert's Mini Cooper, every part of me, inside and out, is numb or growing that way. I am still wearing Dad's jacket. I hear Jody trying to talk to me and see Rupert checking every few seconds on me in his rearview mirror, but I can't respond to them. Behind my silent facade I am falling deeper and deeper into a pit that I have been digging for so long I can't remember. The last moments of Genelle's wedding keep running through my head like a scene on a defective DVD, playing over and over.

I was standing in the same spot Nick had left me when Genelle started yelling. I'm not sure how long she went on, but she stopped when she saw that I had no measurable response. I was in shock. I could see her and hear her and even though I wanted to say I was sorry for ruining her wedding, I felt so trapped inside my own shell that I couldn't speak. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dartmoor shake his head and tsk tsk to his buddy Wendell as he took charge of the chaos in the aftermath of Roxie and Nick's departure. It all unfolded in a silent, slow-motion, horror movie kind of way. A fleeting expression of sadness crossed Dartmoor's brow and it stung me.
Even my enemy feels sorry for me
, I thought.

Janet tried to hug me, but I couldn't react.

“Clarissa, shake yourself out of it,” I heard Marshall say. “Tell us what just happened.”

Humiliation, shame, my foolish heart leaping into another dead-end abyss? Me, faking my way through life, just as I have for the last four years because I don't know any other way to get by? My abject inability to come to terms with reality because I'm so busy charting, defining, making clever comparisons, and fantasizing an alternate reality where everything goes just as I want it to? Unable to deal with the indisputable truth that I can barely support myself, pay my back rent, or pay off any of my loans? Or the fact that I can't find a job that resembles anything that I was trained for or will compensate me with any kind of meaningful salary? Or that the love of my life, my effin' soul mate, Sam Anders, deserted me and I've yet to face the certainty that it destroyed me inside and left me forever wondering what I did wrong? That I seem fated to repeat the mistakes of my life endlessly without interruption until my demise? I knew the answer to Dad's question, but I couldn't open my mouth to reply.

In my collapsed state of mind I just barely comprehended that I owed everyone an explanation. I mean apology. But Nick leaving with Roxie was simply the crumbling of everything in my existence, so I didn't know where to begin. I felt as if I was trying to climb a ladder inside myself to reach my brain and take back control of a nervous system that had completely shut down, as if my body was some giant robotic exoskeleton—like Optimus Prime or some other Transformer—and had stripped its gears and hydraulics. I desperately needed to reactivate myself, to gather enough energy to try to say what I had planned on saying to Mom and Dad before, to confess once and for all to the lies I had told.

“Clarissa, can you hear me?” Dad asked. “Are you okay?”

“I didn't want you to know…” I began, but the words were trapped in my throat because the sobs kept choking me. Painfully, I started again. “… I didn't have a job and that my personal life is crap.…” I couldn't sugarcoat what I was saying or be witty or clever. I could barely spit out the words between my ever-tightening chest and the salty tears flushing down my face. “I lied to you about everything,” I said, “and I couldn't stop lying.”

When I finally looked up and saw Janet's unease and her pitying vexation, as if I had let her down, I understood why I never told Mom and Dad the truth.

I wasn't trying to save them from the burden of my woes because of
their
problems. I was saving myself from Mom's condescending dismay and disappointment in me. All through my childhood, there had been something about Mom's smug “I don't have that problem” demeanor that never broke down into real feeling. She always saw others through a lens of failure when their lives fell apart, as if it were foreign to her experience. That look, even when she was trying to be sympathetic, has always sucked the life out of me.

With all his faults and challenges, I knew why Dad was barely a shell of his former self. Mom's charming eccentricities aside, no one could touch her. Her ability to manage and never be fazed by those of us less perfect around her is why I've tried to emulate her in my own crazy way. It's why tofu was the perfect symbol for what Mom was all about. Tasteless little squares. Perfectly dependable, predictable, nutritious, and boring. That why it was her food of choice. But of course I didn't say a word of that.